Subscribe
Posts
The formations at Slunj, Plitvice Lakes National Park, Pamukkale, and (we guess) Kuang Si Waterfall and the Caves in Laos are made of Travertine. Travertine is formed through a strange sort of "reverse erosion." The water becomes super-saturated with calcium as it dissolves the limestone it flows over. When the water is relatively still, it continues to hold onto it's calcium, but as it flows over the edge of a waterfall or other disturbance, it is unable to hold as much calcium and the calcium is deposited on the lip of the waterfall. Thus the lip of the waterfall is built up over time with the flow of water, rather than being eroded away. Incredible!
This seems to explain the beautiful pools in and around Kuang Si Waterfall in Laos, the white pools at Pamukkale, the lakes in Plitvice Lakes National Park, and the way a town could be perched atop a waterfall as Slunj is.
Showing posts with label Side Topics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Side Topics. Show all posts
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Side Topic: High Tech Guided Tours
A neat new thing at the Egypt Antiquities Museum was the way they conducted the large group tours. The tour guides spoke quietly into a little microphone that transmitted to little radios the tourists in their groups had. This made it hard to join a tour we didn't belong with (good for the tour guide, bad for us), kept the museum relatively quiet (good for everyone), and we assume made the tour guide easier to hear for the participants. Now that we are in Italy, we are seeing this setup most places. It's pretty awesome, and we wish that sights would ban any other kind of group tour, because bellowing tour guides are so very obnoxious. It also allows the group to clump a little more loosely since they aren't all crowded in to hear the tour, which makes it easier to get past/around the groups.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Food and Language
If you had asked me before I left the US, I would have told you that I spoke no Thai, no Hindi, and no Chinese. I would have said the same thing after 6 weeks in India and 2 and a half weeks in Thailand. Now I know better.
At American Thai and Indian restaurants, dish names are typically listed in Thai or Hindi. So if you go to such restaurants regularly (as we do), you learn the names of your favorite foods in Thai and Hindi. So I actually do speak enough Thai and Hindi to ask for food that I like, which makes a world of difference when traveling in foreign parts. In Thailand we typically walked up to a street vendor and asked for whatever we wanted by its Thai name. When our food came, we handed over 100 bhat and got between 30 and 40 bhat in change. It was that easy. In India there was normally a menu written in an alphabet we could read, sometimes with English translations, not that we needed them.
In American Chinese restaurants, you only get the English translation of the food name, with no lesson in Mandarin. Plus, a lot of our favorite American-Chinese dishes don't even exist in China... so, um, good luck ordering when you get to China.
We eventually found the page in Lonely Planet that had common Chinese dishes written out in English and Chinese characters. At many restaurants we ordered by pointing to dishes on this page until we got to something that they served. Pointing to things other people were eating also worked pretty well... when it worked at all.
At American Thai and Indian restaurants, dish names are typically listed in Thai or Hindi. So if you go to such restaurants regularly (as we do), you learn the names of your favorite foods in Thai and Hindi. So I actually do speak enough Thai and Hindi to ask for food that I like, which makes a world of difference when traveling in foreign parts. In Thailand we typically walked up to a street vendor and asked for whatever we wanted by its Thai name. When our food came, we handed over 100 bhat and got between 30 and 40 bhat in change. It was that easy. In India there was normally a menu written in an alphabet we could read, sometimes with English translations, not that we needed them.
In American Chinese restaurants, you only get the English translation of the food name, with no lesson in Mandarin. Plus, a lot of our favorite American-Chinese dishes don't even exist in China... so, um, good luck ordering when you get to China.
We eventually found the page in Lonely Planet that had common Chinese dishes written out in English and Chinese characters. At many restaurants we ordered by pointing to dishes on this page until we got to something that they served. Pointing to things other people were eating also worked pretty well... when it worked at all.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Side Topic: Accommodations in India
My mom has been bugging me to write about hotel rooms ever since I told her that our room in Delhi was only going to cost us $13/night. We were freaked out our first night in Delhi when we were asked to leave our passports downstairs at the front desk, only to glance behind the desk and see a homeless person sleeping there. Except, of course, the people sleeping in the lobby and behind the desk weren't actually homeless; they were just the staff looking for all the world like homeless people, but probably providing some of the best hotel security you’ll find anywhere.
It seems that budget hotel rooms in India are all about the same. In each, you get a big bed (really two twins pushed together in most cases) with a firm foam mattress and a fitted bottom sheet of questionable cleanliness. They don't seem to do top sheets in this country (we've checked stores too--a sheet set has one sheet and two pillowcases here), but you do get a blanket or two, sometimes covered with something you can pretend that you think they wash between guests, sometimes not. We were really happy to have our silk sleeping bag liner sheets with us, and used them pretty much every night. Though had we known we'd be using them so often, we might have brought a proper sheet set.
The bathrooms pretty much all had western-style toilets, which flushed without the help of a bucket in the nicer places. The shower was always just mounted on the wall of the bathroom, such that when you took a shower, you got everything in the bathroom wet. Including the toilet paper (assuming you brought your own toilet paper), if you weren't careful. Nicer hotels had their own water heaters in each room, which were either the type that instantly heats the water, or traditional tank heaters where you had to turn on the power 20 minutes before you wanted to shower. Less nice hotels had either no hot water or a shared water heater that wasn't necessarily on all day and generally was out of hot water in the morning by the time we wanted it. There was always a bucket and small pitcher provided, presumably for taking an "Indian shower" where you fill the bucket with water and pore it over yourself. We found the bucket handy for doing laundry and flushing the toilets.
The amount of additional furniture in the room varied from none at all to substantial.
We paid between $2.50 and $20 per night for rooms like this. Prices seemed to vary mostly on location, but also on how desperate we appeared to be and how effectively we bothered to haggle. Quality didn't seem to have a lot to do with price, as the $3 room and the $20 room were our nicest two rooms in all of India.
A smaller than average but otherwise typical hotel, in Agra:
A larger than average but otherwise typical hotel bathroom, in Mathura:
Our cutest hotel room, in Udaipur:
The exterior of our cheapest hotel stay of the trip, in Varanasi:
It seems that budget hotel rooms in India are all about the same. In each, you get a big bed (really two twins pushed together in most cases) with a firm foam mattress and a fitted bottom sheet of questionable cleanliness. They don't seem to do top sheets in this country (we've checked stores too--a sheet set has one sheet and two pillowcases here), but you do get a blanket or two, sometimes covered with something you can pretend that you think they wash between guests, sometimes not. We were really happy to have our silk sleeping bag liner sheets with us, and used them pretty much every night. Though had we known we'd be using them so often, we might have brought a proper sheet set.
The bathrooms pretty much all had western-style toilets, which flushed without the help of a bucket in the nicer places. The shower was always just mounted on the wall of the bathroom, such that when you took a shower, you got everything in the bathroom wet. Including the toilet paper (assuming you brought your own toilet paper), if you weren't careful. Nicer hotels had their own water heaters in each room, which were either the type that instantly heats the water, or traditional tank heaters where you had to turn on the power 20 minutes before you wanted to shower. Less nice hotels had either no hot water or a shared water heater that wasn't necessarily on all day and generally was out of hot water in the morning by the time we wanted it. There was always a bucket and small pitcher provided, presumably for taking an "Indian shower" where you fill the bucket with water and pore it over yourself. We found the bucket handy for doing laundry and flushing the toilets.
The amount of additional furniture in the room varied from none at all to substantial.
We paid between $2.50 and $20 per night for rooms like this. Prices seemed to vary mostly on location, but also on how desperate we appeared to be and how effectively we bothered to haggle. Quality didn't seem to have a lot to do with price, as the $3 room and the $20 room were our nicest two rooms in all of India.
A smaller than average but otherwise typical hotel, in Agra:
 |
| From Hotels |
A larger than average but otherwise typical hotel bathroom, in Mathura:
 |
| From Hotels |
Our cutest hotel room, in Udaipur:
 |
| From Hotels |
The exterior of our cheapest hotel stay of the trip, in Varanasi:
 |
| From |
Side Topic: Pollution in India
(This post is about India, but I forgot to post it. Written when we were in Mathura.)
The pollution here is really starting to get to me. The air is nasty: there is continual haze, as I'm sure you've noticed in many of the photos, and it is very irritating to my nose and throat. The sacred rivers are too polluted to safely swim in, by many orders of magnitude. The cities are in desperate need of a sewer system, including treatment. There is raw sewage flowing in ditches and streams through the cities. There is garbage everywhere. The organic matter is mostly eaten by the stray monkeys, dogs, cows, and kept goats and chickens, and turned into eggs, milk, meat, and manure (some cow pies do get set to dry, for fuel presumably, but much of it just remains on the street as filth). But the plastics pile up. There seems to be no cultural understanding of trashcans. We see them in some areas, but they do not appear to be used. The tap water is not safe to drink. There is also a smell of sulfur a lot of the time, not sure from where.
The dogs make me sad. There are tons of stray dogs all over the place, but they don't act like dogs in America. I've never been one to appreciate it when a big excited puppy jumps up on me and tries to lick my face or smell my crotch, but I know what a happy friendly dog acts like. Here, rabies is a big problem. And the treatment/prevention is very expensive (compared with local means anyway). Dogs are treated with suspicion, and that means they are treated very badly to teach them to keep their distance. It's sad to see dogs behaving so unlike dogs.
And then, of course, there is the poverty. Like I said in another entry, I am impressed by some of the shelters that these people build for themselves, and in many ways the self-sufficiency they seem to demonstrate is inspiring. But the filth they are living in is so awful, and I'm sure very unhealthy. And I do not think there are any educational opportunities for those children to lift themselves up.
I'm finding myself thinking a lot about what I read in "Down to Earth: Nature's Role in American History" about sewage and removing animals from the city. I want to re-read the sections about how the cities got much cleaner and healthier by removing the animals, but how it also undermined the livelihood of the urban poor, who relied on pigs and chickens to convert waste into food, and produced a big waste disposal problem when there were no longer animals to eat the garbage. It seems like sanitation and waste management have been ever increasing problems since the dawn of human civilization. India, with it's huge population, extreme poverty, and imported technology for non-biodegradable waste (i.e. plastics), shows these problems vividly. If only the solutions were as clear.
While a modern sewer system and sewage treatment plants are clearly desperately needed and would do a lot, I think neither the Indian culture nor the Indian economy could support removing the animals from the cities at this point. I would like to think that it is possible to clean up a city without denying people the opportunity to keep animals to supplement their incomes/diets, but I really don't know. And something needs to be done about air quality... Don't know how much of that is vehicle emissions, and how much is just blowing dust.
Anyway, I'm not sure how much more of this horrible air I can take. We are talking about moving on from India early.
The pollution here is really starting to get to me. The air is nasty: there is continual haze, as I'm sure you've noticed in many of the photos, and it is very irritating to my nose and throat. The sacred rivers are too polluted to safely swim in, by many orders of magnitude. The cities are in desperate need of a sewer system, including treatment. There is raw sewage flowing in ditches and streams through the cities. There is garbage everywhere. The organic matter is mostly eaten by the stray monkeys, dogs, cows, and kept goats and chickens, and turned into eggs, milk, meat, and manure (some cow pies do get set to dry, for fuel presumably, but much of it just remains on the street as filth). But the plastics pile up. There seems to be no cultural understanding of trashcans. We see them in some areas, but they do not appear to be used. The tap water is not safe to drink. There is also a smell of sulfur a lot of the time, not sure from where.
The dogs make me sad. There are tons of stray dogs all over the place, but they don't act like dogs in America. I've never been one to appreciate it when a big excited puppy jumps up on me and tries to lick my face or smell my crotch, but I know what a happy friendly dog acts like. Here, rabies is a big problem. And the treatment/prevention is very expensive (compared with local means anyway). Dogs are treated with suspicion, and that means they are treated very badly to teach them to keep their distance. It's sad to see dogs behaving so unlike dogs.
And then, of course, there is the poverty. Like I said in another entry, I am impressed by some of the shelters that these people build for themselves, and in many ways the self-sufficiency they seem to demonstrate is inspiring. But the filth they are living in is so awful, and I'm sure very unhealthy. And I do not think there are any educational opportunities for those children to lift themselves up.
I'm finding myself thinking a lot about what I read in "Down to Earth: Nature's Role in American History" about sewage and removing animals from the city. I want to re-read the sections about how the cities got much cleaner and healthier by removing the animals, but how it also undermined the livelihood of the urban poor, who relied on pigs and chickens to convert waste into food, and produced a big waste disposal problem when there were no longer animals to eat the garbage. It seems like sanitation and waste management have been ever increasing problems since the dawn of human civilization. India, with it's huge population, extreme poverty, and imported technology for non-biodegradable waste (i.e. plastics), shows these problems vividly. If only the solutions were as clear.
While a modern sewer system and sewage treatment plants are clearly desperately needed and would do a lot, I think neither the Indian culture nor the Indian economy could support removing the animals from the cities at this point. I would like to think that it is possible to clean up a city without denying people the opportunity to keep animals to supplement their incomes/diets, but I really don't know. And something needs to be done about air quality... Don't know how much of that is vehicle emissions, and how much is just blowing dust.
Anyway, I'm not sure how much more of this horrible air I can take. We are talking about moving on from India early.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Side Topic: Gendercide, Observations of Women in India and Thailand
There are many striking differences we've noticed between India and Thailand. One of the most striking, especially with the Gendercide issue of The Economist still rolled up in the daypack, is the difference in the role of women.
Articles from the Economist:
Gendercide: The worldwide war on baby girls (INTERNATIONAL)
Mothers in China: Sobs on the night breeze (BOOKS & ARTS)
The war on baby girls: Gendercide (LEADERS)
Distorted sex ratios in India: Haryana’s lonely bachelors (INTERNATIONAL)
The Gendercide articles, for those of you who haven't read it, talks about the unnatural difference in birth rates of boys and girls, not just in China with its one child policy, not just in Asia, but worldwide (though not among all groups). This is basically the result of the collision of traditional sexism in son preference with ultrasound technology and wealthier couples wanting smaller families (even where this isn't a government mandate). One of the areas where this is happening the most right now is in northern India. While one could hope that the end result of a shortage of women would be to give them more value, cultures change slowly, and one must not underestimate the hazards of an enormous demographic of young men with little to no chance of reproduction. The Economist also points to South Korea, a country that used to have this demographic problem, but managed to reverse it through wealth and raising the status and education of its women. The Economist is concerned that India and China will not be able to make this transition fast enough. Thailand was not mentioned at all.
I've never in the past given a lot of thought to what a society looks like on the outside if its women have equal status to its men. Oh, sure, I've given plenty of thought to what it looks like as a woman in a modern industrialized nation, equal pay to your male coworkers, job security through pregnancy, no forced marriages, all field open to everyone, no glass ceiling, certain concessions for breastfeeding mothers, etc. In India (or when you depart), you see all the things Western women take for granted. I hesitate a bit to use the phrase "take for granted" because while the meaning is spot on, the connotation isn't quite right: there's nothing wrong with assuming these rights and we shouldn't have to be "thankful" for them. Equal rights for women may be a privilege in truth, but women everywhere are entitled to them.
But anyway, back women in India: aside from needing to worry about being aborted after an unfavorable ultrasound, or dying in an "accidental" kitchen fire for lack of a large enough dowry, or any number of other "invisible" troubles a tourist isn't going to see, there are also big differences out there for all to see. Don’t even get me started about the child bride we saw in Mathura. You hear a lot about modesty when traveling to Asia. Make sure you are well covered. And as far as wearing long pants and sleeves go, this does apply to both sexes. However, Indian men are constantly scratching (and who knows what else) at their neither regions and whipping it out in public and in sight of everyone to pee by the side of the road. Indian women are actually as modest as their clothes and very often cover their heads as well. They don't talk to foreigners. We don't know if this was a sign of less education and therefore less English, or just that Indian women generally don't talk to strangers. We think it's that they don't talk to strangers, because while we saw women working (almost always construction or back room cooking), we never saw a woman driving a tuk-tuk, selling souvenirs, selling food, working in a shop, running a guesthouse, or working any other job that would involve interacting with strangers. This was most obvious in the town where we did our tiger safari, where ever shop advertised "women crafts" (at least one shop along there was honestly associated with a charity promoting women working and supporting themselves and their families), but where were the women who man these supposed women crafts? No idea. There were also just fewer women out and about, strikingly evident as you got on the metro where the segregated security line was always 10 meters long or more for the men, while the women's line was generally no more than 5 people if there was a line at all. (The one public job I saw women working was the security screening, which always included a full pat down by a member of the same sex as yourself.) Now, to the fair, there were some women we met who were exceptions, but they were all either in Delhi, Mcleod Ganj (which is culturally more Tibet than India), or Indian-Americans on holiday from the US. Every single one.
We talk in the US about women's clothing styles being a reflection of men's sexual desires. We talk about women being objectified and all that. But now that I'm in Thailand and suddenly seeing women dress however they wish again, I'm seeing it with new eyes. Women here not only have the right to talk to whomever they want, they can dress provocatively for whomever they want too. Sure, styles do often reflect male sexual preferences, but as long she is deciding who, if anybody, gets to come home with her, it's her desires that are truly being served. Here in Thailand we see women in all sorts of jobs that involve talking to strangers and foreigners. And we see them out in public as much as men. Now I don't know if they face discrimination in places a foreigner wouldn't see, or secret violence in the home, but outwardly Thailand looks like a fine place to be a woman.
Articles from the Economist:
Gendercide: The worldwide war on baby girls (INTERNATIONAL)
Mothers in China: Sobs on the night breeze (BOOKS & ARTS)
The war on baby girls: Gendercide (LEADERS)
Distorted sex ratios in India: Haryana’s lonely bachelors (INTERNATIONAL)
The Gendercide articles, for those of you who haven't read it, talks about the unnatural difference in birth rates of boys and girls, not just in China with its one child policy, not just in Asia, but worldwide (though not among all groups). This is basically the result of the collision of traditional sexism in son preference with ultrasound technology and wealthier couples wanting smaller families (even where this isn't a government mandate). One of the areas where this is happening the most right now is in northern India. While one could hope that the end result of a shortage of women would be to give them more value, cultures change slowly, and one must not underestimate the hazards of an enormous demographic of young men with little to no chance of reproduction. The Economist also points to South Korea, a country that used to have this demographic problem, but managed to reverse it through wealth and raising the status and education of its women. The Economist is concerned that India and China will not be able to make this transition fast enough. Thailand was not mentioned at all.
I've never in the past given a lot of thought to what a society looks like on the outside if its women have equal status to its men. Oh, sure, I've given plenty of thought to what it looks like as a woman in a modern industrialized nation, equal pay to your male coworkers, job security through pregnancy, no forced marriages, all field open to everyone, no glass ceiling, certain concessions for breastfeeding mothers, etc. In India (or when you depart), you see all the things Western women take for granted. I hesitate a bit to use the phrase "take for granted" because while the meaning is spot on, the connotation isn't quite right: there's nothing wrong with assuming these rights and we shouldn't have to be "thankful" for them. Equal rights for women may be a privilege in truth, but women everywhere are entitled to them.
But anyway, back women in India: aside from needing to worry about being aborted after an unfavorable ultrasound, or dying in an "accidental" kitchen fire for lack of a large enough dowry, or any number of other "invisible" troubles a tourist isn't going to see, there are also big differences out there for all to see. Don’t even get me started about the child bride we saw in Mathura. You hear a lot about modesty when traveling to Asia. Make sure you are well covered. And as far as wearing long pants and sleeves go, this does apply to both sexes. However, Indian men are constantly scratching (and who knows what else) at their neither regions and whipping it out in public and in sight of everyone to pee by the side of the road. Indian women are actually as modest as their clothes and very often cover their heads as well. They don't talk to foreigners. We don't know if this was a sign of less education and therefore less English, or just that Indian women generally don't talk to strangers. We think it's that they don't talk to strangers, because while we saw women working (almost always construction or back room cooking), we never saw a woman driving a tuk-tuk, selling souvenirs, selling food, working in a shop, running a guesthouse, or working any other job that would involve interacting with strangers. This was most obvious in the town where we did our tiger safari, where ever shop advertised "women crafts" (at least one shop along there was honestly associated with a charity promoting women working and supporting themselves and their families), but where were the women who man these supposed women crafts? No idea. There were also just fewer women out and about, strikingly evident as you got on the metro where the segregated security line was always 10 meters long or more for the men, while the women's line was generally no more than 5 people if there was a line at all. (The one public job I saw women working was the security screening, which always included a full pat down by a member of the same sex as yourself.) Now, to the fair, there were some women we met who were exceptions, but they were all either in Delhi, Mcleod Ganj (which is culturally more Tibet than India), or Indian-Americans on holiday from the US. Every single one.
We talk in the US about women's clothing styles being a reflection of men's sexual desires. We talk about women being objectified and all that. But now that I'm in Thailand and suddenly seeing women dress however they wish again, I'm seeing it with new eyes. Women here not only have the right to talk to whomever they want, they can dress provocatively for whomever they want too. Sure, styles do often reflect male sexual preferences, but as long she is deciding who, if anybody, gets to come home with her, it's her desires that are truly being served. Here in Thailand we see women in all sorts of jobs that involve talking to strangers and foreigners. And we see them out in public as much as men. Now I don't know if they face discrimination in places a foreigner wouldn't see, or secret violence in the home, but outwardly Thailand looks like a fine place to be a woman.
 |
| From Delhi |
Monday, March 1, 2010
Side Topic: Wildlife in India
Wildlife is ubiquitous in Indian cities. In rough order of commonness, we have:
- Dogs - Lots of wild dogs in the streets. Some are kept, some are partially kept, most are wild. The eat refuse like squirrels do in the states, and bark more than I'd like. A lot have been wounded from being hit in the streets.
- Cows - Yes, there are tons of cows in the streets in cities and towns. The get in the way of traffic, and scavenge the leftovers in the street. At night, they go home and get milked. Cows are big. We even saw one in the train station and on the train tracks.
Cow Eating Garbage in the Train Station from Drop Box 
Cows in the Street from Drop Box - Goats, Pigs, and Sheep - Like cows, but smaller. Which of these is most common seems to vary by region.
Goats Climb on Stuff from Drop Box 
Goats Eating Leftover Flower Garlands Along Sacred River from Drop Box - Squirrels are more like chipmunks in size.
- Monkeys - Monkeys are like really big and human-like squirrels. The really cheeky ones can steal handbags and eat the food out of them. Elsie had this happen to her; she got her stuff back, sans food. They seem to have become well adjusted to human society. Monkeys are crazy fast at moving around in cities or anywhere with some vertical stuff to climb on. Monkeys will probably get the vote soon.
From Drop Box
Monday, February 1, 2010
It's Tomorrow!
We are right about over the International Date Line as I type this, about halfway from LAX to Seoul. I'm excited to finally be on our way after a hectic 10 days visiting family and making last minute preparations. Not surprisingly I'm also having some trouble getting comfortable and sleeping.
Here's a photo of us setting off from the Portland train station to visit our sisters in Washington. We cut our hair short in preparation for the trip. We'll be living out of those two little backpacks for the next 5 months. I didn't get a final weight, but think our stuff comes to around 30-35 pounds between us.
Here's a photo of us setting off from the Portland train station to visit our sisters in Washington. We cut our hair short in preparation for the trip. We'll be living out of those two little backpacks for the next 5 months. I didn't get a final weight, but think our stuff comes to around 30-35 pounds between us.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Side Topic: Financial Summary (after the fact)
"If you don't mind me asking, how much does a trip like this cost?"
As you can imagine, we got this question pretty often. With a trip like this, it's a bit hard to say before you leave. Not including COBRA and items purchased before leaving, our "goal" was to spend no more than $20,000 and we promised ourselves we would come home early to keep the total under $30,000. Obviously this doesn't count the cost of not working for 6 months and now being unemployed. So let's see how we did.
So we are basically on budget, or near enough, though as you can tell from reading the blog, it was a challenging budget to stick to.
Of course, we spent a good bit of money on the trip before we left.
And worth every penny...
As you can imagine, we got this question pretty often. With a trip like this, it's a bit hard to say before you leave. Not including COBRA and items purchased before leaving, our "goal" was to spend no more than $20,000 and we promised ourselves we would come home early to keep the total under $30,000. Obviously this doesn't count the cost of not working for 6 months and now being unemployed. So let's see how we did.
| RTW Trip Spending Breakdown (from mint.com) | ||
| Travel (Other): | $13,027 | (Mostly foreign ATM transactions, we mostly used cash.) |
| Air Travel: | $5,763 | (Individual one-way tickets turned out to be less than RTW tickets) |
| Visas: | $892 | (not counting visas on arrival paid in cash) |
| Vaccines: | $262 | $477 spent and $215 reimbursed from insurance |
| Prescriptions: | $35 | $388 spent and $253 reimbursed from insurance |
| Travel Insurance: | $302 | (mostly just for medical evacuations) |
| HostelWorld: | $215 | (10% down for online reservation) |
| Total Spent: | $20,596 | |
So we are basically on budget, or near enough, though as you can tell from reading the blog, it was a challenging budget to stick to.
Of course, we spent a good bit of money on the trip before we left.
| RTW Trip All Expenses (from mint.com) | ||
| Total Above: | $20,596 | |
| COBRA: | $3,156 | (health insurance for February-July) |
| Clothes/Luggage: | $240 | (what we didn't already own) |
| Electronics: | $2,064 | (what we didn't already own: DSLR+lens, 2x Kindles, 3x 32GB SD cards, Mini Laptop, iPod Touch, 2x Mini Noise-Canceling Headphones) |
| Grand Total: | $26,057 | For two people traveling the world for 158 days. |
And worth every penny...
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Trip Preparation
I've created this blog for Josh and I to share our experiences traveling around the world during the first half of 2010. I'm endeavoring to make it easy and painless for all our friends and family to subscribe to this blog using Facebook, LiveJournal, or E-Mail. We'll see how it goes.
The background of the trip, for those who don't already know, is that Josh and I quit our jobs on January 8th and have moved all our stuff to my parents' shed in Oregon. Having thus shed most of our regular financial responsibilities, we are now preparing to depart on January 31st for a Northern Hemisphere around-the-world trip. We plan to return in time for my childhood friend Sarah's wedding on July 10th, and then hope to acquire jobs in the Portland area before the money runs out.
Our rough itinerary so far is as follows:
- 4 weeks in India
- 2-4 weeks in Southeast Asia (Thailand, Cambodia, Singapore, and maybe more)
- 4 weeks in China
- 3 weeks in Turkey
- 5-7 weeks in Europe with an emphasis on Greece and Italy, and a side trip to Egypt to see the pyramids
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)