And you thought Hollywood stars slept around a lot

Still a few more things to mention about our trip. Along the way, you could say we slept in quite a variety of places, usually changing places almost every night. Places where we slept ranged from planes to buses to airports to boats to tents to actual hotels. I thought it would be interesting to track the different places we slept on our trip. So, here are the stats:

Overall we spent a total of 322 nights in 143 different locations (some visited more than once). We slept in what I classify as at least 16 different types of accommodation. Here's the breakdown:

151 nights in 92 different hotels or hostels (mostly hotels)
60 nights at 7 different extended family homes (in Thailand, Philippines and the US)
29 nights at 9 different friends' houses (in China, Australia and the US)
17 nights on 2 different boats (Antarctica and Galapagos)
15 nights at 8 different B&Bs (North Island, New Zealand; Santiago and Valparaiso, Chile; Lima and Trujillo, Peru; and Quito, Ecuador)
10 nights in 5 different lodges (mostly in Peruvian rainforest and Patagonia)
9 nights living in 1 van on the South Island, New Zealand
7 nights in one rental apartment in Buenos Aires, Argentina
5 long nights spent on 5 different overnight buses in South America
5 wonderful nights spent in 2 resorts (El Nido, Philippines and Mancora, Peru)
4 nights on 4 different planes (London-Beijing, Manila-Sydney, Papeete-Easter Island, Boston-London)
3 nights on 2 trains (2 nights Shanghai, China to Lhasa, Tibet and 1 night Varanasi to Delhi, India)
2 nights in a relaxing bungalow on Moorea, French Polynesia
2 nights in 2 different covered tents (1 while whitewater rafting in Nepal and the other in the Rajasthan desert, India)
2 nights in a regular tent (while whitewater rafting in Peru - sad to admit, but this was my first time ever sleeping in a tent)
and finally 1 long night sleeping at the airport in Mumbai, India waiting for a 5 am flight to Bangkok, Thailand (although the Mumbai airport is designed for odd-hour flights and provides a large number of reclining seats for people to rest in)

I took a very liberal interpretation of the hotel/hostel category. This was basically anything that didn't qualify as one of the other categories. This includes the grimmest places we ever stayed in Tibet which were basically thin walls to attempt to block the wind and cold and plywood beds with foam mattresses. I'm not really sure what classification to give these types of places.

As for best places to stay, we occasionally got to stay in decent places. But I still think the overall best value for money goes to the place we stayed in Sucre, Bolivia where we got a huge room, huge beds, hot water, great cable TV, etc. for $12 a night and stayed 3 nights. Great stuff.

Besides people's houses, the longest time we spent in one place was in Cusco, Peru, where we used the same hotel 3 different times for a total of 11 nights. Of course they also gave away our room reservation the 4th time we tried to stay there, so that's loyalty for you.

And finally, I have to give a huge thank you to all the friends and family members who allowed us to stay at their houses. Over 25% of our nights on the road were spent at 16 different friends' and family's homes. Most of these were in the US, but we also benefited from such kindness in China, Thailand, the Philippines, and Australia. Not only did these stays allow us to save some cash, but they also provided us with some very welcome breaks from finding a hotel every night. And of course gave us the opportunity to spend some great quality time with the people we care about. So to everyone who hosted us on our journey, thank you so much.