Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.
~ Anthony Bourdain
1) A combined washer/dryer is a bad idea
What is it with the rest of the world and the tiny combo washer/dryers that don’t work!?!? Without a doubt, our biggest frustration during our time abroad was trying to figure out how to do laundry every time we moved to a new place. The worst offense is the tiny washer/dryer combo that takes 6 hours to wash and dry a single, small load and, even with that, it usually still isn’t dry and needs to be hung up somewhere. And when you are renting fairly small apartments, where do you hang stuff up? Out the window….
Or draped on random rails or chairs around the apartment.
The second biggest problem was trying to figure out how to actually run the washer and dryer when it is in a foreign language….Ummm…help…
Luckily, certain symbols are universal, so after some serious googling the first few months, we got better with symbol recognition. But, even then, we would run into issues like this…
How the #%$^$ am I supposed to get the soap in there? So, yes, our number 1 biggest problem we faced while traveling around the world was laundry.
2) Everything takes forever when you have no idea how stuff works
Plan on basic tasks taking the entire day. Every country does things differently, so getting used to the norms can be tough, especially when you are used to American conveniences. Need cash in Argentina? Well, expect the ATM to have an hour wait, be out of service, or have a ridiculously low max withdrawal. You might have to wander around town to find multiple locations to finally get what you want. Need groceries in Vietnam? Plan on multiple stops. We got eggs from an elderly gentleman at a street market nearby. And bananas were carried around by women in random locations.
We had to take an Uber to get to a market with fresh meat and a decent vegetable selection. We were pumped to find a food store with simple western conveniences such as canned black beans, lentils, tuna and olive oil, but that required an out-of-the-way Uber ride. Needless to say, grocery shopping was an all-day activity in Hanoi.
Even figuring out how to deal with trash and recycling was a challenge. Some places, such as Tokyo and the Amalfi Coast, had really strict trash and recycling guidelines. Every time we went to throw something away, we had to refer to the cheat sheet posted on the fridge (nicely color-coded for us in Japan, of course) to figure out which bucket to place an item in and what day/time to take it out.
There wasn’t just a general “trash,” so you had to pick a category for every item that you threw away. We seriously ended up debating where various items went with our friends who visited us in Italy because we weren’t sure and didn’t want to get fined.
3) A fully-equipped Airbnb kitchen varies drastically
Our goal to cook meals at home was a tough one to keep and led to some frustrations as we realized that the definition of a fully-equipped kitchen can vary immensely. Once, we were surprised to find only two forks, so we had to wash them after every meal. Often, pans would be available for cooking eggs/chicken, but they were so scratched up and flaking that we didn’t feel comfortable eating from them. On several occasions we bit the bullet and just bought a pan or appliance and left it there for the next people…pay it forward. We actually left a rice cooker in our Thailand apartment because they were so cheap there and we were eating rice 3-4 times per week. Although, why would an Airbnb in Thailand not have a rice cooker? Other times, we had the right equipment but maybe didn’t know how to use it. How is this a can opener?
After seeing these in a couple countries, we finally got one of our Airbnb hostesses to teach us how to use this dangerous contraption. Lastly, and I am so upset that I forgot to take a picture of this, our Costa Rica Airbnb left us a spatula that had been melted down to a nub. It was so ridiculously unusable that we couldn’t help but laugh.
4) Expanding our cooking repertoire was not really an option
When we started our adventure, we had these grand notions that we would be learning the language of each country and taking cooking classes to learn how to cook the local cuisine. Neither of those happened thanks to #1, #2, and #3 above plus a failed first attempt to cook one of our favorite, easy recipes that left us a bit jaded. Was it the crappy pan? Was it the ingredients? Who knows why it didn’t turn out? But, we were too busy to keep worrying about recipes, ingredients, and equipment every time we moved. I mean, we still needed to work 3 days per week and wanted to do fun activities and see all the touristy stuff where we were living. Thus, we decided to let the professionals do the work and enjoy the local cuisine on the weekends when we toured around. To minimize the damage from gorging on our 4 days off, we decided to eat clean and simple on our 3 work days. Most dinners were sautéed chicken breasts with brown rice and some sort of veggie.
Breakfast was normally eggs and black beans or lentils. For me, lunches were normally salad with tuna on top. I was really surprised that you can find canned tuna in every country. Now, salad dressing is a different story. I primarily had to use balsamic vinegar and olive oil, which got a bit boring after awhile. Our favorite simple dinner was when I could find fresh salmon and prepared pesto (surprisingly quite a few countries had this), which is absolutely fantastic when broiled.
5) You gotta have a routine
Going into our adventure, we knew that it would be a good idea to try to keep our life feeling as normal as possible to avoid travel burn-out. We set up Monday through Wednesday to be our normal work days. We would start off with a trip to the gym to counterbalance all the overeating we did during our four days touring around.
Then, we would both settle into 7-8 hours of work. Finally, we would cook dinner in our apartment and cap off the evening by checking e-mails, sorting pictures, and working on blogs. Unfortunately, we got behind on most of our favorite tv shows and never really had the time/desire to watch local TV, but we did manage to stream Game of Thrones to not miss an episode!
6) Part-time desk work still needs good ergonomics
Being able to work anywhere in the world is quite the luxury. However, remote work required us to sit at the computer for 7-8 straight hours. Even if it is just 3 days per week, poor ergonomics can wreak havoc on your body. Every time we moved to a new place, I had to figure out what table/desk/chairs in the new Airbnb would make the best set-up. Here is a picture from my set-up in Japan:
As you can see, I had to use shoeboxes to get my monitors high enough. A chair and pillow held up my mouse pad…oh wait, that isn’t a mouse pad, that is a DVD of Season 4 of Friends that I had to use as my mouse pad. Yep, had to be creative with what we had. And who knew that Friends was popular in Japan!?!?
7) Grocery and drug store etiquette can be a challenge
I learned pretty fast that the US is one of the few countries where the cashiers weigh your fruits and vegetables. At our tiny grocery store in Siena where we stayed for our first month abroad, I think I upset a few people when the cashier had to run back to the produce section to weigh and get stickers for me. In Thailand and a couple other places, there was a special produce person that you would have to take your fruits and vegetables to for the weight/sticker. Every time we moved to a new place, figuring out the proper etiquette was a bit stressful. In Santiago, I couldn’t even figure out how to buy a bottle of shampoo! For some reason, personal hygiene products are kept behind the counter similar to drugs in a pharmacy. After entering 2-3 different stores, I finally figured out that I had to ask someone to get what I wanted, and they would put it in a bag and then give me a ticket (and not the bagged item) to take to the cashier. After paying the cashier, I could go back and show the person the receipt to actually receive my shampoo. The whole process was super annoying and ridiculously inefficient.
8) Signs in other countries are always good for a laugh
Whether meant to be humorous or not, signs around the world can be a great source of entertainment.
And my personal favorite…
Apparently, Asian tourists are so used to their stand-up toilets that there has been a problem with them standing on Western toilets when they travel to Australia, New Zealand, and Europe.
9) Google Translate is a life-saver
That first grocery run to the small store in Siena was my first experience using the Google Translate app, and I quickly learned that it was going to help make our trip much more manageable. Strolling through the food aisles, I had no idea what a lot of the items were. But, you simply hold your phone up to an item, and Google Translate magically converts it into English right before your eyes. This was especially helpful when we would buy items like frozen dinners that had instructions to follow. Check this out from a Swedish dinner called the Flying Jacob:
So, it isn’t perfect, but it gets the job done and gives you a laugh at the same time. In Siena, we even got a tour through one of the contrada museums completely through Google Translate. The guide would talk into his iPad and then show us the text. Again, it wasn’t always perfect, but we could get the gist of things. If we were going into a shop or something that required us to ask a question to someone we weren’t sure how well they would know English, we would have the basic question/problem written out on our phone to be able to show them the text. This often meant we got laughed at due to the awkward translation, such as the time we were at a fancy cocktail bar in Tokyo. Overall though, we were pleasantly surprised how often people spoke English or how quick people were to find help if they didn’t. We rarely found the language barrier to be an issue.
10) Bouncing through 30 countries in 20 months is exhausting!
Where are we going to go, where are we going to stay, how are we going to get there? What are we going to eat? Let alone, what do we do once we get there? We were constantly having to answer these questions. Nomadic living is not like being on vacation. When we plan our vacations, we know all the logistics in advance so that we can maximize relaxing and enjoying every moment. In the situation we were in bouncing around so frequently, that just wasn’t possible. Travel days were extremely stressful because we often didn’t research the country or travel logistics enough beforehand (See #12 below). Every flight when I felt the tension rising, I would turn to my good old buddy, Bruno Mars. I jammed out to 24K Magic to remind myself that we were living the dream. Even while living the dream, we still had plenty of stressful days and frustrations, and the worst part was that we would end up feeling guilty and get angry with ourselves for allowing frustrations to get to us. Everything was supposed to be amazing while traveling the world, right? So it was hard to allow ourselves to have a bad day. But, even part-time work can feel overwhelming when you move to a new city every few weeks and have to figure out the logistics of basic living over and over and over again… where can we find groceries, what gym is nearby that allows short-term membership, how do we get our laundry done…. All these aspects definitely added dimension and unique learning experiences to our adventure but also made it not sustainable for a long-term lifestyle like I once thought.
11) Time goes by at a different pace
We thought we were going to do so much. Learn to kickbox in Thailand and Tango in Argentina. Learn a bunch of new languages. But, after work, working out, figuring out how to do stuff, figuring out where we were going to go and what we were going to do next, documenting what we just did and then walking around town and seeing the sights, there really wasn’t much time left over. Traveling really can be a full-time job.
12) Somehow everything worked out on travel days even with poor planning
Although the opportunity to visit so many new places is unbelievable, planning month after month of travel is tedious and often started to feel like a second job. Due to this and the fact that we probably got a bit too casual thinking that international travel was easy and that we were experts, we let a few things slip by that could have been major issues.
A couple times, we didn’t have the correct currency (ironically, USD) to be able to pay for a visa-upon-entry. In Bali, luckily, they were lenient enough to allow Jimmy to leave the customs area to go to the ATM outside while I waited. But, I had a mini panic attack wondering what a country would do to us if we couldn’t pay for the visa. For Australia, we didn’t even realize we needed a visa before boarding the flight because the last time we went our travel agent took care of it. This time, we got a lecture from the lady at the airport check-in, and fortunately, she was able to help us sort out our visa issue to still be allowed on the flight. Although everything always seemed to work out for us, we don’t recommend taking this nonchalant attitude.
13) Everyone poops…but not the same way
Considering we, as a species, have been dealing with this issue from the very beginning, toilet design and bathroom etiquette are remarkably different throughout the world.
It will come as no surprise to anyone that Japan wins this category. Shouldn’t we all have toilets with a heated seat that plays music, dispenses fragrance, and cleans and dries your tush for you? This was the control panel for our toilet in our Tokyo Airbnb:
Europeans seem to be on the right track with the bidet, but why does it have to be a separate apparatus? And what are you supposed to do with the tiny towel? Learning to squat and aim into a small hole in the ground without peeing on my shoes or pants was a big accomplishment for me while in Asia. But, even these toilets would have different designs with places for your feet although those always seemed to be in awkward places compared to the actual hole.
And then there is the butt gun randomly hanging on the wall by toilets throughout SE Asia. I loved the sign in one Vietnam restroom that totally called out Americans and told us to stop killing trees and wasting toilet paper and to embrace the butt gun. I couldn’t figure out how people use that thing without making a terrible mess. The bucket of water with a ladle next to the toilet was another common sight that really grossed me out, especially when the floors were flooded with the water. Even in places that had modern looking toilets, there were often warnings that no toilet paper could be flushed. Breaking a 35+ year habit of throwing TP into the toilet is terribly difficult. The fear of being “that American” that broke the toilet is stressful. Luckily, when I did forget, I never ended up with an obvious clog that got me in trouble.
14) Time zones made for some interesting situations.
Living in a different time zone from our co-workers and friends often led to interesting situations. During our 6 months in SE Asia, Jimmy watched a Giants playoff game at 4 am. Both of us had to stay awake for meetings around midnight and even a few at 3am. If you read the Bali blog, you already heard this story. But, during a work call, my “office” (which happened to be an outdoor space in tropical Bali that I first thought was amazing because I could work in my bikini and occasionally jump in our pool) turned into the wild kingdom.
I witnessed a moth getting attacked and eaten by a lizard on the wall. The sloppy lizard dropped part of the moth while he was munching away, and a spider ran out from underneath the mat to grab the remnants. I restrained my scream at that point to not scare my co-workers. About 20 minutes later, my eyes were drawn to the ground again where I noticed a parade of ants triumphantly carrying the leg of the moth off to their lair. For those of you that know me and my fear of bugs, this was a rough night to focus on a work call. I know, cry me a river, because my office has a pool in it.
15) Healthcare is surprisingly affordable and efficient in most other countries
Visiting the doctor in other countries was much less scary or daunting of a task than I expected it to be. We easily made an appointment at a fancy hospital in Bangkok for our regular dental visit. The cleaning was quick, and we easily paid the reasonable bill and were on our way. I even had to see a dermatologist in Japan and had no problem finding someone that spoke English and fit me into the schedule on relatively short notice. Even heading to the ER in Buenos Aires to get my foot checked out when I got the stress fracture was fairly straightforward (granted, it did help that Jimmy speaks Spanish).
The only hiccup we had was when I went to see a specialist about my foot a few days later. They expected us to pay in cash! What doctor office expects cash!?!? And remember what I said earlier about getting cash in Argentina. Jimmy had to wander all over town to get enough cash to pay for my visit. Then, we went to pick up my crutches at a different location, and again it was cash only. Poor Jimmy had to go out again because he hadn’t gotten enough cash the first time. Jimmy, frustrated with the cash situation in Argentina, and me, depressed about a broken foot, led to probably one of our lowest points during our travels.
16) Airbnb made our style of nomadic travel possible, and while we mostly had amazing experiences, we learned that you never quite know what you are going to get
Airbnb was the perfect way for us to feel like we were truly living in a different country and not just on vacation. We stayed in some amazing accommodations; however, we often found ourselves dealing with some less than ideal features, like this tiny shower with no curtain and a sloping roof in our Tallin Airbnb.
We often struggled to keep water in with the strange shower designs around the world, but this one took the cake. Then, there was the shower in Costa Rica that sprayed water in every direction except down. Of course, our Japan shower was a completely enclosed room of its own with a door that fully seals shut. Just another reason to love Japan and their efficiency.
We thought we hit the jackpot with our Bali Airbnb having its own pool and cool outdoor space for the kitchen and living room.
However, the culture there is quite different, and we didn’t fully appreciate the mention that people in Bali have a bit more of an “open-door” culture. Random people would just show up to the apartment and enter without knocking and with no prior notice from our Airbnb host. Some random guy came in one afternoon while I was working and walked into our laundry shed, and I yelled for Jimmy to come out and ask this guy what he was doing in our apartment. Oh, he’s just the pool guy here to clean. Whew! Another morning, I awoke and went out to our outdoor kitchen for breakfast (thankfully fully dressed) to find the lawn guy “mowing” the small lawn. And by mowing, I mean on his hands and knees using hedge clippers.
Lastly, there was the Costa Rica Airbnb and the case of the mysterious “jiffy” foot. The story is too long to go into detail here, but ask me about it some time to get the whole scoop.
17) Every country has different gym etiquette and workout norms
Japan is the best example of this. We were required to take our street shoes off and have a dedicated pair of clean gym shoes. Also, shoes must be taken off completely to be on the core/stretching mat area.
Also, absolutely no supersetting was allowed. In an organized fashion, as you would expect from Japan, most of the equipment had sign-up sheets. I’ve never had to sign up to use a squat rack or bench press before! I also loved that the treadmill counted your calories in number of nigiri you can eat.
In Morocco, we had read that women had to be careful regarding their coverage in many places, so Jimmy went to the gym on the first day without me to check out what other women were wearing. I didn’t have long pants or full-sleeved shirts to work out in as I had read was customary, especially if running outdoors. Lucky for me, we were staying in the more “western” part of town, so the women at the gym were wearing normal workout gear. But, oddly, that gym had the worst etiquette I have ever seen. Weights were strewn about everywhere, and nobody put anything back after using it. My biggest pet peeve is getting to a squat rack that has 6 plates on it that I have to remove. So rude! The Scandinavian countries had some of the best gyms of anywhere. Tons of equipment. Clean. Spacious.
Vietnam didn’t have any unusual etiquette, but they definitely had an obsession with unusual equipment. Everybody seems to take turns at these two machines.
18) I now hate selfies!
I never was a huge fan of selfies. But, after spending so much time in tourist-heavy places for 20 months, I would be happy if selfie sticks just went away. I can’t believe how long some people will pose in front of one attraction to get the perfect picture. And I don’t just hate on other people, I don’t want to be in anymore selfies either.
As much as I wanted to document where we went, I was just really sick of being in pictures, but Jimmy would torture me and still make me pose for selfies. Until in Australia, I finally snapped!
19) We have iron stomachs but don’t put us at elevation
When we visited the doctor before leaving the US to get all our vaccinations and preventative drugs, our doctor said that it wasn’t a matter of “if,” but a matter of “when,” we would need to use the Cipro. Well, I’m happy to report that neither of us ever got sick enough to need to use Cipro. Don’t get me wrong…we still had occasional GI upset here and there that needed some Tums or Immodium. We thought for sure when we decided to eat at this street market buffet in Laos that our dice rolling was finally going to come up craps. But, we made it out the other side safely.
Unfortunately, elevation was not so kind to us. You can refer to the Cusco blog for further details but to summarize, I fainted in our hotel hallway and was found by a random woman, and Jimmy thought he was having a heart attack on our first night camping on the mountain during our 4 day hike to Machu Picchu.
20) The world seems a lot smaller when you’ve looped around it twice
You know you have been to a lot of places when a tour guide references something on the other side of the globe, and you were just there a few months previously. Yep, we have unfortunately become those people. Our tour guide on Easter Island was telling us all about the Birdman culture and one of the statues that was found on the cliff that we were standing on.
That statue was now in a London museum, which we happened to go to at the start of our journey.
21) Random luck can be more rewarding than well-planned travel
We hadn’t made any plans for our day in Melbourne the day after Christmas, known as Boxing Day in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. Apparently, watching cricket on Boxing Day is a tradition. While strolling through town that day, we decided to walk by the stadium to see if we could get a ticket. Of course, at the ticket window, we were informed that there were no seats available. It turns out the match was one of the biggest of the year. But, a nice gentleman, who had traveled from India for the match, told us that he had two extra tickets and would sell them to us at face value. We were a bit nervous that the tickets would be fake, but we decided to go for it and were rewarded by an extremely fun experience at our very first cricket match.
We were only in London for 5 days, but when a bus with an ad for a play starring some of our favorite actors drove past us, we knew we had to go!
We also happened to be in Bangkok for one of their holidays called Loi Krathong. Although it was a work day, we decided to head out that evening and check out the festivities. Again, we were rewarded with an extremely unique cultural event.
22) “Where are you from?” is the hardest question to answer
When you have moved around as much as we have and are currently living nomadically, what do you tell people when they ask “where are you from?” We tried to answer this question in so many different ways and it always led to other awkward questions. The United States…nope, not enough info. Nebraska/New Jersey…well, we grew up there but haven’t lived there in over 20 years so couldn’t answer follow-up questions. DC…oh heck no, don’t want to open the door to a discussion about politics. Boston…we lived there last but really don’t want to claim it as home considering it was only for a year. North Carolina really ended up being the easiest answer. Or we would go into our long explanation of our travel adventure because everybody we met was intrigued.
23) Finding a little slice of home in a foreign country is always comforting
We played a little Jenga in the evenings on the Vietnamese junk boat in Halong Bay.
The Maldives had Christmas trees to help us keep the holiday cheer without our families.
When ordering every meal is a challenge and you are trying to figure out how to order and pay for your Ramen in Tokyo from this machine…
…randomly running into this sign can be quite exciting.
Yes, with all the glorious food in Tokyo, we couldn’t help stopping in to the local Taco Bell to see if they actually served any of our favorites or had unique takes all their own. Shrimp and avocado burrito with wasabi, anyone?
To our surprise, we were also never too far away from a KFC or a Dunkin Donuts.
This French colonial style strip of shops and restaurants is in Hanoi, Vietnam. Now, my question for you all is did the Sour Cream Cheesy Pops make it to the US as we saw in our Chiang Mai, Thailand neighborhood KFC?
Or this shrimp, egg, and hot dog pizza at Pizza Hut as we saw in Hanoi?
And not to mention fried chicken, rice, and beans at McDonald’s in Medellin?
24) Travel isn’t always pretty
Going back to how we started the blog with Anthony Bourdain’s quote, travel can be tough. We had some hard times. Our car broke down in rural Spain.
We got altitude sickness in Cusco. And once we started feeling better and ventured outside, the skies opened up, and we got drenched.
I broke my foot and had to deal with doctors in Argentina as well as multiple plane trips dealing with luggage and crutches. I was pleasantly surprised by how well I was treated by the airport staff. I was escorted around in a wheelchair through the back doors and lifted into airplanes.
I was in tears trying to figure out how I was going to see the sights at one of my top bucket list destinations, Iguazu Falls, when I couldn’t hike the trails. The staff was so helpful assisting me and showing us how we could still enjoy most of the park. I’m grateful for how kind everyone was when I discovered how frustrating it can be to not be able to walk when our current lifestyle involved walking multiple miles every day. Jimmy stepped up to help get me through it by carrying an absurd amount of luggage through the airports and pushing me to all the highlights of Iguazu Falls and a winery in Santiago in a wheelchair.
Through the ups and downs, we always had each other. We basically spent almost every moment together for 20 months – going to the gym, grocery shopping, working in the same room, eating all our meals together, and, best of all, experiencing the world together. We made a great team, and I couldn’t have asked for a better person to share in this adventure.
25) Now is the time
We learned that dreams can come true if you go for it and ask for it. What have you been wanting to do and not pulling the trigger? Don’t be scared to try new things. This sign just happened to be on the entry door to our first Airbnb when we got to London.
We knew we had made the right choice and will remember to keep living the life that we want and not what society dictates. Now is the time!
You guys got to see and do some amazing things. Thanks for sharing your adventure with all of us.
Awesome! Lots of great adventures.