
BANGKOK -- A Canadian/French couple set out to walk from Europe to Australia to remind the world that travel is more than a commodity. They sometimes walked up to 14 hours a day, got lost in the jungles of Laos and were involved in a fatal bus crash in their extraordinary journey. They reached as far as Thailand before the COVID-19 pandemic closed international borders.
"I always wanted to travel to the end of the world. I wanted to find some place not on any maps. We had to walk all the way from France to Laos to find that place," recounted Canadian Vanessa Mapp over a plate of papaya salad in a late-night eatery in Bangkok.