Our return has been a challenge, not so much the practical stuff like lodging and jobs (although this has not been easy) but the return to the American environment. The over-indulgence, inflation of non-issues to epic proportions, rampant obesity, value placed on useless junk and the general disregard for how great life is here.

What will probably surprise everyone the most is that we have decided to part ways. As we were preparing to set up our lives here in the States again we realized that we wanted different things out of life and that our paths forward lie in different directions. Friends til death but lovers no more.

Saben:
Now lives in Washington, DC. Was able to find a great job but if he told you where he would have to kill you. Enjoys the life and action in DC but does not enjoy the burning smell coming from his debit card. Has a plant named Fred. Due to lack of enthusiasm his room looks like an IKEA showroom.

Saben would like to thank Lindsey for being a fantastic travelmate, sly parnter in crime, talented documentarian and most importantly an amazing woman. Also a big thank you to everyone for following along and taking this adventure with us. Your support was truly inspiring.

Saben’s Favorite Moments:
Shisha on the coast of the Red Sea, watching the lights in Saudi Arabia
Seeing a Sea Turtle for the first time, Diving in Honduras
Fish for lunch at the shack with Roger and his wife, Baliadas for dinner
Hitchhicking along the Pan American highway from town to town, Beach to Beach.
Learning to surf with the ever awesome Carlos
Candy apples and stale hot dogs at the Bolivian Circus
Weeks spent living in Hong Kong
Conversations about life, in 5 languages, in some little dive bar
Everything about Turkey
Eating at Hasims in Amman
Moped rides through the Lao countryside with nowhere to go and nowhere to be
“Vacationing” in Thailand
Being truly free

…One thousand moments that are mine to keep, never to share, and will fuel me through the darkest days of my life.

Not so good:
Nothing… The worst times make the best stories.

Plans for the future:
Definitely in DC for the next several years but after that who knows. I have tasted adventure, I have tasted freedom, and it is more addictive than anything imaginable. I see Africa in my future, I see a motorcycle ride down the Pan American Highway but beyond that I hope for adventure, I ache for freedom.

Lindsey:

Wow, can it really be that just a few short months ago I was lollygagging (technical term) around the world without a care in the world, where my biggest problem lie in the question: what do I want for dinner? Though some days I wished I could have just enjoyed my evening without having to write down the day’s activities, I am so glad now that I did. With time flying by so quickly and so many new things happening, the little things that I loved the most about the trip are fading. But I still love to go back and look at our photos and read posts–it reminds me what’s most important in life: doing what I want.

I want to thank Saben for being such an amazing travel mate, friend, and a generally awesome person. Even though we are now living on oppposite sides of the country, I would undoubtedly travel with him again anywhere in the world.  I would also like to thank all our followers and those who continue to discover our humble blog. We still appreciate your questions, comments, and support. Thank you all!

Lin’s Favorite Moments:

Falafel shop around the corner from our hostel in Aqaba, Jordan; Walking through a wildflower field in Cappadoccia, Turkey; Getting up one morning before everyone else and sneaking out of the hostel to enjoy the sunrise on the beach by myself in Paraty, Brazil; Driving through the desert of Wadi Rum, Jordan; New Year’s on Koh Samet, Thailand; Eating ice cream on a crazy bus ride between Paraty and Trinidade, Brazil; As much as India got under my skin, I still really miss eating thali; The sound of the marble being sucked into and crashed back onto the beach, Tinos, Greece.

Not so great: Scratching my eye, Nicaragua. Legitimately almost dying in Rishikesh, India from some wicked unidentified Indian flu thing. Being harassed in India. Even the not so fun times I would not trade because they made the great times even better and helped me appreciate life in a new way.

Current Location: Portland, Oregon. Busy with work but loving every minute of being in Portland! Have an amazing place to live and a great car to take on roadtrips. Glad to have finally stopped bleeding money and started making it.

Plans for the future: My sights are set on exploring my own country for the next few years but there are most definitely plans for more international adventures. Back to Turkey and Central America for sure but I am also excited to visit so many new places like Namibia, Russia, and New Zealand.

So, that’s the end for us. We truly hope that this blog can stand as a testament to the fact that you can accomplish your dreams. All things are possible if you are willing to put the work in.

May you all travel well, wherever the wind may take you,
Saben and Lin

So this is it. The last 15 months of our lives come down to this day, the day we go back to our own country, the end. But it’s not just the end, only the end of this adventure. We may choose to be stationary for a few years but we have definitely not lost our love of travel. If this were a different era, maybe someone would put us down as explorers or adventurers. Still, we don’t mind to fade into the background for now. It can be our own secret, an inside joke to know what we have been through, to know that it really was something and just because it stopped for a time doesn’t mean that we won’t ever get another chance to get back out and keep doing what we what to do. So thank you to everyone who has followed along with us on our trip around the world. And a big thank you to those of you who sent us donations. We hope you enjoyed our trip with us and don’t worry, there will be more.

Thanks for following along!

So until next time, this is Saben and Lin signing off. Happy travels!

p.s. Keep an eye out in the next couple of days for a trip wrap-up from us (our favorites, thoughts, and such from the trip) and a little about our future plans.

Sure the air is polluted, the beaches aren’t great, the traffic is horrible and the people can be rude and self centered but you quickly forget all of that while wandering down an old ally that looks like it hasn’t changed in the past 60 years. It has that foreign feel that everyone craves when they travel but balances that with western amenities and modern ideals. We love it here and we hope to return some day.

(Check out the Vietnam photo gallery here)

Favorite moments:

• Cheap beer
• Beautiful countryside
• Surprisingly cheap (except Saigon)
• Decent food
• Ease of travel

Not so great:

• Traffic and noise
• All the trash
• All the cockroaches

Total Money Spent Per Person: $483.90

Average Per Day Costs Per Person:

• Lodging: $4.64
• Food: $7.41
• Transportation: $3.10
• Misc: $2.34 (Beer, going out, entrance fees, etc.)

Total Average Per Day, Per Person: $17.49

Number of Days: 28

You might expect the last few days of a trip like this to be stuffed with last minute sightseeing, shopping, and other culture seeking activities. We saw what we felt like seeing already and now we are under pressure to do some things that just must be done. Preparing to return to life in the States is as big a task as leaving it was, and just as stressful.

Saben washing the random road sludge off his feet

Lately, all we seem to do is write and rewrite resumes, pour over endless job listings, and preview DC apartment listings. We are slowly unpacking and packing, throwing things out as need be, getting airport transport worked out and making sure we take out only enough local currency to get us by until we get to the airport. We are feeling increasingly anxious, resistant, and generally stressed about our return. Thinking we could both use some nice relaxing massages, we went to a local spa one afternoon and came out 2 hours later with major spine realignment, some possible bruising, and sore temples. It was anything but enjoyable and certainly not relaxing; it was incredibly painful.

late night coffee and french fries

But at the same time, we are trying our best not to waste these last few days. Walking through tiny alleyways lined with old Vietnamese people who look like they might have been squatting in that same position for the last 40 years, looking out onto the dangerously chaotic traffic from a sidewalk cafe, dodging mopeds, buses, people, bikes, dogs, trash, and taxis while walking in the street because the sidewalks are only used for moped driving or parking—these are things that you just can’t get at home. And though they may not be fun, they are definitely different sights of the world and these kinds of things we are really going to miss. How will we ever adapt to orderly, quiet, mannerly, full sentence, clean life at home?

Well, the time has finally come. With our arrival in HCMC we have fully realized the ending of our trip…and the necessity to immediately being seeking gainful employment. Yikes!

Street side Pho

It was a surprise to see how expensive everything is this city is, from lodging to market goods (tourist, fruit, and otherwise) to even the local food (pho excluded…though everyone eventually tires of this tasty cheap dish). So to fill our time and take our minds and eyes off our resumes we have been wandering the city in search of good shopping. To our great disappointment, it seems that nearly everything here is both exorbitantly priced and unbelievably cheaply made. Not a very useful combination, in our minds anyway. The tourist market is so sickeningly overpriced we have effectively boycotted it and left it overrun with tourist bus loads of older travelers in large tour groups with pockets bursting of local money. Hearing some of the prices they pay, it makes us wonder, don’t they know the exchange rate?!

In the market

On Saturday the 27th, we celebrated Earth Hour with the locals in front of the Opera House. It was pretty fun. There were the requiste “turning out” of several of the surroundings buildings, lighting lots of candles, some live music performances by Vietnamese stars, and plenty of excited clapping and shouting and waves of fiery things in the air. Despite the rain that poured down on us all, we still had a pretty good time symbolically saving the earth for 60 minutes on a Saturday night.

Earth Hour

Candles and a huge PA for Earth Hour.... slightly ironic

Since the city offers us little at this point, we have turned much of our remaining time preparing for our return and reintegration into the USA. We are feeling a flurry of emotions: excitement, anxiety, stress, confusion, resistance, more stress, curiosity. We have missed the creature comforts that come with the basic existence in our country; we are anxious about finding good jobs and a nice home; we are stressed about finding and keeping jobs, about moving to a new city with no contacts and no place to live; we are confused and resistant to the idea of leaving our willy nilly lifestyle (oh yeah, that thing called money….) in exchange for real responsibilities and deadlines; we are generally stressed about every aspect of getting back to, moving, working, and settling back into routine life; and we are ever curious to see how our view of our country and its people has changed—what’s it like, what are we like, can we really converse in full sentences with other English speaking people without the necessity of charades and broken languages, what will it feel like to know that no one else in the world cares about the past 16 months of our lives, except us? Everything will be different and we are approaching this massive change with the same emotions we had when we first left for this trip. Undoubtedly, it will a new adventure all in itself.

Mui Ne is a tiny resort town on a Vietnamese beach. The beach is nothing much but every guest house boasts itself as a resort, no matter how small or large, and nearly every one has a divine swimming pool that is too inviting to refuse.

Poolside

We spent two glorious days lounging in the sun beside a glittering pool and taking a swim when we got too hot or too restless. One afternoon we shook our bones awake and took a rented motorbike up to see the dunes.

Saben dune climbing

Dunes

Though they are nothing spectacular, they are a neat site if you have a free half hour. If nothing else, the ride out of town is a fun endeavor in itself. Along the highway farther out of town are racks and racks of drying fish which are used to make Vietnam’s famous fish sauce.

Ready for the sauce

Boats in the bay

We have been thoroughly enjoying ourselves relaxing in a tiny garden like resort, trying not to think about applying for jobs or looking for apartments.

View down the beach

With two hot, sweaty days and nothing of interest within the city to see or do, we spent two hot, sweaty days on Nha Trang beach soaking up the last bit of sun we can before we go home.

You can really taste the heart attack

We even applied for our first jobs during this time and are now completely freaked out that we are actively seeking employment. It doesn’t feel like it is really happening, or at least not to us. A kind of surreal feeling to be this close to going back to our home country to no home, job (not even any prospects), and no possessions aside from a large wooden dinosaur cut-out and a few boxes of books.

View down the beach

It was a fierce battle. One that may just change how history books are written: the massacre on bus 312, Hoi An to Nha Trang. [insert ominous music here]

Sleeper bus

Last night we took a night bus heading for Nha Trang and were surprised at not only having bedmates but the particular kind of bedmates these were. Every size, age, and color of some overly friendly cockroaches. As we stepped onto the bus and bent down to get into our lower bunks, there were 3 cuddly cockroaches warming Lin’s bed. With a bus full of people, how could she have shrieked and shivered as she so badly wanted to? What’s more, how could she avoid sleeping in such a bed with strangers?! She didn’t even know the names of those creatures and she spent the entire night battling to stay awake, swatting and spazzing out to keep her roaches at bay. Some of those suckers were huge!! And that was just her bed! Both sides of the bus walls were actually crawling in big and small roaches and the beds on either side of Lin’s were even more creepy crawly than hers! (Lucky Lin). So through an usually long night of much murder and attempted bug slaughter, we arrived at Nha Trang with Lin ready to flee from that bus, good riddance!

Touts on the beach

Luckily, Nha Trang seemed to be a more pleasant destination to lay our heads for the night. The beach is decent and the water is a pretty dark teal color. The wind blowing across the sand makes for nice sunbathing despite all the local Vietnamese men leering in the shade at the edge of the beach. Nha Trang is a busy city with a decent beach. Lots of trash and weird smells throughout the city but hey, that’s just how things go here.

The past few days we have been shopping and walking around in Hoi An’s seemingly endless array of shops.

Through the streets of Hoi an

Saben got a suit made, we toasted to St. Patty’s Day, we went to the beach (yes, we walked there and back too…12km), and wandered through the small market of crazed vendors who will do anything to stop you in front of their shop (think: literally standing on your shoes to keep you from walking away).

Saben's new suit

I'm not sure Tiger beer is what St. Pat had in mind but we do what we can

The beach

In the market

Instead of regaling you with each day, we decided to cut it down into a single less boring post with lots of pictures. Hurray!

Today we walked 20 kilometers. Why, you ask? Well, because….er….it was…hmm… all the way from downtown to the imperial tomb of Tu Doc.

Incense vender on our walk

It was a really hot day but for some reason we decided we wanted to take a walk instead of deal with overpriced motorbikes when we each have perfectly good walking legs. Or maybe we’re just crazy.

Mausolem of Tu Doc

Either way, it was a pretty nice day and the complex around the tomb was pretty nice as well. Surprisingly the buildings, stairs, and such are in relatively poor condition for being so new (it was only built in 1867).

Tomb of his favorite wife

Flowers in the park

There is plenty of shade and lots quiet places to rest but the complex is not very large so it doesn’t take too long to visit.