Back to the Future

I’m jumping forward to the future again to let you in on some big news on the travel front. Before we headed off to adventures in Southern Laos without internet, we bought our return ticket home.

Because I’m all about sharing the reality of travel – the good and the bad – let me explain how that came to be. It took us a while to admit it, but somewhere in the last few months of endless buses, boats, lukewarm showers, hard beds, temples and cafes, we both started feeling a little burnt out and bored.  I know it is a hard thing to imagine – how could someone feel anything but ecstatic on a “trip of a lifetime” – but it is true.  And it happens to the best of them.

I can think of many possible explanations. Maybe it was because we got waylaid involuntarily in several towns in a row. It is one thing to decide to stay put and relax; it is another to be ready to move on but being stymied for one reason or another.

Maybe it was because one or the other of us was sick off and on for weeks.

Maybe it was post-India let down. India was invigorating precisely because it was challenging. Anything Southeast Asia could throw at us paled in comparison and seemed like a nagging bother instead of a cultural challenge.

Maybe it was because until recently, we’ve been mostly moving along Southeast Asia’s tourist trail. It is all too easy to go through the motions of travel and end up in the same places, surrounded by other Westerners doing the same things and eating the same comfort foods.

Maybe it is because getting off the tourist trail seemed like more work than we felt like exerting by this point in the trip.

Maybe it was because on some level, we are homesick and some part of us wants to be eating the comfort foods instead of more noodles and rice.

Maybe it was because the trip was rapidly winding down, and neither of us is any closer to figuring out what we want to do with the rest of our lives.

Maybe it was because we let the extraordinary become ordinary.

Maybe it was just because we’d been away from home for nine whole months.

In reality, I suspect that it was some combination of all of these things.

So, naturally, we did what any burnt-out traveler would do…we decided to extend the trip. Makes perfect sense, right?

As we waited for me to recover from a stomach ailment in Vientiane, we found ourselves scheming. One great part about Laos was traveling for a bit with our new German friends. Hearing about their upcoming plans to head to New Zealand, we found ourselves searching for flights and researching costs of campervans. We realized part of the reason we were feeling a little blah was the thought that Southeast Asia could be it for our trip. Our dwindling funds and time meant that we easily could finish out our time in Southeast Asia, in countries that may be unique but that are more alike than they are different.

So, one day – kinda like how this whole trip started in the first place – we just did it. We bought a ticket from Malaysia to New Zealand. Sure, there was much deliberation first. Sure, we probably are just procrastinating returning to the real world. Sure, we’re going to dip into our savings to finance the extension. But, you know what? Suddenly, we’re excited again. About everything. About spending more time in Southeast Asia to see most of what we want to see at a slow pace. About going to New Zealand. About getting our own wheels again. About having a firm return date home.

The truth is, I think the open-endedness of the end of the trip was making us flail around a bit. There are tons of lifestyle redesign proponents out there advocating traveling without time restraints or plans. I’m continually fascinated by the growing chorus of interesting people designing ways to travel indefinitely and encouraging others to do so. I think that’s great, and if there is one thing I learned from our travels is that I need to create the lifestyle I want rather than just do what I’m supposed to do. But the thing is, creating the lifestyle I want involves going home. We’re both too big of homebodies to travel forever. I like Pittsburgh. I like having a home. I know that I want travel to be part of my life, but I don’t want travel to be my life.

So while I haven’t had any grand epiphanies about what I want to do with my life – just small revelations that I haven’t quite worked into a coherent whole – as of May 13, 2011, 408 days after leaving Pittsburgh, I’ll have to work on creating the life I want at home. And I’m okay with that. Especially since between now and then, I have a lot to look forward to. Instead of only spending a week or so in Laos as we originally planned, we only had days to go on our 30 day visa when we crossed the border to Cambodia yesterday. We’ll spend a couple of weeks in Cambodia (famous last words!), including watching the Steelers play in the AFC championship game at the crack of dawn on Monday, then cross over into Vietnam to be in Saigon in time for the Steelers to win their seventh Super Bowl. : ) We plan to be in Vietnam for three to four weeks in total, and we’ll fly from Hanoi back to Bangkok in late February/very early March. We hopefully will be meeting up for a little bit with a friend of mine from high school who has been working on her own travel plans. We’ll head south through the Thai islands, and do a quick jaunt in Malaysia as we make our way to Kuala Lumpur for our April 3 flight to Christchurch. We’ll tour New Zealand by campervan for a month in April (when the flights and campervans are cheaper as it turns to the shoulder season), and then head home – but not before making a week-long stop in Hawaii first. As it turns out, flying from Auckland to Honolulu and from Kauai to Pittsburgh was slightly cheaper than just flying straight home from New Zealand. Which is awesome, especially since we missed Kauai on our honeymoon. As opposed to our big pimping honeymoon splurges, we’ll attempt frugality in Hawaii this time (unless the Hotel Hana-Maui wants to put us up for free, of course. Love that place). As far as re-entries to the United States go, I can’t think of a better way than to visit state number 50. I can taste the pineapple already.

So that’s our plans in a nutshell. Hope you’ll join us for the rest of the ride, as well the rest of the highlights and lowlights from our travels in Thailand, round one, and Laos. Teasers of what’s to come: elephants, elephants and more elephants; the slooooooooow boat to Laos; why foreign massages aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be; and Sean and Amy do Laos on two wheels. Thanks for reading along!

6 months on the road!

Six months ago today, we left Pittsburgh to start this crazy journey.  Our travels took us briefly to New York City, then to 3 continents and 17 countries: Spain, France, Morocco, back to Spain, to Portugal, again back to Spain, to the Czech Republic, Germany, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, South Africa, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, South Korea, and Japan.  It has been a wild and surreal 6 months.  Sometimes I have to remember to stop and take it all in.  By this point, we are used to the constant movement and being surrounded by sights, people, food, and language that are completely foreign.  The other day, I noticed myself just walking down the street in Fukuoka, Japan, like it was any city, in any country.  I had to stop and remind myself, holy crap, you’re in Japan!

Our plans for the next six months are mostly the same as our original plans, although we already cut out China because we just don’t have time.  We’ll be in Japan until October 27, when we fly to India.  We’ll then head to Southeast Asia (Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam).  We hope to finish up the trip in New Zealand, Australia, and possibly some island in the South Pacific.  There’s talk of taking the long way home by way of a cross-country road-trip once we hit American soil, but we’ll have to see.  There is a certain furry gray cat we’ll be eager to be reunited with and friends and family we miss.

Since I know you are starting to miss us as well, don’t forget you can track our progress here.  We’ve updated and improved the map since its creation.  In addition to showing our detailed itinerary by date and city, it also lists the places where we’ve stayed.  Starting with South Africa, I’ve started listing a brief review of each place we’ve stayed.  Finding a place to stay is a neverending task for us, so hopefully it will help someone in the future.

A while back, I promised a packing list and updates to how things have faired.  Since I procrastinated so long, you get two in one.  We’re thinking about ditching some more things before we leave Japan  since we will be in hot weather climates for about 4 months.  I will try to note those deletions.

Thanks for reading along!

On South Africa

At some point during my many ramblings, I may have mentioned that prior to going on this trip, I was more excited at the thought of travelling somewhere than to any place specific.  Perhaps because foreign travel had always seemed so out of reach to me in my life, I never dwelled on the details and just daydreamed about going somewhere.  Upon hearing about our trip, people would ask which country I was most excited about seeing.  Since all of them never seemed to appease the questioner, I usually selected South Africa.

It probably was the most accurate answer.  In college, I randomly took a class about South Africa because it was interdisciplinary and taught by two of my favorite professors.  It was about seven years after the fall of apartheid, and we studied the country from a political perspective and a literary perspective.  When I was done with the class, I thought, I want to visit South Africa someday. But it always seemed so far, so expensive, so foreign, so dangerous.  I didn’t really believe that I would go there.

My 21 year old self was practical and didn’t let myself dream so big.  Of course, my 21 year old self didn’t know my 31 year old self.

When it came to selecting countries to fill our crazy journey, South Africa was always on the list, even though I didn’t even know what there was to see besides Johannesburg and Cape Town.  My 31 year old self forgot much of what my 21 year old self soaked up 10 years ago in the class room.  All I could remember was that South Africa’s history is recent, tumultuous, and fascinating.  And that I wrote my paper for the class on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was a post-apartheid commission designed to grant amnesty and forgiveness in exchange for the truth.  As a young, idealistic pre-law student who was always on the lookout for justice, this was a concept I found strange but gratifying.

So, my jaded, cynical (yet strangely proactive) 31year old self started from scratch in re-educating myself about South Africa.  There is much to learn.  The country is huge – slightly less than twice the size of Texas.  We could have benefited from another week or better planning.  We didn’t allocate our month in the country accordingly.  We dawdled too long in the beginning, and didn’t really start mapping out distances until almost a week in.  The result was that we ended up hightailing it up the coast, skipping Durban, Sodwana Bay, and the Drakensburg Mountains just to make it to Kruger National Park in time for our reservations and our flight out of Johannesburg.

We were never bored in South Africa.  It has world class cities and cosmopolitan touches.  It has groups of people who still retain their traditional ways.  It has natural beauty – mountains, cliffs, canyons, oceans, beaches, flowers, and open spaces.  It has wildlife in their natural habitat, many of which we had never seen before outside of a zoo.  It has friendly, enthusiastic and vibrant people – always singing, always joking.  We saw many hard workers.  There may be many poor people, but we saw very little begging, just innovative methods to make money.  Just 16 years after the official end to apartheid, the country is still changing and working out the kinks.  The all too recent past is fascinating to learn about, especially in the context of the ever changing present.

One man we met from East London said he thought his country is unique.  I think he is probably right.  It is developed, but still developing.  It is unquestionably African, but unquestionably different than the rest of Africa.  There are tribal influences, and there are Dutch and British influences.  It has whites who consider themselves native Africans, with their own language.  It has people who are really, really rich, but it has people who are really, really poor.  My mind is always comparing and contrasting.  I don’t quite know what to compare South Africa with.  I think it stands on its own.  I am glad my 31 year old self got to travel there.

Average Daily Cost in Europe

Back in our planning stages, I loved reading travel blogs to day dream, but the practical side of me was always wondering: how much did it cost?  Here’s a brief breakdown of our average daily cost to travel through Europe.  This figure does not include supplies or gear; costs at home; misc. fees like ATM fees; or most significantly, major transport (which we define as anything that takes us from one overnight destination to another, whether it be plane, train, bus or rental car). Basically, the average daily cost includes things like accommodation, meals, snacks, alcohol, activities, and minor transport like subways.  Any oddities are noted below.

1. Germany ($73/day) (No lodging costs because we stayed with a friend.)
2. Poland ($91/day)
3. Hungary ($101/day)
4. France ($132/day) (No lodging costs except for one night in a B&B in Mont St. Michel and an air mattress because we stayed with a friend in Paris.)
5. Portugal ($133/day)
6. Croatia ($142/day)
7. Czech Republic ($144/day)
8. Slovenia ($148/day)
9. Spain ($154/day)
10. Northern Ireland ($187/day)
11. Ireland ($255/day) (This figure is estimated; we lost track of our budget quickly after many a round of Guinness.  Costs are also higher because we went out more than usual while our friends were visiting.)
12. Belgium ($272/day) (This just for a 2 day trip to Brussels.  Again, costs were probably higher because we drank a lot with our friend and bought an excessive amount of chocolate.)

There are a lot of factors that affect costs, and I plan to write in the future about some of them, including tips we’ve learned for saving money.  To give you a sense of our travel style, we are not eating ramen noodles and staying in hostel dorms, but we watch our spending.  Where you stay has the biggest effect on the budget.  In general, when it comes to accommodations, we always have a private double; we try to avoid shared bathrooms, but will share if we’re feeling cheap; we try to find clean, simple budget accommodation, which means a variety of hostels, pensions, apartments, guesthouses, and B&Bs; and we will sometimes spend $10 or $20 more to get a private bathroom, free wifi, better location, or overall nicer place.  When it comes to eating, we always eat 3 meals a day and usually dessert or snacks; we usually order a drink or two with dinner, and occasionally have a few drinks at other times; we stay at places with free breakfasts if it makes sense, but tend to self-cater breakfast otherwise;  we tend to eat out almost every day for lunch and dinner, but sometimes self-cater if we have a kitchen; we usually spend our most money at dinner, as it is typically our nightly entertainment; and overall, we tend to eat what we want and not skimp on food.

Hope that helps to put the European portion of our trip in context.  Europe is definitely not as cheap as developing countries, but as you can see, it does not need to be outrageous.  If you have any questions about our European costs, leave a comment or send me an email.

Get Out the Map

Before I left, Sally, one of my favorite lawyers that I worked with at my old firm, told me a story about how one time her and her husband just got into the car and drove without a plan.  There is something romantic about meandering about aimlessly.  I’ve always daydreamed about going to an airport and picking the next flight out of town, no matter what its destination.

As much as we have more flexibility on this trip than most Americans have when they travel, we still typically have some semblance of a plan, even if we end up changing it later.  As romantic as travelling without a plan sounds, I can’t bring myself to do it completely.  To truly travel freely, you need to not care where you go.  You need to not care how long you stay somewhere or what you see.  You also need to not care how much money you spend.  We probably planned less than most; I always dreamed of going somewhere, but never the specifics once we got to somewhere.  We used all of our pre-trip planning time just to have a rough idea of the countries we wanted to visit.  People kept asking me before we left, so, where are you going to visit in Japan?  In South Africa?  In Spain? I never had an answer.  This means we do most of our planning on the fly.  Although we usually procrastinate in making our plans, eventually we always come up with something.  It is too hard otherwise, especially if you want to find efficient, low-cost flights, or go somewhere in certain seasons, or sometimes to even get into a country.  I still have not shed my anxious, perfectionist self enough to truly throw all plans out the window.

But sometimes it is fun to truly not care where you will be for the next few days, to pick your next destination by where your finger lands on the map.  The first time we didn’t really have a concrete plan was when everyone left us in Kilkenny to fly home.  Our friends kept asking us where we were going after they left.  It is a foreign concept to not have a planned itinerary for travel to Americans who are used to making the most out of limited time.  Compared to our friends, and compared to our pre-trip selves, after four months of travel, we were now becoming somewhat used to not knowing where we were sleeping that night (even if there are some days I am not entirely comfortable with that concept).  Sitting in the car in Kilkenny, we kept asking each other, so, where should we go? We had just shy of two weeks before we had to return the rental car in Dublin to travel wherever we wanted in Ireland, with our only goal of wanting to eventually head up to Northern Ireland.  We hadn’t even booked our tickets to South Africa yet (or really decided exactly where we wanted to go in Africa).

We decided to head north straight away through a mountain pass marked as scenic on our map, and then make a detour over to the part of the penninsula past Galway we hadn’t seen.  The sad truth is, going someplace random means that, more often than not, you end up in towns like Birr.  Situated square in the middle of Ireland, Birr, and the surrounding areas, lack the dramatic scenery of the coasts.  Best I can tell, Birr’s claim to fame is that the first automobile fatality occurred there when an early model car collided with a horse and buggy.  Our options for dining on a Saturday night were Indian or miscellaneous Asian food.  Birr would have been a good town to check out local pub life, because surely there were no other tourists there, had we not been detoxing after the ten days with our friends from home.  Birr is a perfectly fine town, but sometimes there is a reason why certain areas are touristy and others are not.