Dancing Dave's recent blog (
China with my Xiong di...How it all began) made me wonder -- who have you met during your travels that led to a friendship across distances and possibly oceans?
With TravelBlog's recent 15-year birthday (
TravelBlog.org is now 15 years old !!) and the truly wonderful bloggers and friends (sometimes both) that we've met on and off the road, I was wondering if you would be willing to share at least one story of one of the best treasures we can come away with during travels -- a great friendship.
Reply to this Hi Michelle,
WOW nobody has responded to this post?! Crazy!...well let me be the first, unfortunately I haven't had the privilege of meeting up with anyone from our community here, but I have met a ton of great people on the road who I'm still in touch with to this day whether I met them 8 years ago when I was first starting out on the,road or just last year. I am pretty choosy with who I keep in contact with I will admit, I'm not into the young kid going to other countries to party and do nefarious things, I'm a bit older and prefer people my age and older. Meeting great people from other places is an experience that has changed my life for the better and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I have lifelong friendships that I've made and continue to cultivate whether it be I travel and visit them or via whatsapp or plan a trip together it's made my travel experience so much better and hopeful I can catch up with some of the community here one day when we cross paths 😊
Reply to this We met up with the Teesside Travellers in January in the Philippines, which was great fun. Suzanne had met them before at a festival back home but it was my first time. Great couple.
We are also friends with a guy from Lyon who we met while camping in France and he worked in a bar. We hit it off and we're determined to meet up again, either in France or Taipei where he spends a lot of time these days.
Must also mention our wonderful experience in Bogota when we got talking to a guy in a Rock bar called Felix Motorhead, who turned out to be a singer with Colombian Metal band Ursus. We spent the night with the band in Dynasty Rock bar drinking beers, whiskey and bourbon. What a great night!
Reply to this Travel blog has made it possible for us to make many new friends. We can answer this in detail later but we have some close friendships.
Brendan...the BV chef is a good friend and we have traveled with him to Jordan and Egypt. He is a scream to travel with and he is going to visit us in Florida in October.
We have a wonderful friendship David and Denise Hooper.... the dancing ones. We skype them in Australia frequently and have now traveled with them twice. Once on a blues cruise in the Caribbean and recently to Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia. We enjoy our time together and will plan other escapades.
We are pleased to have met and become friends with Ali, Michelle and the precocious Miss Olivia. We visited them in Portland in February and miss living near them as we did when we were all in California.
Reply to this Hi Roger,
I think a lot of bloggers have gradually built friendships online by reading/appreciating one another's blogs (e.g. leaving comments) and some will send PMs to meet-up. Sometimes there are get-togethers in different parts of the world allowing for multiple bloggers to meet-up. In the latter situation, I would recommend posting a new forum topic and set a future date and location, then you can message folks to see if they would be interested in joining.
The hardest part, as travellers, is figuring out when folks are in the same area.
Best of luck!
Michelle
Reply to this In response to: Msg #200684
I went on a 2 week trip to Scotland with my best friend Ali back in 2005. Ali is originally from Australia and a friend of hers from high school, Meg, was working in London at that time as a nanny, so she was able to take the train up to Edinburgh and spend the weekend with us. At the end of the weekend Meg went back to London and Ali and I continued on our trip. Meg and I kept in touch after the trip via Facebook and email. In 2007 my husband and I moved to Germany for his job and Meg was just finishing up her nanny position and was backpacking through Europe before heading back to Australia. She came to visit us in Germany and we showed her around for a few days. In 2011 my husband and I visited Australia and I got to see Meg again. She hung out with us for the few days that we were in Sydney and showed us around. About a month after we returned home she was in the States and we were living in Tennessee at the time, so we visited Opryland Hotel and the Hermitage together. I haven't seen her since 2011...trips across the pond are pricey...but we talk on Skype once or twice a year, keep up with each other on Facebook, and share books on Goodreads. I'm in the process of moving to Taiwan and we've already been in touch about visiting each other since we'll be a lot closer. It's been a truly wonderful friendship that has happened only because we met each other while traveling.
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