Epilogue - Final Blog (Better Late Than Never)

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Around The World In 11 Months

Firstly, it's been a ridiculous delay, but after finally managing to get our New York blogs up we made a start on writing this but never got around to finishing it. Job applications and interviews got in the way (back to earth with a crash). Since we've returned, we've had a hundred and one things to do and unfortunately our blog fell off the list of priorities. Partly because we were now able to speak in person to a lot of people who read it but mainly because it doesn't seem as relevant now that we're back in "reality".

It is just as relevant as ever though as it wasn't just written for others to read, but also as a complete account of our journey. We'd always intended to finish it, and since it has gotten a bit harder to remember some of the smaller details and what order many things happened in, we're glad it's finally done. Strangely enough, having unlimited internet access has proved to be a deterrent in finishing the blog as it's far easier to procrastinate and set it aside for later. When we were actually travelling, internet access was often scarce and costly so we hammered through a lot of entries in the limited times we had. Falling behind while travelling meant the thing started to snowball a bit.

Writing The Blog

We're really glad that we've persevered with the blog and we realised it was important to keep it going after we'd done our first few Hong Kong entries. As the weeks passed, we found ourselves forgetting some minor things that had happened and when, so it was fun to read through and remind ourselves of certain things. With end-of-trip hindsight, we're extremely glad we've managed to blog the full journey as New York already seems a bit distant and dreamlike only a couple of months on! Who knows how blurry our memories will be in years to come.

The blogs are definitely not a completely detailed account of our trip and I certainly don't think we'd have had the patience for that. We did meet some travellers who did day-by-day accounts in written form as well as collecting souvenirs and mementos of certain things. It was pretty impressive to see their diaries but some of them had given up as time had gone on or fallen behind by several months, so it was probably a good thing we hadn't set our sights too high. For the most part, we just summarised events in chronological order (a "proper" travel writing no-no apparently) and tried to avoid getting too bogged down in detail, which does mean there are a few bits and pieces that never made it in. Still, reading over entries now triggers reminders of some of the things that happened and I don't think it would have been feasible to have done much more than we did. Otherwise we could have ended up just writing about things instead of doing them.

We would actually cringe to see the total cost of all the internet time we spent on both our blog and resizing pictures. Any time we uploaded pictures to the blog, we had to use a program called Mihov to reduce the size and speed up the picture uploads. Initially we never did this which is why our first 10-15 entries have minimal pictures. Without resizing it took absolutely ages. This didn't help when we were on stuck on crap computers that had been in use since the early 90s and connections of one byte per second.

Cambodia for example didn't have the most affluent internet cafes and it became painful to wait for the pictures to upload. At times, writing and uploading became a bit of a chore and we would occasionally have to force ourselves to do it, particularly as internet situations weren't always ideal. Using literally hundreds of different computers was a drawback too as our USB drives and cameras ultimately picked up a Chinese virus (we didn't even go to China). Spending the best part of 8 hours in a Bangkok internet cafe locating and backing up every picture wasn't a particularly happy time.

As we got on, we got a bit more savvy with the blog and started uploading a lot more pictures as well as creating a few panoramic ones for the top of the page. We hoped they looked nice, if a wee bit blocky sometimes. We contemplated revising and adding some more pictures to the original early entries, but it would feel like cheating. Plus, we ended up buying far better cameras during the trip so we did actually take a lot more photos as time went on.

So, we've ended up with 102 blog entries (at 50 we never thought we would break the 100 barrier) and almost 1700 photos uploaded. Although this is a hell of a lot, that is actually only around 15%!o(MISSING)f the amount of photos we've taken on our trip, with the total clocking in at around 11,000. Although they're all backed up on DVD and an external hard drive, sifting through to find good photos for hard copy as well as touching some of the rougher ones will probably take the next 10 years. Think there's also probably enough words in the blog to fill a small novel too.

Working in Sydney was probably the hardest part to keep it going, although we did try to do "activities" every weekend. A lot of the blog from then tended to be drunk stories, so they might not have been too fun to read about, but it was a bit more interesting than describing our actual jobs in detail. Judging by our blog stats, some people lost interest at this time (understandable to be honest), but those who did probably won't be reading this entry anyway. It's actually weird to look at the page hits for each entry; our Malaysian blog entry has been by far the most read. We even got an email from some publishing company asking to use our pictures/stories for a book celebrating the 50th anniversary of the country. We said yes, but don't know what became of that.

We were sometimes emailed by other travellers for some tips and information on various places which was pretty nice and I hope they weren't too let down by any of our hostel recommendations. A travel site also asked us if it could use some of our pictures for sections on particular places. It's nice to know that our blog has had some exposure outwith the people that we know.

All in all, despite the problems, the blog has been a fun experience. It's helped give us focus and given us something physical back from our travels other than crappy souvenirs. We're hopefully going to get it bound as a proper book, which is something offered by this site, but we'd probably have to reduce the amount of pictures. We hope you've enjoyed reading it, gained a bit of insight into some countries and that it hasn't been too boring. I know it's going to be something cool for us to look back on in the future anyway.

Travelling

Our trip itself was a lot of fun which you may have picked up on from some of our enthusiastic entries. It definitely exceeded everything we had hoped for and it was great that we were able to do everything we wanted to do, as well as a lot of other unexpected things. We had few regrets and those we did have were mainly because of time and money. It is something you have to have realistic expectations about.

Would we have done anything different? Probably a fair bit, but mainly to avoid some annoyances and crappy hostels, and that's just experience. There were times when we became extremely frustrated with things, for example being stranded at the Cambodian border or staying in a hopsital instead of doing a three day trek. Looking back though, there's nothing we're bitter about at all and in the end every little thing, bad and good, has helped shape our whole experience. Because you're constantly having to make quick decisions, doing thousands of new things and adapting to different circumstances, you do have to expect the unexpected, even if that is a terrible cliche. Especially when it comes to public transport, which is unreliable at the best of times. And transportation is obviously a huge part of travelling.

We travelled by foot, by car, by campervan, by bus, by train, by subway, by tram, by cable car, by motorbike, by tuk-tuk, by cyclo, by bicycle, by aeroplane, by helicopter, by ferry, by yacht, by kayak, by canoe, by hanglide, by parachute and probably a few more we've forgotten about. It's been pretty bizarre and some of the trips were less than ideal. I'll never complain about having cramped knees on a three hour Megabus trip again (and since returning, I've had to do a few of those) after some of the 14 hour Vietnamese buses. You hop into just about anything that'll take you from A to B (although maybe not to C). Carrying heavy backpacks, constant packing, unpacking and repacking as well as darting about from hostel to hostel becomes routine. It's all part of the fun to see how nice/dirty your next room is going to be, how friendly/annoying room mates will be and most importanly, how much of a bargain/rip off the place is.

The main question people have been asking since we've returned is what our favourite place or memory was. Perfectly understandable query, but one that is pretty hard to answer. Everywhere was quite varied and we had completely different experiences in each place. When first arriving in South East Asia, it was a minor culture shock, but you quickly acclimatise and adjust to the differences. After a few months though, you crave the odd "western" comfort (flushing toilets?) so it was nice when we initially got to Australia. It wasn't long though before we got a bit bored with things there being similar to the UK and wanted to go to somewhere culturally different. The grass is always greener. Australia was great fun, but was probably the place that we actually found the least appealing overall. Perhaps because of over-familiarity and having to work, but I think it's also true that the longer spent somewhere, you start to pick up a lot of the more negative sides than you would on a 2 week visit. We both agree though that on the whole, Vietnam and New Zealand were probably the two favourite places that we visited. Although this has a lot to do with the experiences we had there, we also really enjoyed many different aspects of the countries themselves. In regards to a favourite memory, our helicopter trip over the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers seems pretty hard to beat...

It has been a once in a lifetime experience and while we've not noticed it ourselves, I'm sure it has changed us a wee bit. Although it has helped broaden our world view and deepen our understanding of other cultures (the two common learning experiences people mention in regards to travelling) it has also been a really educational experience. Educational and enjoyable are words which don't appear often together, but it does sum up a lot of our experiences. We did of course expect to have a great time, but it was lot more than just that. It's easy to see why you end up meeting so many long term, nomadic travellers along the way as it's an extremely liberating and addictive lifestyle. If finance wasn't an issue, it would be ideal to live your life travelling for long periods of time.

It was great to get back home though and catch up with a lot of people again. It seemed to be too quick an adjustment as well and it seems like we've never really left our Scottish life. Some home comforts were pretty welcome though, particularly our curry on the first night back (very Scottish). I never did manage to map out a career plan as I had naively mentioned before leaving, but things have worked out well for us in that respect since returning and we're now looking to rent a flat in Edinburgh. On the other hand, this financial crash situation isn't ideal for two skint ex-travellers.

Anyway, that's it from us (finally). Using Saint Augustine's analogy of the world being a book, our travelling experience has meant we got to read a lot more than just the one page. It really does seem to be the most appropriate description of the experience. We had an amazing time, seen amazing places and met amazing people and it doesn't really get much better than that.

Thanks for reading and goodbye,
Gary & Emma

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Photos

Back Through Arrivals
Our triumphant return to the land of rain. Exhausted from lack of sleep and cramped travel.