Catching up - July 2022
It's July 2022, and hard to figure out what happened to my Tripping Out Alone Blog..
I think I just stopped blogging because I stopped tripping out alone, then I stopped tripping out.
Since January 2020 I have not left Australia... however before that...
The last post was post my trips to Aceh, Africa and China.."I went to five countries in Africa and China - China twice and about to go again.. I have discovered more, more or less on my doorstep and I keep going."
I did go to Shanghai, then Beijing, then made a fantastic adventure trip with Joe, Robi and Nee to Yunnan Province, that was in June /July of 2017 and I returned for my last year of teaching in Bali.
In 2018 I went back to the UK for Easter and in the summer I went to visit friends in Myanmar and Bangkok and I went on a three or four day tour of Java with the band Navicula who were doing a 31 day tour, and by August I was flying to Darwin and taking up a position in Tennant Creek Primary School on the provision that they honoured my commitment to a journey I had planned almost my entire life.
A trip to Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan that took place in October 2018 - that was a full adventure , I will have to update the blog and add the pictures. I am so pleased I went to these two countries.
I think I have to check my passport to see what happened at the end of that year, but I know I spent 2019 teaching in Tennant Creek.
It turns out that I didn't remember because I actually did a great deal, I took the 13hour bus to Darwin, flew to Melbourne, flew to Byron, visited my friends and family then flew to Bali where I spent New Year with my friends from the Africa trip before flying to Bangkok for a few days before catching up with friends in Myanmar and then back to Bali to visit the new house, back to Darwin for a visit before heading back to work. Seems like a lifetime ago I used to live like this with multiple flights booked and a suitcase packed for summer.
Easter 2019 I went to Melbourne and went to an Iggy Pop concert for his 70th birthday, that was phenomenal! I got to meet Andrew again, with whom Kepsi had now moved in with and who later that year became Kepsi's husband. During the mid year break I returned home to Bali and spent my vacation there and returned again in September to keep working on the house.
I took a job in North East Arnhemland for 2020, I went to Bali and Lombok for Christmas and then to Bangkok and Cambodia. I moved out of my pretty rented house into my own home in the forests of the Batu Karu National Park and returned to Australia to take up my new job in January 2020 and that, thanks to first the Covid 19 pandemic and then a serious accident, has been it. So here I am in July 2022 , spending a holiday in the remote community in which I work, watching the images go up on facebook as friends rediscover the world. I am somewhat envious but know this period of recovery has to be undertaken and that there are airline tickets booked for future travel.
Let's see how I go looking backwards, not forwards and try once more to update the blog !
So I have stuff everywhere in the cyberworld, I have this blog, I have sites, I have magazine articles and a mass of photos through google photos and facebook. Then I have my teaching sites, unrelated to travel they are still an online line record of my activity in developing curriculum that I find interesting to teach.
I will need to find a place for everything to go together and not get lost, or just let it get lost.
I really understand why I needed to make this blog, I was starting again as a solo person going off into a world of travel supported by my dreams and fortunately for me a number of kind editors who let me write articles on the places I visited.
But what of now?
I have nearly finished my house in Bali, my friend Joe wrote an article about that for CNN Traveller which was great, although it is weird that CNN protocol is to refer to you by your surname only, so I become Denham. You can see it here: My House in Bali.
I will apply for citizenship of Australia, I will keep studying at CDU and I will keep on working while I can.
I have now got flights in my future and I have reached a stage where, especially after visiting Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan that I can feel I made my escape. I have no envy when I see travel shows I know there is more that I want to see and in the fullness of time I shall see it.
This blog started the documentation of my solo adventures, however I think the most significant journey was the one I took in 2007 with Kepsibel. We went to Dubai for the first time and it opened my eyes to the very real ability I had to make the kind of travel adventure I had always dreamed of, happen.
Comments
Post a Comment