That Time We Went to North Korea

North Korea, or the DPRK has been in the news a lot lately. And of course, it's not all good. What we see is scary, threatening, dangerous.

Riding the Transsiberian Railway

We are currently in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, having arrived here from Russia on the train. Well, on several trains.

Getting Cultured with Russian Performing Arts

I’ve always liked the ballet. I mean, I’ve always liked the idea of the ballet; I had never actually been before. But I always liked the idea of attending a performance in a classical style of dance that has been revered as the pinnacle of culture and refinement, then returning home to discuss the finer points of music and story over a glass of sherry, a la Frasier.

100 Days of Travel!

We’ve been traveling for 100 days! At just a little over 3 months, we’ve done a lot of walking, adventuring, and visiting people and places. Here are the stats:

Steps: 1,267,281

Kilometers walked: 863 (536 miles)

Best day: 45,000 steps (31 km; 19 miles). Thanks New York!

Cities visited: 28

Countries: 14

Hostels: 13

Friends and Family who hosted us: 8

Hours on buses and trains: We don’t even want to think about it.

Ferries: 4

Cruises: 1

Roller coasters: 4

Mushrooms picked: 5 kilos

Currencies: 5

Languages: 11 (4 we could use, 7 no hope)

Books read: 5

We don’t know about you, but we think those are some good numbers.

While we’ve enjoyed all our travels (for the most part) there are definitely some highlights that we loved most. For Talia, that was our trip to the Efteling (because move over, Disney, this is the REAL most magical place in the world) and mushroom and berry picking in Finland (because again, magical).

Just look at these beauties!

And have you ever seen a more magical place?

Ricky loved renting a car and driving around Ireland and Oktoberfest in Munich.  

He's at home behind the wheel. 

Obviously.

The worst part? Well, you’ll have to wait for another post because this traumatic experience deserves a post all its own. Stay tuned!

Chasing Pigeons: How to Be Happy

It is becoming increasingly clear that the happiest people at any tourist destination, monument, or historical site are children chasing pigeons.

UPDATE: What we've been up to and where we are now

Well, it's been a long time since we've update the blog, and for that we apologize. Life has been crazy the past few weeks. I think we both had forgotten how much fun AND work it is to travel!

Why We Won't Fly

When Ricky and I started planning this trip, we thought we knew what we were going to do. First, we were going to buy motorcycles and ride from Texas to Pategonia. Then, we realized Central and South America were not the safest areas at the moment, what with economic crises, political turmoil, and drug violence.

So instead, we decided to buy a jeep in South Africa and drive all the way north. We quickly saw that this trip would have to be postponed for when we had oodles of money lying around for import and export taxes on a vehicle.

So, we came up with the idea of getting to Australia. It's not that hard to get to Australia, though, so we had to add a challenge. We decided to do it without flying.

See, Ricky and I are slow travelers. We arrange our trips so that we have all the time in the world and we're only regulated by budget. So, traveling across the globe slowly and cheaply is right up our alley, and that meant we had to cut out the travel cheats (aka, airplanes).

We will admit, we cheated once. We flew from Houston to New York, where we would begin our trip. This was mostly due to logistics and finances. We considered taking a bus, but that would take over 2 days and was more expensive than flying. We decided we didn't want to begin our journey tired and grumpy. However, since New York was our starting point, we don't really feel all that guilty for flying to get there.

From there on out, though, no planes. We even took a transatlantic cruise to England to avoid flying.

We've already come across instances where it would be cheaper and faster to fly, but we've passed those opportunities up. In actuality, it's been nice avoiding airports. We've not had to worry about packing liquids or the weights of our bags, or whether they can be brought as a carry-on or not. Instead, we throw our stuff in the belly of a bus and enjoy some free wifi and a nap for a few hours until we reach our destination.

There are definitely ups and downs to this method, and I'm sure we'll discover more as we go along. So far, it's been nice to arrive in a city fairly close to our hostel instead of having to trek through an airport and baggage claim, and then hop in an expensive taxi or a long subway to get to the center of town. We've been able to just keep going without feeling like the journey to our accommodation has taken half the day.

On the other hand, buses take a long time. A really long time. We've taken a bus from London to Ireland, then from Ireland back to London, and from London to Paris. Those are very long rides and hopefully we'll master the art of sleeping well in cramped quarters. We'll definitely be hanging out in buses a lot in the next few months.

It may seem like we're torturing ourselves for nothing, but really there's a charm to riding on ground transportation. You really feel like you're going somewhere. In a plane, there are a few seconds of loud noise and shaking, a couple snacks, and then you magically appear at your destination. On a bus or train, though, you feel the earth under you. You see it whiz by in the windows. You see the change in landscapes and weather and you KNOW that you are traveling.

And for us, "traveling" is more than just being in one city and then another and then another. It's the act of getting there. It's the movement. It's feeling connected to the journey rather than stopping in every once in a while.

So for as long and as far as we can, we are not going to fly. That's just the way we like it.

Finally on the Road....Sort Of.

We left on our trip about a month ago, on July 1st. We had just landed in New York, a first for both of us. We stayed with a friend and had a great time seeing the city.

But....

It didn't really feel like we had started traveling. It's hard to say why. Maybe because we were with a friend? Because we hadn't left the country? Because we weren't roughing it?

Oh well, we thought, our next leg will be something new and exciting and once we leave the US it will feel real!

So we boarded our cruise and enjoyed a week of dirty martinis and 3 course meals and masquerade balls and lectures from astronauts and Broadway producers.  We could hardly call ourselves backpackers at that point either, right?

So we didn't. We couldn't claim that we had begun our trip quite yet. It didn't seem fair, not when we were doing pub trivia quizzes with elderly doctors and snacking on smoked salmon.

It's alright, we said, we'll get to England and then head to Ireland where we'll go see parts of the country that neither of us have seen! It'll finally be something new and interesting!

We arrived in Ireland and went to Ricky's childhood home where instead of dropping off a few things and heading out to tour the country, we stayed and did yard work, helped around the house a bit, brought home the turf, and drank wine with aunts and uncles in the evenings.

And playing fetch with the dogs somewhere in between. 

We attempted to salvage some time and used our last full week there to visit Northern Ireland and then go back down to visit a friend. We stayed in a hostel, like usual, but we also rented a car (not so usual). We enjoyed our freedom and seeing the sites around the parts of the country neither of us knew well, but still it felt like we hadn't begun.

It was lovely, though. 

With a ridiculous amount of ruins for one place. 

After nearly 3 weeks of staying at "home" in Ireland we have begun our real trip. We've left both of our home countries and begun riding buses, staying in 20 person dorm rooms, and familiarizing ourselves with local transit.

And yet...

For the bulk of our time in Europe we'll be staying with friends or family, in homes, with home cooked meals. We'll be visiting cities that are new to me but that are old-hat to Ricky. We'll be eating foods that are somewhat familiar (why do the English serve chips with EVERYTHING!?) and getting away with the languages that we speak. We'll be using a phone with free roaming and lots of data so we don't get lost.

So when does our journey actually begin? When do we start the adventure, the not-knowing, the mystery that travel brings? When will we be ok walking around with just a paper map, using nothing but gestures to find a place to eat?

I'm not sure when I'll feel like we're actually traveling, but for now I'll try to enjoy the weird and wonderful that happens daily, try to find something interesting that makes this place, wherever it is, different from every other place.

What Immigration is Really Like

By Ricky

I have a confession to make. I’m not proud of what I’m about to say, but I believe honesty is the best policy. So here goes:

I have spent most of my life with a bitter hatred towards the United States.

Stranger Things: Loving Places Through People.

One of the greatest, and sometimes weirdest, aspects of travel can be the people that we meet. Magic can really happen when happenstance takes over and random and fortuitous encounters occur. The meeting of strangers can often, somewhat counterintuitively, eliminate the strangeness of a new place.

We abandoned our babies.

Yesterday we did one of the hardest things we've ever had to do.

We abandoned our babies.

On Traveling With Mental Illness

Talia here, and it's time for some real talk.

I have depression. I've been "dealing" with it for about 6 years now. It's hard. It sucks. It's miserable. It hurts people close to me. In short, it's a big bummer that I'd really rather do without.

A New Adventure Begins....Can we do it?

Hey all! Wow, sorry for the scattered posting in the last year! We've had ups and downs as we've been planning and preparing for our next adventure.

We've been working a lot to save for our next trip and it's FINALLY HAPPENING!

Are you ready for it?  Here it is!

A Very 2 Feet Wedding Part 3: Vegas, Baby

Third time's the charm, right?

We decided to really make the marriage stick and do it a third time. This time, we headed to Vegas because, why not? 

Spring Break was a perfect time to do it since we'd have a few days to enjoy the city and do fun things. 

We packed up our stuff and our two dogs and headed out in our dented Hyundai for our very first road trip together. Sure, we'd traveled extensively together, even spending over 30 hours on a train together, but this was the first time we'd been in a car by ourselves for a long time together. 

A Very 2 Feet Wedding Part 2: Houston

As you remember, we had an amazing Thai Buddhist wedding ceremony in Bangkok in June of 2015. But we have a confession...it wasn't legal.

Not that it couldn't have been, it just wasn't logical for us to do the paperwork at that time. Here's the deal.

I did a few interviews and began online training for a teaching license. I got a job in Houston and had to leave at the end of July to start training and professional development and all that super fun stuff that comes with starting a new career.

Rick, however, couldn't come with me.

A Very 2 Feet Wedding, Part 1: Thailand

When we got engaged in October of 2014, we knew we wanted a wedding that would be very "us." We also knew that this sort of wedding wasn't going to be very easy on our families, for a few reasons. We had to find neutral territory, both literally and religiously.

Ricky was raised Catholic in Ireland, and Talia was raised Mormon in the US. Neither of us have been truly practicing members of those religions for a few years and were worried about how our wedding would turn out if we went along with traditional expectations, so we really had to think strategically about the how, when, and where we would do it.

We're Baaa-aaaack!

Since it's been nearly three years since our last post, we thought we would let you know what's happened.

2 Feet got married!

We also ran a 10k in North Korea, went camping at the Great Wall, got another dog, were separated for a terrible 6 months, are currently in the US suffering through inefficient immigration red tape, have gotten our first tattoos, and are somewhat settled for the time being.

Dealing with the Side Effects of Long Term Travel: A Failure's Guide

I was in the bathroom this morning getting ready to go to the supermarket with Ricky. I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and some slide-on shoes. My hair went into a ponytail, with a headband to keep back the flyaways. I slapped on some mascara and some deodorant and was ready to go.

And then it hit me.

Nothing has changed.

During the nine months we were traveling I looked pretty much the same—ponytail (when my hair was long enough), t-shirt, simple shoes, tiny bit of makeup, and looking barely presentable to go into public. 

I realized that I was living the side effects of long term travel. They are unavoidable.  Sometimes I find myself forgetting to change clothes after a couple of days.  I have to remind myself to change my shirt. I forget that I can do laundry when I want, and I have enough clothes to wear while I wait for other ones to dry.

And days like today I forget that I’m not traveling anymore and I can actually take a little bit of time to style my hair (though I’m getting close to chopping it all off again), or put on some makeup, or even make better clothing choices.

One thing that Ricky and I both suffer with as a side effect of traveling is that we’ve forgotten the value of money. We’ve used so many different currencies while constantly mentally changing it over to dollars or Euros that we forget what things are actually worth. That resulted in a lot of stupid purchases when we first got to Beijing. We spent 1200 rmb for curtains and 550 for a rug. That’s about $300 dollars that we actually needed to spend on things we, you know, need. 

And it’s a constant thing.  Our priorities are pretty messed up right now, because what we valued while we were traveling (the occasional ice cream, a nice meal to keep us sane after days of fried rice), isn’t what we should value now. We spend too much money on McDonald’s because we can, when we really don’t want to spend any more money than we have to for dog food.

Basically we are terrible people with imaginary money to burn.

 So hopefully we’ll get a handle on this real-people thing we call life and I might actually put on some make up or do something with my hair.

Super Domesticity Girl to the Rescue, Or My Transition from Vagabond to Martha Stewart

Just a couple of months ago, I was on the road. I was hanging out with macaques, eating cobra, and having my arm covered in giant black scorpions. I was riding a motorbike through Vietnamese mountains and taking pictures with endangered species. I was snorkeling in Thailand and wandering through ancient temples. So, with all this in mind, my question is this:

When did I become so damn domestic?

It hit me the other day that things have changed dramatically in my life. I was so proud of my productive morning: I walked the dog, did the laundry and the dishes, and baked homemade bread. And I liked it (well, aside from the dishes part). What the hell happened in my life??

Ricky and I ended our travels because we were a bit traveled out. We were at the point where we just wanted to wear real-people clothes, and be able to shower every day, and sleep in the same bed every night, and not have to live out of a backpack. We were just ready to settle down a bit.

But I had no clue I would enjoy it so much. Since we have arrived, I have loved cooking in my own kitchen, and taking care of the dog, and sitting in my huge armchair in the evenings and watching some TV.  It just feels right, right now. After nine months of traveling, it’s just nice to take a break.

In the beginning of our travels, though, I didn’t think I would need a break. I felt like I could wander the world forever without stopping. I had heard of those permanent vagabonds that somehow manage to hitchhike their way across continents and I thought “I could totally do that! I never want to settle down! I have everything I could ever need, right here on my back!”

However, after 6 months, I was just about ready to call it a day. Granted, 6 months is a dang long time, but I didn’t expect to feel that way so soon. But the stress of travel was getting to me. We weren’t on holiday anymore. I was enjoying it, but it was rough some days.

Even then, it’s a little strange to me that I am enjoying normal life so much. I have a job, I’ll be starting school in a month, and I make homemade pancakes. It’s weird, and it’s not. It feels good and normal. And until Lady Wanderlust calls me again, I think I’ll just enjoy it, because, really, I make some awesome pancakes.