I spent some time recently walking down memory lane—watching World Race videos, browsing photos and re-reading old blogs—and reflecting on what an incredible experience I had a year and a half ago (hard to believe it’s been that long!)
Caleb and I are currently only connected with missions through our financial support, but we’re involved with our local church and we’re dreaming big dreams of what missions might look like in our future. One thing we have been doing plenty of though is traveling! Since returning home from the Race I’ve started collecting frequent flyer miles and hotel points, which have helped us to take plenty of trips for practically free! I’ve started blogging about this new ‘hobby’ at www.gettingmypointshigh.com.
Today on my points blog I posted a “Throwback Thursday” post about travel lessons I learned on the World Race. I’m excited to share my missions experience with my new readers and direct them to this blog. I thought it might be a good opportunity to share it here as well, and hopefully some of you will be interested in following our travels and learning a thing or two about how we travel on the cheap! My days of sleeping on dirt floors and taking cold bucket showers are (mostly) over now, thanks to the close to a million points we have collected primarily from rewards earning credit card sign ups, but many of the things I learned on the Race still apply to our travels.
1. Pack light. For 11 months we had only the belongings we could carry on our backs. I carried a 65L internal frame pack and a 30L daypack. After packing my tent, sleeping pad, sleeping bag, and pillow, there was very little room for clothes or anything else. We took only what we needed, and it was enough. We traded clothes with each other, learned to pack quickly and efficiently, and only bought things we absolutely needed.
2. Be flexible. The interesting thing about our trip is while we knew the general country we’d be in each month, we never knew what city we’d be in or what kind of work we’d be doing in advance. Every day was different. We learned to expect the unexpected, to let go of a need to have everything scheduled, and to go with the flow with a positive attitude. Stuck in a hot, sweaty, smelly, 15 passenger van with 20 other Africans? Nothing you can do about it, might as well laugh about it!
One of the many times our van broke down in Malaysia.
3. Make your best effort to honor the local culture. Our work every month was different—working in orphanages, partnering with local churches, manual labor, anti-human trafficking ministry—but each month we lived alongside the communities we served. We lived in peoples’ homes and schools and churches and pitched our tents in their front yards. We tried our best to communicate in their language and learned to communicate with hand gestures. For the most part we ate their food, rode in their public transportation, shopped at the local markets and worshipped in their churches. I certainly didn’t understand all of the cultures I experienced, and generally the trip made me prouder to be an American, but I think it’s important for travelers to foreign countries to enter in with an open mind and to always be respectful of other cultures. Your trip will be better if you try to experience more of the local culture and interact with its people!
Wearing traditional clothing in rural India.
Read the rest of my travel tips here…
