Erica and Matt Chua: Biggest Regrets?

After 31 months of traveling the world there are still some things we missed, places we failed to see, things we would have done differently and lessons learned. As we reflect on our journey here are a few things we regret from our RTW trip.

HE SAID…

Considering all the things we’ve done it’s hard to fathom I could regret not doing something. We went all out on this trip, discovering and doing more things than I knew existed before we started. There are a few things though that I wish I had done…especially considering I will probably not be there again.

God descended from heaven and spoke to Moses in a literal burning bush. That bush still exists. Seriously. It’s located in Saint Catherine’s Monastery on the Sinai Peninsula. It’s a place that God himself has been, yet I skipped it. I was worn out of religious sites after Israel. I didn’t want to go on the tours which are packaged with a climbing a holy mountain, something of which I’ve overdosed. These reasons for skipping it seem valid, but when will I be so close again? I should have gone.

I regret not walking across these mountains.

Moving from bushes to bush wacking, I wish we had done Tasmania’s Overland Track. Only after seeing how gorgeous Tasmania is did I really want to do the Overland Track. As much as I want to go back to Tasmania after falling in love with it, the reality is that it’s really far from everything else. The distance makes me realize I had to do the Track when I was there. My bad.

There are little things I wish I had done differently on the trip, such as eat more often at Tim Ho Wan or taking a great tour of Egypt, but nothing is more regrettable than skipping things in places that I don’t think I’ll return to.

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SHE SAID…

“Never regret, if it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s and experience.” -Victoria Holt

I try hard not to live my life in a way that I will have regrets, or at least any worth dwelling on, hence living if. I believe it is better to know what is than wonder what if, which is to say I would rather have done it and disliked it than regret never having done it at all. That being said this post is about those things I wish I would have done. They are few and far between since as thinkchua said we did a lot, but there are a few things that come to mind.

I regret not taking more photos of the amazing people we met along the way, such as this family we couchsurfed with in Australia.

While I love this blog and all the work that went into it, I regret not keeping a more detailed personal journal. There are some things that aren’t fit to print, but worth remembering. My personal thoughts, emotions and epiphanies are not as well documented as I would like. I did keep a small day-by-day journal, but don’t have many diary entries about my mindset during specific parts of the trip or how I felt about certain situations. Along those same lines I really wish I would have taken more people pictures of all the amazing travelers we met, couchsurfers that let us into their homes and lives, and people that helped us along our way.

When it comes to things I wish I would have seen or done the list is pretty short. Each time we landed in a new country we attempted to conquer it and often times we didn’t miss anything. However, there are a few items I wish I would have done, because by not doing them it means I probably never will. I wish I would have paid the extra fee to go inside King Tut’s tomb, paid for a night- or two in Wadi Rum desert, hiked the Overland Track in Tasmania and done the “World’s Most Dangerous Road”. But in the end part of what made our trip unique to us were not only the things that we did, but the things we didn’t do and why. It certainly wasn’t a bad trip by any means, but it was definitely an experience.

King Tut’s tomb

dead sea scrolls