A round the world ticket and overland travel

A French couple began their round the world journey in London and flew to Tokyo. Then they flew to Taipei. Next they flew to Hanoi. Then onto Bali and across to Darwin. From there they used local buses to travel overland to Sydney. Then they flew from there to Auckland. Next they flew from there to Santiago. They only had one more flight Montreal to London. They began to run out of money and had a long distance to reach Canada. They found the long distances sick making and very tiresome. They could only afford the lowest price accommodation. It made for very stressful traveling indeed. They had to travel by boat from Colombia to Panama. What do you think of their trip? Which places on their route would have been cheap?