While Simon writes...

...Rosie runs!

And she's working up to a 10km run in December in aid of Age UK - oh, and she'll be dressed as Santa Claus as she does it.

She would be very grateful for your kind sponsorship which can be made via her personal donation page at www.doitforcharity.com/Rosellen

Photos to follow after the event!

Moving On...

Sadly, all good adventures have to come to an end, but although we have returned to the UK, we have not yet slipped back in to our old lives and are still unemployed and homeless.  I am therefore graced with a large amount of free-time and since our return, have been able to fully re-immerse myself in the joys and frustrations of creative writing. Along with my continued studies at the Open University, I intend to squeeze at least a handful of short stories and poems from the piles of novelty notebooks that will inevitably pile up around me, so that I may set them free into the world via my new blog at www.whatiwritewheniwrite.blogspot.com. Please do check it out and subscribe to the email alert list at the bottom of the page.

Many thanks and happy travels!

The United States of America

The USA is not a country you can visit for a couple of weeks, take a roll of photographs and say you've truly been there - that you've experienced the place and are ready to move on.  A few trips may begin to reveal suggestions of its true identity yet even a lifetime of exploration would probably fall short of knowing what the word America really means.  That said, I doubt many who have lived their entire lives in the States would claim to fully "know" the country.  And this isn't just because it is so huge, being the 3rd largest country in the world - to drive from coast to coast would rack up some 3,000 miles - but because it contains one of the widest varieties of climates, landscapes, natural habitats and geological features on the planet. And then there's all the man-made stuff too - whether you're staring up at all 443 metres of the glorious Empire State Building in Manhattan, or looking down at a steaming bowl of home-made chili in a century-old diner in New Mexico, this country really has it all. There is that somewhat condescending statistic that claims x percent of Americans have never left their own country.  Yet, to be honest, with so much on their doorstep, they don't really need to.

Having only covered a tiny portion of its immense sprawl in the 160 days we spent there, I can still conclude that it is the nation of extremes, of immense variety and endless possibilities. A single day's drive can see you crossing a scorching desert plain with a missile test facility on one side of the road and a vast array of bright white snow-like sand dunes on the the other, to then arrive at a towering mountain range through which tightly wound roads will lead you up to heavenly snow-capped forests of sun drenched pine and herding deer.  Later that same day, you could arrive in the shimmering desert oasis of neon that is Las Vegas with all the noise, alcohol and flashing lights you could ever expect to find in one place. The next day, while traversing another seemingly endless vista of sand and rock, you'll notice a sudden convergence of high powered speed boats gliding down the dusty freeway, pulled behind 4x4 pickups. The road will drop, slip between a deep gap in the rock and reveal a mammoth lake of minty blue. Sparkling in the desert sunshine, its perfect surface being carved and sprayed wide by jet skis and roaring motor boats.  At the far southern end, where the rocky horizon drops and meets the water, the vertiginous concrete face of the mighty Hoover Dam will tumble 221 metres down to the Colorado River.  Follow this same river north and you will soon arrive at the Grand Canyon, if you have saved enough 'oohs' and 'ahhs' and space on your camera, that is.

If the 3,000 mile coast to coast drive isn't on your agenda, throw £100 or so at Expedia they'll email you a plane ticket to New York, or Boston, Chicago, Orlando, Seattle...anywhere you could want to go, and a few hours later you'll find yourself in another corner of the country with a thousand more reasons to say 'wow!'.

I could ramble on for hours about why the USA still reigns as my favourite country, but I'll try and achieve this in ten(ish) words before running through my usual (and final) post-country synopsis:

1. American Beer (but definitely not Budweiser et al.)
2. Road-Trips
2. Manhattan
3. National Parks
4. Route 66
5. The Grand Canyon
6. Incredible Food
7. New Orleans
8. The Old West
9. Sun Studios, Memphis TN
10. Clarksdale, Mississippi, birthplace of the blues.

Country Synopsis

Likes:
The Yanks seem to be the butt of the world's jokes far too often. But brush aside the stereotypes and you'll realise that as a nation, in general, they really are an incredibly nice bunch.  Yes, many people hold their conversations at a volume loud enough to be heard across a crowded room let alone a small table, but the truth is that they're just a lot more confident and outspoken than us Brits. You'll therefore see strangers sparking up conversations on a crowded subway train after someone shamelessly asks for help with their journey. On the other hand, step aboard any London Underground train at rush hour and a bloated silence fills each car, accompanied only by the tinny overspill from iPod headphones. I even read a London travel guide for foreigners that suggested talking on the tube might encourage frowns of disapproval from fellow passengers. Human interaction in the States feels a lot less stunted than in the UK.  Yes, the ubiquitous chants of 'how are you doing today' and 'have a nice day' that echo around the checkouts of shops and supermarkets might sound robotic and insincere, but at least people are looking one another in the eye and interacting, even if it is at a superficial level.  That aside, we found that there really was an unlimited supply of people happy to say howdy, hey, hi or hello, even in the big cities. You really get the sense that they are incredibly proud of their nation and are often more than happy to talk to visitors and offer them a friendly welcome.

Another aspect of the country that we found thoroughly refreshing, was the concentration of independent (and successful) shops, bars and restaurants, especially in New York City.  The high streets of twenty first century London seem to have succumbed to the buying power of large corporations that push repetitive, formulaic and thoroughly unimaginative establishments into every corner of our lives. Conversely, New York, for example, has clearly resisted the soul sapping business men and women in suits in favour of a consumer-choice led culture of creative small enterprises.  Each bar, for example, is completely unique, offering a different theme or interior design.  In Britain, a handful of chains own most pubs and bars, and even those with their own name will often look and feel exactly like those around them.  At the next level, tiny craft breweries then have chance to get their foot in the door, allowing for a raft of local beer choices no matter where you go, all at affordable prices.  In many areas of Brooklyn, finding a Bud Lite or a Corrs is almost impossible.  Instead, you're greeted with rows of beer taps (sometimes even a beer menu) offering brews with names like "Coney Island Amber" and "Brooklyn Blast".  As if to prove our point, a recent beer-run to a UK supermarket left us staring blankly at the wall of Stella Artois, Carling, Carlsberg, Kronenburg 1664 and the other typically British (or European) flavourless, gas-filled chemical concoctions that dominate. 'I don't really want any of them,' I remarked.

This "undiluted marketplace" means that eating out, whether you want to spend $5 on meal or $50, will almost guarantee you a good meal.  Food really is part of the American culture - and I'm not just talking giant portions of meat and fries.  Good food is just part of life over there. Restaurants that have been open for fifty, sixty, seventy years, still pump out the same food, using the same recipes that your Grandpa ate as a boy; and still Grandpa visits, surrounded by his children and his children's children.  The quality of food, of simple but delicious meals, sees many restaurants attain an almost holy level among its devout locals.  It is so great to see and makes eating out a real adventure rather than a simple necessity.  In the UK, so many chain restaurants, in the pursuit of driving down costs, have resorted to microwaved, boil in the bag, fried brown dishes void of flavour and, sadly, void of soul.

Dislikes
Unfortunately, the USA as a whole seems to be a bit too much red, white & blue and not enough green. Yes, the world's greatest superpower is very much behind in the fight against unnecessary waste and pollution.  Take a trip to the local out of town supermarket (and I'm thinking back to the many we visited in the South West) and even on the way there, you'll notice that a surprisingly large percentage of vehicles are enormous gas guzzling pickups, with a giant 6 litre V8 engine up front, a tiny soccer Mom behind the wheel and a large flat bed behind. Now when we Brits think of a pickup, we might picture a reasonably sized van with a single bench seat and few tools in the back, but these things are immense, like the designer has just enlarged the whole thing until it completely dwarfs the humans its designed to carry. During one part of our road trip, I counted one lorry, two trucks and one "normal" car for every 4 vehicles.  At times, in certain towns, it seemed as if the pickup was the only vehicle in existence.  Now this is fine if everyone lives on farms and spends their lives crossing vast dirt roads of mud and puddles...but they didn't and they don't.

So, we've battled through the throng of school-run pickups and made it to Walmart.  I'm going to withhold comment on the aisles of multi-coloured E-number laden cereals, super sized bags of chips, sugar pumped fruit juices and shopping carts without rear wheel steering, and skip straight to the check out. Leave it to the employee at the till and your shopping will, literally, be loaded into an almost laughable amount of free plastic bags, sometimes to be handed to you with just a single bottle of soda or a loaf of bread inside. Re-packing ten bags of shopping into just two, or better still, putting it all into one bag-for-life, was often met with looks of confusion and raised eyebrows of the "stupid foreigner" variety.

Huge hotels and motel chains churn out mountains of chunky polystyrene disposable plates, cups and plastic cutlery every morning for their "Free Continental Breakfast" which would always, no matter where we were, end up spewing from the nearby trashcan, creaking and popping as the compressed cylinder of foam grew tighter and denser as the morning went on.  Ask for your left-overs "to-go" at any restaurant and yet more polystyrene containers will be piled onto the table for you. Head to a public restroom and you'll be drying your hands with disposable hand-towels that have been produced in a factory, driven to a warehouse, driven to the bar or cafe or whatever, then, when you've polished your hands with a fist-full of them, another lorry will arrive to take them away.  On the odd occasion that a blown air dryer was available, those around me almost always flocked to the hand towels instead.

Now, I'm certainly no tree-hugger but, rather oddly, it seems the UK is way ahead in the fight against land-fill and pollution.

Favourite Day
With so many amazing experiences and sights to choose from, it's tough to point at one single day, but standout moments have been:

• Hiking the Grand Canyon
• Spending an evening at Morgan Freeman's "Ground Zero" bar in the spiritual home of blues music, Clarksdale MS.
• Alligator hunting at the Everglades National Park, Florida.
• Driving the Extraterrestrial Highway, through the Nevada desert, past Area 51 to Rachel, Nevada and then spending the night at the Little Alie Inn, the inspiration for the movie Paul.
• Islands of Adventure at Universal Studios, Florida - Worth the trip for the Spiderman ride alone.
• Cruising the old Route 66, arriving in Winslow Arizona and standing on the corner...
• Bar hopping in Williams, Arizona.

Favourite Meal
Oh my...oh my oh my.  What a choice to make. With the help of a bit of local knowledge and a map of Man vs Food locations, we really did eat our way around the States, and I really believe we sampled some of the best the country has to offer.

Some highlights:

• Gus's Fried Chicken in Memphis - again, a mecca for fried chicken fans around the world.
• L&B Spumoni Gardens in Brooklyn - the most simple yet the most delicious pizza ever.  True Sicilian style - a thick doughy base covered in slices of fresh mozzarella, drenched in a traditional herb infused tomato sauce and sprinkled with olive oil and baked in huge rectangular sheets.
• Putnam's of Brooklyn- the best bacon cheeseburger I ever ate, ever.
• Sisters of The New South - so you wanna eat like a Southerner? Go to Savannah GA and go here. Crispy southern fried tilapia fillets, sweet potatoes, fried okra, black eyed peas and gooey mac'n'cheese.
• Dottie's True Blue Cafe - Okay, so we didn't go to San Francisco on this trip, but a couple of years ago this place earned its title as my favourite breakfast spot in the world.  A forty-five to sixty minute line up the street suggests that I'm not alone.
• Yoder's Amish Restaurant, Sarasota FL - I challenge all to find a bigger and better cream pie.
• Oklahoma Joe's, Kansas City KS - we ate a lot of BBQ but this place wins.
• Stroud's Oak Ridge Manor, Kansas City MO - This place was possibly the prettiest spot we ever ate in. A traditional wooden house at the edge of the Missouri countryside, sat beside a picture perfect pond and teetering over a sweeping hillside, it serves amazing home-cooked southern chow in huge portions.  Get the fried chicken.

Okay, I'm going to single Putnam's out as my favourite overall.  It was our local boozer for two months.  It had a great vibe, served great beers and whether you chose the burger or not, you were never disappointed.

*  *  *

So there it is.  Twelve months, ten countries, tens of thousands of miles by land, air and sea, and the most memorable and life affirming year...so far.

The 365 day holiday ends...

..and brings with it a hefty bout of post holiday blues.

We did end on a high, however - a final hoorah in Brooklyn. We said a sad goodbye to the US beers we have come to know and love, a couple of classic New York cocktails and our favourite bacon & cheese burger of the entire trip courtesy of Putnam's of Clinton Hill.

We consider ourselves to be amateur burger connoisseurs and made a point of sampling several of Time Out New York's latest top ten burgers, including Five Guys and Shake Shack.  All good burgers, we concluded, but this juicy delight, however, trumps them all, along with all other burgers that we have ever consumed.  The cheddar is sharp and thick, the smoked bacon mouth-wateringly crisp to the point that it curls and twists into crunchy knots,  and the pink patty oozes with juices and flavour which sink deliciously into the lightly toasted sesame seed bun.  A cup of golden brown skin-on, twice-cooked fries completes the meal, all served on a thick chopping board and downed with any one of a huge list of draft beers.

Food nostalgia over.  

Sitting on the stoop of our apartment building, we awaited the arrival of our cab with teary eyes.  A short drive later, two very sad faces hovered over  two very expensive beers at JFK airport before we hit the Duty Free for some shop-therapy.

The frowns were soon turned upside down with a last minute free upgrade to Premium Economy.  Extra wide, front row seats with leg rests and a 'cocktail table', giant on-demand TV screens with over-ear headphones, a fillet beef roast dinner served on china plates with real cutlery and red wine in real wine glasses, and enough leg room to stretch right out and settle down to a few movies while the British shore drew ever nearer.

Exactly one year after we were last here, we roll through Heathrow's T5 with a little bit more luggage than we left with, thanks to several New York shopping trips and a penchant for Brooklyn's flea markets.

We now sit in Rosie's Mum's house near Chelmsford, Essex, feeling jet-lagged and rather weirded out by the whole "coming-home" experience.  There we were, enjoying another normal day in Brooklyn, popping to the shops, eating our cereal, watching the morning news, when suddenly someone, somewhere, snapped their fingers and zapped us back to Britain in a few short minutes, as if the whole thing never happened.

When my body and mind return to a fully functioning state, I will try and summarise our epic, unforgettable five-and-a-bit months in the USA.

The end of an incredible year, the end of the road and the end of our round the world adventure.  Yet, somehow, I suspect, not quite the end - not just yet...

Farewell New York

The bags are packed and the cab to JFK is booked.

Not much to say right now.  Sad day.

Top of The Rock

With less than 48 hours left until our 12 month travel insurance policies expire and that big white bird flies us back to London, we headed to one of the most popular spots in the city - way up on the 70th floor observation deck of the Rockefeller Center, 259m (850') above the ground.

It is possibly the best view NYC has to offer, and at sunset, you really wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world:

On the left, Brooklyn sprawls out from the banks of the East River right down to the Atlantic shore.  On the far right, the latest edition to the NYC skyline glistens in the setting sun - 1 World Trade Center, the tallest building in the USA.  Second tallest, the Empire State, has soared over midtown Manhattan since 1931 - it is my favourite NY building.

Once the sun has set, the walls of light surrounding nearby Times Square set the stage for the best people-watching location in the world.  Grab a slice of Brooklyn's own "Junior's Cheesecake" from the take-away counter on 45th Street and take a perch on the famous "red steps".

Rosie kicked my arse with her selection here.  While I stuck to the the classic plain cheesecake (which was easily the best plain cheesecake I've ever eaten) Rosie opted for the red velvet cheesecake - What you're looking at here, starting from the top of the screen, is a layer of moist red velvet cake , a layer of cream cheese icing, a slab of plain cheesecake in the middle topped with another layer of cream cheese, a second layer of red velvet and a final coating of cream cheese icing covered in red velvet crumbs.  Food envy!

Yes, it's touristy and yes it's tacky, but it has to be done.  Them's the rules.

Happy Birthday to...me!

I never knew turning thirty could be so much fun!

Here's how our weekend looked:

Rockwood Music Hall

After sampling a few of Spitzer's Corner's 35+ draft ales, we hopped over a couple of blocks to this famous live music venue in New York's Lower East Side.  With a rotating line up of acts each night across two stages, the guy on the door could not tell us what type of music we could expect to hear, but rather than take $15 cover from each of us, suggested we head into the smaller "Stage 1" bar where entrance was free. Taking stools at the bar and a couple of Brooklyn Lagers, we were treated to six wildly different bands over six amazing hours with each one leaving us applauding loudly and buying up copies of the CD's being sold at the front of the stage.  As the night drew on, the bar became rammed with bodies being drawn in off the street by the incredible music booming out from within.

Highlights included a guy, with an acoustic guitar and a loop recorder pedal, creating haunting harmonies that left us all hushed in awe; a six piece ragtime band from Georgia blowing dirty brass rhythms and taking us back to the roaring twenties of Dixieland America; and a heavily bearded banjo player who looped vocals, distorted picking and banjo body drumming to electrify the room with a pounding, inventive sound like nothing I've ever heard - Seasick Steve meets Led Zeppelin meets White Stripes meets Hot Chip, and at one point, a big ol' Indian Bangra shindig:

Enigma: The Show

Having seen three Accomplice shows so far, we would definitely call ourselves fans of this new genre best described as "interactive street theatre".  The latest incarnation to hit the New York City streets, "Enigma" presents audiences with a missing person mystery and sends them off into the leafy Brooklyn Heights with a map and a few initial clues.  Along the way, various madcap characters leap out of the otherwise placid neighbourhood and draw you in to small improvised performances which eventually lead to the next clue. Part walking tour, part treasure hunt, the show cleverly integrates elements of local history into its plot and character back-stories, giving a fourth dimension to what could have easily become another copycat venture. The actors' performances were faultless and the characters made so much larger than life that bystanders were either left stunned and open mouthed or, like a group of young children standing nearby at one point, actually ending up being drawn into the imaginary world, wanting to follow us and understand what on earth was going on. It is the closest to being in a movie you're ever likely to get.

Point Break Live!
'I...am...an F-B-I agent!' The one line that everyone in the crammed room was waiting for.  For those that have not seen the 1991 surfing, parachuting, gun-toting, bank-robbing cult-classic action thriller, this will mean nothing to you. But for those who have revelled in Keanu Reeves's unforgettable one liners, developed soft man-crushes on Patrick Swayze's enigmatic surf guru charm or fisted the air at the Ex-Presidents' "stick-it-to-the-man" mantra, this show is for you.  To the joyous roar of the crowd, mimicking all of the film's most memorable lines, a small cast re-create a stripped down version of the movie, live on stage, with Keanu's character, Johnny Utah, being played by a member of the audience aided by cue cards and a stunt double.  To summarise: It was absolutely crazy! - almost like a bunch of school boys re-enacting their favourite movie in the playground, only with a larger budget and the help surfboards, basic scenery, paddling pools, toy guns, rubber masks and blood pouches - lots of blood pouches.

With us and the rest of the audience cloaked in disposable ponchos from our "PBL survival kits", the first surf scene got underway with stage hands spraying us all with super-soaker water guns, the poor soul playing Utah decked in an ill fitting wetsuit and laying on a polystyrene surfboard, and a dude in the background playing Hawaii Five-O on an electric guitar.  The audience was later "robbed" by the Ex-presidents who charged through the crowd with toy machine guns, forcing several people (including me) onto the floor and demanding they be handed the "cash" from our survival kits.  Another scene saw Bodhi and Utah come spinning across the stage lying on their bellies over a couple of stools on wheels, for the famous parachute jump, having leapt from an office desk with a fan clipped to one end (ie. the plane) and rucksacks on their backs. Shootouts involved drawn out battles of grown men making "UH-UH-UH-UH-UH-UH!" gun noises across the entire room, and ended in blood pouches being slammed against foreheads, sending great arcs of crimson dye spraying out over the poncho clad crowd.  I still have "blood" on my new trainers today! Thoroughly entertaining, painfully funny and again, absolutely crazy!  If you're in NY or LA check it out when it next plays - but make sure you've seen the movie first!

Not wanting to get water or blood on my camera, it stayed firmly inside my rucksack.  Click here for a trailer to give you a good idea of the mayhem on stage.


Street Art Walking Tour
The virtually deserted streets of Bushwick become a weekend stomping ground for street art lovers from around the world. On every block, across shutters, fences, walls and doors, internationally renowned artists have given new life to this once drab and lifeless neighbourhood with everything from giant murals to tiny paintings just a few inches wide.  Despite the heat, the tour was fast paced, owing to the sheer volume of pieces in this relatively small area - we even ran into a small group of artists taking a break from a large design they were spreading across the front of a motor mechanic's workshop - all perfectly legally and with permission, I must add (no really, this type of work is seen as art here, and having a beautiful design across your property is something to be proud of).  Other than several famous American names, we saw work by British, Mexican, Puerto-Rican, German, Italian, Irish and French artisits, to name just a few. Bushwick is now awash with spray paintings, wheatpastings, hand drawn designs and sculptures - a reinvention of the urban landscape. Living here, you could not help but be inspired and uplifted by the talent and creativity around you.  Whether it's cute manga-style characters, life-like portraits, zaney imaginary worlds or vibrant slogans paying homage to this great city, New York has it all.  Check out streetartwalk.com.

And finally...

BIRTHDAY CAKE!

Rosie creates a Betty Crocker masterpiece that actually has more E-numbers inside than sprinkles on top

Frequently Asked Questions

With the end of the adventure just one week away, I thought now might be a good time to try and answer some of the questions we are often asked when people find out what we've been doing for the past twelve months.  What we have learnt from this experience is that travelling the world really is very easy, so if we can help or encourage others to do the same, then we're happy to do so.

How on earth did you get a year off work to take this trip?

In short, we didn't.  We both left our jobs.  We get asked this most often by border officials keen to decide whether we're going to start working illegally.  It normally ends in us showing them our bank balance!

What has been your favourite country so far?

Vietnam stole our hearts from day one.  Maybe because it was the first slice of South East Asia we'd tasted, but we really found something there that clicked in both of us.  The food is amazing - like nothing else we'd ever tried or eaten since, the people are genuinely friendly and warm with a great sense of humour, and the place really has everything you could want in a country.  Be sure to check out the blog posts from October 2012 for the full story.  Outside of South East Asia, the USA will always be a favourite for us both.  It's a country you could spend a lifetime exploring and seems, in many places, to offer a better way of life than that which we are used to.

Did you plan where you wanted to go from day one, or did you make it up as you went along?

A bit of both.  We knew which countries we wanted to go to, a few of which required us to specify our entry and exit dates to obtain a Visa.  We had a ferry booked from Japan to China and an additional flight from China to Vietnam was paid for before we left home.  We also had the Gibbon Experience in Laos booked and the beautiful Waterhouse in Thailand reserved for the Christmas week.  Once we started adding a few dates to the diary, everything pretty much fell into place around them.  So once we arrived in a country, Vietnam, for example, we'd book a few nights at a hostel in the city of arrival (Hanoi), then, when we'd decided how long we wanted to stay there, we'd research and book a room in the next town, along with the train tickets to get us there.  So yes, we did have an itinerary, mainly so that we could ensure we got to see everything we wanted to see, but staying an extra few days here or there, or making a diversion to some place recommended to us by someone in a bar, changing plans was always an option.  While the idea of going in completely unplanned is very romantic, arriving in a town without any idea of where you'll be sleeping can leave you with the dregs of the accommodation options - the sort of places that get one star or less on Trip Advisor and the kinds of places that produce the "rats running over the bed" type of horror stories you so often associate with backpacking - you're also far more likely to be scammed in your hour of need or miss out on the best stuff, which often needs booking in advance.

Once we were in Australia, however, we picked up our campervan on day one and had forty days to return it.  We had a big book of camp sites and a pre-paid telephone, and would decide at the start of a day on the road where we'd be going, call a few campsites in that town to ensure they had space and check them out when we got there.  If we liked it, we'd book a few nights, if we didn't we'd move on, or just stay one night and hit the road again the next morning.  There are also many free overnight rest areas at the side of the road and in National Parks that offer toilets, showers and barbecue facilities.

America was very much the same, and other than a pre-arranged fortnight in Orlando with my parents, we went wherever we wanted, whenever we wanted.  We hired a car (essential) and headed to any place that looked nice.  Although there was always a wide variety of motel and hotel options, it was often easier (and in some cases cheaper) to check them out on-line the night before arriving and make a booking.  Again, you won't end up with the cockroach infested establishments if you check out the Trip Advisor reviews and can often find some real gems like the kitsch Route 66 antique, Earls Motor Court.  On the other hand, you can always just roll into any budget motel chain like Super 8 or AMBVI and get a room for somewhere between £30 and £50 for a king sized room with free HBO, a mini refrigerator and free breakfast.

What have been your favourite experiences?

• Three hours hiking the Great Wall of China
• Seeing the sunrise over Angkor Wat, Cambodia
• Sailing over the tree tops at The Gibbon Experience in Laos
• Snorkeling on The Great Barrier Reef, Australia
• The epic USA Road Trip and seeing The Grand Canyon for the first time.
• Living in New York for over two months
• Waking up with my gorgeous girlfriend and having breakfast together...every day, for an entire year.

Did you miss home?
Home, for me, is Rosie, so as long as we're together, I am home.  At times you get nostalgic about certain "homely" things - a snow covered English countryside, a roaring fire in an English pub, etc. but when you think about all the real life stuff that abuts these postcard images - work, miserable journeys in the rain or on steaming hot tube trains, the UK's overcrowded streets and roads etc. that feeling soon fades.  I think returning to the UK is going to be like the first day back at school after the summer holidays - you kind of look forward to it towards the end of the summer break, but once you're back, the excitement fizzles out after a few days and you spend the rest of the year wishing you were on holiday again.

Is there anywhere you didn't manage to get to?
We'd always planned on seeing South America and hiking to Machu Picchu but while booking the round the world flights, it suddenly became very expensive to add this relatively short detour to the route.  Also, it would have cut into our time in other places and we did not want the trip to become too rushed.  Secondly, the USA is enormous and the entire northern half (from Boston to Seattle), along with the West coast, will have to wait until another day.

What has been the most difficult part of the trip?
To be honest, nothing has been "difficult" to the point of making us want to go home.  Certain things became tiresome or frustrating, like having to pack a very well loaded rucksack every few days, or not always being able to eat the food you really crave, and in some cases the slightly antiquated way of life in a few countries became a bore.  Thai train stations, for example, often do not have signs informing passengers of where they are.  So when a three hour train ride ended up taking six hours, and without a single sign telling you what each stop was called, and no train guard in sight, the backpacking adventure got a little stressful.

The tricky part to any trip, I guess, is really just deciding where you want to go and what you want to see.  365 days is a long time, but the world is a huge place, and I would often get the feeling that I was "missing" something.  Travelling as a couple, also, means that if I go ahead and book a dodgy hotel in a rubbish part of town, Rosie has to put up with it too, so there was always some pressure in making the trip as comfortable and enjoyable as possible, whether it be deciding what hotel we stay in or which town or city we visit next.

Would you do it all again if you had the chance?  Would you do anything differently?
I'd do it all again in a heartbeat and really wouldn't change much at all - although I might make it a two year trip instead.  With a little more time, you can really get away from the tourist/backpacker routes and find your own adventures and nuggets of undiscovered paradise.  I also wish I'd invested in a "proper" camera from day one.  We switched up to a DSLR style camera in Malaysia when our less than robust pocket camera filled with dust and fluff after months of constant use.  Although I'm no photographer, having a decent camera has allowed us to take photographs rather than point and shoot "snapshots".

How much money do you need to go around the world?
How long is a piece of string?  Given our advancing years, we always knew we didn't want to take the absolute budget option.  We'd always want a private room over a cheaper shared dorm and steered clear of the rowdy, gap-year backpacker haunts. So, although it could be done much cheaper if you're happy to rough-it a bit, we had around £37,000 between us on the day we left the UK.  Beforehand, of course, we'd paid for the round the world flights (approx. £1,450 each), insurance (approx.£400 each), vaccinations (approx. £150 each) and Visas (approx. £175 each), along with equipment, clothing, rucksacks, mosquito repellents and other essentials we needed to take with us.

So once we'd left the UK, we had a budget of around £100 per day.  Of course, we probably didn't even spend half of this in many parts of South East Asia, where a private room in a hostel costs around £15, a beer 15-50 pence, and two people can eat a large evening meal for under a fiver.  On the other hand, we have also spent over half of the trip in the United States and Australia, so any savings made in Asia gave us the surplus funds to afford the much higher cost of living in and travelling round these two countries.  Rosie, ever the mathematician, informs me that at present, over the entire course of the year, we have averaged a daily spend of £90, including car and campervan hire, petrol, accommodation, food, beer, souvenirs and the postage fees to mail them all home - everything.

How did you save that much cash?
Quite simply, you stop buying s**t you don't need or can't afford.  We have never been ones for relying on credit cards, we don't drive flash cars we don't actually own and we made our own packed lunch every day for ten years before going to work.  Try buying lunch in Mayfair five times a week and see how quickly £100 disappears (in less than a month is the answer).  For many years, we set ourselves strict spending budgets for groceries and enjoying ourselves, and always asked ourselves 'do we really need this?' when shopping.  We switched to pay as you go mobile phone plans (£10 per month rather than £25 for the same number of minutes, texts and data, minus the flashy phone upgrade that, you've guessed it, you don't actually need); we often drank at home rather than going to the pub, we didn't go on holiday for a year and limited our spending on Christmas and Birthday presents - to name a few methods.   All of these small changes really added up and eventually allowed us to live entirely on my wages alone, with 100% of Rosie's head of department salary going straight into the savings pot.  Additionally, the only items on our Birthday and Christmas lists for the couple of years before we left were STA travel vouchers.

How on earth do you pack for a year of travel?
Check out our kit list, compiled just before we left London.  This has changed slightly during the course of the year, with items such as coats, hats and scarves being added in the chilly South West of the USA, and various other bits and pieces of clothing and souvenirs being picked up along the way.  I intend to do another list of everything that comes out of the bags when we get back to England.

What would be your top ten most useful items of luggage?
1. Netbook - Wifi is everywhere these days (maybe less so in Australia), so for researching your next destination, booking hotels and trips and keeping in touch with home - as well as shifting the thousands of photos onto a portable hard drive, a netbook or laptop is an essential item in any traveller's kit list.

2. Travel towel - although many hostels will provide towels these days, in the event that they don't, or the ones they give you are more like a thread bare T-towel, you're going to need your own lightweight towel at some point.  These things are super absorbent and pack down into a tiny pouch so space is never an issue.

3. Travel washing line - A good friend recommended we take one of these, and we are so glad that she did.  Whether you want to hang your swimwear up to dry after a day at the beach, dry a soggy pile of hand-washed underwear or simply need to air your towels, this thing will do the trick.  Ours has been strung across our cabin during our ocean voyage to China, stretched from one side of the campervan to the other as we rumbled along the Australian coast, and hung over the bath in countless hotels and motels.

4. Universal sink plug - When you want to hand wash your clothes in a sink with no plug, now you have a plug.

5. Portable speaker - Travel is not all fun and games and bar-hopping.  You will spend a lot of time just sitting around in your hostel or hotel room, researching your next stop, writing emails & blogs or just hiding from the weather.  So after just a few days in China, only two weeks into the trip, with very few bars around us and nothing but a few flickering Chinese TV channels to fill the silence in our room, we picked up a very fake, yet very cheap, mini speaker.  For all its fake-ness, the sound quality is very good and it even has its own on board FM radio.  We plug it into the iPod for music, the netbook for Youtube videos and Skype calls, and even had it sat on the dashboard of our campervan when the stereo packed up.

6. Good quality mosquito repellents.  We packed a wide variety of these for the various conditions we had to live in - Your average Jungle Formula from Boots is fine for a warm Summer's evening in France, but Rosie has tasty blood and South East Asia is mosquito paradise - we also didn't take anti malaria drugs, so although the risk of developing the disease is actually so much lower than western literature would have you believe, we figured we might as well take the best repellents we could find.

Our most powerful weapons:

• Repel 55 - 55% DEET and good for daily use in malaria zones and areas where mosquitoes are prevalent.  It stinks, but it works.
• 3M Ultrathon SRL-12 - This cream is thick, gloopy and sticky, but during intense physical activity in malaria zones, it won't run off with sweat.  It was developed for the US military and Ray Mears loves it.
• Bugproof Ultra Clothing Treatment - We sprayed our wardrobe with this before hiking in Laos - the place with the highest risk of malaria on our entire trip.  You spray it all over your clothes, including your socks, it dries without residue or odour and stays active even after your clothes have been washed a couple of times. Any mosquito landing on treated fabrics will die instantly.
• Impregnated mosquito net - Again, the bugs will die upon contact with an impregnated net, and after a few nights use, the white mesh of ours was dotted with black splodges where winged bloodsuckers had met their fate.  We chose one that could be hung from a single point above the bed which came in very handy when hooks and nails were absent.  Many nets are box shape and must be hung from four points - if it's too much hassle, you're more likely to leave it in it your rucksack and wake up itching like a mule.

Once we were outside of the malaria zones, we toned down our sprays to slightly less potent products.  So although we weren't humming with the stench of DEET, we did get bitten a few times - it's always going to happen.  In this case, a Zap-it device is really going to save you from the intense itching a cluster of bites would normally produce.  It's basically a tiny keyring sized gizmo that administers a small electric shock directly to a bite.  This kills the histamines that build up under a bite and cause the itch.  It's not as painful as it sounds and feels like being poked gently with pin.  Despite mixed reviews on Amazon, it worked time and time again for us (and my parents are now Zap-it converts too).  We used it in China, Thailand, Malaysia, Australia and the USA.  It even stops the swelling so your legs don't end up looking like bloated pin cushions.

7. Sporks - Sometimes, you just want to eat a freshly microwaved, home-zapped meal, whether that be rice and chili in a motel room in Nevada or noodles and tuna on a mountain top in Malaysia.  Lightweight, strong and much kinder to the environment than disposable cutlery.

8.   Tenguis - Given to us at the start of our travels as a gift by our friends Mai, Yukio & Kaoru in Tokyo, these are a traditional Japanese hand towel made from cotton.  We had no idea that a simple piece of fabric would come in so handy.  Many public toilets in Asia do not have hand dryers or towels - use number one.. When the temperature is soaring, they also double up as a cloth to dab your face or the back of your neck.  Use number two.  And so it goes on.  On our beach side veranda in Thailand, ours became lampshades for the bright white light bulb hanging over our heads.  In the campervan in Australia, they served as ideal covers to protect the iPod and camera sitting in the centre console from the sun and prying eyes.  When a bottle of fizzy drink explodes over your hands, the tengui is there to mop it up.  If you want to protect something in your rucksack, wrap it in your tengui.  If you're hiking and want to have an impromptu picnic, the tengui is there to sit on, or use as a table cloth, or drape over your sandwiches to keep the flies away.  When you've just smothered yourself in sunscreen or mosquito spray and want to wipe your hands clean - tengui!  I'm beginning to sound like a salesman...

9. Re-hydration sachets.  In South East Asia, in Australia, in the USA...it...gets...hot!  You may think you're drinking enough, but that slightly nauseous feeling, that loss of appetite or mild headache - that's dehydration.  Although in its mild form, it won't kill you, and yes, drinking water will help, but it can quickly ruin your day when you're doing heavy exercise or just wandering in the sunshine.  For the sake of a few of these in your pack, you can replace the sugars and salts lost during perspiration and get back on track much sooner.  Pour the powders into a bottle or cup of water, mix and drink.  On many occasions, we were able to pick these up in pharmacies for just a few pence each and drank them all day instead of plain old water.  If you run out of sachets, many travel first-aid kits contain a small scoop that measures out a palatable mixture of sugar and salt to add to a cup of water.  Re-hydration solutions are also vital during intense bouts of diarrhoea and do a great job at preventing hangovers if consumed before going to bed.

10. Travelpacks - Yes, two of the best things we took with us are our rucksacks.  When you think of a large rucksack, you'll probably think of a tall, top loading, camping style sack with hiking boots and a frying pan dangling from it.  But then imagine that the one item you really need is right at the bottom and the only way to get it is to take everything out, and you only packed it all in there an hour ago.  When you're living out of a rucksack, you really, really need a travelpack.  With these, the whole bag zips open, presenting all of your luggage "suitcase" style.  Ours also have handy detachable day-sacks.  We used Osprey Waypoints.  They are expensive but incredibly tough bags.  When your bag is zooming along a packed airport carousel, you want to be able to grab it and yank it without it falling to bits, or when you only have a few seconds to grab something out before a grumpy bus driver closes the luggage doors, you don't want your zip to burst open and pour your belongings onto the road - a year of travel will test every part of a pack, from the adjusters and clips to the fabric itself.  Also, if you're travelling around Asia, don't even think about bringing a suitcase. Trust me.

What was the scariest moment?
Thinking we were in the middle of a terrorist attack in Phnom Penh.  Our room had no windows and the explosions from the market place outside were deafening.  Read the full story here.

Are you different for the experience you have just had?
I'm pretty sure our parents will still recognise us when we get back - we're not dressed in baggy tie-dyed trousers, carrying bongos or anything like that.  If anything, I think we are going to be less intimidated by unfamiliar situations and far more open to new experiences or new ways of living.  We're also used to living with such a small amount of "stuff" now.  We've realised how unnecessarily cluttered our home and lives had become.

Finally, the world is now so much smaller to us and we have really seen that it actually is as easy as clicking a few buttons on Expedia and spending a bit of cash in order to go see it - what's the worst that could happen? If an Englishman has been there before, an Englishman will have already made a complete hash of the language, will have already walked into the kitchen instead of the toilets, will have flicked his chopsticks into his neighbour's lap and will have already asked directions to something right in front of him.  Grab a Point-It book, grab your passport and go see something different - you'll probably love it.  And if it all goes wrong, at least you'll get an anecdote out of it.

What now?
Good question.  We're going to try and get back to Vietnam somehow, to live, study and work, but really, we're open to a wide list of countries if the right opportunity comes along.  We'd love to move our life to New York permanently, but without work, which is hard to get, you can't get a Visa, and without a Visa, you can't get work.  For now, we're heading back to England to outstay our welcome at parents' and friends houses while we get ourselves sorted.

Any regrets?
None.  Well, maybe that we'd done this whole thing sooner. but I also think thirty is a good age to take a break from the routine of life and properly hit the "reset" button.

If you have a question or would like more information about anything at all, please leave a comment below.

For more travel ideas and inspiration, take a look at one of my favourite professional travel writer's blogs - click here

Standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona...

Final Roadtrip - Montauk, NY

We love freebies - In the space of one day, we managed to get a third and free slice of pizza courtesy of Man vs Food favourite L&B Spumoni Gardens,  free tickets to a show - and finally, a free car for the day from Enterprise, having clocked up sufficient loyalty points over the past five months.

With nothing but our flip-flops, some sunscreen, Dolores our dashboard hula girl and the GPS, we were once again on the road, battling through the Brooklyn traffic and heading east out of the City.  Our plan, get from one end of Long Island to the other.  Cruising through the oh-so-affluent Hamptons and the pretty seaside towns that stretch along the South Shore, it was like old times again - the iPod laying down a summery soundtrack, the sun beaming through the trees, and the winding road leading us off into the distance.  Eventually, the slab of land that is Long Island began to narrow.  The ocean slowly crept in from the left and the right until we were driving along nothing but a slither of sand edged with lobster restaurants and beach-side mansions.  When these ran out, the land spread out again in thick forests and scrub, rising steeply to form the easterly most tip of New York and the Montauk State Park where the famous Montauk Point Light overlooks the vast Atlantic Ocean from its rocky perch.

Seaguls swooped over our heads as we trod the sand of the deserted beach, the red and white striped lighthouse peeking through the grassy dunes at us.  With nothing to be heard but the rustling of the long grasses and the gentle pulse of the sea, it felt as it we were a thousand miles from New York City.

Goin' Southern Yawl

Taking the 3 Train north, further north than we'd ever been before, we found ourselves in the centre of Harlem, surrounded by the relics and ghosts of the 1920's jazz boom and the vibrancy and colour of one of New York's most happening neighbourhoods.  A two hour walking tour took us to historic sites such as the iconic (and now converted to offices) Hotel Theresa, where Fidel Castro famously spent an evening with Nikita Khrushchev, and the still thriving Apollo Theater within which great names such as Ella Fitzgerald and The Jackson Five were discovered during its weekly Amateur Night.

Being a massive centre for African-American culture, we were very much looking forward to some more of the incredible Southern style cooking we enjoyed on our last road trip of the South.  Over pre-dinner drinks, we explained to our friendly bar lady that we were heading over to Sylvia's famous restaurant, having found nothing but recommendations for this long running establishment in my Google searches:
'Another round, sugar?' she asked.

'No thank you,' I replied.  'We're going over to Sylvia's for some food but we may be back la....'  Her upturned nose and single raised eyebrow instantly told me what she thought of my plan.

'Honey, if you want real Southern cookin' you don't need to be goin' to Sylvia's.  Sure, it's okay, but it's too popular now, the food just ain't like it used ta be.'

'A tourist trap,' I added.

'Kay,' she called down the bar, to a lady sipping a large glass of white wine.  'Honey, what you think of Sylvia's?'  The same raised eyebrow.  'See what I mean? No, you ain't going to Sylvia's tonight, you're going to Amy Ruth's, and you're gonna get you some fried chicken and waffles...'

'Oh yeeeah,' came Kay's response up the bar as I was handed a scribbled address.

So we went to Amy Ruth's...

Perfectly seasoned and delicately fried chunky catfish fillets with black eyed peas and super cheesy, super thick home-made baked mac'n'cheese - This is the South on a plate.

Doing as we were told, we also ordered the fried chicken and waffle dish.  Now, the Yanks really do sweet and savoury...a lot! - and what sounds to us Brits utterly cuckoo-crazy on paper, often ends up being the most "right" kind of "wrong" you've ever tasted.  Peanut butter smothered bacon cheeseburgers in New Orleans, for example - incredible.  Likewise, once you've got a mouthful of Amy Ruth's moist, tender, hand-fried chicken, wrapped in extra crispy southern style batter, with a chunk of sweet, fluffy breakfast waffle, all drizzled in maple syrup, your life (and taste buds) may be turned around forever.

Q: How much abuse can one pair of Converse take?

A: Just under a year's worth....

It is raining today so one soggy foot called for a new pair of sneakers.

A Milestone

Today the blog had it's 5,000th visitor!

Many thanks to everyone who has visited the site since we started documenting the run up to our adventure way back in January 2012.  Writing blog posts can sometimes take up an entire afternoon but it is a chore made easier by the knowledge that people are actually reading.

Monkey Island Beach, Vietnam

Broadway

Today we were up at the crack of dawn (okay, 8 AM) in order to get over to Times Square and join the line for the thousands of discounted theatre tickets sold each morning by the famous TKTS booth.  Tickets are for performances on the day of purchase only and can be up to 50% less than the regular price.  We really wanted to see the winner of the 2013 Best Musical Tony award, Kinky Boots - mainly due to the fact that the real-life Kinky Boot factory was actually situated in the small village I grew up in, not in Northampton, as the musical and 2005 movie would have you believe - although the movie does show a few shots of our famous Saxon church.  So, although we were intrigued by the prospect of seeing a Broadway musical based on a story from my mundane little village, the recent armful of Tony awards it received have pushed the ticket prices out of our reach ($hundreds) and have driven away the need for any discounts, such is its popularity at the moment.

Tickets for last year's Best Musical Tony award winner, however, were within our budget and, just hours before the show started, we bagged two seats in the orchestra stalls for Once.  Despite having heard good things and seeing a few posters around the subway, we really had no idea what we were about to see.  As soon as we stepped inside the theatre, most of the cast were up on stage singing what sounded like Irish folk songs, all stood around inside a pub - in fact they were actually selling drinks from the "bar" to the audience who could hop up on stage and mingle with the performers as the rest of us took our seats.  The cast took it in turns to play songs, with the actors themselves playing the instruments while dancing and skipping around.  Eventually, the audience members were subtly ushered offstage to their seats before one of the actors called over to a shy looking chap standing in the corner of the pub with a battered guitar slung over his shoulder.  'We haven't heard anything from you yet laddy!' his thick Irish accent leaving no doubt as to where this was going to be set.  The "laddy" slings up his guitar, the house lights go down, and the show begins.  

The next two hours were filled with some of the most beautiful, heart wrenching musical performances I have ever witnessed - lump in throat, goosebump inducing type stuff.  The story focuses on a young disillusioned singer songwriter from Dublin who finds new inspiration in a local Czech immigrant girl, also a musician and songwriter.  So along with their songs of heartbreak and despair, the story is interwoven with both Irish and Czech folk music, all performed live on stage by the rest of the Irish and Czech characters.

If you get a chance to see this in New York or London before it ends, we highly recommend it - the music was so good it could stand up as an album in its own right, the choreography and stage direction was spot on, almost like watching a movie cut from one scene to the next, yet the scenery didn't change once, and the touches of comedy were well timed and well executed without turning the whole thing into a slushy rom-com.

A couple of songs, courtesy of Youtube:

GO CYCLONES!

We recently partook in one of the most American of American pursuits - watching a professional baseball game.  Overlooking the famous Coney Island Funfair and the misty Atlantic Ocean, we sat, beers in hand, watching our local Minor League team, the Brooklyn Cyclones, lose to the Batavia Muckdogs on the third and final night of play.  The cheer leaders cheered, random musical interludes and organ "wind-ups" filled the gaps in play, and various energetic mascots, including a seagull, a king and a pirate, kept the crowd entertained.  Aside from the game, there were competitions, raffles, a fancy dress contest for the kids, a game of apple bobbing and a running race between three poor souls dressed as Coney Island hotdogs. 

Although we were quite confused as to the exact rules of the game, the hand signals and foul criteria etc, and could not understand why the players more often miss the ball than actually hit it, the excitement roused at the satisfying thud of leather on wood and the subsequent sight of the tiny ball soaring out over the field as players run, dive and slide around the bases, was thoroughly infectious.

Let's go Cyclones, let's go!

The Final Countdown

Eleven months down and exactly one month to go.  And what better place to spend it?

It's 30 degrees at midnight, the beers are ice cold and we're at what is arguably the absolute centre of the universe.  New York City is baking.

Every avenue, every street, every sun drenched park and square; the greatest city in the world pounds to the beat of summer, an endless soundtrack broadcast at full volume to the five boroughs and beyond, sent out into the heavy air from a thousand paint spattered ghetto blasters balanced high on the fire escapes of the brownstones, the pre-wars and the walk-ups of this steamy maze of noise and colour.

Be sure to check out the new slideshow at the bottom of the page - every blog photograph shuffled and displayed for your pleasure.