KUALA LUMPUR: Travelling the world over on the kindness of strangers sounds like a script of a feel-good movie, but a young Dutchman is living out the dream.
Michael Ruppert, who is on a month's visit to Malaysia, has been travelling the world on a shoestring budget over the past three years, living in the homes of strangers.
“Many people think that to travel the world for so long, you must be really rich.
“I didn’t have the money - that was why when I quit everything and started travelling, I booked the cheapest flight I could find,” Ruppert told The Star Online.
The 28-year-old said that it was while travelling that he had the inspiration to start Starring You – a project that has enabled him to travel the world through the help of strangers.
The project began in 2012, with the premise that he would send a postcard to every individual who sends him his or her address. Response was good and people all over the world started to send him their addresses - he now has over 6,000 addresses in his address book.
“People really enjoy receiving something they can hold in their hands. And if you compare an e-mail to a postcard, a postcard is something people can keep somewhere and revisit later. An e-mail is something you read once and forget about,” he said on the reason he chose to send postcards to strangers.
As Starring You became more popular, he said offers from strangers throughout the world who wanted to donate to his project and offer him a bed to sleep in started pouring in.
"The families I have stayed with along the way, they are completely different (from each other), and it is really nice to see how people live around the world,” he said of his hosts.
Ruppert added that travelling without a set plan also allowed him to have experiences he would not otherwise have.
He said that once, after giving a presentation in Romania, a member of the audience invited him to join a skiing trip the next day.
“Then someone else in the group invited me to Dubai – and that is how I go from one adventure to another,” he said.
He added that Dubai host even upgraded his ticket from economy to business class.
Ruppert plans to meet up with the Malaysian followers of his Starring You project while he is in the country.
He also plans to mail out 300 to 400 postcards from Malaysia to those who have given their addresses to him.
“You give kindness out and you will receive kindness,” he said , a summary of his experience of the kindness of strangers.
BY HANIS ZAINAL
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