Travel Blessings
Looking back with thanks.
I remember going on my first plane ride, on a Fokker F27 Friendship, when I was 22. I was a young salesman for an engineering company and I was asked to urgently fly to Kuantan to meet with a potential customer. I had traveled from Kuala Lumpur to Kuantan by road many times before but had never flown. It was my first time flying and I was both excited and nervous. The plane was a turbo-prop and at cruising height, you could still make out the top of the coconut trees, and the roofs of houses. I remember getting off the aircraft dizzy with the thrill of my first-ever airplane ride.
Prior to 1975, I had never traveled outside of Malaya and Singapore. All that changed when I was offered a position with an American company based in New York. I was hired to oversee their distributorship in Manila and received a round-trip air ticket that allowed me to travel first to Manila, and then to the USA for my employment orientation. On the way back we flew to London, then Rome, and New Delhi before finally heading for my new posting in Manila. I was then recently married and Rhonda was with me as we began our adventure together.
My business travel while living in the Philippines allowed me to visit and see so many places. I have seen most of the cities in Luzon and have traveled to cities in Visayas and Mindanao. For my annual leave, I was provided a round-trip ticket to the US and back and we always included a stop in either Guam or Hawaii. While in the US we visited California, Arizona, New York, South Dakota, and Iowa.
Two years later I was transferred to Jakarta Indonesia where we visited many Indonesian cities and towns over our seven years there. These included Medan, Palembang, Pekanbahru, Bogor, Bandung, Surabaya, Semarang, Jogjakarta, Bali, Cirebon, Balikpapan, Bontang, Banjarmasin, Samarinda, Pontianak, and Manado. We also made annual trips back home with visits to Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Canada, and the US.
When we moved to the US for two years in 1990, I switched careers and joined Rhonda in the educational field. When teaching positions opened up in the American Community School in Amman, Jordan, we jumped at the opportunity. We lived for twelve years in Jordan and were fortunate to travel within Jordan as well as through Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, UAE, and Israel. We also made trips to Greece, Turkey, Nepal, Thailand, Viet Nam, Australia, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia.
Our last educational posting before returning to the US was in Japan. While there we were fortunate to travel to Vietnam, China, Cambodia, and Guam.
Once we were back in the US in 2008, our travel was limited to the US and Canada. However, after our retirement, we started traveling again, on cruises as well as visits to Europe and Asia. We plan to continue to travel overseas at least once every year.
We were fortunate to be able to see so many places. We were not independently wealthy. Our travel was only possible because our employers provided equivalent airfares home which we often used to visit different countries. Part of the attraction of working in educational institutions overseas is that you are sent to a regional annual conference. It was the location of these conferences that allowed us to see such exotic and interesting locations as Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Nepal.
What a blessing our lives have been. Travel is an education in itself and the educational institutions that sponsored our travel to conferences understood that we were not only learning from the conferences but from the culture of the countries as well.
Whenever I meet young teachers, I love to share my overseas travel experiences with them. We have had such rich travel and learning experiences as part of our work which we could never have afforded otherwise. We are so thankful for that.
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