Final thoughts and statistics

Hello from Houston!  We made it home late yesterday and were happy to make it to our house/bed/pillow, etc.!  Now we deal with laundry, dive gear, jetlag, tax returns and pool maintenance.  All the fun stuff!  Also, we get to see our family and friends and HAVE TACOS!  Yay!

This was our first time in the Far East, first time to use a Round-the-World tickets, first time to be gone 7 weeks, first time to ... well, you get the point - we really embarked on a unique journey. Here are some things that we learned a long the way:

- to go all the way around the earth takes a LONG TIME (i know, that should have been more obvious but when you actually DO it - whew - this is a big blue marble!)

- 6 flights in 3 days is TOO MANY!

- get local currency as soon as possible when you arrive

- layovers do not have to be too long (don't cut it too close but there is a limit to how long you can entertain yourself at an airport)

- better to book a flight on an airline that has lots of flights, i.e., if your flight is the only one and it is late in the day you will NOT be able to check your bags and that will leave you stuck

- do not check bags at all if you can manage it.  for this trip, because of dive gear we had checked bags. they add stress but, knock on wood, we never lost one

Ok - here are some fun statistics!

# days - 50

# dives - CA 79 / SA 74 (reminder, Sheri was sick one day)

# hours diving - 71

# dive boats - 4

# flights - 18

# flights cancelled - 1 (we feel VERY LUCKY)

# hours in flight - 80 (over 30 in the last 3 days)

#different airlines - 10 (United, Cebu, Philippines, Virgin Australia, Bangkok Air, Singapore Air, Turkish, British, Batik, Lion)

15 different kinds of transportation - plane, car, van, bus, dingy, dive boat, taxi, rusted-yellow-micro-van-taxi, innertube, Indonesian longboat, kayak, Thai longboat, Filipino Outrigger boat (with and without motor), tuk-tuk, airport bendy-bus

# hotels -7

15 cities (either stayed or passed through) - Sydney, Cairns, Brisbane, Denpasar (Bali), Makassar, Sorong, Jakarta, Singapore, Phuket, Khao Lak, Bangkok, Manila, Puerto Princessa, Istanbul, London 

Laundry - 3 times

Days barefoot - 27 (they take your shoes away from you on the dive boat)

Currencies - 4  - Australian Dollars, Indonesian Rupee, Thai Baht, Philippines Pesos

Shout Outs and Big Thank You!

Carolyn S - for the loan of the GoPro ~ clearly this was SUPER important for us to have to document the beauty of the reef!

Jane W - for handling and sorting the mail and watching out for the house!

Mom & Dad for watching over things, emptying the pool skimmers and dealing with bags of leaves!

Marieke & Alex for pictures of TACOS!

Austin & Jamie for staying at the house and dealing with pool issues (sorry we were not here to see you)!

Cindy B for her suggestion of the App "TripIt" - we love it!

Helge for turning us on to diving!

We are excited to be home for a while!

Thanks for reading!

Love,

Sheri & Carsten