Lessons Learned

1. Smog checks are a good thing. It is such a pain in the butt every other year when you have to go get your car smog-checked in order to renew your registration. Thank God we do, though! Being in a place like Bangkok was gross. I swear, the sun would be out every day if it weren’t for the giant layer of smog over the entire city. The cloud, along with the smell, along with the exhaust you see spewing out of the vehicles on the road, make you appreciate the clean air we have in the US.

2. Expect the unexpected. I would say we were very prepared. I was so nervous about getting sick while we were away. We got our immunizations. We got antibiotics (a different one for each continent) for traveler’s diarrhea. We got anti-malaria medication (a different one for me because it makes you sensitive in the sun). I brought Advil. I brought sunscreen. I brought cold and sinus medicine. What did I wake up with on day six of the trip? Pink eye. Nice. I contracted it from this tailor that was hanging out near our guest house. No worries, though. Matt took me to a Muslim hospital (on Ramadan, no less), and they took very good care of me. I was in and out of the ER, with four antibiotics in-hand, for less than $40. Much more efficient than the healthcare system in the US, as far as I’m concerned. I was not prepared for pink eye. I hadn’t even brought my glasses, so I walked around blind for about a week until I could put my contacts back in.

3. We are fortunate. I’ve touched on it briefly in the blog, but it is really humbling to see the way people live with so little. Our bushman guide, Christian, lives in a wooden hut that is smaller in area than our couch, with his wife and two kids. And he has a good job. The tailor who gave me pink eye obviously had a way worse case than me, that had been manifesting for weeks, I would guess. I won’t go into the gory details, but I’ll just say that it was pretty obvious. It was very disconcerting to think that this man could not afford the $40 to get himself proper medical treatment.

4. You CAN travel with kids. We were so eager to do certain things, like a safari and other “adventurous” types of traveling before starting a family. But, seeing Hans and Nomi with their two daughters, Simone and Ristele, made us realize that, like most things, you can do anything you really make an effort to do. Everyone creates their own lives and, finances permitting, affects their family's and children’s perspectives and tolerances. Maybe things are done on a different scale, in a different place, with different accommodations, but you can do what you set out to do. Hearing all the countries that Simone and Ristele have visited left us awestruck. But, you can tell by their ability to go with the flow that they are used to seeing all different things and living in all different conditions.

5. Go with your gut. There were so many times in hindsight that we said, “We KNEW it.” I just knew that I didn’t have the name of Ko Mak wrong when we were scheduling our tour with Tony. Even with the language barrier, I had done too much research to be that off. When Yasser was driving us to HIS felucca boat, we just knew it was too far from the Nile to be what we were looking for. We weren’t locals, but we had our bearings pretty straight by that point in Cairo. Trust your instincts and question everything. Just because you may be a foreigner doesn’t mean you’re stupid!

6. Know your audience…and their age! We had such a great time with all the people we met on our jungle trek. Even though they were younger than us, we must’ve forgotten about that since we all got along so well. The night we ate dinner with Diarmuid and Ita at the Riverside, our egos were a bit bruised. For some reason or other, Matt was telling them about the band Phish. They had never heard of them. Ok, I think I get it. Not sure that Phish has really made much of an impact outside the US. Matt then told them they are a jam band. Blank stares. “You know, like the Dead,“ he continued. Blank stares. “Uh, the GRATEFUL Dead?” Nothing. Wow. Ok. I mean, we are about eight years older than them, but…REALLY? I think I will prefer to chalk this up to the cultural differences rather than the age difference.

7. Do your homework. We did a lot of research for all the sites and experiences we wanted to take in while away. I do wish that we had spent a bit more time figuring out the locations of the different attractions. For example, we should have gotten the address of the Floating Restaurant in Chiang Mai, and maybe we would have made it there. Maybe not, but at least I would have felt a bit better about it. And we should have gotten more details on the location of Wadi Degla in Cairo. We made it there eventually, but not without spending almost two hours looking for a place that was about 15 minutes from Cairo’s center. It’s just different when you are away. You can’t expect the cabs to know every random thing you’ve seen online, when they might not be in the locals’ ideas of popular tourist attractions. We did give Yasser one of our brochures from Wadi Degla, so he would have it for reference the next time someone asked him to go there. He just looked at us kind of crazy, though. Obviously this was the first, and he suspected, last, time he would be asked to go there.

8. Good shoes are worth the money. This holds true for heels, flip-flops, wedges, sneakers and now…hiking shoes. The last thing we wanted to spend money on two weeks before our trip was new shoes, but they have paid for themselves over and over again in value. Between the trek, the hiking on safari, hiking at Victoria Falls, Wadi Degla…I’m not sure how we would have done so well without our new shoes. They are well broken in. And they do NOT look new anymore!

9. “A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.” We all have different time and money constraints; we all have different levels of adventurousness and curiosity; we all have different interests and goals. Whatever yours are, and however simple or elaborate your plans may be, it is so important to get out there and see things, even if they are right in the city you live in. It will make you appreciate the value and the beauty in every day and every place. I am so thankful we committed ourselves to taking this trip. It took us a bit out of our comfort zone on all different platforms, but it was worth each expenditure -- financially, mentally, physically and emotionally. Things have really been put in perspective on every level.

10. Everything you need to know you learned in Kindergarten. Remember the first day of school, when you would wear a badge or necklace or sticker denoting your name and your bus number, so that the teachers could get all the kids back home safely? What a novel idea! We found the same thing works with adults. When we were on some of our travels through Thailand, the tour groups use this sticker system, where they put a different colored sticker on you based upon your final destination. So, on our big pink bus, there were grown adults, from all different countries, going to all different islands, wearing all different colored stickers. Matt and I laughed at first, but realized it was a really efficient way for them to get the right people on the right buses and ferries without having to deal with the language barriers. Plus, once you figure out the system, it gives you a sense of security to see other people walking around with the same color sticker as you.

11. Marry (and travel with) your best friend. One of my girlfriends told me, “If you two come back married, it will be a miracle.” I kind of nervously laughed. Except for two less than five-minute conversations each with my Mom and Matt’s sister, the only people we actually spoke to from home for six weeks was each other. Of course we made friends with some other people throughout our journey, but the only people we really had to rely on and get us through every day were each other. Even after sleeping in tents, on hardwood floors, in mosquito nets, showering outside, bathing in rivers, eating weird foods at weird times of the day, hospital visits, crazy taxi rides, maiming a giraffe, giant pink buses, uneasy stomachs and everything else, there is no one in the world I would rather travel with than Matt. This trip reinforced a lot of what we already knew about each other, taught us a few things that we didn’t already know about each other and ourselves, and made us fall in love and appreciate each other all over again. I can’t wait for our next adventure together.

These are all lessons we’ve heard before, but somehow they have more relevance when you’re away from home.

I’ve posted the pictures and videos to Facebook, so please request me as a friend if you’d like to see them. Or, if you refuse to join Facebook, send me an email and I will try to get them uploaded to Webshots or something soon.

Thank you for following our blog. If you read it all, I know I can be a bit wordy at times, but it has been fun to share our days with you.