Orn's Travel Blog

Now that we are about to leave South East Asia for China I started thinking about what we have gained – and lost – during the trip.  It is difficult to pinpoint exactly since most of the gains are memories and experience and other internal stuff but I gave it my best shot.

Gained:

• Like any tourist we have bought a few souvenirs, not too many since we have had to carry them, but a few – and a few presents as well.
• So far we have gained over 1,300 photos and videos that we didn’t have before.  I’m especially excited about the videos that I plan to edit and post here when back home.
• We have gained a few items of tailor made clothes.  Suits and shirts and dresses that we hope that will still fit us when we get back.
• Surely the biggest item that we have gained is experience and the peta bites of memories that we are storing from the trip.  Traveling on our own for three months has been a great experience and hopefully we have matured a bit – wishful thinking but one can always hope :)
• It is invaluable that we now have more appreciation for the things that we have back home.  Both seeing so many that are not as privileged as us and also just being away from everything that we have have taken for granted has definitely given more appreciation of everything we have back home in Iceland.

Lost

• We have lost combine 11 kg of body weight.  Without really trying the weight seems to fall off.  I credit this mostly to proper portion sizes since we are eating all food – fried, baked, roasted, candy, ice-cream and everything else.
• Surely we have lost (or rather invested) a few thousand dollars.  I would say though that the trip hasn’t really been expensive and definitely well worth it.  Maybe we’ll calculate the real cost when we get back home and post it here on the blog.
• In the annoying bus incident I lost a wallet, gaffer tape, a flash light and one thousand krónur so that must be accounted for.
• After the bed bugs attack Elínborg threw away her sleeping bag so that one is definitely lost.  She also washed her purse and then left it outside in the sun to dry and someone took it by mistake so the purse can be written on the bed bugs as well.
• We were quite happy to loose the white/gray skin color that we brought with us.  It has, at least momentarily, been replaced by darker/browner color.  I hope that we can bring some of that color back home but we’ll have to see what China has to say about that.

So if we balance the books I think that we have gained a lot more than the few items that were lost and most of them we were quite happy to get rid of (grayish skin and fat).

Tomorrow we’ll be flying to Hong Kong for a couple of days and then it’s China baby!

Happy Easter everyone!