Nobody Told Me There’d Be Days Like These…

……strange days indeed….

It seems impossible that it was only a week ago today that matters really started to unravel and it became more and more obvious that we needed to get out of Vietnam. Such is the unique nature of life in the UK just now that it seems a lot more than five days since we arrived home.

There’s not really much point dwelling on our lost dream, difficult as it may be for us, when the scale of what the world is dealing with right now is so immense. At the end of the day, when all this is history, we will, hopefully, be ready to pack our stuff and resume our travels as soon as the situation dictates that we can.

So for now we’re concentrating on reflecting on the 7 weeks of our adventure which we did manage to enjoy before everything unravelled. First off, we now know that our dreams are well founded: long term travel was every bit as good as we wanted it to be, and we were even loving aspects that we hadn’t expected to. In a nutshell…

Accommodation: Really enjoyed our policy of booking just a few days ahead; not arriving unbooked but leaving it until just before we made a move. Flashpacking, not backpacking. Particularly loved the homestays, there were the real essence. Friendly hosts giving great advice; chatting with fellow travellers over breakfast; being right in the heart of communities. Even the wildly variable quality of homestay locations is a big part of the joy.

Length of stays: Sometimes ready to go, sometimes leaving with heavy heart, it always felt great to be moving on to another exciting place.

Time management: It’s even easy to love the practical side, things like time taken to organise laundry, to organise transport, nearest ATM, talking to locals about logistics, stuff like that.

Money: Even enjoyed managing money, like keeping main funds away from those accounts where we were using cards, managing the budget carefully, making decisions between budget and speed, timing when to transfer funds, it was all stimulating.

Food: Changing cuisine as we changed locations, discovering new foods, new flavours, trying different stuff, market food, street food, everything was good. Even coping with the odd bout of gut rot was all part of what we expected.

And finally. The following was going to be compiled and added to as 2020 unfolded, but of course ended early. But this is where we’d got to:-

Days travelled – 49

Countries visited – 3

Beds slept in – 14

Locations – 12. Bangkok, Kanchanaburi, Klong Nin (Koh Lanta), Chiang Mai, Nongtao, Chiang Rai, Pakbeng, Luang Prabang, Nong Khiaw, Hanoi , Halong Bay (Tuen Chau), Tam Coc.

Different beers – 12 (Chang, Leo, Singha, Beerlao, Beerlao Gold, Beerlao Dark, Tiger, Beer Hanoi, Beer Saigon, Viet Ha, Halida, Bia Hoi).

Mountains climbed – 8 (in terms of reaching summit or waterfall)

Distance walked according to Fitbit – 321.98 miles (average 6.57 miles per day including transport days)

Modes of transport used – 14.

Storms witnessed – 2.

Massages – Michaela 6, Phil 5.

Bouts of ‘travel tummy’ – Phil 2 Michaela 1.

Different meals ordered which turned out to be another noodle soup – several million

Hotel evictions – 1

Bus crashes – Thankfully just the one!