There’s been a slow rumble building inside me for awhile over inaccurate reporting on flu vaccine safety, but today while watching Inside Edition (I know, I know, don’t ask) it exploded. A few weeks ago they aired an episode about Desiree Jennings, a NFL cheerleader. In the report, they claimed the seasonal flu vaccine she received ten days earlier caused a serious neurological disorder, Dystonia. Today they kindly let folks know that the viral youtube video of her was falsely altered. Thank you Inside Edition. Now, can you also let your thousands of viewers know that most neurologists, including those from the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation, believe the woman isn’t suffering from Dystonia at all, but a psychogenic disorder (meaning it’s psychological). Please also let those viewers know that her doctors are banned from speaking publicly about her diagnosis, which makes her and the socially irresponsible anti-vaccine groups free to say whatever they want.
Ok, so let’s set a few things straight because folks are confusing all sorts of matters that are not related. This business about Dystonia occurring in 1 of every million flu vaccinees is bunk. Total BUNK. It has NEVER been associated. Never. People are confusing Dystonia with an association seen between Guillain-Barre syndrome and the 1976 flu vaccine. With that particular vaccine (the 1976 vaccine), there appeared to be 1 extra case per 100,000 people. The underlying incidence of Guillain-Barre in the population is 1-2 per 100,000. Several studies have been conducted since, and it’s a mixed bag. Most studies saw no association, whereas two found that the seasonal flu vaccine was associated with 1 extra case per 1 million people. [Seasona Flu Vaccine Safety. CDC website, accessed 02 November 2009]
So, what should you do? Well, you weigh the risks. It’s estimated that seasonal flu hospitalizes 750 people for every 1 million. What you don’t do is confuse the facts.
Ok, now let’s get to what’s really on everyone’s mind–safety of the novel H1N1 vaccine. The 2009 H1N1 vaccine is built on the same construct as the seasonal flu vaccine, which means it should have the same safety profile. Thus, it’s not likely to cause any adverse events but there is the chance that 1 person out of 1 million *might* suffer from Guillain-Barre syndrome as a result of vaccination (again, several studies found no association but two did). [H1N1 General Questions. CDC website, accessed 02 November 2009]
What I’d like you to get from this post is that public health officials are being honest with you. They’re trying to give you the facts so that you can make a knowledgeable choice. It just irks me that socially irresponsible people take that and twist it into a fear campaign. If you’re in one of the high risk groups (pregnant, aged less than 24 years, or immunocompromised and aged 25-64) you should really get the vaccine.
Don’t be fearful of a smart choice. Any questions?
I’ve been putting off writing this post for awhile. I’ve been waiting until I could write it in a positive note. Well folks, I don’t know when I’ll reach that positive point. So to spare you a negative rant from reverse culture shock, I’m going to tell you about the fortunes told to us before starting our trip.
During Chris’ birthday two years ago, our good friend read our fortunes. This was before we really planned to set out on our travels. It was suppose to be just for fun, but she read wildly different fortunes for us and they stuck with me. For this particular reading, she asked us to think of a question we wanted to know from the cards. At the time, I didn’t think we’d ever manage to travel around the world. From the time I was old enough to flip through National Geographic, traveling to far-off places was a dream of mine but I was about to give up on it. (As a side note, don’t ever give up on your dreams—they’re worth it!) So, I asked the cards whether we’d ever travel around the world. And guess what? The luckiest cards came up. It’s not possible to read a better fortune than mine that night. The position of the cards and their alignment could not get luckier.
And Chris’ fortune? Well, the unluckiest cards came up. It’s not possible to read a worse fortune than Chris’. I immediately started peppering Chris with questions. What did he ask?!? How could our fortunes be so wildly different; we were connected, weren’t we? Much later that night, after enduring an onslaught of my obsessive behavior Chris finally relented and told me his question. He’d asked about our happiness. This perplexed me. How could we travel the world AND not be happy. Those two don’t go hand in hand, in my mind.
A rational person might forget these fortunes; they’re hogwash after all. But, I’ve never claimed to be rational. For whatever reason, I believed in them. It wasn’t until our return, however, that I fully grasped their possible meaning. My fortune was about our travel and Chris’ fortune was about our return. His fortune foretold employment, economic, and relationship hardships—all things we are experiencing now.
Divided by nearly 3,000 miles, Chris lives on one side of the coast and I on the other. It is difficult to be separated after spending 24/7 together. We were never apart during our travels, not once. My friends joke that if we can make it through spending every day together and now 24/7 apart then we can make it through anything. I sort of think that’s true. This year of our return will be a challenging one. We’re both unemployed and living frugally while watching our savings dwindle. Perhaps, it will be more challenging than our year spent traveling but I’m confident we’ll make it. In the meantime though, I hope our fortune changes.
What about you, have you ever had your fortune told? And, did you put any stock in it?
Admittedly, I don’t have a good memory. Usually, I wouldn’t be able to tell you what we did yesterday let alone last year. But, I think this past year might be different. Unlike some travelers, we never really lost track of time or place. I think this is because each day presented such new, unforgettable challenges.
A year ago today, we left the city of Cuenca in Ecuador for Loja. In our blog, we described our disastrous hike in Loja in some detail but I noticed that we didn’t write about Cuenca. And, I wondered why. Our introduction to navigating the Cuenca streets was one of our more frustrating moments; perhaps that’s why. But, I remember it just like it was yesterday.
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We left the blue-footed boobies behind in Puerto Lopez to head to Cuenca. The total bus ride was suppose to take 10 hours. There is a reason that I look so happy in the “happy bus” post from Peru; the Ecuadorian buses were not what you’d call comfortable. On our original trip out to Puerto Lopez, the bus carried so many people that Chris had two people sitting in his lap (no joke).
After finally arriving in Cuenca after 10 hours of bus travel with no bathroom breaks and only a bag of chips to eat, we were tired and cranky. We decided to splurge for a taxi. With around 100 taxis parked in the bus station parking lot, it didn’t seem like a difficult thing to catch one. But, oh no, nothing is simple. And, on this particular day there was a taxi strike.
Our Spanish was pretty limited, so it took us a good thirty minutes to even get the fact that no taxis were running. Another thirty minutes later we finally figured out how to take a bus closer to the center of town. As we exited the local bus, the rain started. Tired, hungry, cranky, and soaked never add up to happy. Mix that combination in with splashing through the mud-puddled streets of Cuenca looking for lodging and coming up empty-handed because the first two places our guide recommends don’t exist, and my poor husband nearly had a meltdown on his hands.
No need to worry though, we clearly survived the tribulations of the day. I’m just not one to sugar coat things. Some days the deck is stacked against you, and our arrival into Cuenca was one of those days.
Cuenca’s underlying charm soon warmed us over. We wandered her cobbled streets and admired the ancient churches. We chatted up a famous hat maker and sipped hot chocolate while watching it pour outside. In essence, we made the best of an otherwise dismal day nearly a year ago today.
Okay, sorry for the delay in our writing; we’ve been busy adjusting to our life back in the states. But, I hope you are now ready for the extremely exciting and much anticipated budget post.
When we were researching our trip one thing that we could not find was any type of good world travel budget. We found a few calculators that ran simulations, but they really didn’t contain a lot of information about how they came up with their figures. I thought that it would be helpful for future travelers to see what we paid for the countries we visited. So, for every day of our travel I made a point of writing down exactly how much we spent and inputting all of our costs into an excel spreadsheet. I really recommend this even if you are not planning to share the information at a later date. It really helped us when we were budgeting in country and it also came in handy when we couldn’t understand what we were spending our money on. We also would do a daily check of our wallets and reconcile that with what we spent the previous day. So, when we noticed money missing in Cambodia it was really easy to see exactly how much was taken. Anyway here is a rundown of some of the figures, and here is the complete spreadsheet if you want to check out the data in more detail.
I broke out the daily cost spreadsheet into six categories (room, food, transport, entertainment, internet, and miscellaneous costs) but for this post I am lumping entertainment, internet, and miscellaneous into one category since their cost were smaller and they fit better together than separated. All of the costs reported are for two people and in US dollars, unless noted.
Room
Most of the time we stayed at hostels, think very cheap hotels. We usually stayed in a double room with a private bathroom. However, on a few occasions (when private rooms were too expensive) we stayed in dorm rooms or with families.
So, for the 282 days of travel we spent a total of $4,221.94 on rooms. That is an average of $15.69 per day. Russia was our most expensive country at $28.66 per day, and Mongolia was our cheapest at $8.76 per day. This was mostly due to the 12 day tour where we stayed with local families every night. Staying in the Mongolian capital was much more expensive.
Food
We mostly ate out, not at fancy restaurants but small local places. If we stayed at a hostel that had a kitchen we would try to cook a few of our own meals to help keep us on budget.
We definitely did not eat at the fine dining establishments so our costs stayed pretty low. In total, we spent $3,323.54 on our meals with an average of $12.36 per day. Argentina was by far the most expensive at a whopping $19.28 per day and Mongolia cost us only a measly $7.29 per day. Just as a reminder, these figures are all for two people, not per person.
Transport
Transport consisted of busses, planes, trains, taxis, tuk tuks, boats, mopeds, and pretty much anything you can think of that would get us around. What this category doesn’t include is our transcontinental flights.
In South America we took busses for our long haul travel while in Asia we traveled on a combo of trains and busses. We only took two in country plane trips on our whole journey (one in Argentina and one in China). In South America we spent $20 per day on transportation. South America is huge and we spent hours and hours on those busses. In Russia we spent a lot on our Trans-Mongolian rail trip, about $600 per person. But since we did the trip DIY, we saved a ton of cash; train tickets through an agency cost at least $800 per person.
Miscellaneous
The miscellaneous category includes anything else that is not included from the above categories, basically everything from our Internet cafe visits to visa fees. In total, we spent $2185.56 in miscellaneous items with an average of $8.12 per day. The majority of the expenses seem to be associated with visa fees. Here’s a list of visa fees we incurred (again these are for two people).
Bolivia: $270
Cambodia: $40
Vietnam: $70
Laos: $70
China: $260
Russia: $129, $48 (invitation letter)
Tours
I split out our tours from our normal costs. I figured that this would give future travelers a better representation of our daily expenses, and they would be able to adjust their budgets by how many tours they were expecting to take.
Here are some of our more memorable tours:
- Photographing Blue Footed Boobies in Ecuador: $110
- Hiking the Inca trail to Machu Picchu in Peru: $1,039.33
- Exploring Uyuni Salt Flats in Bolivia: $242.50
- Visiting the Perito Moreno Glacier in Argentina: $108.81
- Exploring the Angkor Wat ruins in Cambodia: $242.50
- Motorbiking through the Central Highlands in Vietnam: $391.29
- Inner Tubing in Vang Vieng Laos: $21.39
- Visiting the Elephant Nature Park in Thailand: $142.86
- Hiking the Great Wall of China: $60
- Living with the Nomads in Mongolia: $306.80
The Final Breakdown
We originally estimated spending between $60-80 per day. We knew certain countries like Argentina, China, and Russia would be more expensive. We ended up paying an average of $70.83 per day. Here’s our daily costs per country.
- Ecuador: $43.56
- Peru: $55.79
- Bolivia: $81.67
- Argentina: $80.71
- Thailand: $41.71
- Cambodia: $50.20
- Vietnam: $32.20
- Laos: $42.80
- China: $62.67
- Mongolia: $44.57
- Russia: $128.49 (A lot of this cost is due to our train travel and short amount of time that we spent in the country)
We really kept our costs down by not taking very many flights. Here’s a breakdown of our international flight costs (for two people).
Seattle, USA – Quito, Ecuador = $1,166
Buenos Aires, Argentina – Seattle, USA = $1,166
Seattle, USA – Bangkok, Thailand = $1,446
Bangkok, Thailand – Hong Kong, China = $337
St. Petersburg, Russia – Seattle, USA = $1,200
The Total
At the end of the day, our total payout for the trip ended up being about $25,260. For two people traveling over nine months, I think that is a pretty good deal.
Originally we planned to continue on for a few more months after Russia—traveling to Egypt, Jordan, and Africa. We dreamed of visiting the ancient cities of the Middle East and taking safaris on the plains of Africa. But as with everything in life, plans often change. We decided to shorten our trip by a few months and once that decision was made, my lovely wife chose to serenade me nearly every day with Simon and Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound”. Just reflect on that for a moment; I’m sure you’ll feel my pain.
Our decision was based on quite a few factors. And after being back now a few months, we don’t regret it at all. Although we will say this, traveling is a heck of a lot easier than returning home. Culture shock doesn’t even begin to explain it. Plenty of folks wondered why we changed our plans, so read on for the details.
Family
There just happened to be a number of family events that we really wanted to help celebrate. Jodi’s oldest sister and youngest nephew were both celebrating milestone birthdays (the fortieth and the first). A big party was planned with the whole family renting a cabin and having a weekend getaway. Plus, her dad was finally retiring from teaching, a retirement that he has been threatening for the last five years. Upon finally pulling the trigger, we were hard pressed not to be there for this historic event in his life. It was such big news even the local paper wrote about it.
School
Before our travels, Jodi started working on her master’s degree at John Hopkins School of Public Health. The original idea was for her to work full-time and go to school online at night and on the weekends. But once she quit her job to travel, it gave her the opportunity to go full-time on campus and get a better education. It also would cut her course time down from three years to a mere nine months. And by going full-time and finishing up sooner it would save us a significant amount of money on tuition. We originally planned to be back just two weeks before school started. However, we spent more time in a few countries than originally planned and we were running out of time. A whirlwind tour of Africa was just not what we wanted to happen. If we were going to spend all this money to see the African wildlife we were not going to rush it and that is exactly what would have happened. Plus, we thought that by coming home a bit early it would give us some extra time to make the move to Baltimore.
Money
Although we had enough money to finish out our journey, I got a little freaked out by the bad economy. Safaris are seriously pricey, and we would be pretty well tapped out by the time we got home. So, by ending the trip early it would give us some cushion room in case of any unforeseen expenses. Who knows how long it would take me to get a job when we returned. (We’re now 2 months and counting….)
Traveling
But I think that the main reason we stopped was not totally due to missing our family, school obligations, and money issues. What it comes down to is that it was just time for us to head home. While we could have continued on, our hearts were not fully into it. And going off to exotic locations that once excited us but now seemed ho hum was not what we wanted. Africa and the Middle East will be there for our next adventure. Stay tuned….
