8-Weeks in Asia: By the Numbers

After 8-weeks without making a bed, driving a car, cooking (besides the ill-fated Thai cooking class), or doing our own laundry, we are starting to miss some of the luxuries of full-time travel. Thankfully, we have about a billion photos and our travel journals to reminisce on experiences that we will remember for the rest of our lives. From days with no plans that were spent exploring temples and dodging motorbikes, to the days that stand out such as go-karting in Tokyo, sunrises in Bagan, and spending the day with elephants in Chiang Mai. We are breaking it all down for you in detail. Here are the numbers that sum up our 8-weeks in Asia.

Transportation

With seven countries on our itinerary, we did A LOT of traveling and took many forms of transportation. Airplane travel was key in order to accomplish as much as we did in such a short timeframe. We were in 15 different airports at least once (DMK became our home away from home). In addition to planes we traveled by car, bus, subway, bullet train, cable car, ropeway, pirate ship, motorbike, bicycle, van, slow boat, songthaew, minibus, tuk tuk, e-bike, and ferry.

Cheapest Flight: Da Nang to Hanoi, Vietnam – $50 per person (including checked bag fee!)

Most Expensive Flight: JFK to Tokyo, Japan – $471.75 per person

Cheapest Transportation: Accidental canal boat ride in Bangkok, Thailand – $1.44

Most Expensive Transportation (excluding flights): Bus tickets to Shirakawago to go to a sake festival that ended the day before we arrived – $78.39

Accommodation

We utilized many options for accommodation including hotels, hostels, AirBnB, and a homestay. Over the 8-weeks we slept on futons, bunkbeds, capsule beds, Japanese shiki futons, twin beds, a loft bed, one night on a junk boat, and two nights on a sleeper bus. We used points to treat ourselves during our last three nights of the trip in Bangkok, and let me tell you that Courtyard Marriott felt like a 5-star hotel!

Cheapest Accommodation: Hotel in Pakbeng, Laos – $7 per night

Most Expensive Accommodation: AirBnB in Tokyo, Japan – $76 per night

Food and Drink

If we did one thing right in Asia it was eating. We had many delicious meals of ramen, sushi, dim sum, pad thai, pho, curry, and so much more!  To be completely honest, we also had many terrible meals too (and we may have eaten at McDonald’s once). With only one case of food poisoning, eating in Asia was a success although we may or may not have spent over $200 in the Japanese 7-11s…

Cheapest Meal: Khảo soy dinner at restaurant near bus station in Chiang Rai, Thailand – $2.44

Most Expensive Meal: Fresh sushi breakfast at Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo, Japan – $67 (worth every penny!)

Attractions

We visited numerous temples, buddhas, and shrines during our trip, but we also checked out museums, waterfalls, and castles. We had experiences such as renting motorbikes in Laos, getting Thai massages in Thailand, seeing a Water Puppet Show in Vietnam, fishing in Cambodia, and driving go-karts in Japan. All of these attractions come at a cost, but this is what traveling is all about!

Cheapest Attraction (Besides all of the free ones of course!): Entrance fee to the Golden Mount in Bangkok, Thailand – $1.23

Most Expensive Attraction: Spending the Day with elephants with Karen Tribe Native Elephants – $182.66

Lost and Found

We lost a few items along the way including one cell phone cord, one debit card (left in a Thai ATM), and $300 in cash (actually stolen rather than lost). This list would have been longer, but we were able to recover a few other lost items:

Chris’s Glasses – Left in an AirBnB in Japan. Chris realized once we were seated on a train to go to the airport, we had to make the quick decision to grab our bags and get off the train. Chris ran back to recover his glasses, we caught the next train and we still made our flight!

Chris’ Fitbit – After walking around Hong Kong and getting fitted for a suit, Chris realized his Fitbit was missing. We did what seemed impossible and retraced our steps to recover the lost Fitbit at the dim sum restaurant where we had dinner.

Chris’ Orange Jacket – While packing for our flight to Laos, Chris realized he did not have his orange rain jacket. We remembered wearing our rain jackets to dinner the night before. We set off into the night and miraculously were able to find the jacket left in an ice cream shop in Hanoi over 24 hours earlier.

Anyone else notice that Chris was involved in most of the lost items?

Not everything that was lost was catastrophic. When we got home, we found out that we lost a whopping 17 pounds combined. Thanks to all of the walking we did around Asia, probably not thanks to the amount of beer that we drank. Not sure we should admit these numbers, but the final beer tally is: Meg – 93 beers & Chris – 122 beers. Chris was the winner in this race, but even the drunken traveler himself got a little sick of drinking rice lagers near the end.

Over the eight weeks we experienced 12-days of rain (including one typhoon), finished reading 10 books, and used tiger balm on countless mosquito bites. We had many ups and downs and a few bumps in the road, but I wouldn’t change anything about our once in a lifetime trip!