Our Asia Trip in a Nutshell

We’re back: my hair longer 18cm and Marcin 18kg lighter 🙂

Travel, step away from the familiar, touch, be touched. Leave home, let the unpredictability of the road shake your beliefs, find a new way back. Along the way become someone else. ‘Question of Journey’ John Brandi

The trip is over. We’ve been back home for one month now. The first reunions with our families and friends, the first weeks in our new place, which is actually an old place as we used to live here before going to Ireland in 2008. The emotional roller coaster has subsided now and it’s time to summarise, look back and reflect.

We spent 265 days on the road, beginning our trip on 14/06/2011 and arriving back home on 3/04/2012. Of all this time 31 days and 13.5 hours was spent in public transport! This is quite unbelievable that a whole month took us to move around. The plan was straightforward: limit plane journeys to maximum and that’s what came out of it:

We spent 433.5 hours (18 full days) on buses, be it a public or private coach, 297 hours (12 days) on trains (Russia and China are the champions in this category), 12 hours on boats and ferries and finally 15 hours on plane on our way back home. This summary does not include means of transport we took for pleasure such as a bike or a bamboo train in Battambang, Cambodia.

Road ahead

Tracks ahead

Although those 31 days and 13.5 hours spent on public transport were more of a necessity than pleasure, it does not mean that it was not enjoyable. On the contrary, some of these train and long-distance bus journeys were more enlightening in terms of cultural experience than the destination itself. Besides, time for thinking and reading, which you have plenty on public transport, is never wasted.

To continue the stats, we have been to 10 countries and 2 cities-countries, i.e. Hong Kong and Macau. We’ve spent 55 days in China, 38 days in Thailand, 33 days in India and Nepal respectively, 29 days in Vietnam, 28 days in Russia, 24 days in Mongolia, 13 days in Laos, 9 days in Cambodia and 5 days in Hong Kong and Macau together.

Money-wise, Vietnam was the cheapest country (€18.34 per person/ per day) and Hong Kong with Macau the most expensive (€47.24 per person/ per day). The remaining countries can be divided into the cheaper and more expensive group, however, everybody has a different travelling style and needs and the below order in terms of expenses is totally personal.

Not only ‘wasting’ money

Our more expensive destinations in Asia were Russia, China and surprisingly Cambodia, only because of a relatively high entry fee for Angkor Temples and our short stay. The same story goes with Mongolia, which can be more expensive if you sign up for organised trips like our Gobi trip. Unfortunately, travelling independently in Mongolia is quite difficult due to no road infrastructure. The cheaper destinations were the following: Nepal, India, Laos and Thailand.

Our daily budget was not the lowest possible as we met people travelling on $15 pppd, but still it was low-budget and did not include any massive luxuries. The costs depend on a few factors, namely the time you spend in one place, local transport, choice of accommodation, food and entrance tickets for tourist attractions, which can be sometimes as expensive as in China, India and Cambodia, or decent, sometimes even free, as in Russia (student card is a must) or Thailand. 

Lifetime adventure

We’ll be back one day!

But our Asia trip was much more than a spreadsheet. We met fantastic people on the way who dare to dream in this crazy world of ours. They shared with us their happiness, fears and hopes for the future and let us understand what makes them tick. I hope we did the same as we certainly left a part of ourselves in Asia. We came back, but I’m not sure if we are the same Magda and Marcin who left Ireland and Poland 9 months ago. I wish we weren’t. Now it’s the time for reverse culture shock and making the most of this truly wonderful experience of a lifetime journey. Just to clarify, we are certainly not done with travelling. It’s just a matter of time when we hit the road again.