Safe and sound back home in Norway

Wow, what a trip..15 countries in 6 months..Did we blow our budget? Actually, no:) Was it too short time? Yes..Were we excited about going home? Yes..

We talked about what we would say when people asked about our trip. “Well, do you want the short or the long version?” hehe.. Where to start?  We have experienced so many amazing things. Things we never want to forget, and things we definitely want to forget.

People we have met during our travels have asked us why we wanted to do this, when we started planning in and how we could afford it. Well, it was a thorough planning-process, and we knew we were going on this trip the fall of 2008. Some of our friends had already been backpacking and since we both wanted to do it, all we needed was time and money. Both of us had some savings from working, and we had a whole year to save the rest. Silje (blonde) was lucky enough to get a leave from work, and Silje (brunette) would take a year off between her bachelor and master.

We started off with a list of many countries, and then had to remove one after the other, and another, and another. Kilroy helped us out by advicing us. One of the advices for example was to replace Fiji with Samoa. Same kind of islands, but cheaper plane-tickets and living.

We researched other backpacking-blogs to see how much people had spent on 6 months traveling. It seemed like the average was around 100 000 NOK (around 16 500 USD). All in all, we undervalued the cost of preparation. We were very late booking our airplanetickets. All the travel-equipment, vaccines, airplanetickets, prebooked trips etc. cost way more than we thought. However, we were able to save a little bit more knowing that we already had spent too much. Also, we told ourselves that a big part of the preparation costs are an investment and a one-time-cost which we will be able to enjoy on other trips. Kilroy had a suggested daily budget for certain areas and continents, which we  used to calculate our travel-budget. We were aware that it might not be up to date, but we decided to use it. We knew that some areas we would use less than the budget since we would stay with friends or had already booked hotel/bus. This was fortunate since some places (like Australia) was much more expensive than we thought. All in all, we used a little bit less than budgetet.

The question we have been asked the most is what place is our favourite place. There is no doubt, we both agree that Thailand is the winner. The reason behind it is the food, the pricelevel, the weather and the atmosphere. The worst places must be Mexico and Belize because of all the bad experiences we had there with our pre-booked Bamba buspass, the bedbugs, the stomach flu and the awful food. By the way, we got some good news a couple of days ago that Bamba and Kilroy have decided to give us back some money.

The places we have been really sad to leave was Thailand, Singapore and the USA. We felt that we had too little time in Asia in general. We imagined seeing both islands in Thailand and Malaysia, but we missed out on Malaysian islands and saw too few of the islands in Thailand. Also, we felt that Kilroy gave us some bad advice by telling us to book all planetickets before leaving Norway. The transportation-system in Asia is incredibly simple and cheap and we could have had more freedom and saved money by not following their advice.

The best advice we have got from anyone must be to buy all essential things before going to Cuba and finish all important things you need to do online, because of the slow internet. Some things we couldn’t have managed without; flashlight, mosquito-net, silk linen, waterproof ipod bag, moneybelt, coded padlock, microfiber towel, the computer, waterproof camera and waterproof watch.

We started to talk about what our best seightseeing or experiences have been and decided to make a chronological list:

The Great Wall, China
Maya Beach “The Beach”, Thailand
Snorkling and seing sharks, Thailand
PADI-course and reef diving, Thailand
Couchsurfing experience, Malaysia
Snorkling in Great Barrier Reef, Australia
Surf-course, Australia
Living in a fale, Samoa
Seeing Neverland and other celebrity houses, USA
Staying at a Mayan house, Guatemala
Volcano-trekking, Guatemala
Tikal-ruins, Guatemal
Cave diving, Mexico
Seeing Cuba, Cuba
Partying with the president’s son, Colombia
World cup in football, Brazil

We want to say thank you to all the people we have met during our travels. You are all amazing and if you ever come to Norway, let us know! You have all contributed to make this trip more exciting, crazy and fun.

We bet you wonder what the final score for the airport-security-checks were? Well, actually as it turned out, we didn’t get any checks on our way home to Norway. So the score is the same as when we arrived to Brazil, which was 12-12. It is funny, some places we didn’t go in the same line, some we did go in the same line, but we got the same number of checks anyway. We tried to count how many checks we have been through, and we think it’s around 20. Over half the security check points we have been double-checked. Can you believe it? Well, in the end I guess we both look too innocent! hehe..

We are so happy that we traveled together. We have lived together so we knew eachother very well. We have met people who are traveling with 6 or more people and they have said that it is a constant hassle with decisions, arguments and comprimising. Or people who are traveling together who don’t really know eachother, and instead of talking about problems they avoid them and aren’t talking anymore at the end of the trip. Of course, we have had our discussions and comprimises, but when the trip finished we were both choking up when we said goodbye at Gardermoen and we have already made plans for a new trip (not as long though :P).

For the last time, Siljex2