Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handy

Many of our friends have been asking us the same "deep" questions upon our return. Web, of course, can't be serious for a minute and starts answering with Jack Handy-like Deep Thoughts. We finally sat down and put the figurative pen to paper...

1. What was your favorite place?
J: There were too many amazing places to pick just one favorite...Barcelona, Spain, Cinque Terre, Italy, and Santorini, Greek Islands.
W: Cinque Terre, Italy... gorgeous landscapes, beautiful, warm people, and awesome food!

2. What was your most memorable place?
J: SE Asia, although I can't pinpoint an exact city or country. Just watching how people survive with the little they have is amazing. There are poor people everywhere in the world, but to see and to live alongside them was striking; our daily worries are nothing compared with theirs.
W: Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia... to think that wars have been fought century after century, with Buddhist and Hindu leaders taking turns leading the masses from these temples... it was a profound, mystical, moving experience.

3. What have you learned? About the world? About yourselves?
Jaime's thoughts...

• There's no place like home: It was surreal to travel to so many places in such a short period of time; living out of a suitcase and staying in hotels for months is tiring. It was great to come home to our family and friends.
• All work and no play is no fun: In America, everyone is so focused on their jobs and making money. It's great to be successful and make lots of money, but for me, that work/life balance has always tipped more towards having a better quality of life. What's the point of making all that money if you can't spend it and enjoy yourself? I'm as hard a worker as the next person, but if my company is going to only give me 10 vacation days a year, you can bet your life that I will use every last one of them. It makes me sick when I hear about friends who leave vacation days on the table, or have their bosses give them grief when they try to take a week off here or there. This trip has reaffirmed my belief that there is more to life than working and making $. I have tried to get Web to change his mentality; he's already taken a baby step by going on this trip.
• Life is short: Yes, it's a tired cliche, but it's so true. Our 3 months of traveling went by so fast that we wish we had 3 more. We both hope our trip has inspired our family and friends to go out and travel the world. My advice is to go out and experience the things you've read about in magazines, make the time to travel to places you've always wanted to go, and live your life to the fullest. If you don't find the time to do it now, you may never get the chance. It is only a dream right now for us to have the opportunity to go on another trip like this. Our friends think we're crazy, but there are still so many places that we want to see.

Web's thoughts...

• Money may not buy happiness, BUT...: Money may be no guarantee of happiness, but money affords you flexibility and ownership of your life. If we hadn't saved so aggressively these past few years, we would not have been able to go on this amazing trip. If we weren't so responsible with our finances, we would have had more stress with our bills while we were away. In the end, money is only part of the happiness equation, but there's no doubt that having more helps! Now's the part where we have to figure out how to get more...
• America gets a bad rap: Although people abroad seem to "hate" Americans, the smarter ones separate American policy from Americans. Yes, we ran into a number of "ugly American (tourists)", but we ran into just as many inconsiderate Chinese, German, Korean and Japanese tourists. America may not be utopia with its endless consumerism, celebrity-obsessed culture (btw, what's happening with Paris these days?), and inequality, but in the end, there's no place in the world that offers a better opportunity for a driven individual to make something out of nothing. As our driver and friend Dara from Cambodia put it: "To live in America, that would be like heaven. I could work hard, save my money and make a better life for myself and my family."
• American values... the way to go?: Many people touched on the different ways Americans and Europeans approach life. As the Economist summarized, Americans are obssessed with the accumulation of wealth, while Europeans are obsessed with quality of life. As amazing as it is to take this once-in-a-lifetime trip, I'm excited to start work again and get back to building our asset base. Call me American... I want to be rich!
• Beauty is all around us: On this trip, we saw 90 year old Vietnamese rice farmers subsisting on almost nothing, smiling as they drank their tea along the water. We saw Cambodians missing limbs, blinded by land mines, smiling widely at the American tourists whenever they sold their $1 postcards. We sat alongside a mass of people at the Vienna Opera House, sharing in the unforgettable memory of a beautiful evening watching Tosca. We saw tourists and locals alike breathing the beautiful air of Cinque Terre as they hiked the cliffs of the Ligurian Sea. Even in this desolate, soulless city called the city of angels, we are sure that beauty exists. To that end, Jaime and I have decided to try and make the most of our weekends in LA.

Here's a pic of our friends Dara and John admiring the beauty of the pics they took at Angkor that very day as they drove us around, blissfully unaware of what their lives are "lacking". If you ever visit Angkor and need a guide, John and Dara are your guys! They are 2 of the hardest working people we've ever met and we can't thank them enough for our great experience at Ankgor. John and Dara, if you're reading this, we hope you're both doing well.