Epilogue

Our return to Colorado marked three events – the return from our “long way home” through September, a return from an exciting and rewarding two and a half years in Asia, and the end soon to this blog. Our long trip home and our time in Asia made the world smaller for us. We looked into the eyes of people living their lives in many different ways, yet the looking and the smiling brought us closer.  On our return to the USA from Asia, many people asked us about our “vacation of a lifetime” as we attempted to travel from Singapore to Colorado with as few air miles as possible. Ricky said many times that this was not a vacation, but a journey.  A journey both physical - as we rode the rails across two continents - and emotional – as we entered more than just a new life chapter, but a

Part 4, with many chapters left to be written. Air travel has opened up this world to so much accessible exploration.  And, we have taken full advantage of it while based in Singapore.  This past month, rolling through the spectacular mountains north of Beijing, running parallel to the portions of the Great Wall rarely seen, and waking to camels in the eastern Gobi grasslands pacing to the 

speed of our Mongolian train, created an awe in us as we became aware that this was to be a different experience from a regular holiday based on air travel.  We were best prepared for Mongolia where we knew what

we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it.  The Gobi surpassed all expectations yet Ulaanbaatar surprised us with the vibrancy of the Mongolian urbanites and the intimacy of Mongolian Buddhism.  We bumbled into our weeks in Russia with little preparation other than train tickets and an equal number of days off the train winging it.  Yet, we stumbled onto a vast pristine wilderness, hundreds of miles of golden aspens and birch, jaw-dropping palaces and churches, and wandered through a forest, practicing the time-honored Russian tradition of picking wild berries and mushrooms.  We also traveled across 8000 km of Trans-Mongolian and Trans-Siberian rails, likely built and maintained by the enemies of the Soviets between 1919 and 1960 who were imprisoned in forced labor camps. Our faces were not buried in books as we expected but in the windows looking at a world we could not imagine.  We think we saw many of these gulags that had evolved into small towns along the route. And we

coasted out of Russia across the Baltic Sea through the striking archipelagos of Finland and Sweden on a Russian ferry where we were the only Americans on board. We certainly could have continued on the surface of the planet, but public transit options became sketchy and we wanted to begin the second chapter of Part 4.

We are thankful of new friends we made in Singapore who have enriched our life, and of old friends who have launched brand new dimensions within us. Singapooch is home to about 140 posts during our time in Asia and our return to the US. We have been astonished at the approximately 10,000 page views over the past three years. Thanks to all of you who have travelled along with us and enhanced our experiences with your comments.

In Tim Burton’s 1988 movie ‘Beetlejuice’, the Deetz family moved into the house of the suddenly deceased Maitlands.  The Deetz’s battled with the ghosts of the Maitlands’ for most of the movie only to reconcile at the end into a productive coexistence. We’ve changed from our

experiences – hopefully for the better- and in many ways we are both the Maitlands and the Deetzs – we are moving back into a house that was occupied by people who no longer who they were. We will work hard to take the best of the Daly’s who lived in this house until March, 2011 and the new Daly’s moving in from equatorial Asia.  There will be adjustments, but we are grateful to all our friends who make us feel like nothing has ever changed and have taken us as we are.