Final Trip Numbers: GENERAL STATS and FINANCES

So we are finally getting around to writing our wrap-up posts. It only took a month and a half after our trip finished. The next few days will feature lots of random statistics. Get ready because we’ve got a lot of numbers coming your way. You will hate us by the end…

GENERAL STATS

• Days on the Road: 300
• Number of Countries Visited: 21 (Japan, South Korea, China, Thailand, Cambodia, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, England, Turkey, Greece, Germany, Italy, Austria, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Iceland. We only had a night layover in South Korea, a quick train ride through France en route to London, and a longer-than-expected layover in Iceland, but a passport stamp makes it official that we visited.)
• Different Languages: 17 (Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai, Khmer, Bahasa Malaysia, Bahasa Indonesia, Maori, Turkish, Greek, German, Italian, Czech, Dutch, Icelandic, English)
• Hottest Location: Tokyo, Japan
• Coldest Location: Istanbul, Turkey

FINANCES

• Total Money Spent on Day-to-Day Costs: US $23,515.90
• Average Spent Per Day: US $78.39 (We are so overwhelmingly proud of this number. Sure, it doesn’t include flights, but everything else is in there—lodging, food, trains/buses/ferries, and tons of ice cream. We were well under budget for the trip. If we ever do another around-the-world trip, we will definitely be a bit looser with the budget since we stuck so closely to it this time. We never felt like we didn’t do something that we really wanted, but more activities will be on the agenda next time.)
• Number of Times We Used an ATM: 37
• Amount Spent on ATM Fees: US $74.00 (We never got charged a foreign transaction fee by our bank, but we always got hit with a US $2.00 fee per withdrawal. We tried to withdraw large-but-not-too-large sums of money to minimize ATM fees.)
• Different Currencies Used: 16 (Japanese yen, South Korean won, Chinese yuan, Hong Kong dollar, Thai baht, Cambodian riel, American dollar, Singapore dollar, Malaysian ringgit, Indonesian rupiah, Australian dollar, New Zealand dollar, British pound, Turkish lira, euro, Czech koruna)
• Most Expensive Day: US $466.57 (Sydney, Australia. This day won the prize because we did the Sydney Harbour BridgeClimb. We are super glad that we did it though.)
• Least Expensive Day: A three-day tie of US $0.00 (Bali, Indonesia; Sunshine Coast, Australia; Tuscany, Italy. We are proud that we didn’t spend any money on these three days thanks to free lodging, pre-bought groceries, and the generosity of friends and family.)
• Most Expensive Country: England (It’s a hard call between this and Australia, but we found lodging and transportation to be a bit pricier in England.)
• Least Expensive Country: China (Where else can you buy a gigantic bottle of water for US $0.22?)

Two Random People from Our Group, Us, and Ali Atop the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Sydney, Australia. January 2011.