Epilogue a la Blog!

After promising an ‘epilogue a la blog’ for so long, I thought I’d better get to it before … wait for it ….. we start our next trip! Ok, when I say next trip it’s only three weeks, not a year and we are visiting only one country not fourteen BUT it is Thailand and we haven’t been to this part of Thailand before, so it is still an adventure. The backpacks are out again, the same shorts, sandals and – yes – quality sunglasses are packed in again. The camera is charged and ready to go – goodbye cold England, hello balmy tropics! Just to whet your appetites – one of the places we will be visiting is Ko Phi Phi Leh Island, where I’ve heard it rumoured that if you can say which famous American made a film there, they give you a free cup of tea – you have to name the famous actor, the name of the film and the writer of the book - of course!

So here is the epilogue of the blog, written originally 45 days after we got back but never published because it just needed a little finishing work on it that never materialised! This is what happens when ‘normal life’ gets a grip of you. So here it is – as it was written -with a few up-to-date comments ‘hoyed’ in.

As I sit writing this (watching the rain topping up our ‘swimming pool’ that was once a back garden) I calculate that we have now been home 45 days! So perhaps we’re ‘naturalised’ by now and can look back at the whole trip. When we first arrived home it was difficult to think of anywhere but our last stop, India. Thinking about seeing the Weavers in June last year was already a distant memory.

People often ask us: “where was the best place you visited”, “when are you going back to work” and “are your arms really that long or is it camera trickery”. We try to answer the first one and try our best to avoid the others!

So without looking like we’re trying to dodge the ‘best place’ question, the truth is that it’s very difficult to say. I think it depends a lot on what you like! I’ve waxed lyrical about mountains, lakes and some of the most beautiful vistas on earth only to be asked at the end - “Was there nee beaches and bars like - and how much is a pint of beer?”

We can think of several places where we left thinking we didn’t want to leave because we were enjoying it so much and some places when we were ready to move on – not because we didn’t like the place, just because we did everything we wanted to do (except for Phnom Penh, when we did actually move because we didn’t like the place and although we loved Vietnam, we’re not big fans of Hanoi!).

Here are some of the best things though.

Undoubtedly, south east Asia was the most fascinating. A complete change to our western culture and we both enjoyed that part of our trip so much. Malaysia was a big surprise, originally Malaysia was just somewhere we were going to pass through on our way to Thailand but we loved our time there especially the Cameron Highlands, the ancient rain forests of Taman Negara and the beautiful ‘Robinson Crusoe” like Perhentian Islands. All the places in south east Asia are wonderful to experience, Chiang Mai in Thailand, Luang Prabang in Laos, Siem Reap in Cambodia, the beautiful Halong bay, Sapa and Siagon in Vietnam to name but a few. Most of all we found the people so happy and friendly.

Being slightly controversial here, what about the natural beauty of the USA? We have met a lot of travellers who wouldn’t consider the States fearing the crowds of Florida, MacDonalds on every street corner and the lack of adventure in comparison to somewhere like, Cambodia for example. However, if you’re into hiking and natural beauty then the national parks of America are some of the most beautiful places we’ve been on our entire trip and camping in the national parks was one of the major highlights of the year. We’re hoping to do a ‘gallery’ of some of the best pictures from the blog soon, and let me tell you, the pictures from America are some of the best. We’ve seen lots of fantastic manmade structures, but I think they all play second fiddle to Mother Nature!

On that note we have to mention New Zealand. Usually, if I want to give a short answer to the ‘best place’ question, I say New Zealand. NZ has had more than its fair share of natural beauty lavished on it. Also, I think we enjoyed it because of the way we did it – in a campervan. The sense of freedom was amazing and even the shortest of trips seemed to bring you right into the middle of another picture postcard. There is a rather strange thing about New Zealand, even though it is as close you can be to the opposite side of the world to England, it’s the most English like country we’ve been too – they even drink more tea than the English! Jolly good show. Christchurch in particular is like visiting an English university town – except there’s not as many soap dodgers (students) about.

Australia was difficult for the first week, we were slightly disappointed at how expensive it was and we were still in love with New Zealand. We started in Cairns, which was very difficult to get to grips with – first of all it was seriously humid and to add to the torment, the beautiful beaches and water were out of bounds – unless you want to take on the salt water crocodiles and jelly fish with the most poisonous testicles (oops – I mean tentacles). We did give in one day and jumped in the sea for a cool off – keeping a good look out for ‘jellymongous’, crocs and sharks (such a relaxing swim). Afterwards we stopped in a café for a cool drink, we told the lady that we had had a sly swim in the sea, she said ‘Oooh Shelia (she was talking to Suzanne – I hope), I wouldn’t do that, one of the boys here went for a swim last night after a few beers – croc grabbed him by the head!’ (he survived by the way).

It didn’t take long before we got our teeth into Australia and we just loved it. It’s such a big place and one day we’ll go back there and look up some old friends and do some more ‘off the beaten track’ exploring. There’s so much to do and see there that even the three months we had wasn’t enough – although we did pack a lot in!

India was probably our biggest challenge. There are a lot of things about India that will make a westerner gasp with horror (and I don’t just mean people taking a crap by the side of the train line in full view of everybody). For example, arriving in Bombay by train passes through some of the worst poverty stricken places we have ever seen (if anyone has seen the film ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ you’ll know what we are talking about). There is a sense of hopelessness about the situation that sets in when you see the scale of it, especially when you consider how the population is spiralling out of control - the situation might still get worse. Literally, ghettos as far as the eye can see. But there’s the other side of the coin; forts, castles and temples like nowhere else in the world, naturally beautiful places too like Kerala and Goa and then of course there’s the gorgeous food! We had curry for breakfast, dinner and tea and did it all again the next day (just remember to put the toilet roll in the fridge the night before!). Although we loved our time in India, it’s a difficult place to understand! There’s the major problem of poverty alongside some of the richest people in the world. For some reason the poor people do seem to accept their lot! The roads (and the driving) are the worst we’ve seen anywhere (even worse than Blackpool on a bank holiday Monday!) and unfortunately although the food is superb, it was the only place during the whole year where we fell ill - the infamous ‘Delhi Belli’ – I won’t go into detail but enough to say we didn’t get it that bad – we were told of an English man that had it so bad he boarded a train wearing a nappy – mind you that might be just a ‘English’ thing! India – we loved it and sometimes hated it - a land of paradoxes is probably the best description I can think of right now.

For relaxing it’s hard to beat Fiji and the Cook Islands. It’s just a pity you can’t go there every month for a couple of days to recharge the batteries. Our little tree house on the Cook Island of Aitutaki was seriously relaxing and our ‘treat’ at the Octopus resort at Fiji was the best resort we have ever been to (but it’s our secret so don’t you all go booking places!). The Cook Islands have a seriously relaxed nature about everything, we realised this when we hired a motorcycle – to drive a motorcycle in the Cook islands you must have a ‘Cook Islands Driving Licence’. To get one of those you have to report to the police station at 2pm on certain days. I turned up on the motorbike at the required time, when I saw the police officer he gave me the licence and stamped it as valid. I asked if that was it – was there no test? To which he replied ‘well, if you can’t ride a motorcycle you wouldn’t have made it here would you”!

I think a lot of people don’t travel because they have fears, we know this because English people are always asking us if we were ever in danger. Truthfully, we were never in a dangerous situation apart from once when we arrived in an Indian city (Jaipur) one day after seven bombs had gone off (that never appeared in the blog – for obvious reasons!). But in general, walking around these places we’ve probably been in more threatening situations in a British city on a Friday night (“ow –what are you looking at”)! Of course there are dangers in every place around the world and we have met people who have had pockets picked and been ripped of by drivers etc, however we did not witness a single ‘violent act’ anywhere on our trip. The only dangers we experienced were ‘normal’ ones – like getting lost in the blue mountains in Australia and been eaten by leeches or kayaking in front of a massive ship in Tasmania or jumping off a perfectly good bridge in New Zealand with only an elastic band tied to your feet or jamming your finger in an SUV door! All self inflicted dangers!

We have been privileged to meet some fantastic people along the way, they’re all there in the blog. We met some very special people from New Zealand, Australia and Vietnam and some travellers in various places around the world and we’ll do our best to keep in touch with them. We also met some great ‘like-minded’ English people too that we will keep in touch with. We also met some ‘Sunderland’ folk in Cambodia – one of them asked me the crucial question: “So when you’re home like – not travelling the world like – where is it that you drink?”

So, to finish off the blog, let’s get all philosophical! Here’s some things we’ve experienced that we might not have learned had we not taken this year out:

Helping someone is the best feeling in the world! When you’re backpacking there’s not really much you can give or do because you carry only what you need and we were often moving from one place to another and didn’t have a great deal of time to settle anywhere – but one of the memories we’ll have forever was the look on a little Indian boys face when we gave him, of all things, a bag of toiletries that we’d ‘collected’ from a hotel. His reaction is difficult to describe, he looked so overcome with joy that he nearly cried and then he looked at us as we drove off and just smiled. We stared out the window stunned, both of us with eyes full! This is obviously helping in a very small way, but it makes you realise that it doesn’t take much to help someone and it’s an incredibly rewarding feeling.

The happiest children we have seen live in a hill tribe in Laos and don’t have anything but their little huts and their family! This is a fact – in south east Asia, the number of times we’ve seen kids playing together next to rivers or on a dirt track with homemade toys and having such fun is unbelievable. No fancy toys, play stations, not even real footballs - but we’ve never seen happier kids anywhere. There’s a lesson in that somewhere I think!

When we visited these mountain tribes it became apparent that they have very little contact with Western culture, this was their world – generations had lived and died on this mountain village without contact with any other people. The adults spend most of the day cultivating food and on the evenings they come together with their families and neighbours and eat together. There has never been any violence in the village, no one has ever been murdered or robbed or even beaten up. Everyone looks relaxed with each other and I bet there’s no one in the village suffering from stress or depression. These people don’t have BMW cars or 5 bedroom houses with swimming pools or millions of pounds in stocks and shares – so why is it that they look like the happiest people we’ve ever met?

Paradoxically though, when we saw some run down places and high levels of poverty, we felt very lucky to have been born in England. I know the cost of petrol and food keeps going up and even the Pallion club has put the price of beer up (unbelievable) but in England (and most other first world countries) you can work and receive decent pay, your children can go to school and if you don’t have a house, you can get help to rent one. When you’re old, the state will give you some money to live on and if you’re ill you can have free medical treatment. In India for example, if you have a serious illness then you’ll probably die. If you work for someone, you’ll probably be paid so little that you will struggle to buy food and you may be forced to make you own children work just so that you can afford food and clothes. In Bombay, 55% of the population live in absolute poverty and most people live in shelters made from plastic sheets and corrugated iron. It’s astonishing to see such a polarised nation of people. While I’m talking about India – the rich people in India purposely over feed their kids so that they grow fat – to them this is an indicator that they’re from a wealthy family, I wonder where they got that idea from?

And finally…. This has been the most incredible journey. We’ve learned so much about the far off parts of the world we have been fortunate enough to see. It has changed us, it’s made us think more about what is important in life and it has made us think of how we live our life. We couldn’t live with a hill tribe, we’re far too westernised for that, but it’s good to see that people can live very happily with enough – just enough, not everything. Makes you wonder sometimes if you’ve got it right and I suppose that’s one of the most fascinating aspects of it all. So parents – if you’re reading this, don’t worry we’re not off to the hill tribes. If we were born there, we wouldn’t know any different but then again you wouldn’t be reading this would you!

Thanks again to everyone for your comments and kind words over the past 14 months, we really have had a ball. We’ll be campaigning for all people to do ‘national service’ by taking a trip around the world – it’s very liberating!

We will sign off this blog entry the same way a wise woman we met in Vietnam finishes her letters.

We wish you enough.
xxx