And finally.

Sitting here in San Francisco we come to write our final blog entry, so we present in no particular order our final comments on our travels.

Things we have learnt

When setting your budget, add an additional 2% for replacing lost items. If Andy is involved make that 5%.

When using Lonely Planet guides take into account the author. It is unlikely that a 20 year old adventure junky will give you accurate information about the cultural highlights of a city.

Don't drink anything before a bus journey and take snacks, you don't know when you will stop next. Even if its 40 degrees outside take a jumper as if you are lucky to have aircon which works it will be on full blast.

Time in other countries is elastic. If you are asked to meet someone at 8am. Calculate the actual time according to the Hawkins country Index:- – UK +- 10 minutes; Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos + 30 minutes, other countries visited + 1 hour, Indonesia + 2 hours.

Change; nowhere ever has any change. Small denomination notes and coins should be kept and whenever you are in a hotel, large supermarket or restaurant pay with the biggest notes you have in an attempt to get some.

You must both say no to each and every hawker, if only one of you says no they think they might be in with a chance with the other one.

Food & Drink during our trip.

Best Food:- Vietnam.

Worst food:- Philippines, if its not deep fat fried, covered in sugar and vegetable free its not food.

Worst Meal:- Ecuadorian Pizza as served in Tulcan. Caramelized fruit should not go on Pizza.

Best Meal:- Michelin star restaurant in Lima at not Michelin star prices.

Best Cheap Drink:- Philippines (Local Brandy) or Ba Hoi (local live beer) in Hanoi.

Best Expensive Drink:- Pisco Sours at the Pisco Cathedral in Lima.

New fruits we really liked:- The mince pie fruit (Beal), Sherbet Lemon Fruit (Garabano), Yellow Passion Fruit which are much sweeter and very yummy.

New Meats Tried:-  Alpacha (7), Lama (7), Guinea Pig (6), Ants (5), Vacha - high altitude rabbit with fox like tale (3), Argentinian Beef (10)

Things we learnt about food:

UFO actually stands for Unidentified Fried Object (1-10)

Don't eat curry anywhere in the world except the India or the UK.

Take your own chili and pepper if you are going to Argentina.

If you see any unidentified fruit buy it there and then to try it as you may never see it again.

Unexpected Pleasures:-

Bagan in Myanma – Incredible temples of an old abandoned city, with stupas in all directions as far as the eye can see.

Snorkeling in the Philippines - “We can lend you the gear but its not very good here, its much better up the road.” Provided THE snorkeling experience of our trip.

Singing in the rain in De Lat in Vietnam with the local English language students.

Nam Ou river in Laos, Shooting rapids with locals in a dragon boat whilst surrounded by amazing and varied scenery.

There are two types of Museum in South America. The first type is run by an individual who shows you a small collection of something with passion and enthusiasm, but is always eccentric. The Second are the larger museums which are professional and contain interesting, thoughtful and often inspired curation.

Myanmar motorway station food fight at two o'clock in the morning amongst the staff with the anthem of our trip in South East Asia 'Gangnam Style' being played at ear bleeding volume in the background.

Myanmar Visa staff in Vietenne, Loas calling us to tell us that our Visas were ready a day early.

Meeting Marco by chance (a lovely Slovakian we met earlier in our trip) for new years eve and tubing the next day to sooth the consequent hangover, in VangVeng, Laos.

Most Romantic

Inlay Lake In Myanma at dawn, As we traveled the lake we saw the sunrise, set, rise, set and rise again as the sun traversed the range.

Swimming in a jungle pool, filled with hot spring water in San Vincente Colombia

Fireflys in Channing, Malaysia

Chalet in Luang Namtha, Laos, surrounding by beautiful countryside.

Most Fun

Liza Covered in 6 spider monkeys in the Bolivian Amazon.

Best Pub Game in the world: Cancha De Tejo, in Solento, Colombia, which involves throwing heavy weights at gunpowder.

Julia running down the road, chasing our jeep in Chang Mai Thailand as we teased her when she got out to open the gate.

Riding a bamboo train in Battenbang, Cambodia.

Taking the commuter boat in Bangkok, Thailand.

Surreal Moments

Deserted casino in Campot Cambodia, fully opened for business but with no trade.

Worst Roads

The coast road of Western Sumatra, Indonesia 300km in 16 hours for 2 days on the trot.

Bad moments with good outcomes

Meeting Nina the aggressive Orang-outangs in Bukit Luwang, Indonesia. Our guides hadn't seen her in 6 months but she came to visit and decided to eat all our lunch. The guides dragged Liza up the muddy slopes to put some distance between us and Nina, as she is known to bite. It was an amazing trek though as we saw 11 Orang-outangs that day. 

Singapore Airport lost Lizas rucksack on route to the Philippines. It was returned 4 days later, after much fretting and discussion on how to replace large clothes in an Asian country. Manila Airport lost luggage department and our hotel could not have been more helpful.

Getting a puncture up a hill in Cambodia. A friendly passer by who could see our trouble went and got someone who could speak English, they then gave us directions to the local lorry garage. As we got near them the villagers came out to show us the quicker back route to the garage and a young man stayed late to help us and charged us $2 for a repair. We tipped him :)

Transferring at Yangon, Myanma bus terminal at 5.50 am where we had to catch the bus to Mawlamyine. We had to negotiate Yangon bus station which appears to have absolutely no rhyme or reason with passengers, buses, taxis, cars, vendors, hawkers, beggars and everyone who wants to travel milling round with seemingly no structure whatsoever. There is however some order and it does work. One simply asks and are directed. We pitched up in the middle of this and asked someone where we should go. He said 'Follow me' so we did, walked about 100m where he then said 'Follow him', which we did until our number 2 guide said, 'Follow him', this we did until we found ourselves at a man behind a desk who sold us tickets and gave us stools to sit on before our bus departed. How this bedlam actually works on a regular basis I have no idea, but work it does!

Mosquito bites, Liza used to have a massive reaction but has now been bitten so often that all she gets is a small red dot and an itch.

Boarder crossings

Worst boarder crossing (Successful) Cambodia to Thailand.

Worst boarder crossing (Unsuccessful) Ecuador to Columbia – due to farmer protests blocking the road.

Best Boarder Crossing Thailand to Laos, beautiful ferry journey across the Mekong with a polite and warm welcome (Contrasting with Thai immigration).

Hotels

Strangest hotel, Sagada Philippines, 4 days of hunt the staff during the week when we were the only guests, followed by a hotel rammed full of tourists from Manila at the weekend.

Worst hotel, YMCA, Vitenne, Laos. The only place on our travels where our hotel could be called dirty.

Things we now have to unlearn.
Interactions with children:- everywhere apart from Europe and  North America it is polite to smile, chat and play with any child that comes within 5ft of you. The look from an American woman in San Francisco when we tried that could have killed us.

Toilet paper now goes down the toilet.

If you say good day to everyone in Europe you just get stared at, in Latin America, if you don't say buenos dias to everyone you meet its rude.

Using the only Spanish word we have totally mastered - gracias - when in English speaking countries.

Love to all, thanks to all.

Andy & Liza. Sept 2013