Reflections on World Travel

My Travel Wish List for for 2023

Globetrotters Monthly Challenge for the new year — So much to see— so little time!

Anne Bonfert recently posted the January Globetrotters challenge!

Here we come 2023. Places to go. Things to see! When it comes to planning travel, sometimes imagining the trip is all the satisfaction I need.

If my airport experiences over the holidays are any barometer, it seems most have put the pandemic behind them. Even China is dropping the chains for international travel this week. Maybe I’ll finally get to use that visa they pasted in my passport back in January of 2019!

As it happens, I’m writing this story from a train that’s speeding — some of the time — toward California. So that sets the stage for №1!!! — almost in past tense, already.

My train trip is something of a one off. I had a week at my disposal and decided to exploit the opportunity to rekindle my young adult passion for train travel.

Looking forward? Well — that gets a little complicated!

We have three flavors of travel coming up on horizon over the next twelve months. Of course, some of that is still on the drawing board, but here’s a quick redux of what I think is going to happen in the coming year. For the sake of efficiency, I went about categorizing our exploration endeavors: Naturist Journeys, Textile Adventures, and Work Related Travel.

Naturist Journeys

I’m the Meandering Naturist, so I don’t think I need to offer additional rationale related to my proclivity for taking my clothes off. We’ve been doing that since we were first married, and finding new naked places remains an obsession of mine.

As I don’t teach during the month of January, we’ve already confirmed our bookings for two naturist expeditions in the coming weeks. Next week we’ll make our way to Thailand to celebrate the re-opening of a quirky naturist resort there call Oriental Beach Village. I’ve been once before, but this will be the first time to this place for my wife. [It’s a bit of adventure just to get there!] Some great stories will come out of that, for sure.

At the end of the month, we’ll celebrate my birthday — it’s a big one — at a remote naturist resort called New Cambium on the Dominican Republic. It’ll just be a long weekend staying with friends in their beautiful home there.

Happy birthday to me!

We haven’t worked out the actualities yet, but I’m hopeful we can check out one of the sole clothing-optional resorts in Central America. Popa Paradise in Panama offers beach-side casitas where clothing may be optional, but relaxation is not. It’s pretty pricey, so we still have to figure that out.

We’ve also penciled in our annual pilgrimage to naturist France for the middle of June with the intent of returning to La Chiappa on the southeastern shores of Corsica. Our adult daughters have pledged to join us there, so I think that’s going to happen. We also hope to spend a long weekend at our favorite little hamlet on Ile du Levant. Naturist paradise!

After a couple of work engagements that will burn up most of the summer, we’re hoping to make it to Bali where a smallish resort called Bali au naturel sits a couple of hours away from all the craziness of the all nightlife of Kuta. That will likely be the grand finale to our naturist endeavors of 2023.

Textile Adventures

There are several places we’re determined to get to that require proper attire as the price of admission. I’d love to pair our visit to Panama with a stopover in Costa Rica, or maybe even Colombia. But again, that’s still on the drawing board.

And we’ll fly through Singapore on our way to and from Thailand. It’s the best connection on United Airlines, and one-nighters in Singapore are always entertaining, if only for wandering the waterfront and trying out the cuisine at the outside food courts.

That trip to Bali is connected to a music festival I plan to attend there. We’d love to lead into that trip with a train excursion down the length of Vietnam and a maybe even a stopover in Cambodia. Also a work in progress, but looking hopeful.

Work Related Travel

My job as a music professor takes me all over the world. A huge project in progress involves taking a group of 50 students to music festivals in Wales and England, so that’s essentially a done deal!

I hope to do a similar project in New Zealand in 2024 that would require some sort of a reconnaissance trip in 2023, but I haven’t a clue as how to fit that into my already packed calendar. And once again, that trip to Bali is connected to attending conferences in Singapore and Indonesia.

Dangerous work, but somebody’s gotta do it!

While I’m still roughing a lot of this out, it looks like 2023 may well take me back to pre-pandemic travel levels. Maybe I’ll even finagle a weekend in Shanghai! I just have to figure out how to navigate all that while remembering that I still have a day job where they expect to see me on campus every now and again.

In the first draft of this story, I tried to link specific posts to our rather particular and unique destinations in a logical sort of way, but the farther I got into that quest, the more confusing it became. And strangely enough, the only Globetrotter I’ve found who’s written about Corsica or Ile du Levant, is me!

Shocker!

For many of the other destinations, I was successful in finding several Globetrotter accounts that have already proven useful and informative. Here’s a brief annotated list — with gratitude to the authors for their timely advice. (Just in case you thought your writing isn’t changing lives someplace out there!)

And now for the literature review…

D J Hopkins and I are totally on the same page about the beauty of Thailand as well as the calm and friendly demeanor of the people who reside there. I love the chillax vibe of the beach side cafés as well as the transcendent vibes from the ornate temples that are literally everywhere. D J most certainly brings that to life.

Want to see a country in a day? You can just about do Singapore in a day given its size and excellent public transportation. Osan Fernando does a great job of mapping out your itinerary. Despite repeated visits to the theme park like city, I picked up a couple more places we need to visit on our trip later this month.

We have a very specific destination in the DR and it seems that wasn’t on Pamela Oglesby’s itinerary, but she does have a lot of great intel on the island, and I totally concur with her assessment of Brugal rum. As naturists, we can arrive with empty bags and take them home full of tasty beverages.

It may be her first impressions of Panama, but Mariana Carvalho is one impression ahead of me. Sounds like their fly-by encounter will be similar to ours. Eager to try out a few of her food recommendations.

It wouldn’t be a typical summer if we didn’t get naked in the South of France. Not surprisingly, I can’t find anyone on Globetrotters whose written about Ile du Levant or Corsica, other than… ME!

After several stopovers in London over the decades, we’ve finally started discovering the United Kingdom beyond the extensive reach of the Tube! Several trips to Scotland, and more recent trips to Cambridge, Kent, and Wales have truly whet my appetite to keep plying the countryside. Apparently Claire Elizabeth feels much the same way.

Richard Fang gives a quick introduction to Bali along with links to his video blog on YouTube. From my previous visit of about 36 hours, I’m eager to take his advice and get out of town!

I made a brief visit to Vietnam in 2019 to attend a music festival, but we’re getting antsy to go deeper. I have a hunch these two pieces by Jordhan Robinson are going to help us draw up the backbone of our itinerary.

And finally, Charles Black M.D. wrote about his underwhelming stay in Auckland. That doesn’t make me any more excited about going to Auckland, but does make me realize I’d better broaden the scope a little as I put that project together. Thanks for the tip, Charles!

Sorry Anne! Maybe I went a bit overboard on the assignment.

But when it comes to planning travel, I’m all in. In fact, sometimes, planning the trip is all the satisfaction I need. Eager to add my own chapters to those of the authors featured above.

Live long and travel well, but Globetrotter friends!

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