A Visit to the United Arab Emirates and Settling in New Caledonia

The Sixglobetruckers are ending their long journey. After spending months travelling through various countries in Europe and Asia aboard their 'truck', here they are facing their final decisions: selling their truck, visiting the United Arab Emirates, their brief return to Belgium and finally settling in New Caledonia.

They also share their best tips, useful to anyone who, like them, wants to set off on a similar adventure and travel the globe as a family for several months.

Stopover in the United Arab Emirates

While our truck sails towards Europe via the Suez Canal, we make our way back by plane.
From Kuala Lumpur we treat ourselves to one last stop halfway home, in the United Arab Emirates. Stepping off the plane in Dubai, we simply feel like we're walking into a sauna... Over 45°C, and in summer the city empties out. Impossible to stay outside... We'd already had this feeling a year earlier when we were in Bandar Abbas, Iran, on the other side of the Persian Gulf.

Our truck's stopovers are often experienced as "holidays" in the sense that they break the established routine and take us out of our usual habitat. After a friend of a friend who took us in in Taiwan, then friends who hosted us in Hong Kong and then in Vientiane, it's now a cousin who has emigrated to Dubai who is happy to welcome us into his home on Palm Island for this last stop without our truck. Here's yet another new world: an entire city risen out of the desert, packed with luxury attractions for adults (designer shopping, sports cars, an indoor ski slope, thoroughbred racing, etc.) As for us, we simply treated ourselves to a screening of the new Jurassic World film in 3D on an IMAX screen!

We went to see the city's iconic towers, the Burj al Arab, shaped like a ship's sail, and the Burj Khalifa, quite simply the tallest tower in the world, before wandering through the souks of the old town, including the gold souk, where jewellery drips with this most precious of materials.

With the few days we had, we also had time to cross part of the desert and go as far as Abu Dhabi, the capital of the Emirates, to see Jean Nouvel's Louvre, and in a very different spirit: the great mosque. Magnificent buildings, one with metal stars and the other in white marble inlaid with gemstones in the shape of flowers... These places are majestic, calm and bright — you can breathe there.

A brief return to Belgium...

After these last few days enjoying new discoveries, we finally had to catch our last flight... On arriving in France and then in Belgium, we were all delighted to see our parents and grandparents again, of course, along with brothers, sisters and other family and friends. The strange feeling of finding yourself back in your own street and your own house mixes with the whirlwind of reunions as well as administrative and medical obligations. We had to get out a diary again and start booking appointments... We did a big paediatric and dental check-up. We put our house up for longer-term rental. We finally picked up our truck in Zeebrugge, just in time to empty it, clean it and put it into storage! We're renting a spot to protect it, and we have a friend to whom we've given the keys so he can handle visits with the next families setting off on the adventure.

… and a new departure for New Caledonia

For our part, we're continuing our explorations. We set off again almost immediately to settle in New Caledonia, in the heart of Oceania, giving us easy access to the surrounding islands and countries. This continues our route from Southeast Asia towards the South Pacific. We'll probably stay here for 2 or 3 years, taking the time to discover the region, and then we'll likely make a loop through Australia before heading back to Europe.

Since arriving in New Caledonia, the adults have gone back to work, and the little ones back to school. There's the pleasure of discovery for the adults, since it's a new and thoroughly pleasant work and living environment. As for the little ones, they were super motivated to go back to school. Besides making new friends and having real playtimes, they want to learn, they're curious and everything seems easier to them. No sooner had we arrived than the primary school headmaster told us: "Your daughter is in Year 5 — perfect timing, the class is going on a school trip next month... to Tahiti!"

After a year and a half of travelling: our experience and our advice for travelling families

Having reached the end of this journey, here are a few of our thoughts:

1. If we did it again, we would probably have separated the travelling project from the expatriation project. These really are two specific projects that get in each other's way a little.
2. Paradoxically, we're very glad to have moved straight on to another project. This is very personal, but it would probably have been a difficult transition for us to simply go back to "just like before".
3. For the sake of simplicity, we should have planned from the start for a loop rather than a linear route. Indeed, bringing the vehicle back to its country of origin seems by far simpler than selling it elsewhere or getting into import procedures.
4. For nearly a year and a half we had close to three activities a day, almost every day. We changed campsites every day (with rare exceptions). It's very hard to resist the pressure of time. Thinking you're "free" when you set off because you have such a long period ahead of you is an illusion. Logistics take up much more time than in a house, and visas and seasons ultimately set the pace of the trip. For our next projects, we'll probably think more about how to give ourselves a somewhat slower pace.
5. On our return, we were asked the same trio of questions over and over: "Did you ever feel in danger?" "Didn't you feel like getting divorced?" "And what about school for the kids, how did that go?" Let us also give you our answers. We never felt in danger — quite the opposite, what stands out most for us is the warmth, safety and kindness we encountered everywhere. But we think we're careful: we pay attention to the roads we take and the places where we camp, we introduce ourselves whenever possible to our new evening neighbours, and we don't drive at night. As for family conflicts, we had just as many as in our everyday life, no more, no less. In fact, the same subjects tend to cause problems. It's entirely possible to organise separate activities if you want to. You end up meeting a lot of people along the way, and you have the chance to talk very often with other adults besides your spouse. Children get just as many chances to play with other children as with their brothers and sisters. So you don't spend a whole year with only one person to talk to all the time. As for schoolwork, we weren't strict about study times, but we made sure the children didn't fall too far behind in the main school subjects. So we had periods with more or less work depending on how the trip went, and we eventually finished all the textbooks. We also spent a huge amount of time explaining and showing them other things.

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