Tag Archives: family world trip

post-trip-depression

Post-Trip Depression

How does it feel to return to the real world after having taken a year out to travel, having executed on a life’s dream? Well, in a word, it sucks. There I’ve said it. I don’t expect your sympathy or even empathy. I’m writing this post today to round out the how-to series on our family world trip that I started just after we got back. It wouldn’t be right to leave you thinking that we all arrived home and life went back to normal without a hiccup.

We have done surprisingly well. Our kids re-entered the regular school system pretty painlessly. Murph and I are now gainfully employed again. We’ve had a variety of house disasters but those could have happened any time.

But. Even before we got back to Seattle I was worried about impending post-trip depression. Worried enough to strategize about how to manage it way back in July (I’m nothing if not a planner). After a healthy dose of self-analysis, usually over many glasses of wine, I’m happy to say that my post-trip stay happy goals are very similar to what they were before we left: exercise regularly, drink moderately, take time to stop and smell the roses now and then.

I heard stories of typical post-travel depression triggers from other travel-junkie friends: reverse culture shock; lack of comprehension of the enormity of your trip or the breath of experiences had thereon; lack of understanding of how seeing the world North and South, East and West had changed you forever. I thought about these triggers for maybe a minute before quickly realizing that they’re all like your first pregnancy. When it’s happening, it’s the most important thing to ever, ever happen to you. Your life will never be the same again. As the nine months progress, or maybe when it’s all over, you realize that no-one else really cares – at least not the same way you do. They’re happy for you and all, but they’re not obsessing about everything like you are.

Extended travel is like a pregnancy. Your friends will cheer for you when you announce your trip, follow your progress in a mildly interested fashion and congratulate you when you’re done, but mostly, they’re just living their own lives with their own priorities and that’s OK. Don’t let it upset you when you get home, your travel experiences will be yours to savor and treasure forever.

Which brings me back to my one day of real post-trip depression. I had all the classic symptoms: I was lethargic, I couldn’t concentrate, I was irritable and agitated. Why and when did this happen? It was my first day back at work after the winter holidays. The deadening responsibility of having to go to work every day from now until for-e-ver was like my own personal pathetic fallacy with the typical rainy winter day outside my window. It took a good night’s sleep and a re-evaluation of those stay-happy goals to help me reset myself.

So, my two snippets of advice to anyone fearing the re-entry after extended travel:
1. When you’re still on a floaty cloud of trip happiness, take a moment to think about what will help you keep that feeling when you’re back into humdrum daily life. Write down your ideas and goals and put them somewhere safe.
2. Remember that no-one else cares about your trip as much as you do. That’s just life. It’s your story, no-one else’s. This is a good thing, you get to play all the juicy parts, make it Oscar-worthy :)

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Family World Trip Logistics Part IV: Travel Planning and Booking

We traveled for a year and now we’re home. Our project is completed. Now I feel comfortable to write about logistics and comment on what worked (or didn’t) as a reference for anyone else out there planning to do an around the world trip with or without children.

Planning A Round World Trip
We actively planned our trip for about a year prior to leaving. Determining our itinerary was the most important decision we made during this time. At the beginning, a year seems such a long time, you think you can go everywhere and see everything but then just by looking at simple numbers, 263 countries in the world for example, you realize that you have to make choices.

Once we had an itinerary we researched the countries we planned to visit but not exhaustively. We’re lazy travelers like that, we like to learn as we go. When leaving Seattle we had booked a couple of flights, a hostel for the first night, a house on the beach in Ecuador for ten days (to get over the shock of what we’d just done) and the Inca Trail – this last because you must book ahead with an approved tour company.

Once on the road we booked what we needed as we needed it. We did try to follow the old-style “true” (for Murph) backpacking method of finding accommodation when we arrived somewhere. However, there are too many backpackers booking ahead via cell phone or internet now which means that in popular destinations travelers arriving without bookings can find themselves in really crappy digs. Even I have my limits.

What follows is more detail on the how for accommodation, transportation and food, broken down by region because what we did varied considerably between say, South America and Central Asia.

Backpacking Accommodation
Before we left home we found our first hostel on HostelBookers.com and cross-checked the information for the same hostel on HostelWorld.com and on TripAdvisor.com. This became our default method of finding places to stay in South America. We did look at the recommendations in our Lonely Planet guidebook for initial suggestions but honestly, the online reviews were better and more reliable. Ditto for South-East Asia.

China was different (no surprise in that!). Things are changing so fast in China that our (2009) guidebook was useless for everything except history. We found YHAChina the best resource for finding quality budget accommodation. We also used Agoda.com a couple of times – for a hotel in Macau, for example. For the record, in Hong Kong we stayed at the Chungking Mansions (described as the ‘Ghetto at the Center of the World’ by the Economist) and we found it clean and comfortable. Just saying so you know where my standards are.

We stayed mostly in home-stay accommodation in Kyrgyzstan, hostels in Uzbekistan and hotels in Iran usually found using recommendations from other travelers. Budget accommodation is scarce in Iran but we did find some gems such as the Silk Road Hotel in Yazd and Niayesh Hotel in Shiraz.

Other backpackers were a vital source of information everywhere we traveled and we swapped, shared and learned about places to eat, stay and visit from them in every country.

Street Food
We ate as cheaply as we could everywhere we went – mostly. (We did treat ourselves occasionlly). Wherever possible we chose accommodation where breakfast was included in the price of the bed or room. In South America we ate a lot of in-your-hand empanadas for lunch and self-catered in hostel kitchens in the evening. In South-East Asia you can eat like a king all day long from the food carts that set up along the streets in any town. In China, Uzbekistan and Iran we found little restaurants for lunch and dinner. We didn’t go out of our way looking for “authentic” but a busy clientele of local diners and an incomprehensible (i.e. not in English) menu were good indicators that the food was cheap and good. In Kyrgyzstan our home-stay hosts fattened us up like Christmas geese.

One of our favorite food memories is of a little restaurant in Hanoi, Vietnam. At a glance, the large Lonely Planet logo on the sign outside the restaurant made us think that this was an LP recommendation. Then one of the boys noticed that the text above the logo said: “Should be recommended by…”. We felt such brazenness deserved our custom (and the food was good too).

Buses, Trains, Planes, Automobiles and Ferries
Yep, we tried them all. It is unbelievably easy to travel by bus in South America. Easy, convenient and cheap. There’s always the cheap bus, but in Chile, Argentina and Peru, you can pay more – not much more – and ride luxury buses between major cities.
Transportation was most frustrating in South-East Asia. It’s a continual battle between you and the plentiful scam artists touting luxury buses which are really over-loaded, under-air-conditioned jalopies one bend in the road away from a crash. Midget-sized beds on night buses was another personal favorite. The train in Vietnam was a relaxing treat. (You need to book early to have a hope of getting a spot).
When I was planning our itinerary through China I thought we could rely on the train. That turned out to be (a) difficult and (b) not efficient. In such a vast country, it’s hardly surprising that we ended up using every mode of transport except donkeys and ferries.
CBT Kyrgyzstan provided us with a driver which was good because there really are only two decent roads in that entire country. You need nerves of steel – gained by say, having served in the Soviet Army in Siberia like our guide/driver Anatoly – to drive in Kyrgyzstan.
We took the train in Uzbekistan. They have fancy new trains but only between Tashkent and Samarkand. For everywhere else there’s old, clunky, no air-con rolling stock but the beds are massive compared to China. In Iran we wanted to take the train but, since train travel seems to be pretty popular with the Iranians, we were out of luck – there were no seats available on any route for the entire time we were in the country! Thankfully there are plenty of buses, budget to luxury depending on how much you want to spend, running between all cities.

In general, we booked trains and planes (in China) two to three days ahead of when we needed them. With most buses we just turned up at the bus station and took the next bus heading in the direction we wanted to go. The only time this didn’t work was in Portugal at the end of the trip but then we were with Murph’s sister who kindly gave us a ride to the next town – where we got a ferry across the river into Spain and a bus on to Seville. Easy Peasy.

Related Posts
Family World Trip Logistics Part I: What We Left At Home
Family World Trip Logistics Part II: Insurance and Medical
Family World Trip Logistics Part III: Schoolwork
Family World Trip Logistics Part IV: Travel Planning and Booking

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Around the World and Back with Stories to Tell

Family World Trip

Svalbard Spain United States of America Antarctica South Georgia Falkland Islands Bolivia Peru Ecuador Colombia Venezuela Guyana Suriname French Guiana Brazil Paraguay Uruguay Argentina Chile Greenland Canada United States of America United States of America Israel Jordan Cyprus Qatar United Arab Emirates Oman Yemen Saudia Arabia Iraq Afghanistan Turkmenistan Iran Syria Singapore China Mongolia Papua New Guinea Brunei Indonesia Malaysia Malaysia Tiawan Philippines Vietnam Cambodia Laos Thailand Burma Bangladesh Sri Lanka India Bhutan Nepal Pakistan Afghanistan Turkmenistan Tajikistan Kyrgyzstan Uzbekistan Japan North Korea South Korea Russia Kazakhstan Russia Montenegro Portugal Azerbaijan Armenia Georgia Ukraine Moldova Belarus Romania Bulgaria Macedonia Serbia Bosonia & Herzegovina Turkey Greece Albania Croatia Hungary Slovakia Slovenia Malta Spain Portugal Spain France Italy Italy Austria Switzerland Belgium France Ireland United Kingdom Norway Sweden Finland Estonia Latvia Lithuania Russia Poland Czech Republic Germany Denmark The Netherlands Iceland El Salvador Guatemala Panama Costa Rica Nicaragua Honduras Belize Mexico Trinidad & Tobago Puerto Rico Dominican Republic Haiti Jamaica The Bahamas Cuba Vanuatu Australia Solomon Islands Fiji New Caledonia New Zealand Eritrea Ethiopia Djibouti Somalia Kenya Uganda Tanzania Rwanda Burundi Madagascar Namibia Botswana South Africa Lesotho Swaziland Zimbabwe Mozambique Malawi Zambia Angola Democratic Repbulic of Congo Republic of Congo Gabon Equatorial Guinea Central African Republic Cameroon Nigeria Togo Ghana Burkina Fassu Cote d'Ivoire Liberia Sierra Leone Guinea Guinea Bissau The Gambia Senegal Mali Mauritania Niger Western Sahara Sudan Chad Egypt Libya Tunisia Morocco Algeria

Map Legend: 9%, 26 of 263 Territories
In Progress
Not Yet Started


ArgentinaAustraliaCambodiaChinaChileEcuadorFranceGreeceHong KongIcelandIranItalyIraqKyrgyzstanLaosMalaysiaNetherlandsPeruPortugalSingaporeSpainThailandTurkeyUnited StatesUzbekistanVietnam


The map above shows all the countries we visited on our family world trip. Now that we’re back, I’m realizing that we have thousands of photos to share and hundreds of stories to tell about this amazing adventure.
As I write stories and share them here, I’ll update the map. Clicking on a country that is ‘In Progress’ (Yellow) or ‘Completed’ (Green) will take you to a summary page with photos and stories about where we went and what we did when we visited that country.

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tashkent-peace-park.jpg

Family World Trip Logistics Part III: Schoolwork

We traveled for a year and now we’re home. Our project is completed. Now I feel comfortable to write about logistics and comment on what worked (or didn’t) as a reference for anyone else out there planning to do an around the world trip with or without children.

In today’s installment I’ll cover what is probably the most difficult topic for me to write about: schooling.

Let’s just get this out there first: I am not a teacher; Murph is not a teacher. We opted to “homeschool” our children while traveling because we could. The school system in Seattle permits, and indeed makes it easy for, parents who opt not to send their children to school. We both value education very highly but boy, do we differ on how to educate a child and what matters in terms of a student’s educational excellence. I’m very old-school. I like my rapid-fire times tables and page-long essays. I value production and demonstration of knowledge. Murph’s more about understanding and will take discussion over writing any day.

So, how did we do? (measuring ourselves up to very high standard set by travelswithanineyearold)

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Family World Trip Logistics Part II

We traveled for a year and now we’re home. Our project is completed. Now I feel comfortable to write about logistics and comment on what worked (or didn’t) as a reference for anyone else out there planning to do an around the world trip with or without children.

Insurance. It’s such a boring word, totally at odds with the ideal of adventuring to exotic locales as a carefree traveler. For our usual travels (to visit with family), we rarely take out travel insurance but this time at least medical insurance seemed necessary.

Travel Insurance
I did my initial research on available policies and vendors using SquareMouth.com but we ended up buying our policy through WorldNomads.com. The WorldNomads.com interface is simple and straightforward to use. With two clicks you can get a quote for family coverage for travel worldwide for up to six months – and you can renew or extend the policy online. Although I was initially dubious about the coverage provided by a policy that was so easy to find, the coverage provisions and amounts were comprehensive.

Two things worth noting:
Firstly, all our pre-trip medical preparations were covered by the health insurance we had through our respective employers.
Secondly, in preparing for our trip, we took the approach that while we needed travel insurance in case of a medical emergency, we were less concerned about baggage or equipment coverage. Instead, we opted to pack light and pack only things that were easily (and cheaply) replacable. The netbook we carried with us being the only exception and it was guarded carefully throughout the whole trip.

We had two bags stolen during the trip, both in Chile. I have just submitted a claim against one of those thefts. Look out for my review of WorldNomads.com insurance from that perspective in the future.

International Association for Medical Assistance to Travelers
This organization provides members with a listing of english-speaking doctors worldwide. Given that we are shamefully unilingual (even if we have excellent pidgin French, Spanish and German), the $100 membership fee for IAMAT seemed like a no-brainer.

Additional Medical Insurance
This is only relevant for U.S. residents. A month before our trip we were deep in pre-trip preparations. We had a master to-do list on which we added items or checked off items daily – sometimes hourly. It was in one of these frenzied “work the list” sessions that Murph had a light-bulb moment: we needed U.S. medical coverage too. Our travel insurance policy (like most such policies) stipulates repatriation to primary residence in the case of a medical emergency. Following that thought, in a disaster situation, we could end up back in the U.S. with a broken bone or worse but without any health insurance. We deemed that the potential to be out-of-pocket for thousands of dollars for post-event care in the U.S. was huge.

We considered COBRA – the optional extension of an employer-sponsored plan. Unfortunately, the cost of the very excellent medical insurance provided by Murph’s employer way out of our budget.

We did our research and found an independent health insurance broker who helped us choose an insurance plan with Lifewise. The plan is not cheap but now that we’re home, we happy we have it since it also gives us coverage while we’re looking for work.

Related Posts
Family World Trip Logistics Part I: What We Left At Home
Family World Trip Logistics Part II: Insurance and Medical
Family World Trip Logistics Part III: Schoolwork
Family World Trip Logistics Part IV: Travel Planning and Booking

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Family World Trip Logistics Part I

We traveled for a year and now we’re home. Our project is completed. Now I feel comfortable to write about logistics and comment on what worked (or didn’t) as a reference for anyone else out there planning to do an around the world trip with or without children.

All questions relating to trip logistics fall into four general areas: home-related, medical, school-related and trip-related (planning, booking, etc) so this will likely be a four-part series ( I have a storage unit to unpack and a job to find, but be assured the intent is there). In this post I’ll focus on home-related topics.

The House
We did not sell our house, we rented it for a year. This meant we spent most of the month before leaving emptying closets, packing boxes and carting stuff to the dump, Goodwill or a storage unit. It was like an archeological dig through the history of our family. I guess if I had a regular closet-cleaning routine it wouldn’t have been so bad but I don’t so it was a very worthwhile, if monstrous, effort.

I listed the house on craigslist in June and had a lease signed within a month. (I bought and downloaded the lease document from an online vendor such as uslegalforms.com). The rent paid our mortgage for the year.

I sold some pieces of furniture (on craigslist) – including my kids’ bunk beds. I think they may hold that against me for a long time. They came home from camp to find their beds gone and were not impressed.

We gave our tenants the option of choosing furniture they’d like to keep in the house to use which helped them and us. In the end, we needed only to store a couple of sofas, rugs and a coffee table – and a gazillion boxes of books, clothes, bedding, towels, dishes, kitchen equipment and every single little knick-knack my boys have made or bought ever. (That last is staying in the storage unit until I have every other box emptied and then we’ll see whether or not it comes back into the house or “accidentally” gets routed to the dump).

Mail
Using usps.com we opened a P.O. Box and registered a change-of-address routing all our mail to the P.O. Box. We had “home team” support: J, a friend who cleaned out the P.O. Box monthly, dumped the junk mail and let us know (via email) if there was anything that needed our attention. We let all magazine subscriptions expire – except the Economist so we could continue reading it online.

Bills
I switched to managing our bills electronically using our bank’s bill payment services a number of years ago. Before we left, we changed any bills for which we were still receiving the paper copy to e-bill – any I missed were picked up by J from the P.O. Box. Although, it’s worth noting that since all utilities were changed to our tenants and we no longer had subscriptions and services to pay for, we only had four or five monthly bills to think about while traveling.

Our second “home team” member was a different friend who had power-of-attorney over our finances so that in the event of an emergency there would be someone in the U.S. who could represent us.

We put originals of all important legal documents (birth certificates, rental lease, and the like) into a safe deposit box in our bank.

Phones
We parked our cell phone numbers with family-phone.com a handy service which keeps your number active, records voicemails and emails the voicemail to the email address you provide. Google Voice may provide a similar service today, but I haven’t researched this service yet – even though Murph keeps telling me I need a Google Voice number :)

Initially we thought that this and Skype would be sufficient for the year but a family medical emergency in October prompted us to sign up with OneSimCard.com. The roaming international rates with this provider are super-low, but again, we kept this just for emergencies, picking up cheap sim cards locally when we needed to have a phone for travel planning.

Murph did keep his iPhone but without a service plan so that he could use it to connect to the internet whenever there was a wifi connection available. We also used it a handful of times to make phone calls via Skype.

Money
I wrote about the cost of our trip in RTW Travel – How Much Does it Cost? The only additional logisitical detail I’ll add here is that while on the road we used a Fidelity mySmartCash account as our primary checking account. This account reimburses ATM fees – even when the ATMs are in out-of-the-way countries – a big bonus when you know you’ll be hit with a charge for every ATM withdrawal for a year. We managed cash-flow and transactions using a combination of our banks’ online tools and Mint.com .

Related Posts
Family World Trip Logistics Part I: What We Left At Home
Family World Trip Logistics Part II: Insurance and Medical
Family World Trip Logistics Part III: Schoolwork
Family World Trip Logistics Part IV: Travel Planning and Booking

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A Road-Schooling Day

It struck me recently that I’ve said a number of times that road-schooling is hard work but that I’ve never really explained why this is so. It seemed like a description of a typical “school day” would be a good idea to remedy this.

The diary below describes a day in Emei Shan, a mountain two hours drive from Chengdu. It was Saturday. We’d hiked the mountain on Wednesday and Thursday (60km, 3,000m) and been in Leshan (to get our Chinese visas extended) on Friday. We were overdue for a school day.

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hue-vietnam-citadel-origami.jpg

Origami In Hue

hue-vietnam-citadel-origami

Just inside the square of the main palace at the Citadel or Imperial City in Hue, Vietnam, there are a pair of massive bronze urns filled with rain water. Unsurprisingly, as with fountains and other such water features in any city, people throw loose change into the urns for good luck. When CAM peeked into one of the urns, he spotted an origami crane, now sunken, among the coins. Being an origami nut himself, he though this was a capital idea. Since we didn’t have any origami paper on us (!), he settled for a Dong note instead.

hue-vietnam-origami-boat

The resulting origami boat.

hue-vietnam-origami-boat-wind

Setting the boat afloat on the urn “pond”.

Head on over to DeliciousBaby for more travel-themed Friday photo fun.

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And One More Thing

CAM and I were leaving the sprawling MBK mall in central Bangkok.

“That’s another reason why I hate this trip” he said.
He was behind me, so I couldn’t see the look on his face, but I could tell from the tone of his voice that he wasn’t being serious. He is a master curmudgeon.
“Why’s that, bud?” I asked, curious to know what had brought on this latest complaint – especially since I’d just bought him a new pair of headphones.
“$23 isn’t a lot of money”, he replied.
“Well”, I said, “it is for some people”.
“That’s the point. It is for some people”
“Like the villagers we met in Cambodia”, I suggested, referring to our visit to the opening ceremony for the Passports School.
“But it shouldn’t be for me and that’s why I hate this trip, it’s made me realize that $23 is a lot of money for a lot of people” he continued, giving no sign as to whether or not he’d heard what I’d said.

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