RTW2VT: Around the World to Vermont
– Travel like it's 1997 –
MISCELLANY
You know you're in
Asia when...
Bus travel in the
Andes
WHERE WE'VE BEEN
See it on a map
Mexico
Fiji
New Zealand
Australia
Thailand
Laos
Burma (Myanmar)
Nepal
Hong Kong
Macau
Vietnam
Cambodia
Singapore
Indonesia
Hawaii
Vermont
Peru
Bolivia
THANKS TO...
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed
by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did.
So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.
– MARK TWAIN
In 1997, we left. We quite our jobs, sold the house, and spent the year traveling. As we went,
we stopped at cybercafes along the way and keep this electronic journal. This is the story of our trip.
What's New
June 25, 2023: A re-launched website
This website was originally developed in 1997 when the internet was in its infancy. Speeds were slow and tools were rudimentary and its original design reflected that. This re-launch updates the website in a manner that makes it easier to use while retaining its original character. It also includes light edits, some additional information, fixes broken links, and adds additional photos.
This update is still a work in progress. Underlined links are to pages that have been finished and the others will be added over time.
June 25, 2023: The story of the website's long hiatus
We originally developed this website as a way to keep friends and family updated. Before we left, we asked our local internet provider how much disk space we could use and he said that disk space was cheap and we could use as much as we wanted. There was no talk about bandwidth - we never thought about it and neither did he.
But then other people started finding the website and it got popular, including getting a mention in the New York Times (A Home Page Away from Home). We don't know how popular as we didn't have any sort of counter on it, but our internet provider got in touch with us saying that we had lots of traffic and should start advertising on it and split the profits. We asked him how much traffic we were getting. He also couldn't say, just that we were getting more traffic than all the other websites he was hosting combined and that the traffic had become too much for him to continue to let us do for free.
We didn't want to advertise and pushed back, which led to lots of back and forth and we eventually stopped responding and hoped that he wouldn't take the website down. He never did, and then a couple of years after our trip had ended, he sold out to a larger company and they took it down. Our trip was over and we just let it lie.
Now the internet is full of travel websites, nearly all of which are very different from ours and the few others that were being developed at the time. As you'll see from this one, we never tried to be "Influencers" (a term that didn't exist back then) and focused on describing our experiences and thoughts as we traveled. We resurrected the website so that we have a record of our trip and so that others can see how much things have changed.