Reflecting on our trip: Our Favorites & Best Ofs

For our final "reflections" blog post, we wanted to list our favorite locations of the trip for a number of categories.  It was difficult to choose but here's the best of the best from our trip.

Favorite Food:
Kate: China
Chris: Japan

Favorite Site:
Kate: Taj Mahal in Agra, India
Chris: Ta Prom in Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, Cambodia

Favorite Island:
Kate: Maui, Hawaii
Chris: Mykonos, Greece

Favorite People:
Kate: Japan
Chris: Japan

Best Shopping:
Kate: Barcelona, Spain; Istanbul, Turkey; Greece (couldn't choose just one!)
Chris: Istanbul, Turkey

Most Fun City:
Kate: Brussels, Belgium
Chris: Dublin, Ireland

Best Transportation:
Kate: Japan
Chris: Cambodia

Favorite Overall Stop on the Trip:
Kate: Istanbul, Turkey
Chris: Siem Reap, Cambodia

Reflecting on our Trip: Packing

Packing for this round-the-world trip was daunting to say the least.  What do you pack for 60 days that can fit into a single backpack?  What do you pack that works in every climate your visiting?  We think we did a pretty good job on packing and can now recommend what to pack for this type of trip.  Below is what we didn't need, what came in handy and what we couldn't live without.

What we couldn't live without:
1) Dry-wick clothing
2) 40% DEET inset repellent cream
3) Back-up camera (our first camera broke in Hawaii and wasn't repaired until we returned to the U.S.)
4) Benadryl
5) Imodium
6) Laptop
7) Passport holder that we wore under our clothes
8) Our luggage with the zip-off backpacks
9) UV-light toothbrush sanitizing cases
10) Travel toilet paper

What came in handy:
1) Silk sleeping bag
2) Travel-sized laundry detergent
3) zip-off pants
4) Blackberry (with international service)
5) Jewelry (for Kate to turn her travel clothes into an outfit for a nice dinner out)

What we didn't need/use:
1) clothing line
2) Ponchos (we opted for umbrellas instead)
3) Dry wick towel
4) Toilet seat covers
5) Shampoo & body wash (hotels and hostels provided these)

Reflecting on our Trip: Appreciation for our Country

That’s Amazing

It’s amazing what other people find amazing, and what they don’t.  Chris had this realization back in 1998 when visiting family in Italy and got excited in the car on the expressway when they passed a castle on a hill, taking out his camera to snap a quick picture.  His cousins couldn’t understand what he was doing or why.  To emphasize the point, within a few minutes they passed another castle, and yet another just a few minutes after that.  Amazing is only what you’re unaccustomed to.

Chris and Kate were on the other side of this experience in China and Cambodia.  Chris had brought a standard MasterLock combination lock on the trip and attached it to a loop on the shoulder-strap of his backpack.  Our tour guide in China asked what it was and was interested in its purpose.

The best experience with the MasterLock, however, happened in the Siem Reap airport in Cambodia.  While buying a last minute item from the duty-free store the salesperson at the register asked what the lock was and Chris took it off and showed him.  Chris put in the combination and opened the lock to an audible reaction of surprise.  Then Chris closed the lock, handed it to the salesman and walked him through the combination to unlock it.  Then, with the combination properly entered, the salesman opened the lock and reacted with the most sincere sensation of joy and surprise. 

 Combination locks, as it turns out, are amazing.

The Stars and Stripes Forever

WARNING: AMERICAN PRIDE COMING OUT....
So after all our travels and experiences one other realization continued to drive itself home, time and again:  We are truly lucky to live in and be citizens of the United States of America. For all the problems we have in our country (and we have many), we have gotten a whole lot very right. 

China has between 3,000 and 4,000 years of continuous history.  Greece developed democracy over 2,500 years ago.  Istanbul has been the center of multiple empires during the last 2,000 years.  All three of those countries combined don’t produce as much in one year as the people of the United States.

In less than 300 years the USA developed the world’s largest economy, history’s most advanced society and the highest standard of living the world has ever known.  We are the most prosperous people on the planet, and we did it in roughly one-tenth the time as the rest of human society.

When you are in a place like Cambodia or India, you start to get a sense of people who have no opportunity.  Where they are born is where they will die and, at best, they will have only as much as their parents, who were born into the same fate.  There is no social mobility, there is no opportunity, and there hasn’t been opportunity for generations (though in places like China and India this is finally beginning to change).

This is the miracle of the American experiment in democracy and capitalism.  In a remarkably short period of time we have created the most enviable system for prosperity and opportunity in the world.  Travelling the globe and seeing the stark comparison is a vivid reminder of these accomplishments and not a small source of pride.

Reflecting on our Trip: Adapting to the Culture

Let's Get Religious
It's no surprise that religion is different wherever you travel to but we still found other countries religions to be so interesting and thought-provoking. Japan has many popular religions, some that we'd never even heard of before and your religion seems to correspond to your age. Religions in Japan co-exist, even in the same household. One of our Japanese tour guides said he was Shinto, his wife was Buddhist and his kids are Christan. Although achieving religious freedom is arguably the reason our ancestors came to the "New World," different religions in the US are far from co-existing. However, we of course visited places in the Middle East (Istanbul and Dubai) where a single religion is so prominent there are prayer rooms in the airports and call-to-prayer heard through the streets.

When in Rome… or Tokyo…

When we were in Japan we got tired of seeing temples, when we were in India we got tired of seeing Mosques, when we were in Europe we got tired of seeing cathedrals, but the fascinating thing about wherever you are is how unique it is compared to everywhere else you go. 

Even in this age of globalization and high speed travel, each place is uniquely its own with a special sense of culture, social norms, cuisine, architecture and all the other arts that make humanity such a fascinating and confusing anomaly.  While you will absolutely see the impacts of global reach (for whatever reason KFC is huge everywhere, even for people who have no idea what Kentucky is), the world has remained remarkably local.

One of the great joys that we had on our trip was throwing ourselves into the places we visited and trying to live as they did, if only for a few days.  Learn how to say “hello” in Japanese; say “thank you” in Khmer; shake hands with a touring rural farmer in outside of Gandhi’s memorial in India; take a picture with an old Chinese couple.  These are simple but impactful experiences you can only get by allowing yourself to get immersed in a place.

And, of course, you must eat the local cuisine.  The pineapple in Cambodia is surprisingly unique, the sushi in Japan is truly second to none, the curry in India is not as hot as advertised (as long as you ask for it be made mild), the Peking Duck in Peking Beijing is crispy and delicious, but you have to be willing to dive in and try the local cuisines to learn anything about them.

Everybody Poops!
It’s true, and it’s unavoidable.  What’s amazing is the variety of contraptions the world has developed to accommodate this. 

In China, a baby’s or toddler’s diaper is literally a pair of pants with the butt cut out, and this is considered totally acceptable.  In India, the kids don't wear any pants, just shirts for the same reason. Also, the “squat toilet” (if you don’t know what a “squat toilet” is, just be happy and know that ignorance is bliss) on Chinese trains, is a hole in the floor that opens onto the tracks (not exaggerating). 

Bring your own toilet paper, especially in India.  The bathrooms aren't equipped with toilet paper, instead they use a hand-held sprayer (for lack of a better word).  However, the people of India know this is unusual for tourists and sell paper (napkin-like paper) to you in the bathroom. 

You will know we are successful when we finally have a Japanese toilet installed in our home.  If you haven’t seen one of these before, find a way to check them out.  They are amazing, and we’ll leave it at that.

It’s the Most Important Meal of the Day

For whatever reason, breakfast is terrible in every country outside of the U.S.  Bacon as we know it simply does not exist.  People advertise bacon on menus, but it’s always ham and it’s often boiled.  Sausage is always hotdogs, again boiled.  The Japanese serve miso soup and dumplings.  The pancakes in Thailand come with honey, not syrup (due to a lack of maple trees).

Country after country we raised our hopes for a piece of bacon with our eggs and time and again, we were disappointed.  We can’t explain why, exactly, the rest of the world has not discovered the glory that is pan fried American bacon, or spicy breakfast sausage, but for some reason, they have not.

That’s not to say that some countries haven’t developed their own version of a tasty breakfast, they certainly have. Chris liked the Greeks combination of yogurt and honey that is cool and delicious on a warm Greek morning.  And we both liked the Irish world famous breakfasts which are hardy and warm on a cool July morning. Still, all the charming adaptations the world has on breakfast fail miserably in comparison to the basics that you can grab at any Waffle House, IHOP or diner across the good ol’ US of A.

Reflecting on the Trip: Staying Healthy

The reality is that, even with all the immunizations in the world (and they will try to give them to you before you leave), with unique culture, world travel exposes you to unique diseases that are as local to countries and regions as their food.  So how does a traveler balance the desire to taste Indian curry in Delhi with the fear of getting the “Delhi-Belly”? 

We were lucky enough that neither of us experienced any debilitating illnesses during the trip outside of some occasional fatigue and stomach aches.  While we can’t be sure exactly why we were so lucky, there were a few basic precautions we took that we feel contributed to our success in the health department:

      Happy Birthday to me..
Wash your hands with soap and water.  It sounds so simple and even juvenile, but, Chris formerly worked in an after school-day care for kids while in undergrad, and learned that most people don’t wash their hands correctly.  To effectively wash your hands, you need to use soap on them for a full 15 seconds.  While this doesn’t sound like a long time, when you’re actually doing it, it feels like forever.  Amazingly, the trick is to sing the happy birthday song to yourself while you wash your hands.  This ensures you will spend the right amount of time and it serves as a little, personal childish joke.  Doing this one simple thing with standard soap kills almost 100% of all the germs that make people sick.  We probably sang happy birthday to ourselves hundreds of times.

          
     
     Floss like you've never flossed before
Has anyone ever been to the dentist and been told they are flossing the correct amount?  Probably not, but we likely got really close on this trip.  We flossed and brushed our teeth at every opportunity we could find.  In addition, we brought battery operated UV toothbrush cases to ensure that our toothbrushes were always germ free before use.  Dental hygiene is huge when you’re body is not adapted to the world around you. We also made sure to brush our teeth with bottled water to be extra safe.

      H2O
Bottled water.  Not just the fact that it’s bottled, just drink lots of it.  Hydration is huge, when you’re travelling and lots of stuff can take it away from you (air travel, heat, heavy baggage, etc.).  If you think you’re drinking enough, you’re not, drink more.

      Pack yourself a pharmacy
Listen to what you’re body is telling you.  You’ll likely bring a small pharmacy with you, so you might as well use it.  If you’re having trouble sleeping, pop a melatonin; if you stomach feels weak take one of your Imodiums; if you’re starting to feel itchy, grab a Benadryl.  Basically at the first sign of anything take action.  If you're feeling weak, take the day off and sleep. Again, while we can’t be sure that our proclivity for pre-emptive medication was effective at stopping whatever might have happened, we can assure you that the alternatives could have been disastrous. Remember that the meds you may need on the trip, may not be available in the countries you visit.  Kate was having some stomach pains in India and so we ventured to a "chemist" for some meds.  Not a great scenario to be in but we were able to get some safe pills (that we googled online) for Kate to take.


     Protect Your Skin
Wear your sunscreen and bug repellent everyday, all day. After weeks of touring in Japan, China, and Cambodia, we didn't protect our skin the first day in Thailand and we paid for it.  A quick dinner outside at our hotel left both of us with many many bug bites and forgetting the sunscreen our first day on a cloudy Thai beach left us (mostly Kate) with a bad burn for a week. This burn later started to bubble when mixed sweat from the India heat!  Re-applying is key.  After a monsoon rainstorm in Cambodia, we didn't re-apply our bug repellent and Kate immediately received multiple bug bites. And don't forget to wear a hat!  This protects you from bug bites as well as sun spots. 

     To Party or to Tour?
Cut back on the alcohol.  We weren't here to drink, we were here to tour.  Alcohol can slow you down and to be honest, most of the countries we went to did not have great alcoholic drinks.  Wine and beer didn't get anywhere close to good in Asia and liquor was always very expensive. We're not saying we didn't enjoy a drink over dinner but we definitely didn't make a night of it. It's also not safe to be drunk in a foreign country.  Pickpocketers exist all over the world and by staying clear-headed we were able to keep a close eye on our belongings.  (A side note to theft: remember that your passport is your most prized possession.  At the end of the day, everything else is replaceable but you need your passport to get home.)

At the end of the day, the answer is, of course, that there is nothing you can do to 100% protect yourself from getting sick, but these are really easy things to do that can only help your odds.

(Note: please excuse formatting on this blog. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't fix it. )