The Adventures of Jim & Rhonda

Some of you have been wondering about our day to day life on the road. Let me assure you it is NOT a typical vacation. You’ve all done them, you get up early, drag yourself to the airport, sit for hours, board your flight, finally arrive at your destination after hours and eventually get to your hotel later that day. But then, if you’re at a beach destination or staying in one spot you’re pretty much set. Well, every 2-4 days we’re doing one of those “travel days’.

Mind you, we are not complaining! We dreamed of this trip for years and are thrilled to be living out our dream. However, this is different than any trip we’ve ever taken before. We have 3 types of days: chill days, sightseeing days, and travel days.

Travel days are the worst. NOTHING ever operates on time and, other than international flights, you’re told a wide range of times, generally something along the lines of 3-8 hours. We’ve now taken planes, boats, trains, buses, sleeper buses and motorcycles and I’m sure the list will continue to grow. A travel day normally starts with us getting up around 6am to get breakfast before our transportation for the day. Whatever time they tell you you’ll be leaving you normally actually leave between 1 and 11/2 hrs later. We’ve gotten stuck in the muck on the boat, had flat tires on the bus and .. once, even had them stop so they could wash the bus! The seating is usually not geared towards westerners so we’re often crammed into seats, which are occasionally just wood benches. For the bus rides you must deal with either the tv on full blast with kareoke playing or, at the very least, the CONSTANT horn honking as traffic is navigated. Usually 7-8 hours after we left we arrive at our next town. Then, the fight to get away from the hotel touts awaiting to actually get transport to our first choice hotel. I’ve normally done some research and have 2-3 hotels in mind so we must convince the taxi driver we do NOT want to see his hotel (where he gets commission) but want to go to the hotel you want. We have sometimes looked at 5 hotels before making a choice, a couple of times we went with the first one. I always wait with the bags while Jim goes in to inspect the rooms. By that time we’re usually just ready for some dinner and bed!

The second type of day is a sightseeing day. This can start from 4:30am to 8am depending upon what we’re seeing. These days are usually very interesting and are one of our favorite types of days. Occasionally you end up seeing something not so great but overall it’s at least always great to get out into the countryside and see the local villages and greet the people.

Chill days are just that…when we take a vacation from our trip. Mui Ne , here in Vietnam, was our last one. 3 days of doing very little except napping, swimming, watching the sunset, etc. They are the most like a real vacation and are really helpful after a country such as Cambodia where the history and poverty are in your face 24 hrs a day.

So, that is it, our life on the road… lots of sightseeing and travel days intermixed with a few chill days every 5 weeks or so to recharge our batteries.

Thats us, living the dream!!! Cheers, J&R

U

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 at 2:11 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.