FAQ - What Have We Learned?

We've already gotten a good number of questions about our travels so far, but the question of "What have we learned...?" has been the most frequent and hardest to answer due to the number of different ways you can come at it. We'll cover the other questions too in a different post, but I thought we'd spend some time just on this one question for this post. 

• Overall
• The biggest take away of the trip was importance of our friends, family, and community. We missed them more than we thought we would, especially near the end of the trip.
• The importance of hospitality and generosity. Some of the best experiences we had were due to others' generous hospitality. It's something that we want continue to model and improve on in the years ahead.
• Personal
• We learned less about ourselves and each other then you might think. We did reaffirm some things we were pretty certain of from before, but for the most part, maybe due to our age, we've reached a stage where we know and are comfortable with who we are
• We still sometimes need our own "me" time
• We still still need to work on being less selfish 
• We still prefer staying places longer because we get exhausted and stressed very easily when we're jumping around too much. We don't like change, and there are just too many details to figure out when you're constantly on the move.
• We liked blogging more than we thought we would. Katie especially found it fun and even therapeutic. 
• We developed more of a taste for wine given that the beer selection in Australia and Thailand was either poor or very expensive.
• Katie has grown more fond of cats thanks to some recent positive experiences. 
• We really liked having a grocery store or two that was within a quick 10 minutes or less walking distance. We may look for such a luxury in the future.
• Skills
• How to drive on the opposite side of the road 
• How to drive with two people on one motorbike 
• How to cook Thai food 
• Katie can use her physical therapy skills to help with my occasional dental problems 
• How to surf on fake waves
• How to better surf on real waves too
• We got pretty good at playing Hanabi 
• Travel
• How to navigate the Melbourne and Sydney public transit system
• Finding a budget airline like JetStar can be extremely helpful when piecing together a multi-flight trip on a budget. 
• Don't sit near the bathrooms on an airplane if you can help it
• If people are being obnoxious on your flight, it is better to do something about it, like politely asking them to stop, instead of holding it in and being bitter/annoyed all flight.
• Having a working map/gps on your phone that works offline is extremely helpful when traveling.
• Finding a church to temporarily plug into is a great way to make some valuable connections in the areas you're visiting.
• Always double check your directions/address/contact information. We learned that lesson the hard way.
• Airbnb is awesome (thus far)
• Wool clothing really does work well for traveling light.
• General
• Australia's craft beer scene is really young
• Australia doesn't have pumpkin puree
• Australian footy is really fun to watch
• The Melbourne/Sydney public transit is great 
• Deep water solo rock climbing is awesome!!!
• It's definitely cheaper to eat out in Thailand than to make your own food. And it's super delicious too
• Thai massages are quality
• Medical/dental stuff really is quite cheap in Thailand. We can see why medial tourism is so big there.
• Hawaii doesn't have sand flies... yet. They used to not have mosquitoes either, but they were accidentally brought over in the 1800's. But even so, they weren't as bad as we're used to.
• Chromebooks are just okay. They work well for doing stuff on the internet. But they do not work that well offline. So even though that situation of being offline is really rare these days (probably even less than 5% of the time) I would still not consider them a good replacement for a normal laptop, at least not for our needs.
• Things we wished we would have learned or are still working on
• The secret to work/life balance
• The secret to never being stressed
• The secret to always being happy/content in all circumstances 

I'm sure there is more I could add, but that's already a pretty decent list. Apparently we learned a lot. So I'll just leave it at that for now. If you have any questions and/or want to learn more from our experiences, feel free to let us know. We'll be happy to give any advice that we can.

Cheers!