Chris loves to travel. When he was single, whenever he got time off from school or work, he would used it up for road trip and travel all over the place. On the contrary, my idea of vacation is good book, coffee, massage, and sleep.
I was lucky to have parents who are not scare to travel. The fact that they have four kids, don't speak English and only little Chinese did not deter from traveling all over Asia. Because my dad don't like to be told what to do, he prefer to skip the tour and go on our own. I had good memories of our traveling but it took me a while to fall in love with it.
In the beginning of our marriage, every time we travel somewhere, we would get into fights and arguments. Chris expected us to wake up when the sun rise and not wasting any time to explore the place 'till night. His idea doesn't exactly match my "relax-we're-on-vacation" idea.
Over the years, we learned and are still learning to understand, accept our differences, and adjust. It wasn't easy and doesn't happen overnight. I love what Bill Hybels wrote on his book: Fit To Be Tied: "In the covenant of marriage, God asks two self-willed sinners to come together and become one flesh - not in body only, but in spirit, in attitude, in communication, in love. It takes years and a very high price for two self-willed sinners to submit one another, serve one another joyfully, to honor one another, to edify one another - it's a lifetime challenge."
Sure the sightseeing is great
so does the food
did I mentioned food yet?
but what I love most about traveling is the learning experience and the fact that:
a. traveling broaden my horizon and give me broader perspective.
For instance: we won't realize how light the traffic here until we're stuck for 2 hours in Jakarta traffic (a trip that would takes only 10 minutes here).
b. We are learning other people's culture and way of life that's different that ours . Growing up in a third world country, where we encounter poverty wherever we go, it's easy to be grateful and content with what we have.
But living in America, where we have access to anything and everything; we often forgot to look down, stop thinking about ourselves, and appreciate what we have instead of always thinking about what we don't have.
c. Family bounding time. There is nothing that bound us more than when we get unplugged, out of our comfort zone, explore new places and experience new things together.
Lastly, how else we got to see this unique creatures if we don't travel:
most of the images above were taken from our travel to Manado & Bangka Island, Indonesia.
What the camera failed to capture were the heat, the bugs, geckos, the stomach pain, the fear, the smiles, the laughter, and how much we learned and took away from it.
"Why do you go away? So that you can come back.
So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors.
And the people there see you differently, too.
Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving." Terry Pratchett
