I’ll admit it, I like numbers. This post is a look at our year-long trip in numbers.

Miles Traveled – 30,703 (The distance around the world is 24,901 miles)

Posts Written – 130

Twitter Followers – 301

Tweets Sent – 798

Pictures Taken – 7,870

Number of “good” pictures taken – 3,055

Dollars Spent – $34,989

Pairs of sunglasses Sharon went through – 8

Pairs of sunglasses Jason went through – 2

Comments on Posts – 565 (Thanks!)

Most steps taken in a day – 35,100 (Guilin, China)

Number of countries visited – 12

Number of fights Sharon and I had – 13

Number of times our fights happened with our backpacks on in the heat when we were hungry and lost – 12

New Facebook friends from traveling – 39

Lifelong friends made –5

Items stolen – 2 (1 Leatherman, 1 backup hard drive)

Number of couches surfed – 1

Number of couches attempted to surf – 10

Number of times we felt unsafe – 0

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2. 2010 Year In Review
3. When Travel Loses Its Thrill, Is It Time To Go Home?

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Previously, Sharon wrote the Top 10 Things We WON’T Miss About Asia. Today, I continue our “Asia Recap week” with the top 10 things we’re going to miss about Asia.

1. I’m awesome: Just for looking the way that I do, I’m awesome. It may be strange and intimidating at first being constantly stared at, having random people want to take pictures with you, say hi to you, and just make a big deal about you, but over time you learn to appreciate it. This is probably the closest I’ll feel to a celebrity and I enjoyed it.
2. No Tipping: Maybe it’s because I’m cheap, or maybe it’s because I believe restaurants should take care of their employees rather than rely on the generosity of random customers, but I love the fact that tipping isn’t a part of the culture. It makes going to dinner easier with friends. You don’t have to do that whole calculation thing at the end of the meal – did I leave too little? Did I leave too much? What it said on the menu is how much you owe, easy and simple.
3. Cheap Food: When we first arrived to Korea we thought food was pretty expensive, but compared to incredible $1 meals in Vietnam, it’s easy to think every country is expensive. The more we got into the swing of things, we realized that food is actually incredibly cheap in Korea as well, especially at restaurants. In the United States, there’s a pretty large difference between buying groceries at a store and going to a restaurant. In Korea, though, there’s hardly a difference. Delicious meals can be had for $3 – $5 per person. And remember, no tipping!
4. Public Transportation: Sure, it’s in another language, but once you get the hang of it it’s incredibly convenient. Long-distance buses, subways, trains, convenient and cheap taxis- all of them made getting around Asia incredibly easy. I don’t think there was more than a couple of times when Sharon and I wished we had a car. On a sidenote – I don’t think I would even want a car there, people drive like idiots.
5. Automatic Door Locks: While we weren’t fortunate to have an automatic door lock in our Busan apartment, most Korean apartments have automatic door locks that don’t require a key. You simply type in a 4-digit code to get into your house. No need to carry a key or worry about locking the door, it’s all taken care of. Perfect for the lazy, and forgetful.
6. Stuff is Always Open: Things don’t close on Sundays, there’s no last call at bars, and if you’re hungry on a Sunday at 4am there are places open and ready for you to eat — it’s an amazingly convenient thing that you quickly get used to. It will be dearly missed.
7. Random Kindness of Strangers: I’m sure if we were to travel in the Unites States we would also experience the random kindness of strangers, but because we don’t typically need to rely on strangers here at home, this is something that we’ll end up missing. There’s just something about being lost and having a random person help you figure out where to go that brightens up your day.
8. Makgeolli: This delicious rice wine from Korea quickly became Sharon and my drink of choice. First, it’s delicious. Second, it’s extremely cheap. I rest my case.
9. Cheap clothes, cheap transportation, cheap electronics:Asia being much less expensive in general gets 2 bullets on this list. From shoes to haircuts to basic electronics, things are just less expensive in Asia. It’s a wonderful thing seeing your bank account very slowly move in the downward direction and I’m going to miss that a lot.
10. Our Lifestyle: While there were a lot of things Sharon and I accomplished during the trip, overall our lifestyle was a relaxed one. A year-long vacation was pretty sweet. We rarely set alarms, we constantly forgot what day of the week it was — we were on a year-long vacation. Unfortunately, it’s time to start taking things a little more seriously now and begin thinking about how we’re going to start earning a living again. Our Asian lifestyle will be dearly missed.

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1. The top 10 things we WON’T miss about Asia
2. Singapore: The most “un-Southeast Asia” of Asia
3. Top 8 Things we promise NOT to do back at home

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1. Accidentally ordering cow brains: We will not miss having to choose our dinner like a crap shoot and being stuck with some mystery “meat” that could be anything from chicken to frog meat to something even worse…
2. The Asian staring: Yes, Jason may love this because it creates a celebrity status for him, but in reality it’s really annoying.  Our first experience in mainland China involved every single person turning their heads to stare at us.  Talk about culture shock.  I probably wasn’t the most diplomatic of tourists myself, however, as I returned their stares with a mean glare and a face that said “what are you staring at?!!”
3. The Asian shoving: Whilst patiently waiting in line for the bus, don’t be alarmed when an 80 year old Korean or Chinese grandma pushes you out of her way to get in before you.  This is not considered rude here, but to us, it was quite strange and didn’t make any sense.  Calm down, you’re gonna get a seat lady!!!
4. The Asian bargaining: If there’s one thing that I’ve mastered through traveling, it’s the art of Chinese bargaining.  It’s common tourist knowledge that in many places in Asia, especially in China, foreigners are charged more than double the amount a local would pay for an item.  Because of this, I am now a bargaining master.  The first time I tried, however, I was so nervous that I could barely muster up the courage. Now, I almost always receive the “Chinese callback” (where the seller tells you there’s no way they’ll sell it to you for that price, so you walk away and they call you back by saying “ok ok!!!”).
5. The other-worldly restaurant timing: In China, they served you one main dish at a time, making you wait as much as 10-15 minutes for the next dish to be served.  And then as if that wasn’t bad enough, they almost always served us our rice LAST.
6. Durian: If you’ve never smelled or tasted this “fruit”, consider yourself lucky.  I will never be able to forget its awful smell, but for some reason Durian fruit has a cult-like following of people who eat it like it’s delicious or something.  I describe this “fruit” to taste like moldy meat.
7. Communication barriers: After a year in non-English speaking countries, it gets very frustrating when you can’t even ask a grocery store worker where the drinks are.  Now that we are in Guam, it’s like sweet music to my ears when the gas station attendant says “how can I help you?” no matter how bored they look.
8. Littering: There were a few places in Asia where the amount of littering that took place would be considered an epidemic in the US.  In some countries they littered because a trash team would come and clean up the streets, but in other places there was no one to do this, so the trash just piled up and sat there.  I don’t understand this mentality in the least; don’t you have a sense of pride in your city?  Do you really want your home to look like a dumpster one day?
9. The water issue: In every country we visited, with the exception of Singapore and Japan, local tap water was not clean enough to drink.  This became a real nuisance as our only options were to buy new water bottles every day (which is terrible for the environment) or fill up a bottle with tap water and sterilize it using our Steripen multiple times a day.  Needless to say, the Steripen thing got pretty tedious, at least for me.
10. Stinky bathrooms and drains: Squat toilets aren’t really that bad in theory, but I will die a happy person if I never have to SMELL one ever again.  The one pro of squat toilets- you don’t have to touch anything.  The many cons of squat toilets- the stench is terrible for some reason, you have to throw your TP away in a trash can, the Asian squat is impossible for anyone who hasn’t practiced it since birth, and you have to try to dodge other people’s urine and feces on the ground because some people don’t know how to keep it in the toilet.  In addition to the toilets, it’s also not uncommon for a terrible wafting stench of sewage to hit your face from one of the street drains.

Stay tuned for the follow up to this post where Jason will be revealing the top 10 things we WILL miss about Asia!

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1. Top 10 Things We’re Going to Miss About Asia
2. Singapore: The most “un-Southeast Asia” of Asia
3. Top 8 Things we promise NOT to do back at home

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Upon our arrival back home (San Francisco or Sacramento, both are home to us) Jason and I will have spent approximately 355 straight days in Asia at each others’ side.  In this case, when I say “days”, I literally mean almost 24 hours per day and most definitely 7 days every week.

In a nutshell, spending that much time together while traveling has had its side effects.  We have been almost the only friends to each other for a year, so there are bound to be some inside jokes and habits that have developed that might prove to be obnoxious to the outsider.

Here are a list of things that Jason and I promise NOT to do when we come home:

1. We promise NOT to complain about how expensive everything is in the States.  We will bite our tongues when the phrase “WELLL, back in Vietnam this would be a FRACTION of the price!!” comes to our minds as our eyes meander through the menu at dinner.
2. We promise NOT to be cheap and to tip our servers at restaurants.  Asia has spoiled us in the fact that tipping is non-existent.  We’ve been growing accustomed to this habit, so we will force ourselves to quickly adapt back to our mainland ways.
3. We (Jason) promise NOT to constantly mention how annoying it is that people aren’t saying hello to us everywhere we go.  As you can imagine, Jason was quite the circus act in many places in Asia, especially China.  If you ask him he won’t lie, he got quite the big head from all of the stares, giddy smiles, hellos and pictures taken of himself.  I warned him that he will no longer be the celebrity of California.  He promises not to sulk.
4. We promise NOT to excessively peer over at each other and giggle to ourselves while saying “you remember that??” while in the company of friends.  We know how obnoxious inside jokes can be when you’re on the outside.  Like I said before, we have been practically each other’s only friends for a YEAR, so we are aware of how many stupid inside jokes we have.  We’ll try our very best to tune it down for your sake, although you can’t really blame us if it’s just a really awesome joke.
5. We promise NOT to say the following phrase every 5 minutes: “OMG this totally reminds me of when ____ happened on our trip!!”
6. We absolutely, indefinitely, REALLY promise NOT to make anyone sit through an awful slideshow of all 7,000+ photos of our trip.  We wouldn’t want to sit through anyone’s Trilobite dinosaur slides, no matter how exciting it may be to the creator, so we’ll refrain until specifically asked.
7. We promise NOT to complain about how non-existent the subway system is in California and how awesome they are in Asia.  Along those lines, we also promise not to mention how weird it is to be driving again.
8. We promise NOT to constantly whine about how early everything closes, especially bars.  We frequently found ourselves up until 5am or 6am in Korea without even realizing how late (early) it was, and then we found ourselves eating at one of the many restaurants open at 5am.  In our 1:30am stupor, we promise to only be happy and tired.

These are the only things we can think of for now, but if you have any suggestions, please feel free to warn us now rather than later.  What would you like us to refrain from doing when you see us back at home?   You wouldn’t want to be on the other end of these as they happen over and over again…

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After spending over 3 weeks in Padang, Indonesia (on Sumatra, one of Indonesia’s 17,000 islands) we are now in the very international country of Singapore.  It would be an understatement if I said that the transition has been drastic.  We went from being in a city where we were about 2 out of a whopping 20 non-Muslim people (a gross, over-exaggerated estimate) to a city that has every type of ethnicity and food you can think of, skyscraper buildings, and a Formula 1 race track.

All I have to say is that it’s nice to fit in again.  Even though the sun was so strong in Padang that it actually hurt my skin, and the humidity was so high that my skin became an adhesive for dirt and small insects, I only saw about 3 women wearing sleeveless shirts during our entire stay.  Being the sun/heat hater that I am, I commonly wore sleeveless shirts, which didn’t exactly help me fit in, although neither did walking around with a white “bule” (pronounced “boo-lay” which means “foreigner”).  One local child even shouted “YOU ARE SOOOOO WHITE!!!!” in his language as we walked by.  It continues to make me laugh when I think about it.

We are in glorious Singapore for just a few days, until September 11^th, when we fly to Guam after a very short layover in Manila, Philippines.  In Guam we will be spending two amazing weeks in a vacation rental home that looks quite lovely in pictures, assuming that they are somewhat recent.  The most exciting thing about our rental home is having our own washer and dryer.  The days where we are charged $10 for a load of laundry are almost history…. so close!

After Guam, we have a pretty ridiculous flight back “home” on September 25^th that includes layovers in Hawaii and San Francisco (how ironic-  who wants to meet up at SFO for drinks?) on our way to Seattle.  We will be spending over a week in Seattle helping to send my best friend into married life!  What a perfect way to be greeted back to the mainland!

After Seattle, we plan on traveling down the West coast of our beautiful country.  We will try to be back in San Francisco by October 9^th for a series of parties hosted by our best friends- but perhaps some random city in Oregon will captivate our attention, forcing us to postpone our arrival date.  Keeping form with the rest of this frolic around Asia, we will play it by ear.

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There are many things in my life that I would consider lucky; this trip is not one of them. Here are a few things I’m particularly lucky for: I was born to two awesome and supporting parents, Sharon finally decided to date me, I’ve got my health, I didn’t buy a house in 2007 when everyone seemed to be buying a house. That’s luck.

How did we make this trip happen?

Not luck. We prioritized the trip above all-else. We sacrificed going out. We didn’t buy new cars. We lived in a pretty small room with 2 (sometimes 3) other housemates. We automated our savings – creating a little stockpile of money for when we get back and then saved up as much as we could for the actual trip. Nothing in there is luck, we made that happen. Sure, you could argue that having jobs to support all of that was lucky, but if we didn’t have the jobs, I guarantee we would have found another way.

I’m tired of people saying how lucky we are, that we were lucky to quit our jobs and travel the world for a year and they can’t. I typically smile, nod my head, and agree with them how lucky we are, but deep down I know they can be “lucky” too. Of course you can, you can do anything you want. Admit it, it’s simply that you won’t do it. And why won’t you do it? Do you have a house? Sell or rent it. Kids? Bring them with you. Debt? Create a plan and pay it off. For every excuse out there, there’s a solution. As long as you first admit that you CAN do it and it’s only yourself that’s the barrier.

End of rant. Have a good day.

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As we were planning our trip, we knew China was going to be one of our first destinations. To prepare, I worked on my Chinese with Rosetta Stone a few times a week for a couple months to try and learn at least some Chinese. When we got to Vietnam, the first thing I did was memorize how to count. It was exciting and fun.

Now, we’ve been in Indonesia for a week and I still don’t even know how to say thank you. And the only reason I know how to say hello is because “hello” is also Indonesian. English is spoken everywhere, so it’s not truly hurting our travel experience, but I feel like a bad traveler. Part of the fun and enjoyment for me in travel is learning at least some of the local language and trying to have them understand me. Does this change mean I’m taking travel for granted? Has travel lost its excitement?

The odd thing is that I’m still happy being here and am having a great time, but this life of constant travel seems so normal now. Perhaps, too normal? Travel has always been that special thing you look forward to once a year–counting down the days until you finally get to take off. It was the ice cream sandwich you look forward to after dinner.

It seems odd that I’ve made travel my everyday life to the point where I am now taking it for granted. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that after over 10 months of being on the road it’s not as exciting as it was at the beginning. Nonetheless, it’s a strange feeling.

Image credit: Morgan Leichter-Saxby

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Sharon and I have now officially booked and planned the rest of our trip, including our return flight back to the states. In this post, I’ll give you a quick update on our plans for the next few months.

August 12^th is our departure date from Korea. Hopefully there will be no issues, as the 12^th is exactly our 90^th day in Korea – the limit on our tourist Visa. We’ll be flying from Seoul to Singapore with China Southern Airlines.

Our next flight is one month later, also out of Singapore. Our plan for our month back in Southeast Asia is to spend a few days in Singapore and then move on to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. After KL the plan is to head to the beach and do as much diving and surfing as possible. We considered trying to get to Bali, Indonesia, but we wanted to avoid another plane flight. So, we’ll instead most likely be hanging out in Peninsular Malaysia. If you happen to have any suggestions on good diving or surfing places around Malaysia, any help would be appreciated!

After our month in Southeast Asia we’ll be spending two weeks on the island of Guam (Sharon’s other 25% ethnicity). One of the cheapest flights we found home happened to have a layover in Guam. After talking with Continental, we found out for an extra $100 we could have a 2-week “layover” there. That was a no-brainer.

September 25^th we fly from Guam -> Hawaii -> SF – > Seattle where we somehow land only 2 hours later than we departed (the international date line can be trippy). We fly into Seattle, for Sharon’s cousin/best friend/LAC #1 Fan’s wedding. I’m also excited, as this will be my first time in Seattle.

After Seattle, we’ll be spending the next few months in the states. There may be a trip to the east coast, but primarily we’ll be spending time with friends and family in California.

After the New Year, we’re still debating what’s next. One of the leading ideas is to head back to Korea to teach for a year. By doing so we’d be able to save money again and also learn a lot more Korean. Regardless of what we choose, I don’t think our Life After Cubes adventure is coming to an end quite yet.

P.S. It’s pretty hard to believe, but this is our 100th post. Time for a mini-party.

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Greetings from Busan, South Korea — our new home for the next 2 months. We’ve found ourselves a cozy (read: very small) studio apartment and will be settling down here for the next couple of months. Today’s post is focused around a constant battle Sharon and I experience: trying to see all of the sights versus taking it slow and not tiring ourselves out.

You’re never going to hear me truly complain about our current lifestyle. Essentially, traveling for a living has been a dream come true. However, one aspect we consistently struggle with is how much to do and how much to see in a given city. It’s easy to get carried away and try to pack each day full of activities and sightseeing. A couple examples:

Example A – Vancouver Island

During our first week of traveling, in Vancouver, we were immediately faced with this issue. We had to decide whether or not to see Vancouver Island. It sounded like an interesting place. However, it was going to require getting up very early and getting back to our hotel very late. With our days being pretty packed as it was, we decided to pass.

Example B – Tokyo

In Japan we recently had an ever tougher choice to make. We had a rail pass which allowed us unlimited travel in the country for 7 days. We planned on seeing Hiroshima, Kyoto and Osaka during those 7 days, but leading up to the trip I began questioning if we should add Tokyo to our list of destinations. How could we go to Japan and not see Tokyo? We ended up not seeing Tokyo and instead left it for a future trip.

Our Travel Style

The more we travel the more we realize it’s mostly about the people we meet that make the destination; not seeing as many sights as possible. It’s more important to us to not tire ourselves out and ensure we’re enjoying our time.

As an added bonus, when you miss something, it’s the perfect excuse to go back there. While I had an awesome time in Japan and I feel like I got a good feel for the country, I know I need to go back and see Tokyo.

Image Credit: Funkyfootage

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I am going to keep writing to a minimum in this post because I don’t want to take away from the awesomeness of the pictures.  Enjoy!

Note:  These pictures are arranged chronologically, with the first picture taken at the beginning of our trip and the last picture being the latest.

This picture was taken at a park where they apparently hired the Wicked Witch of the West to translate for them.

Damn, I had my danger all ready.

Dear Hiker. Oops, you’re gonna have to walk the 6 miles back to where you started.  Sorry.  Love, the Great Wall.

This one is a repeat from a previous post, but I still can’t get enough of it.

Sprinkled soup… crab in soup… omelette… what??

The Japanese use a very accurate metric system.  It’s called “Terrible”.

“Axe murderers, please find business elsewhere.”

“It puts the lotion in the basket….”

They must have hired a really good English speaking lawyer to translate this.

… And the Japanese REALLY appreciate the heart.

I hate to say it, but the Koreans might be on to something here.  I am going to go back to the states and start calling tampons “crampons” and it will spread like wildfire.

You would think they could have had a 5 year old proofread this sign.

Hello Take-Out Coffee, my name is Sharon.

The international consultant for TGI Friday’s needs to be fired.

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