Home Sweet Home

The revised itinerary (click to view larger image)

102 days after we left, we arrived home again. This is the longest time we’ve ever been away and it feels great to be back where everything is familiar and you can have things exactly the way you like it. It’s been a privilege to be able to travel spontaneously, to adjust our itinerary whenever we felt like it, to stay longer or shorter at any location depending on our mood. We had great luck wherever we ended up and managed to serendipitously come across hidden gems and make special discoveries at almost every turn. And we didn’t do so bad budget-wise either as we were able to stick close to our plan of spending only $100 per day. But had we gone to Japan as planned, we probably would have really gone over.

It will take weeks, if not months for me to digest this amazing experience. But as of right now, if there is one word that can summarize the entire trip, it is “guilt.” Every day, we read about the widening gap between those who have wealth and those who do not. On this trip, I was confronted with the reality of this discrepancy almost every day. Of course this is completely my fault for choosing destinations where our dollars could be stretched. I suppose if I wanted to avoid guilt, a trip to Europe could easily make me feel like a pauper in just a couple of days. But instead of feeling lucky to have what I have, I felt sad for those who have so little. It would have been okay if the poor and uneducated had opportunities to improve themselves. But they do not and are doomed to live out their lives in poverty. The world today is simply not a fair place.

On this trip, it also became obvious to me that government and policies can make a huge difference in the well-being of its people. In countries with weak or corrupt governments, market forces have taken over and these are the countries where the common people are suffering the most. It’s obvious to me that market forces don’t always make things better, and in fact they often facilitate the exploitation of the little people by letting the bullies have their way. Capitalism is simply not fair and only a strong government can level the playing field.

So now that I have reliable internet access again, it’s time to finish up the sabbatical project. But first, I'm going to cook myself a good home-made meal. No more eating out for a while!