Traveling for 45 days is kind of a long time. In 45 days you can explore a lot of new places. You can experience a variety of new things. You can meet a whole bunch of new people. You can catch up with some of those people you don’t see enough when you’re at home. And you most definitely come to realize how much you miss what you have left behind.
I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting coming into this trip. I don’t think I was necessarily looking to get anything in particular out of it, it just seemed like a cool thing to do and a great opportunity to see some new places. So by those rather “low bar” goals, the trip has been a complete success. Actually, I think by most measures it has been a great trip. Even with a few less than ideal experiences along the way we have come through with smiles on our faces and a lot of great memories.
A couple of smaller things that made a difference:
- Running in the mornings in northern Lao and central Vietnam
- While I’m not even close to my glory days of easy 12 mile runs, getting a mile or two off the beaten track into some of the areas surrounding the towns where we were staying was great
- In one Lao village a group of old women waved and laughed as I ran out past them, and then looked completely bewildered when 5 minutes or so I ran back in the other direction (while my Lao is not very good, I’m pretty sure I made out the phrase for “crazy white man”)
- Taking pictures along the way
- While there is always a risk of missing the experience because you’re busy messing with your camera, I found it forced me to look at things a little differently
- Besides great as memories are, it’s nice to flip through pictures every now and then
- Meeting up with people along the way
- HBS crew in Singapore, Jen in Cambodia & Hong Kong, Anne’s dad in Ho Chi Minh City
- The local perspective was always appreciated
- It was also good to introduce a new personality into the trip dynamic for a short while
- Writing the blog
- A few people were worried we would “waste” too much time writing all this, but in retrospect I would have to conclude that was not the case at all
- To be fair, we have spent a lot of time on this, maybe more due to our “rambling” writing style rather than sheer volume of content but nonetheless
- I have found that writing all this has helped me synthesize and refine my thoughts about some of our experiences, plus barring the collapse of this whole internet fad we have a pretty great record of our expereince
- It has also been nice keeping all of you up to date on our movements. The comments and emails you have sent responding to various things we have written have been great. And besides, now we don’t have to tell the same stories over and over again …
- Traveling with a good friend (okay this is officially the sappy part of the blog)
- I’m not sure I would have wanted to do this trip alone. I know a lot of people travel by themselves and have a great time, but I don’t think that’s really something I’m interested in.
- Through all the places we went it was great to have a familiar presence with some shared history and understanding
- At the same time it was good to have a slightly different perspective as we reflected on the various things we saw
- And to address the comments some made before we left, Mike and I survived this trip relatively unscathed… to be sure a few minor frustrations along the way, but we were never at each others’ throats ready to make it a solo expedition from that point on
