… from Korea.
According to an article in the Korea Herald, a Korean family (mom, dad, 3 kids) took the family mini van to Portugal, via a ferry to Vladivostok and long drive across Siberia, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, etc.
They have been photo-blogging about it. Now they plan to drive back.
This is awesome. It's hard to explain all the ways that this is so fascinating to me. I think on the one hand I love the idea of that kind of trans-Russian adventure, and have fantasized about it for years. But the idea of doing it as a family, like as a sort of "family outing," it cool too, and makes it into the stuff of a kind of unconventional novel – not to mention my own childhood trekking across the Cascades or the Rockies or British Columbia with my sister, parents, Peggy, and a dog in a Model A Ford. Finally, it's interesting to see Koreans, specifically, doing things like this because they have a bit of a cultural reputation for being so, um, (pen-)insular… this is a nice antidote.
Here is a screencap of a picture of them setting out, at the Sokcho ferry terminal where you catch the boat to Russia (because North Korea – if it weren't for that, one could just drive all the way to Portugal directly). I like it because I was just in Sokcho last week.
By the Way, Mr. Way, in the photos of you and Ann and Jacob, you are looking quite healthy! I don’t know if you are feeling any better,but you look better!
In mid-2011 in Kazakhstan I met a lanky, slow-talking, grey-haired [White] German Rastafarian (he had to hair to fit the part, as well as the attitude, and certain other things) who was driving around the world in his homemade RV — an enormous truck of some kind with a boarded-up back featuring a bed and sink and stuff.
He was going across Asia at the time, and said he’d already been all through Africa in that behemoth of a vehicle (years earlier, I think), as well as Latin America. He had good things to say about Mexico, IIRC.
German Rastaman just seemed coast through his long trip. He’d plop down and park to sleep in his vehicle for the night just about anywhere, and he never seemed to get in any trouble.
At one point, myself and two others drove around with him — And he’d just smile and wave to the police and bellow out “Dobry Dzien!” while bouncing along playing his loud music (including, to fit the stereotype, Bob Marley).
He’d already done this kind of thing for years, not all consecutively. He was about 50, I think. How he was able to do such extended travel comes down to penny-pinching. Most people would not consider his vehicle to be road-worthy, for example. It sort of clattered along. You’d think “it may conk out any minute now” to see it and hear it. And boy, could you see and hear it. It was bigger than some tanks, and maybe louder too. It seemed to me to be a 1980s model or maybe even 1970s. German-made. He said he took good care of it, and it *had* gotten him across Eurasia. The vehicle still had the German license plate.
I came to meet this man through the French across-the-world-walkers (two men around age 30) I had come to know, who were then held-up in Almaty. They French had gone to the Kyrgyz consulate in Almaty to get a visa to go to Bishkek to get a new Kazakh visa while they waited on their latest attempt to procure a longterm China visa. German-Rastaman was there, also getting a Kyrgyz visa. He casually invited himself to do his laundry at the place they were staying (the same place I was staying at the time, Couchsurfing). The French guys were very polite . Meeting a 6’3″ White Rastaman who is *very* interested in long conversation..Most people would just nod along.
Later, it seems the French walkers accompanied the Rastaman to a “hippie festival” near Almaty. How this German Rastaman knew about a hippie festival in Kazakshtan is beyond me. The party ended when the police showed up, I was told later by the French (as they’d call themselves; when they buzzed-in to come into the apartment, they’d say “the French are here!”). Once again, German Rastaman somehow eluded any trouble with the police, though, and was off to Krygyzstan, as far as I know.
The French pair, stuck in Almaty for months awaiting a longterm Chinese visa, eventually made it to China to cross the Takla Makan desert on foot. How they did that I have no idea, but if they could make it across Kazakhstan… (They said the trick on the Kazakh steppe was to go along rail lines, and every so often a train outpost would appear at which they could ask for water, and the guy would give them some).
I think the French are now in SE-Asia, still on foot. I celebrated their cross-the-world trip’s third anniversary with them, May 2011. They started from France in May 2008. Now it’s over five years. They said the only serious problem they had 2008-2011 was in eastern Turkey, where the army shot at them, thinking they were Kurdish guerrillas (what with the large backpacks). They promptly surrendered, and were taken to an army camp where they were given a free meal and warm place to sleep and steered in another direction!