The Dancing Video

Ok, we've finally got around to finishing our dancing video. We've posted it to YouTube but hopefully you'll be able to view it below. Well.......Enjoy! :)

End of the Road

Ok, so this is it! We’ve been travelling since 6th March 2009 and after all that time on the road, we have finally reached our destination: Australia! It is sad to leave the backpacking behind us, but at this stage, we are looking forward to having somewhere more permanent to live and to have a home. We are currently trying to organise employment.....it’s been a while so we hope we remember how to do everything!

We’ve been in Australia now for 2½ weeks already. We spent the first week in Sydney with our friends Barry and Emily, and then the next week and a half with Conor’s brother John and his wife Kate in Canberra. So far, in our short time in Oz, we have checked out the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House and also managed to get a close up look at some wild Kangaroos bouncing around a hill near John and Kate’s house.

Some facts about our trip......

Time travelling: 6.5 months

Countries visited: 15 (USA, Mexico, Cuba, Jamaica, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, New Zealand, Thailand, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, South Korea)

Miles travelled: Unknown!

No of separate flights: 25

No of different hostels/guesthouse stayed in: 74

Size and weight of our bags: 45L weighing 8-10kg

Modes of transport used: Walking, bicycle, motorbike, horse, tuktuk, car, pickup, bus, boat, tram, train, helicopter, plane.

No of nights spent sleeping on overnight busses/trains/boats/flights: 20

No of rats encountered in our rooms: 2

No of Irish pubs visited: 5

No of weddings missed: 1 (sorry Henry!)

No of photographs taken: 12,500 (that’s 46 GB)

No of embarrassing dancing videos: 68

No of blog entries: 83 (well done to anyone who’s read them all!)

No of old friends met along the way: 13 (Darin, Stan, Cónall, Ena, Fenton & Angela, Marcel, Myra & Graham, Helen & JP, Charlie & Pippa)

No of new friends met along the way: Too many to count, but special mention to the slow-boater in Laos!

Most useful items packed: Laptop, guidebooks....it would have been very different without them

Least useful items packed: Water purification tablets, rain cover for our rucksacks, PADI dive manual (we had to buy a new one when we started the course anyway)

Things we wished we brought: Map of the world (to show where Estonia is!)

Most luxurious place slept: Las Vegas (with Sapa, Vietnam a close second)

Least luxurious places slept: Hut in jungle in Thailand, Four Thousand Islands in Laos, Piste in Mexico

Items lost/stolen: None!

Length of time since Conor last had a hair cut: 7 months (and counting!)

Length of time since our last skydives: Too long!

No of Seven New Wonders of the World visited: 4/7 (Chichen Itza, Machu Picchu, Rio Statue of Christ, Chinese Great Wall)

We will miss:
- Exploring new and famous places
- Complete freedom to go wherever we want
- Some great cheap food and beer
- Not working

We will not miss:
- Brushing teeth with bottled water
- Wearing the same clothes everyday
- Constantly finding new places to stay
- Night busses

Well, we hope you enjoyed reading our blog along the way. As we’ve reached our destination, we don’t intend to keep it going, but fear not, this is not our last blog entry!!! Stay tuned as we are currently working on the video of embarrassing dances around the world and we’ll post it here whenever it’s ready.

The Seoul of Asia

The final country of our travels (before Australia) was South Korea. Admittedly it is an odd destination, it is certainly not on the backpacker hitlist, and we didn’t meet anyone along the way who was going there or had been there. In fact, we never planned to go there ourselves! We originally intended to go to Japan, but when we were purchasing tickets, we found that flights from Japan to Sydney were very expensive and we could save €1000 each by flying from their next door neighbour: South Korea. Along the way, our plans to visit Japan were dropped and so South Korea became the last destination of our backpacking.

We only had five days so we spent the entire time in and around the capital, Seoul. However, the city has a population of 10 million people (that’s half the population of Australia!) so it is quite a developed and built up place, and was easy to spend a few days investigating.

What struck us as odd initially was the distinct lack of English (throughout Asia, we had become accustomed to English signs and menus etc everywhere). Even the Starbucks sign was written in Korean! As mentioned in our previous post, most of the ATMs didn’t have any English – even those that did have some English usually gave us a Korean error message before spitting out our cards (thankfully we did eventually find one that liked our cards). There were also very few foreigners about – of course we were the subject of photos for a few people that wanted to pose with us. It’ll be tough giving up this celebrity lifestyle in Australia!

So what did we get up to in Seoul?

We checked out the N Seoul Tower. A large tower built up on a hill in the middle of the city, which offered great views of the city. But the best bit was definitely the view from the urinals.....check out the picture below! After 15 countries, Conor can safely say that these are the BEST TOILETS IN THE WORLD!

We came across hundreds of police gathering around a central square with riot gear all ready. They looked like they were ready to pick a fight. We asked them what was up but they were really serious and wouldn’t tell us.....but when we asked for a photo they were all smiles :)

We found a parking space for “women only”.

We found a bunch of trees with medical drips hooked up to them (yes, IVs)!

We wandered the streets and observed the many lit-up signs advertising various shops.

We ate some food like the locals. (All over Seoul, they have restaurants where there is a barbeque grill built into the table and you cook the meat yourself. There were not any other white travellers dining in any of the restaurants and it was great atmosphere being immersed in the Korean culture.)

We visited a Palace and appreciated their old Korean style architecture.

We checked out their National Museum and found an impressive collection of old tanks and aircraft (along with a bunch of other stuff).

And Korea has a laser show of its own......a mist spray provides the surface for their enjoyable 3D projection along a river in the middle of the city.

Yes, Seoul turned out to be a worthwhile destination and it was nice to spend a few days in a place that we knew nothing about and had absolutely no expectations.