One year ago, and 146 days after leaving the UK, we arrived home in Brisbane.
The flight from Kuala Lumpur was with Air Asia, took eight hours and was quite uncomfortable. I didn’t get a wink of sleep, instead reading almost all of one of the Twilight books, but eventually the time passed and we arrived at Coolangatta Airport at 7:30am local time.
Our families were all there to meet us and took us to Kirra Surf Club on the way back to Brisbane for a much needed cooked breakfast. There was a lot of catching up to be done before any resting was allowed!
So we came to the end of this chapter of our world travels. It was an amazing journey, and even now a year later we haven’t begun to go through our photos, apart from what you see on our websites.
One of the questions we get asked the most is: which country was your favourite? Shane usually replies Turkey – it is a beautiful and varied country and very well set up for tourists. I loved Turkey but I did also really enjoy visiting Iran. The friendliness of the people and the amazing architecture and history makes it a fascinating country. Tibet and the rest of China were certainly highlights as well.
So what happened to the rest of the people we traveled with in the Big Orange Truck? Well they continued on south into Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, with a little bit of group drama but mostly together. It sounds like they had a wonderful time – we’ll get to South East Asia one of these days to catch up on what we missed. The Big Orange Truck was shipped back to the UK from Singapore, and the group moved on into Indonesia and then on to Australia, where they met up with a Big Orange Bus to drive from Darwin down to Adelaide and around to Sydney. Most of them headed to their various homes after that, but we have caught up with a few people since they arrived in Sydney last November.
What have we been up to in the last year? Well, it was first things first once we got home. We bought jeans, we ate Red Rooster, got jobs, moved into our house in December, bought quite a lot of things and caught up with a lot of friends, some of whom we hadn’t seen for at least three years.
Where are we traveling to next? We’d love to visit South America, the US and South East Asia, but I’d also quite like to go back to the UK for a visit at some point. Perhaps after all this starting a family stuff is out of the way…
If you have any questions about the trip, please feel free to contact me or leave a comment!
Thank you for sharing this journey with me! I’ve enjoyed reliving what we were up to, One Year Ago.
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August 30, 2010 at 6:50 pm
Jen
I had fun too! And I’ve added a couple of places to my “maybe someday if I happen to win the lotto and I can afford taking half a year off work”
One curiosity: how much did this all cost? I’m guessing you paid for transport and accommodation up front, and then paid separately for room upgrades, food, tickets for stuff etc?
August 30, 2010 at 7:52 pm
Anni
Glad you liked it
Plus we took our own tents and sleeping gear so you can imagine it all added up to quite a lot!
We paid up front for all transport and accommodation, yes. Then we paid another amount into a “local payment” from which group meals were bought. We paid individually for meals when staying in hotels, entrance fees and room upgrades. Visas and any travel insurance/docs etc were at our cost too.
If I remember correctly, it was £2000 each for the up front payment then another £750 each for the local payment (don’t forget we only went part of the way so the full London-Sydney people paid a lot more!). Then there was the spending money..
August 31, 2010 at 1:02 am
Jen
Thanks, that’s not bad at all for 6 months… considering I just paid £200+ for a 4-day trip in London (plane+hotel) it’s actually amazing!