How far away were we from home?

Checking back in for a post involving distances.

A quick word first on what I did over the past weekend. I spent the previous weekend hiking in the Great Smoky Mountain's National Park with a group from Hermitage United Methodist Church. We hiked up Mt. LeConte on Friday and spent the night at LeConte Lodge (link to their official site LeConte Lodge). We hiked back down the next day. LeConte Lodge is a real neat place. I would recommend it if you ever get a chance to go. The only way you can get to it is by hiking one of the 5 trails to the top. The shortest trail is Alum Cave trail at just over 5 miles and the longest is the Boulevard trail at just over 8 miles. The facilities are basic with no electricity or showers. You stay in either a cabin or lodge depending on your group size. They have flush toilets and running water (via a spring, it's treated with a little chlorine to make sure it is clean). They also include a hot dinner and hot breakfast which are great. It is a nice peaceful place to get a way from it all for a little bit. I've been numerous times throughout the years. I've been so many times I didn't even take my camera but I did snap a few pics with my cell phone. I also missed the opportunity to take a picture of a bear in Cades Coves. I saw it from inside a car driving around the loop road. It was just walking along minding it's own business out in the cove in plain sight. Bears are pretty common in the park. There are about 1,500 with a population density of 2 bears for every square mile.

view from the Cliff Top area on Mt. Leconte close to sunset - taken with my cell phone

Let me transition back to the purpose of this blog post. I could probably write several post on the Smoky's if I had to. This post will be about something that I would think about from time to time on our trip and that was exactly how far we were away from home and which places were the farthest. In this post I am thinking about physical distance versus cultural distance. It was easy to see the cultural distances since we experienced them each day face to face. In this post we'll play a little trivia game too. The question will be what was the furthest distance that Alethea and I were from our home base of Nashville, TN? I spent about a hour recently researching this topic. I plotted and plugged in various cities in most of the obvious countries that we were in throughout our travels. I was a little surprised with a couple of the locations. I went into this looking at a flat map without giving much thought about the world being round and some places being further away while some are closer than I thought.

Before I get to the top five list I'll mention a few interesting tidbits. Before our trip the furthest I'd been from Nashville, TN was Rome, Italy at 5,025 miles. Krakow, Poland was a close second at 5,002 miles. The closest we were to home on our trip was in Portugal at a little over 4,000 miles. To put that in perspective Honolulu, Hawaii is 4,337 miles from Nashville. When I started to research this it really sunk in just how far away from home we were at times. We also covered some distance on our long haul international flights. The longest flight was our first international flight from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia. It was 7,491 miles. We were in the air for 14 hours. I slept for nearly 6 hours and watched 3 2 hour length movies. Alethea will remember that flight because the kid next to her got sick to her stomach and she helped the poor mother who had another young child to keep an eye on.

One humorous distance related tidbit was how close we were to Osama Bin Laden. I looked it up after his untimely demise. It turns out we were only 501.4 miles away from his compound when we were in Shimla, India back in March. I plugged in the GPS coordinates into Google Earth to get an exact measurement :-). It would have nice to collect the $25 million bounty on his head but I doubt he would surrender to us especially since we would have only been armed with a plastic spork. Anyway, listed below are the top 5 places we visited that were the furthest away.

One note on my methodology: I only included a country once otherwise the country that turned out the furthest would have the top three cities. Good news is that the two cities that took the place of number two and three were close to the same distance, so this is very close to being an exact list based on distance instead of one that is actually based on countries and cities combined.

Here's the top 5 list:

5. Invercargill, New Zealand @ 8,628 miles. This kind of surprised since I thought it would be number one but New Zealand is about a 3.5 hour plan ride east of Melbourne, Australia which puts it further east and a little closer to the US than I realized.
   
   

   

   pic taken south of Invercargill, New Zealand @ southern most point 

   
   

4. Bangkok, Thailand @ 8,695 miles. This one surprised me a little but not too much.
   
   

   

   Buddha statues @ Wat Pho in Bangkok, Thailand

   
   

3. Kochi, India @ 9,075 miles. Not too surprised on this one. This area was the furthest south we were in India. I'll remember it for the heat, mosquitos, and our overnight trip through the Kerala backwaters.
   
   

   

   boats of the Kerala, India backwaters

   
   
   
   

2. Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam @ 9,089 miles. This one surprised me because I didn't realize how far it was both west and south. Vietnam was a country we enjoyed quite a bit although Ho Chi Minh wasn't among our favorites. We enjoyed Hoi An in the center and Hanoi/Sapa/Halong Bay areas in northern Vietnam more.

former Presidential Palace in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Drum roll please, well a virtual drum role.

1. Adelaide, Australia @ 10,210 miles. I was mildly surprised. My initial guess was either somewhere in New Zealand or South Africa. New Zealand came in only at #5. Cape Town South Africa was I believe 8^th. As I mentioned earlier, Melbourne would have been second and Sydney third if I were going purely on exact distances by city.   
   
   

   

   us feeding a kangaroo on Kangaroo Island just south of Adelaide, Australia - 10 K miles from home

   
   
   
   
   
   

Home and other miscellaneous topics like haircuts

Well we've been back home now for two weeks. It is good to be home. We've both spent the last couple weeks visiting friends and family. I feel rested. A pleasant surprise for me is that my allergies have made an tremendous improvement. I thought for sure things would be pretty bad when I returned back to Tennessee. It is probably the number one reason we decided to come home since we were fatigued with sinus issues for most of our 6 weeks in Europe. I've pretty much been staying indoors quite a bit and taking my medications when necessary. I went in for a wellness exam today and the doctor said I was doing about all I could do except maybe use a nose inhaler which I have (Alethea's). Now that I've taken a two week break I'll write some blog posts on trip related items. Some posts will be lighthearted and some more focused. I like to look at facts and figures being the analytical geek that I am. Speaking of numbers I weighed in at the doctor's office today as part of my wellness exam at 178 lbs. According to his chart I weighed in at 192 lbs. the last time I  saw my doctor 4 days before we left on our trip last July. The most I have ever weighed was 235 lbs about two years ago. If I were going skydiving again, I wouldn't have to pay the overweight fees (I usually refer to them as a fat tax) that I've had to pay twice before! Anyway, I'll start off with a lighthearted post regarding haircuts around the world.

I never really gave haircuts that much thought when we were planing for this trip. After all it is a rather routine experience. Although it didn't really present any great difficulty, I found it interesting from a culture experience. It is kind of neat to see how the process works in other countries. Fortunately for me my haircuts are pretty simple. I just had every barber use a 1 blade and start shaving. It is pretty easy to communicate this to someone even if they don't speak English although it was a little more difficult at first in Italy than it was in Beijing since the barber in China spoke more English than the gentleman in Rome. Probably the best or maybe most unique haircut I received was in Vientiane, Laos. I had to take my shoes off and walk barefoot into the barbershop. It is pretty common to have to take your shoes off any time you are indoors in Asia. She proceeded to cut my hair then when we were done she started karate chopping my neck so I also received somewhat of a massage too. Not bad for a haircut that cost 20,000 KIP or $2.45.

Vientiane, Laos on 12/30 - 20,000 KIP or $2.45

Probably, the next most interesting one occurred in Kusadasi, Turkey. We asked our hotel staff where we could get cheap basic haircuts and the person at the desk called out to someone else who told us to follow him. We followed him just a couple blocks from our hotel to barber shop. Our escort told the barber in Turkish what we wanted. The barber understood maybe a few words in English too. One interesting aspect was that everyone got a small cup of hot Turkish tea before their haircut. The barber would send his son out who was probably around 14 or 15 to a local shop. He would come back with some tea. Another interesting thing that took place was the gentleman before us was getting a shave with a straight razor blade. When the barber was done he poured something on his face and lit it. It flashed for a sec before going out. Alethea and I both got big eyes but the barber looked at us, chuckled, and essentially gestured that was for him and would not be happening to me. I was relieved :-).

Kusadasi, Turkey – 10/26, 13 lira or $9.13   

Looking back on it I would probably say the best haircut might have been the one in China. It cost around $5. He took his time and was thorough. The second haircut I received in Bangkok was pretty good too. It is kind of hard to mess up my style. It was a little mini adventure slash cultural experience each time I was ready for a haircut. Anyway, listed below are the dates, locations, and prices I paid for a haircut over the last nine months along with a couple other pictures Alethea took of me getting a haircut.

1. Melbourne, Australia – 8/22, $9 AUD or $8.03
2. Beijing, China – 9/25, 25 yuan or $5.22
3. Kusadasi, Turkey – 10/26, 13 lira or $9.13
4. Cape Town, South Africa – 12/3, 70 ZAR or $9.47
5. Vientiane, Laos – 12/30, 20,000 KIP or $2.45
6. Bangkok, Thailand – 1/22, 110 Baht or $3.58
7. Bangkok, Thailand - 2/19, 150 Baht or $5
8. Rome, Italy – 3/25, 11 euros (10 for haircut, 1 for tip) or $15.53
9. Bayeux, France – 4/27, 12.50 for cut & 1.50 for tip = 14 euros or $20.43
   
   

1st haircut in Melbourne, Australia on 8/22

maybe the haircut with the least amount of English being spoken - Rome, Italy on 3/25

last & most expensive haircut in Bayeux, France on 4/27