Asia Overview

After spending the holidays with our family and welcoming another addition (baby Peter!), we set out on our South East Asia adventure! Here is a brief itinerary.

Travel Dates: January 8th - March 4th 2015

• Hong Kong
• Taipei, Taiwan 
• Cebu, Philippines 
• Boracay, Philippines 
• Bali, Indonesia 
• Yogyakarta, Indonesia
• Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 
• Singapore, Singapore
• Bangkok, Thailand 

Our budget for this trip was $14,000 broken down like this:

Flights: $4400

Accommodations: $5000

Food/Fun: $4600

After researching multiple airlines and ticket sites for cheap multi stop tickets, we slowly realized that our budget might not be appropriate. The cheapest tickets we found online were around $4000 per ticket, $8000 for two. Alan to the rescue! He found an awesome site, airtreks.com. With airtreks we were able to cut our ticket prices in half to around $4400 total! That's for 12 flights! All you need to provide is your destinations and they will do the rest for no charge! Highly recommended.

For our accommodations, we relied on Airbnb and Agoda. We kept our budget tight and usually searched way under budget to splurge on areas we knew we wanted a nicer accommodation, specifically Bali and Singapore. 

We planned well in advance for our trip. Alan planned the sights and activities while I planned out what delicious and unusual things we had to try ;).

Our bumpy start

Departing from Orlando we were super excited for our adventures! Everything was prepared and ready, all bags were packed. On the ride to the airport we start listing off everything we packed, and eventually figured out that we didn't pack our GoPro!!!!!!!!!!! After making a few calls to the house to search for our GoPro, no one could find it in the house so there was not point in going back to get it. Solution... buy another GoPro (after Pear gave Alan the pissed off faced and the "I can't believe you forgot it" face).

Ok, everything was good, bought another GoPro, checked in, went through security, made our way to the gate, and.........our flight was delayed, for 2 hours! The first thing I did was calculate the time we would have landing in Chicago and transferring to our international flight, roughly one hour. Obviously airlines would be smart and check passengers with connecting flights right...to make sure that they all go on their connecting flights smoothly especially when it is an international flight...WRONG!

We landed in Chicago and sped through the gates like our life depended on it. Seeing a bunch of people do the same thing we had in our minds "rest assured, they can't leave 20 plus people.. impossible. " POSSIBLE. We all lined up through security and by the time everyone was there, the officer stood up and said the flight had already departed. WHAT? Um... we had 20 minutes!

Everyone was dumbstruck and started questioning the officer and he said to go deal with your flight operator. The thing is... it was 1am, if this was an international/ non american airport, of course you would be able to find your airline counter open. But this was Chicago, in the middle of winter at 1am. We were told we were rebooked on the next flight going out to Hong Kong, and that luckily that flight was in 12 hours. ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?! After the crap you pulled, do you think any of us would believe that the airline was so kind to book all 20 plus passengers that they left behind on the next flight??? Without issuing us another ticket, just letting us sit on our asses until 7am until the airline counters open?

They were so kind as to give us a $50 hotel voucher but that was basically it. So we waited, slept in the airport, and were first in line when counters opened. After Alan told the officer what had happened, she was nice enough to upgrade us. Finally, we were on our way to Hong Kong, just twelve hours behind schedule. This is our reoccurring lesson from our trip as you will read on through our adventures, if something goes wrong, it will get fixed for the better.

Stay tuned for our first stop, HONG KONG! 

We're Back!

After a long hiatus (nearly a year), we are back! YAY :). So for the first post from our overdue update, lets recap South Korea.

Korea conclusion

It was a bittersweet feeing as our days in Korea came to an end. We survived one year in a foreign country teaching English! We accomplished a lot in the year and time flew by fast. There were definitely highs and lows as the days went by, but overall it was a positive experience for the both of us. Would we teach again? Yes. Would we teach in Korea again? No. Let me explain. 

If it is your first English teaching position, then Korea is one of the best choices. Most positions will only require you to have a bachelor's degree, but your application would be greatly enhanced with a TEFL certification. Most positions will provide roundtrip plane tickets, accommodation, and health insurance. The salary you will earn will be around 2,000,000 won per month depending on your location. So the package was good, and since it was our first teaching gig, it was the route we chose. 

Why Korea wasn't for us

Let us start with stating that this is solely based on our own experiences. We know many people who have enjoyed their stay and others who have continued teaching in Korea since we left. A large factor for us were the people, both Korean and Foreigners. The majority of expats living in Korea were straight out of college, single, and younger than us. We were the old married couple, so interests and experiences were obviously different. For Koreans, it was a lot harder for us to make relationships outside of our coworkers mainly due to language barriers. Even with our coworkers, there was a separation between the Koreans and non Koreans, so it felt very forced.

Another factor was the food, and this definitely was in relation to where we were located. If you were located in a bigger city, then your experiences might be different. As you know, I am a huge foodie and Korean food although good, was somewhat repetitive. I missed the depth of flavors of spices and herbs found in other types of cuisines. 

Some awesome things about Korea

Korea is a beautiful country. We started exploring the southern and eastern parts of Korea but unfortunately never made it up north pass Seoul. Public transportation is on time, comfortable, and clean. It is one of things we miss dearly from Korea. Another is their infrastructure. Korea has one of the fastest internet speeds in the world and you can have internet basically anywhere. 

Goodbye Korea hello SE Asia! 

After our one year contracts ended in Korea we headed back to USA for the holidays. Our plan from the moment we started our Korean adventure was saving enough money for our south east Asia trip. Stay tuned for our SE Asia adventures!