My dream is to be able to complete my trip, travelling round the world, without needing to resort to flying. It will be difficult to accomplish, and almost certainly be more expensive and take longer than if flying, but I feel that airplanes have somehow trivialised distances so that we no longer really appreciate how far away places are. And when travelling by plane from point A to point B you do not see what is between them, how the land changes, how cultures, traditions and people connect the two. Furthermore flying is also the most polluting form of transport (per kilometre travelled) out there. (And in one of the world's ironies/hypocrisies, it is also the form of transport that is taxed the least, thereby benefitting the most affluent as well as the most profligate polluters.) The dream may not work out, but I will certainly try.
The fearsome Taiwanese army, ready to fight off any invasion from Commie China ... OK, maybe not. But they did help me cut my way through the bureaucracy of buying a SIM card in a 7-Eleven on Matsu. |