Have you taken long break (like 6 months or more) to travel around the country or World?

I would love to, and I could afford to, but I have a job that wouldn’t allow that and I have a young dauthter in elementary school so that’s not practical for me at this time.

I do a lot of traveling and have the freedom to but I generally find after about two or three weeks away, I’m ready to be home. I have lived abroad a few times in my life and may plan an extended stay in Paris at some point, but I don’t think I’d like to be on the road at this point for several months. I might think differently if I had a travel companion.

Not yet but will in 8.7 years. My younger brother back packed around Europe when he graduated college. Shared some amazing stories.

I would do it in a flash if I had the opportunity!

I did backpack around Europe when I was in college.

I haven’t, but I would in a heartbeat. I love to travel. However, I also have a husband who owns a business so getting away for more than a few weeks is pretty much impossible. In the future, after we retire, I’d love to take off and spend a few months living in different countries.

I did spend about four months living in Australia many years ago. Technically I’d already emigrated, but it became a holiday and I went back to the UK and then returned to Australia again a year later.

I have to keep my health insurance and therefore my job, and I’m still too scared to wander far from the doctors and hospitals that know me. Bad attitude I know. It’s just scary. It drives me nuts beyond measure that my health ties me down this way.

Yes

I really really wanted to do this when my husband was laid off and he wouldn’t do it. I’m still a little resentful we missed the chance. I wasn’t thinking 6 months, but a month here or there sounded good to me. I wouldn’t have minded longer.

@Mariah Buy travel insurance that covers you to be airlifted back to the states. It’s not terribly expensive usually. I don’t think it’s a bad attitude, you just need to find something reasonable so you feel safe. It makes perfect sense you are worried about it. If it makes you feel any better a friend of the family who has had very bad problems with crohns and has had many surgeries because of it, used to spend one and two months at a time in Europe. He got better at avoiding blockages, and finally felt comfortable with travel. He avoided countries that made him really nervous about medical care. He mostly travelled in Western Europe.

That’s really comforting advice, thanks!! My blockages have nothing to do with what I eat, so I can’t prevent them, and are urgent, so even though I don’t get them often it’s just scary to think what would happen if I were abroad. Europe does sound like my best bet. I dream of going to Costa Rica to do some birding, but I’m not sure about it. I need to do more research before I get serious about any of it. I’ve just applied for a passport for the first time a couple weeks ago!

@Mariah, there are people here with personal experience of the medical systems in different countries in Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. I hope you can gain the confidence to be able to travel. There are certainly many countries with health systems that are at least equal to the US.

Yeah it’s funny because I hate the US health system but it’s the devil I know!

@Mariah The man I speak of wound up doing best by eating what is garbage for most people. Fatty foods, no roughage. I have another friend who was diagnosed with pan ulcerative colitis, I know I’ve mentioned her before, and I think she used some sort of healthy diet to basically cure herself after years. She doesn’t believe her diagnosis was correct in the first place.

I bought full coverage insurance for a trip I took that was only several months after a very bad accident. I still had some vertigo, and pain in some places. I think it was $200 for just over a week. Or, that might have been for both my husband and me? I’m not sure.

Europe they will treat you if you’re sick, and the treatment should be decent. The third world has socialized medicine, but people with money don’t use it, so you would want to be careful. Just so you don’t feel paranoid, my Mexican husband had a gall bladder attack while living in Colombia. He got through it and it passed. It happened a second. I diagnosed him over the phone, I easily could have been wrong. The third time it was on a visit back in the states, confirmed it was his gall bladder, and he opted for surgery even though the pain passed while he was in the emergency room. He didn’t want emergency surgery in Colombia.

There is wonderful birding in America too, I’m sure you know that. In years you might have much better confidence in your health, in the meantime America is large and varied, and we are so lucky to live in such a big country.

@Janbb I did backpack around Europe when I was in college

I backpacked around the US in the early to mid seventies. I would encourage anyone to travel, especially when they’re young and before the responsibility of career and family set in.

Yes. I highly recommend it. Traveling is one way I don’t mind spending money. I’m still frugal but I like seeing places and people who live differently than we do.