Travel to Live!

By George Hodge

Travel to live! Not work or eat or exercise to live!

Nothing trumps travel; for, that's the only real way to find out who you really are and can become.

Travel provides the greatest experiences, joy and memories.

Take it from this once backwoods, barefoot boy who has traveled to Alaska, Hawaii, the Mediterranean (twice), across the USA and Canada and did the Caribbean a few times well, including Cuba, Santo Domingo and the Panama Canal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: George Hodge
• Release date: Mar 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311199096

George Hodge

Born in Anguilla in the Caribbean in 1942, I have been lover of words from very early, playing with them in the dirt, on sand and on all types of paper, including brown cement bag.During my university years (1963-66) in Barbados, I was lucky to get short stories published in the leading newspaper. Titles include “The crane lift which was to be his last” and “The day the topless came to town”.In 1970, I completed a full novel with the same name; and, proceeded to write the play shortly thereafter. Unfortunately, both manuscripts were lost in a hurricane.If you google Anguilla Spoken Word, from 1:42 into the video, you will see me, in my golden years, breaking my public speaking phobia, I being the second guest presenter.I invite you to read and enjoy my salvaged poetic pieces. If you feel satisfied, please spread the word; and, also look out very soon for my biography and other works.

Book preview

Travel to live!

On any budget! Here’s how!

By: George Hodge

Contents

Chapter 1 - Introduction

Chapter 2 - My travels

Chapter 3 - Evaluate your life

Chapter 4 - Make the decision

Chapter 5 - Do your research

Chapter 6 – Start preparing

Chapter 7 - Decide HOW you wish and can afford to travel

Chapter 8 - How, where and when to budget travel

Chapter 9 - How, where and when to travel cheaply

Chapter 10 – The how where and when of luxury travel

Chapter 11 - Tips to families with children

Links to other published ebooks

Disclaimer

Chapter 1 - Introduction

We have not yet truly begun to live, if we have never traveled! Rather, we are like babies in our mother’s wombs; goldfish swimming around in a glass bowl; chickens in an egg; or, eaglets in their mother’s nest.

We each have to emerge from our respective places where we feel safe and comfortable; and, enter into the big, unknown world around us, each according to our own will power and strengths and weaknesses that we inherited through our DNA.

We were born to travel; for, each one of us is like the sperm that either swims to fertilise the female egg; or, dies without having achieved its true purpose for living.

It’s through travel that we truly grow and develop and become the best that we can be. Our birth enrolls us into the university of the world which molds and shapes us; brings out our real potential as human beings; and, educates us to become citizens of the world as we ought to be, if we are to care about Mother Earth and the brotherhood of Man.

Travelling is our own best teacher; for, it’s through travel that we get to truly learn about ourselves. It’s the one true catalyst that reveals who we really are; how we handle challenges; how we deal with defeat; how we manage success; and, how we respond or react to different situations.

It is the only true medium open to us to truly understand and learn to appreciate cultural, ethnic, sociological, religious and other differences of peoples across the globe; and, to make quality life-lasting memories.

There’s a child in each one of us; for, curiosity is an important part of our makeup; and, it's through it that we learn. The more the curiosity, the more we learn. When we stifle or starve our curiosity, we stifle and starve our ability to enjoy life. To feed our curiosity, we need to feed our minds with various regular diets of travel which is like food, water and rest to the body.

There is a Christopher Columbus or Marco Polo in each one of us, just as there are both male and female hormones. All we have to do is to activate that desire within to travel, see, learn, experience and enjoy!

Sometimes, it takes somebody to give us the push; or, even a swift kick in the rear; or, for us to become dare devilish and do whatever it takes. For example, why would a female decide to take the male testosterone hormone? For good reason! Not just to ease pain; but to go, sexually, where she has never gone before. To reach heights never before attained. To dream, fantasize, widen her horizon and push back her sensual sky ceiling!

That’s what travel does to our ordinary lives. It adds the extraordinary to the ordinary to spice it up; for, it transforms our life and lifestyle forever, depending on the regularity, quantity and quality of the dosage.

That’s why a teacher, lawyer, accountant or other career professional in America or Canada or England or China would suddenly and quite unexpectedly quit their jobs; put on a backpack to travel across and experience life and living in New Zealand or Australia or the Southeastern Asian countries of Thailand, Laos, Cambodia or Vietnam; or, travel to experience what life and living is all about in the low cost of living destinations of India and the Philippines.

The peers, extended family members and friends of such persons might think they are crazy to just drop everything to travel freely; but, this is exactly what an increasing number of professionals and others are doing each passing year, as they evaluate their lives and discover that they are like seaweed in a sargassum; and, the only change that they are experiencing daily is the same boring cycle that is so reminiscent of a test rat or hamster walking the treadmill.

Indeed, they are increasingly being considered as the sensible and courageous ones who feel moved to evaluate their lives; and, conclude that they have to abandon the rat mill for a more exciting and fulfilling lifestyle.

In truth, most people everywhere are making moves to break the humdrum of their lifestyle by doing some form of travelling on a regular and consistent basis, starting with holiday and weekend jaunts.

For decades now, ordinary looking Chinese have been showing up at popular tourist venues across the globe. I saw them myself at Lake Louise in 1981 when I was on a car trip from Jasper via the Ice fields Parkway, Lake Louise and Banff to Calgary, Alberta, to catch a flight back east to Toronto.

I was an ordinary teacher originally from Anguilla, a British Dependent Overseas Territory in the Caribbean. They might have been more surprised to see, a black man, than I them.

Though we were from totally different ethnic backgrounds, we shared and experienced, in awe, the absolute beauty of the placid lake. We also, invariably, scrutinised and experienced each other. Their visors and cameras caught my attention; and, seeing me with a white wife must have confused most.

Just on that leg of my travel, from Jasper to Calgary, my experiences were priceless. I saw the spectacular ice fields; mule and whitetail deer, white mountain goats; bighorn sheep along the Maligne Lake route; and, even a great big, moose along the way.

Earlier, on a tour to Maligne Lake - famous for its unique bluish colour - I was part of a bus load that stopped at a canyon where, for centuries, water had carved out the rocks resulting in an impressive deep maze of waterways.

The rainbow trout in lemon sauce at the lodge was absolutely delicious.

Great lasting memories from an all expenses paid promotional trip to Jasper given by a book and periodical wholesaler in Toronto which, today, is fast being bought up and owned by enterprising Chinese, maybe by companies owned by some of the same travelers I met in 1981. One never knows!

However, what I want you to know and realise is the continuing importance of travel to Chinese. A January 2015 article reported that 109 million Chinese travelled abroad in 2014; and, that they spent US$165 billion. 1.8 million visited America.

Ge Lei, a marketing manager in China CYTS Tours Holding Co., gave the reason for it, saying, More and more ordinary Chinese are putting tourism expenses on their list of priorities.

While most of the rest of the world’s 6 billion people feel that most of China’s 1.4 billion are poor, China still leads the world in the realising the need to travel; and, in actually doing so.

China’s 2014 GDP per capita stood just below US$4000, being just 31% of the world average.

The rest of the world should follow the Chinese in travelling around the world. They show us how to truly live; for, life is short; and, most of us can do without the proverbial 70% of anything that we might own.

Trading this value for travel is the best investment we can ever make; for, if education is the considered best investment we can ever make, travel is the best teacher.

Proverb: If you wish good advice, consult an old man!

That’s me! Consider that’s what you are doing; so, please also tell your family, friends, relatives, fellow workers, group members, congregationalists and social media buddies.

Chapter 2 - My travels

In the 1940s, I was a little, poor, black, barefoot boy in a small village of a dot of an island called Anguilla that was not even yet on the map of the Caribbean.

From a hill just above my family's two room, 12x20 foot concrete home, I used to see stately luxury ocean liners, all aglow at night, passing close to our shores to and from places and ports unknown.

Guess what this did to me - the little, black, barefoot boy? It kindled a fire within me to also, one day, travel like those lucky, rich passengers; for, in my little mind, they had to be just that.

It did even more! It also made me wish and pray that, in time to come, my beloved, scrubby,