Chronological Disasters of the Trip
1) Finding out I'd been booked on a non-existent connecting flight to LA after ten hours in transit, Washington Airport, USA.
2) Chicken Pox. All of it.
3) Tingling feet and hands and sleep talking side effects of anti-malarial and anti-altitude sickness meds, Peru.
4) Every time I had to get up to catch a 4am flight.
5) Discovering my chicken was raw as I was eating it, Cusco, Peru.
6) Climbing the Inca staircase of doom at 3500m elevation and what felt like an asthma attack, Isla del Sol, Bolivia.
7) Being soaked in Arctic air conditioning for 12 hours, overnight bus La Paz-Uyuni, Bolivia.
8) Being served the grey chicken that had sat unrefrigerated on the roof of the 4WD in 45 degree desert all day.
9) Arriving to San Pedro de Atacama after three days without proper shower access in the desert, only to turn on the shower and have no water come out because the water was shut off for the rest of the day.
10) Wearing only one sweater on the open ocean ferry ride from Manly to Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
11) Innaloo, Western Australia. Every second we were there.
12) Having to change bus stations three times with zero helpfulness on the part of the locals in 45 degree weather with 97 percent humidity and Mehron getting heat exhaustion, Miri, Malaysian Borneo.
13) Discovering I'm allergic to bed bug bites. Three times.
14) Mehron losing all her cards, Hoi An, Vietnam.
15) Typhoon drenching us and having heat exhaustion bordering on fainting, Hanoi, Vietnam.
16) Accidentally entering Jordanian territory without a visa stamp at 5am, Amman airport, Jordan.
17) Everyone I met who went there getting robbed, Barcelona, Spain.
18) 9 hours of periodic vomiting due to food poisoning, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
19) Giving out the award for most disgusting toilet of the trip to the non-stop Cairo-Aswan train, an award you don't want to give out to a toilet that makes you literally decide it's a better idea to hold it for 14 hours.
20) Dirty old men touching and sniffing my hair when I'm not paying attention, Egypt and Mexico.
When I was a kid, we took long road trips, cramming our van and driving for days. On the way there, we were all keen and eager to get to our destination. When we saw an interesting detour, we'd agree to see it "maybe on the way back". But on every drive home, we would drive right past the detour, agreeing that we really just wanted to get home already. The moral of the story was to always seize the opportunity and "maybe on the way back" became a reminder of this lesson.
