So Many Numbers, So Many Favorites!

Nearly 4 months (16 weeks and 2 day or 114 days) later, we are finally home. Now that we are home and trying to get back to reality and settled into our life, we have been asked many questions regarding our favorite places on our trip.

Our trip emphasized quality over quantity – Chile, Argentina, New Zealand, Hong Kong, China, Tibet, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and England. This means if you count Hong Kong and Tibet as separate countries, our journey took us to 10 foreign countries on 4 continents (as well as coming within 500 miles of Antarctica). In order to accomplish this, we flew on 25 flights (11 international, 12 domestic, 1 scenic and 1 helicopter), 2 overnight cruises, 9 day cruises and stayed in 47 different hotels in 45 different cities (not including London and staying with family). We had to pack for 4 seasons, travelled in 6 different time zones, paid with 11 different currencies with various exchange rates, and couldn’t speak 7 of the languages. WHEW!

After getting through all those impressive numbers (yes it took a while to figure all that out), we started thinking about some of our favorite things throughout our time abroad. Here is what we came up with.

Our favorite…:

City – definitely Buenos Aires… beautiful, clean, fun, culture… everything!

Country – we had the best time in Chile – the scenery, horseback riding, hiking, food, wine and culture were all amazing. Cambodia comes a close 2nd for me but while I’d love to visit Cambodia again and would recommend it to everyone, I would love to have a vacation home in Chile… I could go back again and again…

Food – Raj and I disagree about this one – I liked Vietnamese or perhaps Thai food the best, but Raj preferred the food in China though I didn’t particularly enjoy all the oily sauces (we do agree that Tibet was the worst food – I will not be disappointed if I’m never confronted with Yak meat again).

Airline – after all those flights we have some clear preferences. we might have a tie between LAN and British Airways – if you took LAN’s media and BA’s seating and food, you’d have the perfect airline.

Beach – Cape Foulwind in New Zealand – the surf was incredible and we saw seals and other lovely wildlife – and we were all alone (except for the 1 random person we ran into who took the photo on the left) – so nice!

Hotel – Park Hyatt Saigon was my hands down favorite until we stayed at the Intercontinental Bangkok (our last hotel) – that was pretty darn nice too; it even had a humidor bar in addition to its rooftop pool and amazing gym. It was a very nice splurge to finish off Southeast Asia.

Non-hotel accommodation – Helena’s home in Futaleufu with the long pastures, rivers and horses – she was also an amazing cook and they introduced us to mate. We stayed in their guest cabin that they had built themselves to be like a huge tree-house. It was fantastic!

Week – horseback riding in Futaleufu, Chile – it simply can’t be beat

Sunrise– the sunrise on the cruise in southern Patagonia where we woke up to the sound of of seals splashing and the red glow of the sun was so lovely- not only the nicest of the trip, but the nicest I can remember ever.

Sunset - with Brian and Eleanor in Dunedin when we saw seals and penguins was gorgeous and we had so much fun.

Culture – Cambodians were lovely and we enjoyed the unique dancing and authentically friendly people

Sky – Tibet – we were clearly closer to it than usual and the color and the clouds were spectacular.

Temple –I can’t even count how many we saw and many were nice, although at some point they all blend together. Angkor Wat, however, was quite extraordinary.

Shopping/market – Hong Kong night market, with a very close Beijing as second with its snack street.

Currency/exchange rate – Cambodia…. and they accept US dollars as well as Riel

Nightlife – ok, this one is obvious - BA

New friend – Romi is best entertainer (in BA) and Fabian in Futaleufu – though Fabian isn’t returning our emails :( maybe he didn’t feel the same way – really sucks because we were hoping to plan another trip with him).

Transportation – Hong Kong was the most impressive and easiest to use.

Local Drink – we tried many local beers, teas, mate, pisco sours, local wines. I still crave Stella Artois from BA (it just tastes better – can’t explain it, must be the water it is bottled with there)

As you can see, for the most part, Raj and I agree on the answers; we also agree that this trip changed our perception on travel as a whole. We had wanted to travel to places that we might have a harder time travelling to in the future when we have kids. Now that we did this trip, we realize that while some places will surely be easier with kids, no place will be out of reach. Furthermore, we have completely changed perceptions of what a “long flight” or a “long drive” entails.

A huge thanks to all of you who have followed our blog (by the way, at the time of posting, you may be interested in knowing a few more numbers – we had 1645 number of page views and 756 visits in 19 countries!)

Also, a special thanks to my parents for unexpectedly watching our crazy dogs and making sure our house was ok – we still can’t believe how much you were willing to do, and so graciously. With your help, we were able to explore the world without worrying about what was going on at home.

We leave you with a few of our favorite quotes regarding travel:

“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard

“The world is a book and those that do not travel read only one page.” – St. Augustine

and my favorite: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

Lovely London

London was great. In short, we got to spend tons of time with family and friends, managed to do some insane shopping, and explored some new parts of London we’d never seen before.

The morning we arrived in London from Bangkok, our sisters where supposed to pick us up at 7am, but unfortunately they got stuck in good old London traffic and didn’t get to us until 9am. Sud was then running late for work, so Raj had to drive us back from the airport (good thing he got some left hand driving practice in NZ). That day was Maha’s 16th birthday and Su had prepared a BBQ feast for her party.  Nearly 50 people came to Su’s house to celebrate that night and Raj had the privilege of working the BBQ and fighting with the three coal BBQ’s; he clearly missed his gas grill at home, but he got some much needed practice for our return nonetheless.  Ande and some other old friends of Raj’s showed up that night so we had a great time catching up with everyone.

As if Maha’s sweet 16 wasn’t fun enough, the next day was actually her prom!  During the day we did a bit of shopping with her and then went to have her nails done.  Then, of course, we helped our beautiful niece get ready for her date (who we were assured was JUST a friend). After an hour or so of madness, we tried to take a few pictures and saw her off in her black cab.  While she went off enjoying her youth, we met up with Gavin and his girlfriend Carla, as well as Ande and his girlfriend Sarah.  We had a lovely time with them as usual and tried to last into the night, but the jetlag caught up with us and my eyes would only stay open with a great deal of concentration.  When we got back, we managed to stay up with Su until Maha returned from her prom and although we probed relentlessly, we were disappointed to discover that Maha had absolutely no gossip to share regarding her momentous evening!

The rest of the week we alternated shopping, hanging out with the family and going over each picture of our trip (there are over 2000) and visiting with friends that we rarely have the pleasure of seeing.  One day we decided to go into central London and do a bit of sight-seeing – we went to the changing of the guard, the British Museum, Covent Garden, Trafalgar Square, met up friends for lunch and again for happy hour, and then, spur of the moment, we went to the London Eye, which neither of us had done before.  We could not have timed our visit to the eye better if we had tried; we ended up seeing an amazing sunset as we went around the huge Ferris wheel style capsules and saw beautiful views of the Houses of Parliament, Hyde Park and Buckingham Palace as the sun set slowly behind them!

This trip we were also amazed by how much our nephew Corey has grown!  He just turned 10 and we are already seeing the markings of a young man.  He is much changed from the last time we saw him and even has a new haircut – or lack of haircut depending how you see it- he has a a very impressive afro that he refuses to cut (and he has my vote to keep it, sorry Su)!  As always, the Choudhury family could not have done more to make us feel welcome and we had a wonderful time seeing them.  Thanks again to Dipali Mum, Sud, Su, Maha, Corey, Sasha and Princess- we love you!

A Long Layover in Bangkok

We only had two nights in Bangkok before heading to London so there was not enough time to get out of the city and see more of Thailand.  We stayed in an amazing hotel in a great location and had a wonderful time exploring.  Raj’s sister, Su, had given us the number of a friend of hers near Bangkok who wanted to show us around for a few hours, so for our first day we were fortunate enough to have a wonderful tour guide. Mon took us to the Grand Palace (houses the Thai King, Parliament as well as the Emerald Buddha, among many other things), which we likely would have skipped had we been on our own because we had seen SO many palaces/temples and were feeling very done with the typical tourist sites.  However, Bangkok’s most famous palace was absolutely stunning and we were very glad to have seen it.  Each building had lovely architecture and beautiful detail.  The heat that day was again stifling so we spent a few hours inside before heading out to an early dinner at the waterfront – we went to a restaurant that we never would have found on our own, yet was a very nice local seafood restaurant with great views, and also a collection of strange amphibians (which they don’t eat).  We even got to see how they make dumplings.  Later we went to a night bazaar and spent an hour or so checking out the millions of options.  We picked up a few souvenirs but didn’t have time to work our way through the incredible maze and finish up.

Our last day in Bangkok, and technically our last day of the adventure portion of our trip (because London is all about family and it’s familiar), we decided it was about time to finish up our souvenir shopping.  After months of worrying about baggage restrictions, we were ready to weigh our bags down because we only had international flights left.  We spent hours weaving through the overwhelming traffic in the horrible humidity and crowded markets picking up item after item.  It was such a relief to finally buy things for family and friends that we had been seeing over and over again in Asia but unable to pack.  While we were out shopping we also got the chance to get some street food for a snack; we played it safe and bought a bag of fresh sliced mango and a chilled coconut to drink and it turned out to be the perfect refreshment for getting us through!  Later that night we packed up all our goodies into our bags that suddenly felt much heavier and took off for the airport for our midnight flight to London!!!