What Can Be Done In 9 Months: An Alternative To Pregnancy

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So here we are. It's 9.30pm in New York City and we're less than 12 hours away from getting on a flight back to London after nearly 9 months away. This blog is a breakdown of our experience (along with a few of our favourite photos) and we hope you enjoy reading it. We'll do one more entry on what we got up to in Boston and NYC after we've gotten around to writing it, but this is a little something to keep you occupied until then.

I can honestly say that we're both looking forward to being home. Dave especially to the upcoming football season and me to be reunited with my hair straighteners and Mum's lasagne.

Hope to see you when we're back. As I promised to my Auntie just a couple of days ago, we'll try not to drone on too much about our little holiday 😊

Days Spent Away: 261
Continents Visited: 4
Countries Visited: 10
Flights: 18 (not including connecting flights)
Distance travelled: lots
Over Budget By: £3000 - Bah!
Estimated *total* spend: £24k
Number Of People Who Subscribed To Our Blog: 0...

Favourite Countries: Australia, Vietnam and New Zealand

Over the last 9 months friends and family have been getting engaged, starting new jobs and buying houses. We, on the other hand, have just spent all of our money. It hasn’t been a waste though, we might not have moved up the career ladder but we have learnt a lot. Below are 51 things we now know that we didn’t before.

1. There is only so much rice and noodles that a person can take
2. Motorbikes are great
3. You shouldn’t eat food named after bodily functions
4. Backpacking can get expensive - the most costly being accommodation, food and transport
5. Norwich City suck at football (though, thinking about it, we knew that before the trip as well)
6. Automatic cars are much better than manual
7. Wombats are elusive
8. Australian TV is the worst around. Four advert breaks in 30 minutes?!
9. Vietnamese TV is great - virtually all Premier League games shown live on normal TV!
10. Outside of Europe, people like the English
11. Australians are the nicest people in the world (Except for maybe the Thais, who are always keen to help)
12. There is a channel on US tv that is totally devoted to news on Michael Jackson
13. The food chain ‘Subway’ can be used to for breakfast, lunch, dinner and also as a refuge from New York City downpours
14. Dave is capable of getting a speeding ticket
15. No New Zealand radio station can be accessed more the 20km out of a city
16. It isn’t a good idea to suggest that a swelling on Helen’s face might be caused by a living parasite (thanks Mum & Dad!)
17. How to say ‘no’ I don’t need to buy your goods/services in lots of Asian languages
18. But that these people still don’t understand the word ‘no’
19. French tourists are the most miserable and rude race of people you could ever have misfortune of meeting (with a few exceptions)
20. Doing a blog can be fun to start with but it’s a pain to keep up to date…
21. Dave wants a better camera
22. Helen needs a hairdryer to be happy
23. The way to cross a road in Vietnam is to just walk in front of the traffic.
24. Dave isn’t any good at any part of the game ‘rockband’.
25. Monkeys might look nice, but they can be mean and jump on peoples (i.e. Helen’s) back
26. Having a camper van is fun
27. Parents should stop taking their children to museums
28. That it gets cold in Australia
29. Buying a massive suitcase isn’t a good idea, especially if it only cost £20
30. Helen likes her eggs “over easy”
31. Driving whilst being on your phone isn’t illegal in much of the USA
32. You shouldn’t buy books whilst backpacking
33. Scuba diving is pretty easy
34. In Australia, one road closure can lead to one very, very big detour
35. If food doesn’t usually come in a canned form, you shouldn’t buy it in a canned form (e.g. macaroni cheese)
36. No matter where you go in the world you’ll find waterfalls
37. A regular BK Joe contains only 5 calories
38. Coles ‘Grated Parmesan Style Cheese’ is not anything like parmesan cheese
39. Not including tax in prices is stupid
40. Having streets mapped out in blocks makes navigation easy, but having to stop every 30 seconds to cross a road means getting any where takes an age
41. England is really a good place to live!
42. If on Christmas Day the temperature is 30 degrees, it isn’t really Christmas
43. That Dave has started to look like his dad
44. In our experience phones are more likely to be stolen from a 4-star hotel than a backpackers
45. Internet access is easier to come by (and cheaper) in SE Asia then in Australia
46. It’s annoying to have to hold a hairdryer into a wall whist you dry your hair
47. It’s not a good idea to just randomly pick some food of a menu that’s all in Thai
48. You shouldn’t visit one of the best places for wildlife in the world when it’s flooded
49. It’s possible to electrocute yourself on a hob
50. The best way to see somewhere is to have a local show you around
51. Travelling beats working!

Five Things Dave has learnt about Helen:

1. She isn’t bad with directions, she’s terrible
2. She can suffer from seasickness…
3. She can happily walk for miles
4. She has a paranoia of bedbugs
5. She is slightly addicted to coffee

Five Things Helen has learnt about Dave:

1. He has the desire (and energy) to see and do EVERYTHING
2. He’s obsessed with hoarding items to include in a scrapbook
3. He can and will communicate with any person of any nationality in whatever way necessary
4. His rendition of ‘Timmy & The Lords of the Underworld’ from South Park is frightening
5. He’s rubbish at golf

Best Accommodation:

Yai Ya, Thailand - A new posh hotel owned by some family friends. Our sea view deluxe room (get us!) came with two sets of pyjamas, slippers and even flip-flops!

Swissotel, Sydney - A birthday treat for Dave. And after a month in a campervan this was a welcome change! The unexpected free steak lunch was worth the money alone.

Agrabah, our Campervan - The only room we could drive around with us

A hotel in Hue, Vietnam. For me (Dave) this was my favourite place we stayed. For £10 a night we had a huge room in the city centre with a balcony, satellite TV, massive bed and, best of all, it's own private computer (with fast, free internet)!!

Worst Accommodation:

The Hotel in Sandakan: The owner of this place ranks top in my imaginary ‘who is the grumpiest person in the world’ competition, beating even pre-enlightened Scrooge, Posh Spice and The French. I (Helen) managed to snap the key off the lock. This did not please him.

A hostel in Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Where to start. It stank, the sheets were stained, water leaked into the bedroom from the bathroom, there were millions of mosquitoes, the door didn’t shut properly and the café downstairs served up some of the worst food during our 9 months. We stayed one night.

Agrabah, our Campervan - Because when it was cold, it was really cold. I don’t know the temperatures we endured but let’s just say that I know how Jack and Rose felt.

Favourite Places We’ve Visited:

Mulu, Malaysian Borneo - A remote National Park in the middle of the Borneon jungle only accessible by flight, Mulu was our favourite place we visited. Teaming with wildlife, well managed, affordable and offering activities from traipsing along treetops to watching millions of bats stream out of an incredible series of caves, it’s always the first place we think of when remembering where we’ve really enjoyed.

Mount Cook, New Zealand - The 3 days (which was going to be 2 before we extended it) we spent here were fantastic. We stayed in accommodation surrounded by mountains on three sides, took our first ever helicopter ride, got up close with icebergs, watched shows at the planetarium, enjoyed some delicious meals courtesy of Helen’s parents and topped it off with star gazing, even glimpsing Saturn and her rings. Plus we had lovely weather!

Similian Islands, Thailand - We hadn’t planned to visit these islands and were instead going to go elsewhere. Fortunately, the place we’d intended to see was too far away and so we took a day trip here. We’ve been to a lot of beaches but none were as nice as these - beautiful, aquamarine water, pure white sand and an ocean filled with fishes. To top it all off, the crew of the snorkelling trip were very friendly Thais.

Great Barrier Reef, Australia - Is the Great Barrier Reef as good as people say? Yes it is. Out first trip wasn’t too successful - Helen spent most of it waiting on a beach - but our second trip was great. We saw tons of fish, a huge variety of coral and, best of all, got to swim with turtles.

Luang Prabang, Laos - The only place we visited in Laos made me wish that we’d seen more of the country. However, unlike the other places on this list I’m not sure what made it so good. Maybe it was the lovely people, perhaps the great waterfalls and walking nearby or it could be the music shower we had. Whatever it was, we had a great few days in Luang Prabang.


Other nice places:

A quick mention for the other places that were definitely worth a visit:

Hoi An, Vietnam
Melacca, Malaysia
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Melbourne, Australia
Halong Bay, Vietnam
Ko Phi Phi, Thailand
Ko Tao, Thailand
Queenstown, New Zealand
Fox Glacier, New Zealand
The Tablelands, Australia
Hawaii, USA

Nicest People We’ve Met:

The man who runs the ‘Superb Hub’ hostel in Singapore. Each time we saw his smiling face he would give us free water, making sure we had everything we needed and gave us pages of information on Singapore that he’d typed up himself. He also let us use his umbrella for 2 days.

Pau and Nui, family friends, for their continuous hospitality, the meals they bought us, the 5 days we spent at their Bangkok apartment, the 6 days we spent at their Chaing Mai apartment and the 2 days we spent at their hotel - all for free!

Dave and Christine from Portland. Cooked us our first (and only) home cooked meal of our whole trip, took us around some Japanese gardens and sent us back with a bag full of food and drink.

Dave’s family from Malaysia. Family might have to be nice, but that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to get onto the list. We had an excellent couple of days in Kuala Lumpour with my Uncle and Aunt as they showed us around, bought us meals and helped out with what we should be doing.

Finally, all the people that gave us free lifts without us ever asking anyone. You’d be surprised how nice people can be when you’re carrying two large backpacks!

Least Favourite Places We’ve Visited:

Bintulu, Malaysian Borneo - Whenever I think of somewhere we visited that I didn’t like, Bintulu is the first place to come to mind. In Bintulu there are no tourist attractions, instead the tourists are the attraction. We only spent one day here but in that day we endured people staring, pointing and even tapping their friends on the shoulder so that they could look at us. The food was terrible, the town dirty and the ‘Man United’ café didn’t show any football matches. What was worst though was that in Bintulu I saw the film ‘Inkheart’, I know its not the fault of Bintulu that the film was so bad, but I still hold it partially responsible.

Chumpon, Thailand - We’d been recommended to visit Chumpon by someone who was from there, but only after visiting did we realise that they were either joking or they didn’t like us. Chumpon manages to appear on this list despite us only spending a single night there. In that night we saw enough. Again, it had awful food, was dirty looking and certain areas were full of ‘ladies of the night’. If you can call them that anyway, I suspect many held a not so ladylike secret beneath their trashy clothes.

Rockhampton, Australia - Rockhampton really isn’t that bad, it’s just your typical industrial town. The reason it appears on this list is because of its name. It’s called ‘Rockhampton’! Surely it was going to kick arse!? But no, it didn’t and it will forever remain on this list because of the disappointment it caused me.

Accolades:

‘New Zealand Spaceships blog of the day’!
Ranked number one on Google (type 'Helen and Dave' in and see what happens!)
Most viewed blog - Phnom Penh & Siem Reap- 409 views

Top blog readers:

Self proclaimed “biggest blog fan”: Kate Partridge aka Mrs P
Most comments: Nick Hamlin - thanks Nick!

Finally, we’d like to say thank you for reading this blog of our travels. Especially those of you that took the time to send us comments, messages and emails.

Dave and I have truly had a fantastic 9 months but are looking forward to coming home, seeing all of you and planning the next trip, of course 😉

With love, Helen and Dave xxx

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Comments

[Anna]

WOW
Hi Dave, Helen Are you really back? I am sure that you have a lot of catching up to do. Never mind adjusting to the British weather! Poor things… Let me know if you fancy a drink. It would be great to see both of you Anna

[Hodge family]

Welcome home!
Well, we failed miserably to comment on your blogs as you went around the world, but we have followed your journey with great interest, known lots about the highs and lows, and enjooyed your humour. Your blogs have been shared around the family and Oma has taken agreat interest in your progress - although it has mostly concerned the day on which you have been expected home. I am out of time - but we look forward to seeing yopu very soon. from sunny Girona, love Mum, Dad and Louisa