While working at MinVu over the last 5 years I have had many opportunities to travel, for both business and pleasure, so I thought I'd just show off where I've been. Working in mining means you get to go to some pretty remote places, and similarly I feel very blessed that I've been able to afford to do some of the pleasure trips as well. I should point out too that a lot of my personal trips have been church related - going to camps and conventions and such.
So without further ado here is a summary of all my trips so far...
- Fiji four times - for 6 months in 1991, family holiday in 2003 for 10 days, honeymoon in 2006 for 1 week, and we stopped there for 10 days on our way to Canada
- Indonesia three times - all for work, spending all of my time at Balikpapan, Sangatta and the Kaltim Prima Coal mine on the island of Borneo
- Papua New Guinea twice for work (at Tabubil and the Ok Tedi mine, near the border of Indonesia)
- PNG for a missionary type trip with a couple of guys from my church. We went to a Pastor's conference in Lae, then a couple of us went down to a place called Apahuhuna, down on the eastern tip of the country and spent some time with our church down there - a truly life changing experience for me.
- New Zealand twice - once for a church convention in Christchurch (no sightseeing this time) and once when a group of us guys went on a boys week away where we started in Wellington for a church convention then hired a motorhome and drove from Wellington to Auckland, stopping everywhere in between.
- More trips than I can remember in Australia - so much so that I have been all up and down the east coast - from Cairns in northern Queensland right down to the Grampians in western Victoria, and also Tasmania as well (Launceston to Hobart, Hobart to the Freycinet peninsula)
- Spent more time than I care to admit at the Ekati Diamond mine and in Yellowknife, NWT, Canada
- Currently living in Victoria, BC, Canada as part of a 12 month world trip (and so have seen some of the sights of Vancouver Island)
- Also been to many places on stopovers (from a couple of hours to overnight) - Singapore, LA, San Francisco, Honolulu, Calgary, Edmonton, Seattle...
I have mentioned a few times that DW and I are currently on a 12 month world trip. The main purpose of this trip was to help out our church in Victoria, Canada, so that is where we are spending most of our time. But it would be a waste if that is all we did - so we spent 10 days in Fiji on the way here and on the way home in July 09 we will be having a 6 week holiday. We are planning on doing a week in New York, a week in London, spend three weeks driving from Paris to Rome, then spend a week or two in Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong - with possibly (if there's enough time) a side trip to an orangutan sanctuary on Borneo in Indonesia.
There are so many other places I want to go as well but of course that depends on finance and how and when my family grows (no kids yet but you never know). I want to do a missionary trip to Africa (our church has over 7,000 members in Kenya, Malawi and Mozambique), I want to swim with the jellyfish in Palau, I want to go to the islands of Tristan De Cunha (the most remote in the world), Easter Island (because of the statues) and Socrota (an amazing diversity of plant and animal life), I want to spend some time in what I think are the most beautiful places on earth - Niue, the Seychelles and the Maldives - before they disappear forever under the rising sea, I want to spend time in the middle east talking to people on both sides of the conflicts (Palestinians, Israelis, Iranians, Shiites, Sunnis - everyone), above all, I want to experience life everywhere :-)
And when all is said and done, I want to retire to Fiji to run a little cafe on a beach in the middle of nowhere, where both travellers and locals can come and relax.
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