Breathtaking landscapes: Glaciers and fiordlands of New Zealand’s South Island Flying over the Great Barrier Reef, Australia Limestone islands and jade green waters of Halong Bay, Vietnam Water-filled caldera of Santorini, Greece Endless savannahs of Tanzania

Amazing man-made structures: Angkor Wat and surrounding temples, Cambodia La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, Spain City of Arts and Sciences, Valencia, Spain Taipei 101, Taipei, Taiwan Skyline of Hong Kong

Favorite animal encounters: Bathing elephants at Elephant Nature Park outside Chiang Mai, Thailand Coming face to face with everything from lions to hippos in Tanzania Snorkeling with various fishy friends in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia and Koh Pha Ngan and Koh Tao, Thailand Spotting koalas and kangaroos along the Great Ocean Road, Australia Hanging out with Honey, the hotel owner’s dog in Koh Samui, Thailand

Unique urban experiences: Crossing the street in Hanoi, Vietnam Hearing the call to prayer in Istanbul, Turkey Bar-hopping in Spain (including free tapas in Granada) Eating in a night market in Taipei, Taiwan Retracing the steps of history in Berlin, Germany

Most un-amusing experiences:

• Dealing with touts the world over, but especially in Vietnam and
  Turkey (which were nonetheless two of our favorite destinations)
• Losing our luggage for three days between Kenya and Tanzania
• Having a thief climb onto our terrace in Valencia, Spain

Unimpeachable Global Truths:

• Regardless of the country or culture, the most shameless line-cutters are the elderly.
• Where there are (English-speaking) expats, there will be Irish
  pubs, probably named Molly Malone’s, Flannigan’s, or O’Flaherty’s.
• Despite the fact that the beach you’re on is thousands of miles
  away from Jamaica, there will be bars playing reggae and tourists
  getting their hair braided.

Getting from Point A to Point B

Number of flights taken: 37 (or 40 if you count the infamous Tanzanian flights as 4 instead of 1)

Number of flights missed/cancelled: 0

Most consecutive flights (excluding Tanzania experience): 4 to get from Taipei, Taiwan to Santorini, Greece

Favorite airline: British Airways—we liked the individual on-demand entertainment systems and professional staff; Adrian also wants to give a special shout-out to their chicken curry entree

Worst airline (not counting puddle jumpers): Tie between Iberia (delays + no included food or drink on our 3.5-hour flight) and our very own American Airlines (no included food + surly flight attendants)

Airports we flew through the most times: London Heathrow, Hong Kong,
and Bangkok, each of which we transited through 3+ times (yet we still
don’t know why Bangkok’s “Suvaranabhumi” is pronounced “Soo-wanna-poom”)

Worst airport: London Heathrow (hellish security lines and terrible layout for transiting)

Favorite mode of transport: Train

Eating

Favorite activity, no matter where we are: Eating

Best food: Thailand—nowhere else do they have such mastery over the balance of salty, sweet, spicy, and sour

Food we were most ready to leave behind: Greece or the fast food of Turkey (if we never hear the word börek again…)

Weirdest things eaten: Cakes of pig’s blood (Vietnam), live green
ants (Daintree Rainforest, Australia), “stinky tofu” (Taiwan), coffee
made from beans digested by a weasel (Vietnam). In general, traveling
is easier if you can eat what is put in front of you without first
playing a game of 20 Questions.

Schlepping

Total weight of our luggage: 18 lbs (Jomay’s backpack) + 23 lbs (Adrian’s camera pack) + 22 lbs (Adrian’s suitcase) = 63 lbs

Items we carried around the world but didn’t use once: sewing kit,
waterproof neck pouch (so you can swim with your passport, money,
etc.), some of the first aid supplies and drugs (probably a good thing
we didn’t use these)

Number of items lost/stolen: 0 (though they sure tried their darndest in Spain)

Staying Healthy

Immunizations acquired for trip: Typhoid, Yellow Fever, Hepatitis B,
and Japanese encephalitis. (We had previously been immunized for
Hepatitis A and standard stuff like polio, tetanus, etc.) We also
brought along anti-malarial drugs (Malarone).

Number of times we got sick enough to stay in bed: 2 for Jomay
(stomach ills in Thailand and bad cold in Taiwan/Greece) and 3 for Adrian (stomach ills in Thailand, bad cold in Greece, strep throat in Canada)

Number of countries where we could not drink the tap water: 8 (Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Greek islands, Turkey, Tanzania)

Staying Entertained

Number of Scrabble games played on the Treo: 406 (some against the computer and some against each other)

Number of books read (not including travel guides): 12 (Adrian) and 8.5 (Jomay)

Total number of photographs taken by Adrian: 18,858, which works out to an average of 104 photos per day. Aren’t you glad we didn’t post them all?

We’re back in San Francisco! How does it feel? Very, very weird. Here are answers to some other popular questions…

Q: Why did you take this trip?
A: Do we really have to answer this? Because we live on a pretty great
planet and it would have taken 12 normal working years (assuming an
average 2 weeks vacation per year) to see everything that we did in 6
months.

Q: How did you decide where to go?
A: We whittled down a huge wish list to fit the constraint of a
six-month itinerary. We dropped places that wouldn’t be easy to get to
with the type of plane tickets we had (e.g., Iceland and Bhutan). We
dropped India, China, and all of South America because we hope to take
dedicated trips there in the future. And we tried
to drop places that would have miserable weather (e.g., we dropped Fiji
because it would have been rainy season, but somehow ended up going to
Southeast Asia in the hot season… ouch!). And last, but not least, we
tried to fit in a few places where we have family/friends as well as
favorites from past trips. You may also have noticed that we spent most
of our time in cities, and that’s because both of us are “city people”
who are content not to hack our way to remote, “untouched” places. That
being said, our favorite cities are ones where locals outnumber
tourists such that you feel like you are walking the streets with
normal people going about their normal lives (working, going to school,
shopping, etc.).

Q: Was it expensive?
A: Yes, but not as pricey as you might think. Our level of
travel was mid-range with some splurges. This means that we stayed
mostly in budget hotels or hostels (always with a private sleeping room
but sometimes with shared bathroom), often had cheap meals from food
stands or the supermarket, and walked or took public transportation
when possible. But, we did also indulge in some high-budget experiences
(e.g., Lizard Island, Ayer’s Rock, Tanzania safari). So, it would
definitely be possible to do this type of trip for less (camping or
staying in hostel dorm rooms, flying less, eating out less, going to
cheaper countries). By the same token, it would also be possible to do
this type of trip for much, much more. Honestly, the biggest “expense”
was not earning a salary for 6 months while continuing to drain our
savings accounts

Q: How do you pack for a trip like this?
A: The short answer is “The same way you pack for a one-week trip.” For the much longer answer, see “Packing.”

Q: Did you plan everything out in advance?
A: Yes and no. We had to submit the entire itinerary for our
around-the-world plane tickets up front (they validate it and price it
out with airport taxes included). But, we did have the flexibility to
make date or routing changes later if we wanted. (See “Air Tickets”
for the nitty gritty details.) As for everything else, we generally
booked hotels, excursions, etc. anywhere from a few days in advance to
same day via internet or phone. The major exception was the safari,
which we booked months in advance.

Q: Did you buy lots of cool stuff along the way?
A: We didn’t really buy much (except for Adrian’s tech gear spree in Taiwan). Yes, we know we could have shipped stuff home, but
having just gone through the experience of packing up our whole
apartment and putting it in storage (aka Jomay’s parents’ garage), we
weren’t eager to add more boxes to the pile.

Q: Was it difficult to get around without speaking the local languages?
A: English was spoken pretty widely everywhere we went—with the
surprising exception of Spain. We also ran into non-English-speakers
when going outside of the main tourist areas in Asia. But, you can say
a lot with pantomiming, pointing, and smiling.

Q: Did you encounter any anti-American backlash?
A: Not really, although many people—from all kinds of cultures
and backgrounds—asked us what we thought of our president.
Interestingly, we were also asked about Hillary Clinton and Barack
Obama, which is pretty amazing considering most Americans can’t name
world leaders, let alone election candidates. P.S. Despite our
country’s pariah status, you will never catch us with Canadian flags sewn on our packs.

Q: Did you ever get tired of each other?
A: Not as much as we thought we would!

Q: Did you ever get homesick?
A: Welllll… no.

Q: Did you get the travel bug out of your system or what?
A: Unfortunately (or fortunately?), this trip has only made the world
seem bigger and we now have an even longer list of places we want to go!

After traveling around the country a bit, we returned to Sydney for
one last week. Besides doing the Harbor Bridge Climb (see post below),
here are some of the highlights:

• Day at the Taronga Zoo
• Weekend in the Blue Mountains with Carl, Tracy, Peter, and Chantal
  – this trip involved hiking and eating (okay, mostly the latter)
• Revisiting some of our favorite places, like Bondi Beach and the Royal Botanic Gardens
• Drinks at the Opera Bar on our last night in town

We loved our time “down under” and hope we will be back someday. In parting, we’ll share some of our favorite Australianisms:

• “How ya going?” (common greeting)
• “Good on ya!” (compliment, kind of like “way to go”)
• “No worries” (said in response to just about everything)
• “Cracker” or “cracking” (said when something is really great, like “it’s a cracker of a day”)
• The need to abbreviate everything, e.g. “brekky” for breakfast,
  “arvo” for afternoon (yeah, that one didn’t make sense to us either),
  “sunnies” for sunglasses, and “Paddo” for Paddington

So long, Australia! We had a cracking good time.

(By the way, in case anyone is wondering, this trip is going by REALLY FAST.)

View photos from our final week in Sydney

Today, we donned these attractive gray jumpsuits and climbed to the very top of the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

The whole Bridge Climb “operation” is almost as impressive as the
view – they’ve got the whole process planned down to every minute
detail. You start out by meeting your climb group, signing waivers, and
taking a breathalyzer test (everyone in our group passed, even the
elderly woman and 12-year-old child). Then, you change into your climb
suit, leaving behind anything that could catch on the bridge or fall on
the road below such as belts, watches, or—unfortunately for Adrian —cameras.
(You are allowed to take sunglasses and hats, but they have to be
attached to you with a cord.) Then, you go through a metal detector,
get your safety harness, go through a climb simulation, get a radio and
headset, and finally, head out to the bridge with your climb leader.
They churn a new group of climbers through this whole process about
every 10 minutes, and it all happens like clockwork.

The climb up the arch is very leisurely and gradual…the promotional
video shows people hugging and cheering when they reach the top as
though they’ve just mounted Everest, but in reality, the climb is not
strenuous at all. And, you can’t beat the view from the top!

P.S. The official summit photo above was taken by our climb leader
(because, again, no cameras are allowed for the rest of us) and
purchased by us at a highway robbery price. Speaking of our climb
leader, he told us he was an “ex-IBMer”, so some people really do
escape the tech industry…