The Second 100th Days

The last three months and a half we covered 31.116 kilometres (8.851 km by land, 22.175 km by air).

We spent 47 hours in 4 trains (of which 2 overnight trains).

We spent 129 hours in 18 buses (of which 2 overnight buses).

We spent 36 hours in 11 planes (7 direct flights and 2 trips with a connection) and waited 10 hours in transit airports.

We spent 3 hours in 3 ferryboats.

Therefore, in total, 9% of the trip was passed in transport between cities.

Crossing the Mekong River in Champasak, Laos

Crossing the Mekong River in Don Khong, Laos

 Chiang Mai, Thailand

Vientiane, Laos

During this period we visited 43 cities, crossed 11 borders with the usual checkpoints - 9 countries plus 2 Special Administrative Regions (Macau and Hong Kong) - and had to get used to 11 different currencies. And all of that in Asia: a month in Southeast Asia, a dozen of days in South Korea, a month in China and two weeks in Indonesia. This period ends with our arrival in Australia, new island, new continent!

Border between Mainland China and Macau

We slept in 35 cities: 84 nights in 31 hostels/guesthouses/hotels, 5 nights at 2 couchsurfers' places and 7 nights at 3 friend's places (or friends of friends ;).

We changed city every 2,9 days and moved to another country every 11 days (on average).

So we were not idle during the last 100 days and we visited some of the most impressive places our world has to offer like the biggest square (Tianmen square), the biggest religious monument (Angkor Wat), the largest volcanic lake (Lake Toba), the largest military structure (the Great Wall), the largest city wall (Xian), the largest collection of Australian native animal (Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary), the widest long-span and tallest steel arch bridge (Harbour Bridge) in the world.

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We took some habits that could seem strange with external eyes like we always take a shower with flip-flops on and we got used to cold showers for a lot of days in a row.

We became very familiar with the crazy road traffic and the lack of respect for the road code. Crossing a street on a crosswalk with the red light on for cars is no guarantee for safety. So we always double or triple check! Overloaded scooters and buses without windows were in our everyday life.

About the food, we drank a carton of milk every time we found one to have our dose of calcium because cheese do not actually exist in Asia. And for the last five months and a half we nearly did not eat western food!

Less glorious we also got used to collect toilet paper and soap because we never know what we'll find next..

During our intercourse with local people we got better at talking with our hands. It is not as easy as it may sound. In some countries our simple "can you go faster" gesture sounds like an incongruous invitation. One thing is for sure the gesture language can create very funny moments! ;)

More generally we have somehow lost the notion of time and often do not know for sure what day of the week it is. Changing often time zone do not help and when we get on a plane we usually do not know how long the journey will last. It is also disturbing to move from Singapore where the sunset is at 7pm to Australia where it is at 5.30pm. By the way we also lost 15 degrees during this migration!

Going from Asia to Australia ended a period of five and a half months in developing countries. We had read when preparing this project that one should alternate periods in developed and in developing countries. This idea did not match with our road. We now do understand better the advice. Travelling in developing countries can sometimes be demanding. But in the end what we experience is priceless!

A funny experience, the fish pedicure!

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We do hope we succeed a little in conveying and sharing those experiences. Actually the traffic on this blog is quite encouraging. We have just surpassed 12.400 viewpages with an average of more than 50 viewpages per day during the last month! 33% of those readings occured in France followed by Portugal (19%), Germany (6%), United States (4,6%), Italy (4,5%) and India (4%).

As we were beginning to store a lot of videos, we decided to post them on the web and create a Youtube channel with all our music related videos. And we have always wanted to rock around the globe! ;))