Those of you who have been waiting, the new finances page is up. Until a few hours ago I thought my total was around $18,000 but after clarifying some discrepancies on my spread sheet the total has come to $21,625.45. Just to better solidify my OCD with all of you I’ve added more details, including pulling out shipping and airfare expenses. I know that when planning a RTW trip it can help to see just how much one might pay for a one-way ticket from Cairo to Addis Ababa. One way fares aren’t cheap!

Out of the 37 votes in my poll, the majority (by one vote) was closest, guessing $20,000. Now that I have the magic number I have also flushed out my Phase II Trip Statistics. You can find it here.

Before I left for Phase II, back in May 2006, my first poll was titled Which country are you most excited about?. Now that I’ve been to all of the countries in the poll I wonder if you still feel the same. Madagascar won with 64% of the vote—did it turn out to be the most exciting country I visited? You can see all of my poll results here, and vote for the most exciting on the poll at the right.

When I first returned home it was obvious that most of my readers were anxious for that big number—my total expenses over 14 months. It’s been a struggle to motivate myself to step up to the demands and tally my expenses but I’m finally almost done. It wasn’t an especially difficult or time consuming task—most of you know I write down all of my expenses every day on the road. The difficulty came in facing that number which would most likely be comparable to the cost of a new car.

I don’t have that number for you yet because I’m still adding up Kenyan and Tanzanian expenses and it’s after midnight. But I’m excited that the total is, so far, less than I was expecting. Africa was more expensive than Asia, which was expected, but I’m surprised that I spent so little in Rwanda. While I was there it seemed very expensive but it turned out to have a much small daily average than Uganda because of big ticket items like my $95 rafting trip. I also expected London to be expensive, maybe $70 per day, but my ticket to the musical Chicago helped to boost the daily average to $100. Remember, at that price point I was sleeping on a top bunk in a room with eleven strangers. I won’t elaborate on my $389 tab for one day in The Democratic Republic of the Congo other than to say it was worth it.

In college everyone would go on and on about how I should be on MTV’s The Real World. Of course, this is back when the show was cast with average-looking but interesting people. I don’t fit the mold of a Real World-er anymore, but ever since The Amazing Race came out I consistently hear about how perfect I would be for the show. When I tell people I’ve never seen The Amazing Race they stop for a second and get a confused look on their face. But I love travel, I travel a lot, I even travel to exotic places where they eat fried spiders, alone… on public transportation! How could I not watch the show?

I finally gave in and watched the first two episodes of the new season. Although it’s interesting to see the places they go to I don’t think that it has much at all to do with travel. There have been some instances when navigation has come into play but overall the show is about quickly completing tasks—it just happens that these tasks are in foreign countries. There’s little interaction with locals so far and, to me, navigating social and cultural differences on the road is much harder than pole vaulting over a muddy ditch.

What are your views on The Amazing Race? Does anyone watch it and feel differently? With a little more work in the gym I think I could do well on the show. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from travel it’s that you have to hit a donkey with a stick to get it to run!

Longtime readers will remember how much I love Halloween. Last year I dressed up as a mountain climber and spent Halloween at the Mount Everest Base Camp. Just the other day Sui (the Californian I traveled with on and off in Tibet, Nepal & India) and I were reminiscing about our Halloween adventure. Now we’re both home and can’t believe it’s been a year since I woke up to her vomiting from altitude sickness! I also received a “Happy Halloween” email from Nargiza, my translator in Kyrgyzstan. I wrote her back to see just what kind of Halloween celebration happens in a former Soviet and heavily Muslim country.

Some of my readers requested I continue to post about my Halloween as early as last Spring. This one isn’t as in depth as my 2005 post but I don’t have much to talk about. Every year Christmas decorations go up earlier and Halloween is becoming overshadowed. My friends with apartments don’t throw Halloween parties and are too busy to put together costumes to go out in. Those my age that wear costumes inevitably put on something very inappropriate and not in the true spirit of Halloween. Even the ten trick-or-treaters we got were in uncreative costumes. If you can’t sew it’s still possible to put together something fun and not store bought.

On that note I mention my store-bought costume (made by hand but not by me!) of a Maasai woman. I liked the beadwork in East Africa but couldn’t find a good excuse to buy so much of it without Halloween. I spent an hour trying on different combinations of necklaces in a souvenir shop in Nairobi, Kenya the day before I flew to London. The staff was helpful in helping me choose which combinations worked best but didn’t quite understand why I was buying so much—they had never heard of Halloween.

The headdress and necklaces are from a shop in downtown Nairobi, bracelets are from various markets on the outskirts of Nairobi and both Kangas (cloth) are from Zanzibar. Most Maasai wear a red plaid cloth like a cape but I found the women around the Kenya/Tanzania border more interesting in their adaption of colorful Kangas like the ones I bought in Zanzibar.

My family’s new dog, Buster was more than willing to dress up and play watchdog for trick-or-treaters. I’ve never seen a dog who likes clothes as much as this one. Attentive readers will notice Buster’s cowboy hat from my souvenir page. I bought it in Thailand with the foresight that I would someday have a dog that would wear hats. His bandanna is also trip-related—I used it as everything from a scarf and towel to a wrap for leftover food during Phase II!

Every other year since 2004 I’ve been on the road for Halloween, usually somewhere remote where I can’t get a descent piece of candy. China’s improved leaps and bounds since my first visit in 2004 but it still lacks edible chocolate in the West. Wherever I am next year I can only hope for more celebration of my favorite holiday.