3 Months Already!!! – 3 Socks in a Suitcase

We’ve already been traveling for 3 months now! Honestly, it doesn’t seem like it. After this long wandering around, we thought we would make a quick recap and maybe even show you some “crispy” behind the scenes photos…

First of all, the numbers:

1: Doo had one regret: not having bought the picture at the aqua park in Dubai where Julia is just terrified and he is laughing out loud while looking at her. It was a magical moment that will remain engraved in our memories and will always make us laugh so much. 😁
2: this is the number of times Côme fell in the toilets (much to Julia’s despair). And it wasn’t in the pristine toilets of Korea and Japan of course. Nuh-huh. It was in the dirtiest toilets we’ve ever seen. Toilets so filthy, it was even difficult to tiptoe in with our shoes on… 😩
2 is also the number of major stressful moments at the airport (Dubai and Hanoi) and the number of days “off”, where we just stayed at home cocooning.
4: is the number of sleepless nights for Julia. 2 because of night flights (she prefers to stay awake just to make sure she can wake the pilot up in case he falls asleep of course 😝) and 2 other sleepless nights because of the Macha tea she drank or even ate (Macha cookies) after 3 p.m.
4 is also the number of arguments and fights we had but we won’t expand on that…
12: is the number of times we took the plane. We know this because Julia is counting them, or rather counts them down. Every time we land she says: “Only … left” (we keep that number a surprise of course 😉). Yes! Julia is still “slightly” afraid of flying. For every take-off and landing, she’s holding Doo’s hand which ends up soaked so much she stresses… One would have thought after 12 flights her phobia would somehow be attenuated… Well, not yet. She could work as a pilot critic though. She has become an expert acknowledging their skills. “Ah! That one was good! We didn’t even feel it (that we landed)!” or “Seriously! He must have broken the plane this one!?!” (and to be honest, even Doo was glad we didn’t continue on with this plane… the landing gear had had to be broken…).
13: is the number of animal species Côme has fed so far. Cats (Istanbul), dogs (Nepal), turtles (Denpasar), pigeons (Istanbul and Kyoto), fishes (in pretty much every country), deers (Nara), hedgehogs (Tokyo), squirrels (Denpasar), monkeys (Kuala Lumpur and Kathmandu), ducks (Tokyo), chicks (Bhaktapur), mosquitoes (pretty much everywhere) and leeches (Nepal and Bali).
20: is the number of seconds it takes Julia to put away and close her bag now. (“Yeah right…” says Doo… 🤔).
100: that’s about the number of times Côme said he didn’t want to do his homework. He hates doing them and doesn’t really like his new momycher (mom teacher). Despite everything, he is making good progress and is already reading a few small words.
1100: is the number of yen we have spent on the “scam”… That’s about 8€. And yes, at the beginning, we couldn’t understand why the Japanese were playing them. It turned out we caught the virus as well. Particularly Julia. We’re actually quite fortunate we don’t live in Japan. This stuff is really addicting and she would spent all our savings there… We almost won twice though. Really!! We did!! We were a plush hair away from winning. We all believed we had it as the crane was bringing the plush to the hatch and it bounced off the edge… 😭
22,614: is the number of kilometres (as the crow flies) around the globe so far…
Uncountable: are Côme’s moments of sulkiness. There were a fair amount but we prefer to forget them and only remember the good times. We know that this adventure requires a lot from a child of Côme’s age and we try as much as possible to respect his rhythms and needs.
Uncountable: are the number of times Côme put his hands in the water to touch or catch fishes.
Uncountable of course: are the number of incredible moments we’ve lived.

Alright! What about everything else?!

Well, Côme is a great adventurer, except for food (surely a trauma from Nepal). He is very often up for discovering new things, getting off the beaten tracks (even if he really liked our two days off at home) and he adapts very well to all the changes that this adventure impose on him. He is also learning English (despite Doo not speaking English nearly enough for him to really learn).

Julia still doesn’t like insects and other crawling creatures very much, but Doo is still working on that and “organizes” wild explorations as soon as the country allows it. She was our guide in 1 country… Well, not exactly one country, more like an one hour or so in Korea… As much as Côme actually. When he was holding the district maps in Seoul. Apart from that, let’s just say Doo is pretty much a human GPS.

Speaking of Doo, he doesn’t have a hole in his sock, like in the drawings, but there’s a big one in his sweater… we’ll see how long it lasts before it becomes a thread ball once more. The hole is already much bigger than when we left (yes… Doo brought a holey sweater on the trip). Julia expects the sweater to last 3 more weeks. Barely… We are taking wagers.

We walk an average of 8 km per day and Côme is keeping pace. We find it amazing. Sometimes though, Doo is carrying him on his shoulders.

We enjoyed each of the 8 countries we’ve traveled to. We obviously didn’t like everything about them and we could have added “didn’t like” as a category in our ritual, but we wanted to stay positive. Besides, we were much more often pleasantly surprised than disappointed.

We all feel it’s a shame we haven’t had more exchanges with the “locals” though. It’s probably because of our accommodation choices. We’ve tried as much as possible to choose “Homestays” instead of hotels but we quickly realized that homestays were often another way to say hotels in some places and that there were very little interaction with the locals. We also probably didn’t stay long enough in one place to have the kind of interaction we wanted. We hope it will change in the second part of the trip. This is the part that we haven’t planned at all and where we will try to do some “Pekin Express” (a French TV show in which contestants have to be hosted by local people after knocking on their door). Doo can’t wait to knock on some doors… 😅

To wrap this up, as promised, here are some “off the record” pictures… Enjoy!!!

So we always tell you about the visits and the fun stuff we’re doing. We show you beautiful pictures… But there are also some moments we’re not doing much, some moments before or even during the “visits” we are just resting. Here is a glimpse…

There are also the moments where we commute or just travel long distances. We talk about them but we don’t spend too long explaining. They are usually long and not very interesting. So we try to busy ourselves as we can: we draw, write to friends, play dices, invent games, read, write our blog, do homework, watch cartoons…