What a year! We visited 4 continents, explored 28 countries, and traveled a total of 64,000 miles in 11 months. It is hard to really put the entire experience into words, so instead the data nerd in me will lay it out by the Numbers. Hopefully my fellow nerds will enjoy it and maybe it’ll even be enough numbers for a certain math teacher to write new word problems for her class ;). Now, onto the data!
Oh the Places We’ve Been
We’ve been travelling together now over over 10 years and I decided to make our map show all of our travels, including 35 countries, 21 US states and 4 Canadian Provinces. The blue (and one orange since we arrived to Japan in 2023) were all of the new countries for us in our travels last year.
Our original plan included more of Africa and some South America, but we decided to seize a few travel opportunities with family and friends and one of our favorite travel vloggers. I am thankful we only book a month or so ahead so it was easy to adjust our itinerary. Also we were able to get advice from Mr. Wander’s Aunt & Uncle while we were in Thailand, who had recommended Laos instead of Malaysia. I am glad they did, Laos was beautiful and so relaxing, plus so much delicious food!
I looked back at our initial list, and was thinking we hadn’t intended to visit that many countries, but we had 27 countries on there! Most of the first few months, other than Laos, are the same, since the entire itinerary was pivoted around our Mt Everest trek to be in April as that was our highest priority. The funny part is one country we never intended to visit was the UK, and we went back 3 times, exploring England, Wales and Scotland. It actually became the country we spent the most time in, a full 10 weeks. Our shortest is a tie between France and Slovenia, as both are only about 12 hours each, as we were just transiting through via train or ferry.
The one country I probably wouldn’t spend that much time in again was India. I am glad I went, the cooking class, Taj Mahal and visiting my friends were the highlights, but perhaps if we had spent less time in cities it would have been more enjoyable. Some of those on the lower end we just got a taste, especially Slovenia, Singapore, and Belgium I could spend more time exploring.
Planes, Trains, Automobiles, and Bicycles
It’s crazy to think that we traveled over 64,000 miles last year, that’s more than 2.5 times around the world! If you remember my last numbers post we had already transited over 30,000 miles after just 4 months. Proof that we did learn to slow down. While flights are still the highest mileage, that only accounts for about 71%. About a third of our train journey was in Japan alone, and most of the rest was gallivanting around Europe.
Our longest flight still remains the inaugural flight from Minneapolis to Tokyo which was 5980 miles. The next longest was our other ocean crossing from Amsterdam to Curacao, 4870miles, and narrowly winning bronze is our only business class experience from Seoul to Singapore at 2980miles. We flew on 45 different planes and one helicopter across 16 different airlines, and two were propeller planes.
We had 7 layovers, 2 multiday stopovers in Doha and Singapore, and 2 single night stopovers in Bangkok and Cairo, and the most amazing part? Zero lost luggage, and we even checked our bag most of the time! We had chosen our bags so that we could have avoided checking on nearly every flight, however I did have scissors and often could only find the large size of contact solution, so we were forced to check. I did get used to checking the bags and almost prefer it, it’s much less hassle to get through the airport and less stress when boarding since we don’t have to find space for our bags. Sometimes you can feel the desperation of fellow passengers!
The coolest flight experience was our business class flights between Seoul, Singpore, and Chennai that we likely never would have sprung for without use of our airline points. We don’t ever do premium cabins if we are paying for it in cash, we might get to the age eventually where we don’t want to suffer with little sleep in the back of the plane on the long haul flights, but for now we like to save to be able to fly more often.
Miles to go before we sleep
Last time I shared a “number of beds” statistic, however, this gets a bit fuzzier this side of our trip to Scotland because our bed moved. While we sometimes had to book accommodation for parking the campervan, we didn’t need to pack and unpack our bags, which is the more exhausting part of moving beds. If you count the campervan as just one, it was 141 different beds for an average of 2.6 nights in each bed. Our longest is the campervan at 28 days, then two weeks each in Cardiff, Wales, and Panama. We had several single night stretches, a full month between Himalayas and the Camino hikes where we moved every night.
For the full travel experience, we let ourselves suffer through 6 overnight transits, although one did let us sleep most of the night. This was the ferry from Japan to Korea, which could probably be counted as a 1 day cruise, since we had our own cabin with beds and were served both dinner and breakfast buffets. We had two overnight trains, one was quite comfortable yet cozy with Mr. Wanders parents and us tucked in a cabin from Ljubljana to Zurich. The other Mr. Wander and I had to ourselves, but the tracks were more bumpy and I was feeling ill on the route from Hanoi to Hue in Vietnam. We had one overnight bus in Türkiye since the flights were not very convenient. The last were our two overnight flights, Minneapolis to Tokyo, and a red-eye from Bangkok back to Tokyo that again was a cost vs. comfort decision.
All about that Dough
So let’s get into some of those costs. We weren’t specifically trying to keep under a given budget, but we had hopeful numbers and were always mindful about offsetting costs with points to pay for hotels or flights and travel style. We were not trying to hop around between countries too much as international flights are usually the most costly part about travel, yet we did visit both Thailand and UK three times.
Three of the top four categories are what you would expect, lodging, flights and food. The fourth category is multi-day tours which includes the cruise in the Mediterranean with our parents, the G Adventures tour in Vietnam and Cambodia, the guided hike in the Himalayas, and a few others. It accounts for 17% of the budget but less than 15% of our travel days. While these include lodging, transportation, and most of the food, it does cost more to travel this way, as you are paying for the convenience and for someone else to do the travel planning. I think this had a profound impact on how much on average we spent per day in a few of the countries.
Switzerland as the most expensive country is no surprise. Italy and Greece I would have put more in the middle but because we visited parts of these countries on the cruise, the per day amount increases drastically. Vietnam and Cambodia are again two that I would have expected to be around $100 per day or less but because we had a dedicated guide for the entire time plus drivers and travel planners, we paid the price of convenience.
Japan is one that could be lower, but because we moved around so much we had opted for the rail pass, that added about $65/day. The U.S. dollar was very strong against the Japanese Yen so most of the hotels we picked were about $50 per night and food was very affordable, plus we enjoyed plenty of 7-eleven dinners. We did pick one fancy Ryokan that was the size of an apartment, with our own private outdoor onsen, so we’ll splurge every once in awhile when we feel it is worth while.
Cyprus would normally cost much more per day, but we managed to get all our meals for free as well as the hotel room paid for in points, so we only bought 2 meals and 2 taxi rides, making the cost per day abnormally low. We were also recovering from the cough we got from the Himalayas so we didn’t zero exploring.
Overall, if you do not count the multi-day tours, we spent on average $92 per night on hotels and $50 per day on food for 2 people. It is amazing the lodging works out this way, but I think we tried to spend less than $100 per night when we could, and limit anything above $200 or use points where possible. $25 per day per person for food is actually pretty good, but it helped that we did so many grocery or convenience store meals, and tried to pick hotels with free breakfast. I told Mr. Wander that if this was actually a food blog, that number would be much higher than $50 ;).
Less About the Numbers
For fun I decided to include some quick questions, more qualitative data if you will, answering some things we were asked while visiting friends and family over the holidays.
Favorite Cuisines?
Japan, Turkey, Germany (mostly the beer), and Spain
Favorite Food Experience?
Green Curry Gnocchi in Laos
Yakiniku in Japan, cooking Wagyu beef and veggies on grill at your table
All of our cooking classes: Japan, Vietnam, India, Italy, and Panama
I could probably do a full post on our favorite foods from each country, let me know if you would like that!
Weirdest Food Experiences?
Singapore “soft boiled egg” was a lightly poached egg served with the water and a side of toast
Escargot served as appetizer in Japan prior to Shabu-shabu meal, had to google how to eat it. Still better than soft boiled egg from Singapore
Most eye opening experience?
Travelling with Egyptologist on cruise, who made history come alive
Himalayas were so picturesque, stunning natural beauty
Easiest City to get around?
Singapore and Amsterdam, you can just tap in and tap out with a contactless credit card on metro trains and buses.
Most Unique Lodging
Ryokan in Japan, Temple Stay Japan
Where do we need to return to spend more time?
Singapore, Japan, Slovenia
What is something you have learned
Mrs. Wander travels through her stomach, and we both like more of a balance between visiting cities or more remote areas, plus we prefer to be in more walkable cities.
Next Time
We have ventured out for lap two, this time exploring the southern hemisphere, starting WAY south! We left the extremely cold Minnesota winter to experience summer in a place that is still pretty cold, but most of the inhabitants only dress in tuxedos. Let me know if you figure it out. Also, if you have a question you’d like to ask please put it in the comments below or send us an email, and I’ll update the section above. See ya next time!
Leave a Reply