Around the world in 62 days

Sabbatical is complete - we begin the final Marty on the Map post. A very belated wrap-up on my vibes now I'm back in London (turns out returning to real life is quite time-consuming). The main motivation to actually write this is that I want my globe visualisation to complete my circumnavigation. I really did go all the way around. Can confirm that the earth truly is round and if you keep going east you'll eventually make it home. That feels Wizard of Oz coded.

My single goal before setting out (and the source of my stress dreams) was not accidentally ending up in a foreign prison. By all measures: resounding success.

Highs and lows

A few quick fire categories looking back on the trip in its entirety.

1. Best overall place: China. Just so incredibly unlike anywhere else on earth.
2. Best cuisine: Korea takes it. Variety, banchan, and most importantly bingsu.
3. Highest highs:
   • Bombing down a mountain in Taiwan blasting our personal spin playlist
   • Singing on the back of a scooter on a warm breezy night in Bali.
   • Blasting the Twilight soundtrack in the passenger seat somewhere in Washington
   • Unsurprising parallels with my favourite London activity (cycling home quite fast on a forest bike and singing with the wind in my hair after 1 pint).
4. Lowest low: The 5 hour cursed chinese train with food poisoning, cold sweats, and a lady sleeping on me
5. Most unexpected fave: Gyeongju, Korea - I love tellytubby land
6. Where I would move tomorrow: Hong Kong for SURE. Energy was so great.
7. Worst activity: Keeping all my electronics charged. A neverending slog.
8. Best activity: Editing my camcorder content. It's been so much fun to have stupid videos everywhere we went.

Rewind time

I revisited my first blog to see what I was thinking before I left. Let's take a look back at my goals for the trip:

☑️ Hanging out with people I like in places I don't normally - Travelled with my mum and my lil bro. Nobody got killed, and I even received a rare compliment from George that I was less annoying than he expected. On a real, feel lucky to have done that - it's so rare to have the time and schedule and stars aligning to do one on one trips with people you love!

☑️ Factory resetting my brain - So thoroughly achieved that I could barely log in to my laptop when I got back. I find it so easy to lock into whatever I'm doing and so it was nice to fully cut stuff off so I could discover what I did and didn't miss. Turns out that fundamentally it doesn't matter too much when you dip for a bit.

☑️ Doing some solo shit - I went in treating it like eating vegetables, but turned out discovering a new fave thing. I've always had people I love travelling with, so solo travel never felt like something I needed to do — but geniunely think I'll actively choose to go on solo trips in future sometimes, even if I could drag someone with me. Happy to have discovered that.

Things I was worried about:

1. Having to do things for myself
   • Obviously not a problem, necessity breeds innovation or whatever. When you are forced to deal with the money or the maps you tend to just do it, even when it means having to memorise a new exchange rate each week.
2. It is really hard to know how much you'll miss shit until you do it
   • I thought I would be surprised by whwat I missed, and surprised by how homesick I got or what I was going to wish for. Turns out I am actually quite resilient to not being at home. Only started to get excited for my own bed in the last week or so, which was perfect timing.
3. Balancing how busy to be is tricky
   • I was worried about not accidentally crashing out from doing too many things, particularly when everyone I linked up with was only away for a couple weeks. I definitely learnt about this along the way.
   • It feels so difficult to elect to do nothing when you're surrounded by cool options in an interesting place. But when you don't actively slow down, your body does it for you and you enter a zombie era, scrolling on your phone and feeling guilty for it.
   • Bali was an ideal energy reset at a good time, so I think I've learnt the importance of interspersing locations where it's literally impossible to not do nothing.
   • On this theme, I discovered that long travel days are actually lovely. On a short trips getting a 6 hour train feels long and boring. On a 2 month situation it's a true blessing to know you have 6 hours of uninterupted time to do some nice relaxing life admin, napping, reading, or just miscellaneous phone time - without feeling like you should be doing something else.

Packing review

I had quite an insufferable level of smugness about how well I packed for this trip, its truly not like me to have done so well. My suitcase somehow increased from 15.8kg on day 1 to 21.2 on day 62, perhaps I picked up a ghost on route. Packing for the extremes of 10 degree windy Washington, 30 degree Bali, and Korea where you need to look cool and iconic is quite difficult. For the most part we got by, ignoring a stint of wearing the same pair of shorts 3 days on the trot in Bali.

Suitcase MVPs

1. Packing cubes
   • Can't describe how much these saved me from being overwhelmed by living out of a suitcase. I am so bad at not just shoving things in bags with no order and then getting extremely stressed when I have to deal with the chaos of my past self. Every single thing I brought was in a themed bag with its friends. We're talking individual pouches for socks, pants, trousers, cables, even my hairbrush. NOTHING can be loose.
2. Tide pen
   • Rescued me from many a stain, particularly prevalent when you are eating a lot of red tinged soups in China. Doing the lords work.
3. The actual suitcase
   • Excellent purchase, Antler came through. Buttery soft to roll and did not lose a wheel mid trip. She's a touch more beat up now, but also covered in stickers from every place I visited, I hope she enjoys the accesories.

What I wish I had

Whilst I did surprisingly well living out of a suitcase, I really missed shoes and jackets. Having 2 pairs of shoes for 8 weeks simply stifles my creativity. And not everything I own is elevated by a navy fleece.

What now

I've been back in London for a couple weeks now, slowly slotting back into my life. I'm trying to slowly reset my dopamine levels - it's time to lock back into enjoying the nice mundane things in my day. A little routine never hurt anyone.

A short list of things I am enjoying:

• Being in the same timezone as everyone else. Constant mental maths aside, it's nice to know you're existing at the same time of day.
• My own washing machine. Not using the shared hotel one is truly a treat.
• Home-cooked food and vegetables. My final couple weeks in America made me SO excited for fresh food and normal portion sizes. It's nice to not feel overwhelmed every time you sit down to dinner.
• The sun. I've been to warm places, but London sun truly hits different, it's so vibes to see everyone enjoy it.
• Playing guitar. I've really locked in on teaching myself the guitar with Max for the past couple weeks! So far so good, I had to chop off my nice Korean nails for the privellege so you can tell there is true dedication. Can't play any bar chords yet but we're making ground.
• DIY. This marks my 3rd era of DIY - I tend to do a lot and then have an entire year to recover and forget why I hate doing it. I've been redoing our living room and bedroom setups - it's been really fun to have a creative hobby.
• All my gorgeous friends. The most lovely thing about being back is catching back up with everyone I've missed. Have had a truly lovely week of silly times.

Meanwhile I've been slowly ramping back up to being able to use my brain at work. We started out with a concentration capacity of around 2 hours per day, but we're getting there.

The final question that remains is: where would I travel next? For the rest of the year I think it's time to chill out and enjoy the UK, but next year, we have many options swirling. Another trip to explore more of China and Tibet, a solo surfing trip in Morrocco, a cycling holiday in Europe, the list really goes on and on, I feel so inspired to see EVEN MORE of the world after doing a good portion of it. In the meantime, I'll have to settle for finding a Bingsu spot in London.

Over and out

Blogging complete for now. The unwritten goal of the sabbatical was blogging my way round, and I made it - a little late at points, but we didn't skip a single spot. Writing has been such a fun way to remember things and reflect on the funny/beautiful/silly/dumb bits of the trip, and I feel like I've really found my voice along the way. No longer do I write like I'm still in my english language GCSE class.

So the final agenda item is to say thank you for reading! Particularly anyone who has sent me their commentary on the blogs - it's been really lovely to see what people liked/hated/laughed at and motivated me to keep writing them.

See you around ✌️