The Times, They Are A-Changin’

Well, Indi and I did what needed to be done and did some number crunching. And plans are going to have to change.

Here is the rough breakdown of how our daily expenses have gone per country:

New Zealand: $100/day (we went a little nuts with an unexpected Fidelity deposit)
Indonesia: $66/day
Malaysia: $81/day
Thailand: $64/day
Cambodia: $46/day

Our original budget of $40 a day didn’t hold, even in the places where our dollar stretched the furthest. Could it have? Sure. But we made a decision awhile back that we’d rather not pinch pennies and stress out about money and sacrifice our experience. If we wanted to get a place with A/C, we looked for a good deal and took it. Plus we lost a good chunk of money when our former renters moved out unexpectedly and a decent amount of repair work had to be done. Self catering was a lot more difficult than we’d anticipated, too.

After seeing that we’re nearly halfway through our starting money, there’s not really any way we’re going to make it to Europe this time around and do it right. We don’t want to come home with fumes in the tank and will probably have to cut things short after finishing China, Thailand, and Myanmar once Japan is done with. Depending on how cheap we can get an Air Asia flight, we may be able to squeeze England into the mix on our way home.

This makes me a little sad, but not overly so. Yes, it’s not the two year extravaganza we’d hoped for but it’s not ‘THE END’ by a long shot. I’ve looked into getting teaching jobs abroad and they all require some type of bachelor’s degree; nothing I can do about that while I’m traveling. Plus we feel a bit selfish for taking so much time away from our family.

We aren’t sure when that brings us home. Probably close to the one-year mark in March/April. As things get more solid, we’ll let everyone know of course.