360 in 365 – Joachim voyage autour du monde

Our hero returns.

As you might have learned, I’m in Paris, after more than one year of travelling around the world. Over 80 000 km if you count the plane trips. 372 days and four hours.

Being back doesn’t feel too bad. It might be because of the two friends who came to get me at the airport (her and her), or the numerous picnics, evening beers, wine parties that ensued with my friends in Paris. It might also be the fact that I’m still in a “travel” state of mind because I’m staying on a friend’s (him) couch, that I’m doing nothing except seeing people and minding my own buisness. I’m landing smoothly. Next week I’m going in the south, at a barbecue with other travellers I met around the world. And then, back to Bordeaux, to live a few days with my parents, because there’s no better motivation to go look for a job and a place than living again with parents. Then I’ll look for a job in graphic design/motion design/web design in Paris or elsewhere around the world. I’m not afraid to travel (as I might have shown). I’d like to start working again in November. If you know people who might be interested in working with me, well, contact me.)

There’s one more week of answering the same answers to my friends, because they always ask the same questions. So yeah, do you know how I got Dengue Fever in Vietnam? Japan’s really nice but it’s expensive… I don’t have a favorite country, it’s different everywhere, depends on the different experiences. Some are human, some cultural, or some downright bizarre, yet not all were perfect.

But these posts are not all. I forget vegan soups with mutton in Mongolia, coming back to the hostel, drunk and lost, in a foreign city, night train rides with a chinese soldier sleeping on my shoulder, discovering a new subway, a new currency system, a new Hello, Good-bye, Thank-you and No-thanks-lady-I-won’t-buy-it-and-that’s-definitive in a new asian language every few weeks, or learning to express myself in Spanish… also, there’s the ability to know where to find stuff in your backpack in the dark, or being able to pack it in less than half an hour, knowing who’s the liar and the one you can trust when you meet people, sharing so much with interesting, funny, surprising people that you might never see again (except maybe on Facebook), eating horrible-looking things while knowing what it is, or eating delicious food while not being able to know how to order it again, sleeping in a new bed every day and waking up to a new horizon every morning, digestive problems due to bad curry or not-so-fresh chicken hearts, vacation days in the travel, where you do nothing all day (except late postcards),weeks that stretch for years because nothing happens or days so packed with new things happening that they look like weeks, the girls met on the road and the complications ensuing sometimes, and people, locals, those who seem invisible to some tourists, those who seem always up to bad things to some travellers, but mostly those who can be your best friend for a day. All of this I’ll miss, and much more still. And I know they won’t ever leave me. And perhaps in some time I’ll rediscover them when I’m back on the road.

While I’m not travelling this blog will be way less active. Only postcards will be published for sure, perhaps a few more pictures… but I don’t know if I’ll have more to say. I might also add some AdWords ads on the articles now the micro-sponsoring project is finished… my next travel projects are not for today (I’ll have to learn to drive a motorbike before).

So I thank you my friends to follow my adventure around the world, to leave me comments. If you’re travelling and you find the advice on this website worthwhile, please tell me! And if you were just looking for dreams of travels, please help yourself…

… and happy trails!

PS: and I just learned that this website of mine was on a french teen-girls mag named Muteen… the scan’s here : twitpic.com/2p7im2 (in French). Merci Muteen, merci Benjamin-who-fond-the-scan! And cheers to Nico & Johanne who are also on it!