A Budget for 296 Days on the Road

Since we’ve been home, we’ve both been procrastinating on our wrap-up blog posts. Part of this is because “real life” matters have intruded into our lives. Who knew that finding an apartment was so complicated and time-consuming? Not I! So here we are, over three weeks later and I’m just now writing this. Sorry about that.

Now let’s get down to the numbers. In just shy of 10 months on the road, we spent $45,918.24. Here’s a list of our total costs by category, from most money spent to least money spent. All totals are for the both of us, and everything is in US dollars. (For exchange rates, we used the rates that we received from our ATM withdrawals.)

Transportation costs:
- RTW tickets (14 flights, two surface sectors): 5,982.40
- All other flights (13 legs each): 2,639.06
- Bus rides: 2,194.07
- Subway/monorail/tram/metro: 494.77
- Trains: 314.21
- Taxis: 302.40
- Car/scooter rentals and gas: 232.34
- Airport taxes: 85.40
- Bike rentals: 23.11
- Ferry/boat: 10.22
TOTAL TRANSPORT COSTS: 12,277.98

AFRICA TOUR: 8,154.93

Excursions:
- Whitewater rafting: 280.00
- Devil’s Pool: 120.00
- Annapurna trekking permits: 54.79
- Paragliding: 206.44
- Chitwan National Park: 120.00
- Day trip to Ko Phi Phi: 78.55
- Flight of the Gibbons: 125.68
- Easy Riders Dalat: 420.00
- Ha Long Bay Marguerite Junk: 102.40
- Kool Katz Surf Camp: 213.52
- Skydive video*: 129.71
- Milford Sound cruise: 149.03
- Routeburn permits: 122.78
- Penguins: 129.87
- Torres del Paine: 57.37
- Big Ice trek: 337.66
- Los Glaciares National Park: 38.96
- Salt flats tour: 338.00
- Floating islands day trip: 28.27
- Inca trail: 1,057.74
- Dune buggy and sandboarding: 31.80
- Muyuna Lodge: 1,217.78
TOTAL EXCURSIONS COST: 5,516.06
*Skydiving itself is not included because it was a gift.

Food:
- Africa (this is the food we had to pay for outside of our tour): 440.05
- Asia: 1,754.46 or 17.90/day
- Australia/New Zealand: 715.31 or 21.04/day (we mostly cooked)
- South America: 1,415.91 or 17.27/day
- Europe (includes Egypt): 944.42 or 28.62/day
TOTAL FOOD COSTS: 5,270.15

Lodging:
- Africa (outside of the tour): 321.50
- Asia: 753.89 or 7.70/night
- Australia/New Zealand: 1,033.45 or 30.40/night
- South America: 1,274.70 or 15.55/night
- Europe (includes Egypt): 1,230.54 or 37.29/night
TOTAL LODGING COSTS: 4,614.08

Gear:
- Camera and accessories: 762.60
- Netbook: 378.00
- Clothing, packs, sleeping bags, etc.: 1,720.60
TOTAL GEAR COSTS: 2,861.20

Medical:
- Travel/health insurance: 1,010.00
- Immunizations and meds (pre-trip): 894.08
TOTAL MEDICAL COSTS: 1,904.08

VISAS: 1,759.36

Sightseeing:
- Africa: 8.04
- Asia: 386.01
- Australia/New Zealand: 426.59
- South America: 93.47
- Europe (includes Egypt): 334.90
TOTAL SIGHTSEEING COSTS: 1,249.01

Entertainment:
- Tickets to musicals: 190.64
- Movie tickets: 14.17
- Wimbledon: 59.26
- Mini golf: 14.29
- Poker tournament (Kevin): 7.14
- Fish massage: 5.00
- Cooking class: 24.00
- Bowling: 9.73
- Philharmonic (KL) tickets: 8.85
- Other: 12.18
TOTAL ENTERTAINMENT COSTS: 345.26

TIPS: 347.14

Miscellaneous:
- Money stolen on Chobe River cruise: 110.00
- Qantas ticket change fee: 90.00
- Hard drive (bought in HK): 63.83
- Five-Euro note found in Singapore airport: -7.54
- Leftover Taiwanese bills (gave to Tina): 9.32
- Change for buses given to us by Wang family: -6.09
- Phone call in Thailand: .36
- Bribe to Cambodia border patrol: 3.02
- Printing/postage fee for Asia miles forms: 3.02
- Lost key fee: 4.45
- Money won at Sky City Casino: -10.71
- Supplies for Routeburn: 14.29
- Printing Andesmar tickets: .76
- Bag check at Machu Picchu: 1.06
- Money accidentally thrown out at Lima airport: 14.13
- Daily Mail and keychain at Wimbleon: .74
TOTAL MISCELLANEOUS COSTS: 290.64

SOUVENIRS: 268.60

GIFTS: 214.58

POSTCARDS AND POSTAGE: 204.57

CLOTHING: 126.83

PERSONAL CARE: 113.56

INTERNET: 89.68

LAUNDRY: 83.41

SHIPPING BOXES: 73.86

ATM FEES: 70.31

TOILETRIES: 54.48

BOOKS: 16.25

TOILET: 7.35

(FORCED) DONATION: 4.88

GRAND TOTAL: $45,918.24

A few things haven’t been included in that total. They are: any gifts (cooking class in Chiang Mai, hotel in Chiang Mai, gorge swing, skydiving, train tickets to Xian, etc.), bills and change that we kept as souvenirs (one each from each country) and bills that we have left over that we haven’t changed back to US Dollars. We ended up with substantial amounts (over $10 worth, that is) of Yen, Euros and British Pounds that we still need to get exchanged. I should technically include our bill and coin collection under souvenirs, but I’m too lazy to count it up and add it in. Just as a guess, it probably cost us about $50.

There were a few things that jumped out at me when I put this together.
1) Our transportation costs were over 25% of our total costs. Doesn’t that seem a bit high?
2) We spent more money on excursions than food. Doesn’t that also seem a bit high?
3) Total food and lodging for two people over 10 months cost us less than 10,000. That’s practically how much I paid in a year’s worth of just rent in Charlotte.
4) Compared to our cost of living for 10 months in Charlotte, we spent about the same amount of money traveling the world. Huh.

We also have a table of our average expenditure per day by country. The expenditures include food, lodging, transportation within the country, visa fees (if any), sightseeing, excursions, etc. The only things it doesn’t include are the cost of actually getting TO that country and any pre-trip expenditures (gear, immunizations, health insurance, etc.).

Average spent per day by country:
China*: 45.33
Singapore*: 46.57
Nepal: 47.82
Malaysia: 56.06
Taiwan: 68.25
Thailand*: 68.29
Cambodia: 79.00
Bolivia: 83.80
Japan: 85.08
Hong Kong: 86.96
Spain: 88.71
Vietnam: 92.28
Egypt: 92.87
Chile: 99.79
Portugal: 112.86
Argentina: 118.17
New Zealand: 119.79
England: 127.01
Peru: 131.36
Australia: 134.03
*We had free housing for some or all of the time in this country.

Here are some thoughts about these numbers:
1. The first half, with the exception of Bolivia, is made up of all Asian countries. This is not only because food and lodging are cheap in Southeast Asia, but also because sightseeing is relatively inexpensive. It is much cheaper to get a ticket to the Angkor complex for three days than to see Machu Picchu in one day.
2. Bolivia comes out to a surprisingly low average, considering the cost factors in our visas ($135 each) and our four-day salt flats tour.
3. Japan and Spain are two countries I would have expected to come out with higher averages. Tokyo and Madrid aren’t cheap, but Japan and Spain came out under $90/day because we stayed in one city and in that one city, we didn’t do anything but eat and walk around. So that means all we had to pay for was food, lodging and some transportation.
4. Vietnam, Egypt and Peru are three countries that come in much higher than I expected, since all three are relatively cheap countries. But in this case, the cost of our excursions really brought the average up. In Vietnam it was the Easy Riders tour and Ha Long Bay. In Egypt, our sightseeing expenses added up to over $160 and our cruise came out to about $110/night. In Peru the Inca Trail and Muyuna Lodge were the biggest costs.

Where we saved money:
The number one way we saved money compared to other travelers was on alcohol. I had a few glasses of wine here and there, and Kevin didn’t drink at all. We also saved money on food. We had three meals that cost more than $40. We had eight meals that cost between $30 and $40. Over 90% of our meals cost less than $17. In countries where street food was delicious and cheap, we ate street food – that was a no-brainer for us (it helped that neither of us ever had food poisoning). Where eating out was expensive and not that different compared to home (Australia, New Zealand), we mostly bought groceries. In Argentina and Chile we did a little bit of both. It was too expensive to eat out all the time, but it would have been a shame not to eat out some of the time. We also saved money on lodging. We didn’t necessarily stay at THE cheapest place available, but we did stay at the cheapest place available at the lowest quality I could stand. In the more expensive countries, this meant staying in dorms. In the cheapest countries, we’d get our own room with attached bath – pure luxury!

Where we splurged:
If either one of us really wanted to do something, we did it. Sometime it was something small – like having Papa John’s for dinner (Kevin) or having two ice cream cones in one day (me). Other times it was something much bigger, like shelling out over $150 each to climb on a glacier (totally worth it) or spending $500 each to spend an hour with mountain gorillas (also totally worth it).

The bottom line is – your budget is your own. We talked to some people who thought we were traveling very cheaply and we also talked to some people who assumed we were living like kings when we told them how much we had spent. In the end, I think that both of us were satisfied with what we splurged on and what we saved on. Looking back on it, I can’t think of anything that I wish we had done that we didn’t do because of money, and I don’t regret spending money on the things we did do. I would call that a success.

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Goodbye For Now

7/2/10

Today was our official last day of the trip. Boy, that is a heavy sentence, isn’t it? Official. Last. Day.

As far as “lasts” go, the last day of a 10-month around-the-world honeymoon isn’t one of the best lasts that happen in your life. It’s not like “last day of sixth grade” or “last day with braces” or “last day of work” or “last compulsory blog post writing.” (Kidding, kidding! Sort of.)

I think Kevin and I both expected some extreme culture shock arriving in the United States, which would only have served to make our “last day” even more markedly last, but we didn’t really. Kevin tried to salvage our shattered expectations by pointing out things that were different. “Can you believe we have to pay FIVE dollars to leave the airport?” he asked, outraged, as we left JFK. “We never have to wait for more than five minutes in other cities’ subways,” he grumbled as we sat for ten minutes waiting for the A train. “Hey, look, it’s Wendy’s! We haven’t seen Wendy’s since we left the States!” when he saw another rider bring a Wendy’s bag onto the train.

But despite all of Kevin’s attempts to make me feel otherwise, I still felt like we were on the road. After all, we might have been in New York City, but we still weren’t home. We were still wandering around the streets of a city in our same clothes, carrying our same backpacks. We were still getting shouted at by people trying to sell us stuff. We were still traveling.

And that feeling didn’t leave me all day, as we hung out our friend Rachel’s apartment during our long layover, as we found our way out of the city and to LaGuardia, as we sat patiently and waited for our delayed flight to Columbus to take off – and even after we touched down in Columbus. Hey, we’re still Kevin and Zhou, world travelers! We’re on an adventure!

But when we saw Mom and Dad Curry drive up in their loaner car with a giant “‘08 CERTIFIED PREOWNED” splashed across the front windshield, it gave me a jolt. We weren’t going to be “Kevin and Zhou, world travelers” anymore. We’re just going to be Kevin and Zhou.

We aren’t quite home yet, and we won’t be for another few months, but we’re on our way. It’s sort of a limbo time for us, and there are definitely a lot of mixed feelings. On the one hand, what is sweeter than coming back and being able to spend time with all of the people you love and who love you? What’s better than being greeted by your own small Christmas tree with tons of Christmas presents underneath it in the middle of the summer? (Not much, I’ll tell you that.) But on the other hand, now we’re just “Kevin and Zhou, normal people.” We’re not going to wake up in a different country every few weeks. We’re not going to pinch ourselves every other day and say, “Can you believe we’re doing this?” We won’t have to navigate through other countries without understanding a word of the language. We won’t have constant stomachaches anymore. Instead, we’re going to find a place to live. We’re going to hang out with our friends. We’re going to eat too much popcorn (me) and watch too much sports (Kevin). We’re going to get a puppy.

A puppy! You know, when it comes down to it, I think “Kevin and Zhou, normal people,” are going to be pretty darn happy.

…

Hi everyone. I’m sorry to say that NHC, international edition, has come to an end. We’ve both enjoyed writing this blog (well, we enjoyed it 90% of the time), and we hope you’ve enjoyed reading it. Though this will be our last daily blog post, we do have several wrap-up entries that we’ll be writing and posting sporadically over the next few weeks (budget overview, stat contest, etc.). We’re not entirely sure yet what the fate of NHC will be after that, but please stay tuned for updates.

Thanks for your comments and emails, and most of all, thanks to all of you for reading.

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I Usually Don’t Like Baths

7/1/10: London, England

Today is a sad day. LeBron is no longer a Cavalier. (Well, at least for the time being.)

Oh, and it’s the last full day on our honeymoon. I’ve told myself that there will be plenty of time to reminisce in the coming days and weeks, so I’m going to try to avoid doing that here. But, wow, what a ten months we’ve had! On September 10, 2009 we slept overnight in London Heathrow to kick off our trip. Today, July 1, 2010, we returned.

This Giraffe Juice and Coffee Bar marks the beginning and end of our trip.

Our very first night.

And we're back one more time.

Although our trip has come full circle, we would be fools if we didn’t learn something along the way. Our very first night was cold, it was loud, it was uncomfortable. It just wouldn’t make sense to sleep in the same spot again. Today we slept with the other seasoned travelers:

Long benches in warm hallways are the way to go.

But that’s the last of the reminiscing, for now. We had a big day today: we saw Stonehenge!

I’m a big fan of the idea of Stonehenge, but a very small fan of how it has been set up for tourists. Thousands of tourists shuffle around an ovular track that never comes closer than 30 feet from the rocks themselves, and it appears that every single tourist takes the exact same pictures. Audio guides are handed out, but you never really get the full feel of the site. Apparently up until the late 1800s most visitors actually chipped off parts of the rocks as souvenirs, and up until the past few years tourists abused the privilege of walking through the site by touching the stones. Thus, there we were in the mob of folks walking dutifully around the track.

Following Stonehenge our bus took us to our very last touristy spot of the trip: the historical town of Bath.

The famous Roman baths, with a tiny Zhou in the background.

Georgian architecture.

The River Avon.

Flowers adorned almost every single building and lamppost.

One of the many lions scattered about town in a charity art exhibit.

Bath was a beautiful city – the nicest city beginning with ‘B’ that we’ve visited on this trip – and a great way to end our stay in England. What we had heard was a gloomy, rainy, overcast country never lived up to the hype. We didn’t see a drop of rain or even a hint of a dark cloud. It must have been the travel gods way of saying, “You guys had a great trip, and we thank you for not following the stereotypical obnoxious American way.” Because as soon as we arrived in Heathrow for the night, the skies opened up and it rained.
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Ohio Picture: Our final O H I O was our toughest – it took me way too long to track down people to help us out, and after all that you can’t see Stonehenge very well anyway.

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Picture of the Day: As if visiting the Sherlock Holmes Museum and Harry Potter’s platform 9 3/4, Zhou found one more of her heroes: Jane Austen.

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Two Days of Plays in London

6/29/10 – 6/30/10: London, England

Fact: As our trip progressed, we got lazier and lazier and clearly didn’t make the most of our time. Remember the WOLV?

Fiction: Cool Runnings was not snubbed by voters of the Academy in 1994.

Fact: It has set in that London is our last stop on the trip, as we haven’t stopped being touristy since we got here.

The last 48 hours have been one big continuation of where we left off with Zhou’s post yesterday. We know that this is our last chance to see a foreign country on our honeymoon, so we’ve pushed the WOLV out of our minds and have gotten busy. We wake up early every day and go to bed late every night. In between, we get things done. I would try to describe our accomplishments of the past two days, but it would take far too long. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Yes we know the Muffin Man, who lives on Drury Lane.

These are the former homes of Virginia Woolf and George Bernard Shaw.

The beautiful gardens in Regents' Park.

Zhou's hero #1: Sherlock Holmes.

Zhou's hero #2: Harry Potter.

Not to be confused with the ingenious Rube Goldberg-type game

The title pretty much sums up the play.

You never know when four people without cell phones will show up.

The highlight of our short stop in the Science Museum.

Our final trip to the theater.

You can see Zhou in our private box in the lower left.

The Marble Arch of Hyde Park.

We just happened to stroll through the park during a sold-out Kings of Leon concert.

In all I estimated we walked over ten miles and in between we sat down to watch three of London’s most famous shows: The Mousetrap, War Horse and The Lion King. Add this to our viewing of Avenue Q, and I believe that we are official connoisseurs of the British theater. With that in mind, I’ll rank the four plays we saw here, and throw in one we didn’t see just because I feel like I’m entitled to.

1) Avenue Q: As Zhou mentioned previously, it was “almost pant-wettingly funny,” almost being the key word. It really was incredible what the actors were able to do with the puppets, even if there were a few moments that were so awkwardly risque that I felt embarrassed to be seen in the audience.

2) War Horse: It was a bit longer than it probably needed to be, but I sat in awe for the entire 165 minutes at how lifelike the life-size horse puppets seemed. Their ears twitched, they whinnied, they galloped, they were even ridden by the actors. You really have to see it to believe it. I’m not a big fan of war stories or horse stories, but this was fantastic.

3) The Lion King: When this show came to Charlotte two summers ago, Zhou and I snagged third row, center tickets and it was one of the most memorable things I’ve seen. While you can’t screw up the awesomeness of this show, the British version wasn’t nearly as good. The sound, the lighting and the actors were all a couple notches below the Charlotte show. On top of that, it was just plain weird to hear a British Simba.

4) Les Miserables: Ok, so we didn’t see this show itself, but we saw the line that formed after the show of people waiting for Nick Jonas autographs. And any show with Nick Jonas can’t be all that good. However, it is Les Mis, so I bumped it a slot in the rankings based on name alone.

5) The Mousetrap: The theater was hot, the seats were uncomfortable and I was tired. I slept through most of the first act and woke up with an ache in my back and a pool of sweat in my lap. The second act kept me on the edge of my seat, and although I didn’t solve the mystery before the answer was revealed, I did enjoy the process. (Zhou, she who was awake the entire show, did solve it.)
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Pictures of the Day: Quick quiz! Who are Zhou and I trying to imitate in the below pictures? (Answers at bottom.)

Answer: Zhou is puzzling over a case a la Sherlock Holmes, and I am pumping out a sweet saxophone solo just like the saxophonist for Gerry Rafferty.

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We’re Just Two Little Kids

6/28/10: London, England

This morning started off with a leisurely walk along the Thames River. As Kevin so aptly put it, “If the Thames River didn’t run through London, it wouldn’t be special.” But even if the dirty Thames isn’t anything special to look at, there are lots of things on it that are worth seeing.

Westminster Abbey.

The Houses of Parliament.

Black Rod's garden entrance.

Sarah told us about some of the weirder English government traditions. Apparently Black Rod is some person whose job is, once a year, to knock on the door of the House of Lords, announce the Queen and ask if she can come in. The person who answers the door then says NO to the Queen and slams the door in Black Rod’s face. I asked Sarah why it is that they keep doing this every year and she just shrugged and said, “It’s a tradition.” And people think American politics is crazy!

Um yes, I was trying to get this other guy in the picture on purpose.

Ok...no, I wasn't.

The famous London Eye.

The Millennium Bridge.

A piano/art exhibit.

After our walk along the river, we went to visit the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum. The only problem was that the Natural History Museum was so awesome that we spent all afternoon there and didn’t make it anywhere else. The place was crowded with tons of groups of schoolkids, but don’t worry, we pushed them out of the way to make sure we could see all the exhibits.

Deep ocean fishes.

Petey the squid!

Not sure what came over me.

The Natural History Museum in London also has a humongous collection of pickled animals. It was simultaneously disgusting and extremely fascinating.

I think these are fish?

Snake in a jar.

When we finally tore ourselves away from the games and displays, it was time to meet a couple of friends. You might remember Chris and Marija from Nepal (where we hiked together for a few days) and from Vietnam (where we stalked them – successfully!). This was our first time seeing them on their own turf, after they finished their own around-the-world trip. We (coincidentally) were staying at a place only a mile from their apartment, and it turns out that they didn’t mind us stalking them (in Vietnam OR in London) so we went over to their place and had dinner together.

Before we left on this trip, Kevin said to me that one of his goals was to meet a lot of new people and make some new friends. Whenever he said that I remembered thinking that I had a lot of goals for the trip, but making new friends was definitely towards the bottom. But now that we’re nearing the end of this trip and I look back on everything we’ve done, I’m realizing that it wouldn’t have been the same without the people we’ve met along the way. It’s helped me take home yet another life lesson. If I can keep in touch with all of the friends that I already have and just add on more along the way, I think my life will be fantastic.
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Picture of the Day: Gemstones from the Natural History Museum.

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