The End of the Road: Trip Statistics

---

We have now been back home four days, staying at Scott's Dad's apartment, and what a busy four days it has been. We've spent hours on the phone sorting out car insurance and AAA, and calling gas and electric companies. We've been to Sprint and had new phone accounts set up. Scott made a seven hour trip up north with his dad to collect my car from where it was being stored. On the way up, he spent five or more hours opening mail from the past year! Meanwhile, I stayed at home with the kids and did some much needed shopping for shoes and shorts for them. Things are starting to get organized! Tomorrow we are moving back into our empty house with just four futons as furniture. At least I bought new cute bedding for the kids to make it look a little less barren!

While we still have internet access at Tom's, I thought I'd better wrap things up with this final blog...



TRIP STATISTICS:



CONTINENTS VISITED: 4

Europe, Africa, Asia, South America



COUNTRIES VISITED: 7

England, South Africa, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Ecuador



MODES OF TRANSPORT USED: 16

Planes, cars, taxis, tuk-tuks, truck-tuks, pick-up trucks with benches, minivans, tricycles, monorails, horse and carts, speed boat, ferry, longtail boat, panga boat, glass bottom boat, cable car, taxi boat



BEST BEACH: I can't decide between two very different beaches...

The first is Long Beach on Ko Lanta, Thailand. It's a gorgeous stretch of sand and perfect ocean backed by lots of good restaurants. Convenience and gorgeousness combined!

The second is Papaya Beach in El Nido, Philippines. This beach is backed by steep cliffs and is picture postcard perfect. It can only be reached by sea. We'd sometimes kayak out to it and have it to ourselves until all the tours stopped in at about 3pm. The kids loved the tyre swings and I loved the gorgeous photo opportunities they provided!



BEST SUNSETS: Corong Corong beach, El Nido, Palawan, Philippines

Almost every night, the sky would light up with beautiful shades of red, pink, and orange.



BEST RESTAURANT: Mugg & Bean, Lower Sabie Camp, Kruger National Park, South Africa

This restaurant is built on stilts with views over the Lower Sadie River in the game park. During dinner, you can watch herds of elephant, impalas, warthogs, crocodiles and hippos to name but a few. It was also tasty and cheap and the staff were nice. It even had a resident black mamba snake! ?Who could ask for more?

Runner up prize goes to ThaiCat on Ko Lanta in Thailand. It was located right in the sand, had great Thai food and, best of all, had a ton of kids' toys on the beach. Parent heaven!



WORST RESTAURANT: DapDap Resort's restaurant, The Philippines

It had less atmosphere than a board meeting on Mars, and the food was awful (as noted below). I'm sure there were others, but this stands out.



NUMBER OF DIFFERENT ROOMS SLEPT IN: 53



MONEY SPENT ON ACCOMMODATION: $17,406 for the year (averaging $52/night)



FAVORITE HOTEL: Polaris Resort, Cabilao Island, Philippines ($70/night)

This was a really pretty dive resort. We loved the character-filled pool and all of the hand painted fish everywhere. The restaurant had really good food and the staff were fantastic at catering to our kids' random needs. There was a sundowner area with loungers and hammocks and lots of hermit crabs to keep the kids entertained. There was even a playground! One last very cool feature was that there were resident fire flies in the trees, making Polaris a very magical stay!



WORST HOTEL: Dap Dap, Anda, Philippines ($36/night)

Ironically, we stayed here immediately after leaving Polaris, our favorite hotel of the trip! The location was bad as you were out of town by several miles, plus a kilometer down a dirt road, meaning getting a taxi into town was impossible. You had to rely on the owner to drive you up to the main road. The food was so greasy and salty that it was inedible, and as virtually no one was staying there, they kept running out of basic things like bottled drinking water. The room was run down and had gaps in the windows, letting in lots of mosquitoes (thank goodness we had our own nets!) We moved out after one night!



MOST EXPENSIVE ROOM NIGHT: Parigata hotel in Bali ($105/night)

Kyla was ill with a high fever so we justified it with the great a/c, spacious room for hanging out in, and Disney Junior channel in English (aka free babysitter). There was also a breakfast buffet, which meant getting the kids to actually eat breakfast was easier.. It also had a buffet breakfast, making feeding the kids in the morning much easier. They loved being able to pick out exactly what they wanted.



CHEAPEST ROOM NIGHT (other than staying with family): Mawar Bungalows on the Gili Islands in Indonesia. ($22/night)

For this price we got air conditioning, breakfast for four included, and even a pet cockroach or three! The friendly manager, Chill, was so nice to our kids, but the cockroaches sent us packing!The manager, Chill, was so friendly and lovely to the kids, but in the end the cockroaches sent us packing.



BEST VALUE HOTEL: Arrow Guest House, Ko Lanta, Thailand ($27/night)

We were very happy at this guest house. We had a nice clean room with hot water shower, air conditioning, and even a TV with a few kid channels in English - score! It also had a great central location, essential when traveling with little kids.



MOST RIP-OFF HOTEL: Astoria Hotel, Palawan, Philippines ($92/night)

The only reason we booked this expensive place in the middle of nowhere was to get access to their water park. Things looked good at first with an ultra modern room, a playground, a mini golf, and a cool swimming pool which changed colors at night. However, we were super annoyed the next morning when we went to the water park to discover the little-kid-section was closed (which was the whole point in coming!) The main problem, however, was the sand flies. They were all over the resort, even in the rooms, and they'd bite. I'd wake up in the morning covered in 30 or so bites, just from being in the room. It was crazy! We couldn't wait to check out!



NUMBER OF FLIGHTS (take offs and touch downs): 29



MONEY SPENT ON FLIGHTS: $14,352



MOST MEMORABLE KID QUOTES WHILE IN-FLIGHT:



Kyla: "Mommy, can you blow up the plane now?" (referring to her toy blow-up plane.)



Jake: "It's exploding, it's exploding!" (while getting into an iPad game!)



BEST PART ABOUT TRAVELING WITH KIDS:



One of the best things is seeing the world through your children's eyes. Things that had become humdrum to us suddenly became really exciting when seen through Kyla and Jake's eyes. One of the best examples is snorkeling. We've seen a lot over the years so it takes a lot to impress us. Normally we wouldn't bat an eyelid at a clown/Nemo fish, but we were super excited for Kyla to spot her first one in the Philippines! The same was true for a turtle on the Tulamben wreck in Indonesia. When Jake finally put his head in the water on the Gill Islands, it was so fun to watch him excitedly point out boring old silver fish, the kind we wouldn't usually glance twice at!



Another thing we found about traveling with kids is that you have an instant connection with the locals. No matter how different your lives are, children are the same the world over. Babies wake in the night causing zombie parents, toddlers have meltdowns in the most public of places, and, at some point, all kids sit down in the middle of the pavement and refuse to walk any more. Chatting to the locals about all the exact same parenting issues really bridges cultural gaps.



HARDEST PART ABOUT TRAVELING WITH KIDS:



It may come as a surprise that it wasn't the travel days that were the most challenging aspect. Sure, we had our meltdown moments, especially when we'd had to drag the kids out of their slumber in the middle of the night to catch a flight. Those days we were setting ourselves up for disaster, but they were few and far between.



The most challenging times were actually mealtimes. There's a reason that most people don't eat out much with a 2- and 4- year old: it's basically disaster management. It's constantly being on the lookout for glasses teetering at the edge of tables, and stools about to topple over. Jake isn't the most civilized, shall we say, so we were always having to apologize for the mess made as we quickly tried to clean it up with wet wipes. Kyla is much more civilized but far more picky. We always ended up having to go off-menu with her as she won't eat your typical "kid food". We'd often end up ordering her a plate of raw veggies and some plain pasta or bread, all separated out. Yep, mealtimes were tough. That's why we loved Ko Lanta in Thailand with its kid-friendly restaurants on the beach, complete with toys on the sand!



THE END OF THE ROAD



So that pretty much sums up our year long trip. When we left home, the kids were still sleeping in cribs (Kyla with the side down to make a toddler bed) so it's going to be strange to have to buy "real" beds for their rooms. For the short term, I've ordered four futons on Amazon! I'm not sure how they'll react to sleeping in their own rooms after so long all sleeping in the same room. I kind of don't want them to share a room as Jake needs more sleep than Kyla, and having the same bedtime as each other on this trip is something that has bothered me. I'd also like to return to reading books to them individually, in their beds. On the trip, we've been reading together but I don't like it as Kyla needs much longer and more involved books than Jake. It's hard to find ones that suit both of them. Another thing I'm looking forward to is Scott and I having our own time after bedtime to do something simple like watch TV together. There are definitely things I've missed about a "normal" life! On the whole, though, it's been an amazing experience. We've been so lucky to be able to spend so much time playing and having fun with our kids, free from the usual stresses of life such as work, cooking, shopping, and cleaning. Even though our kids are young, I think they've learned a lot about the world too. While most people who take a gap year do it in their twenties, ours have done it at the tender ages of 2 and 4, whether they wanted to or not! We never thought we'd travel once we'd had kids, but we've proved to ourselves it's possible. Even though the memories will fade (for the kids), the photos will last a lifetime! ?



Thank you to everyone who's been following our adventures!

---

Comments

[Home and Away]

And thanks for this summary...
I can relate to feeding the kids as being the most difficult part of the experience. You gave the price for transportation and accommodations. What was the total price is you don't mind me asking.

[Born to travel]

Price
Hi, yeah, it's hard to say the exact amount we spent as it's hard to decide what's included: insurance, inoculations, offset the rental income from our house etc. As a ball park, we estimate about $80,000 overall. Money well spent! ?