Where’s Wally (going)?
Today we leave.
Our tickets are booked, injections painfully and repeatedly administered, backpacking associations and frequent flyer programs applied to and accepted. It’s real.
Here are the main dates and then I’ll fill in the details a bit further on:
The Trip
- 1st June – 22:05 Departing flight QA10 Heathrow to Sydney (via SIN)
- 5th June – Flying Sydney to Christchurch
- 8th July – Flying Auckland to Cairns
- 1st Sept – Departing flight QA11 Perth to Singapore
- 17th Dec – Departing flight QA10 Bangkok to Heathrow
So that’s pretty much all that’s set in stone. We’ve then got minitineraries (see what I did there?) in each continent which is split mainly into week-long chunks(ish).
Australasia
This is a pretty flexible section, we’re planning to spend about a month in New Zealand, taking in both the North and South Islands to some degree. After that month we’ll be flying across to Cairns to pick up a camper van and drive it down the East coast, ending in Adelalide.
Luckily, friends of ours have just emigrated to Oz so we’ll be nipping over to Perth to go on a few week tour with them up the West coast, hopefully taking in Shark Bay and Ningaloo reef – so broadly, leg 1 is:
- < 1 week – Sydney
- 3 weeks – South Island
- 1 Week – North Island
- 5/6 weeks – Cairns -> Adelaide
- 3 weeks – Perth and surrounding
That takes us to the flight into Singapore on the 1st Sep
South East Asia
Amazingly, that’s pretty much half the trip gone by this point. We’re flying into Singapore and spending a few days there. Then on into Malaysia to Kuala Lumpur, via a couple of beach days relaxing in Melaka. We’ll take in a few of the islands of Malaysia, particularly I want to go on the mentalist Langkawi Sky Bridge. If we make it off there alive, then it’s into Thailand, right up to the top for some Chiang Mai jungle action and across into Northern Laos. Depending on time, we’ll travel the length of Laos into Cambodia, down through Kratie province, detour to Siem Reap for the temples of Angkor Wat and onto Phnom Penh.
Across into Vietnam and up the east coast. I’m hoping we’ll have enough money/time to take a motorbike tour into the east highlands. On up to Hanoi and Ha Long Bay where we’re booking onto a junk for a tour of the UNESCO-listed wonder. We’ll try to take a moped up to Sapa, then a short flight back into Bangkok.
Depending on how much time we’ve got left we’ll have up to a month to hole up in Thansandet or somewhere we liked on the way up.
This is a really rough set of timings as I’ve worked out an alternative route which doesn’t include the full length of Laos and a whistlestop of Cambodia if we’re running short on time.
- <2 weeks Malaysia
- 2 weeks – Thailand
- 2 weeks – Laos
- 2 Weeks – Cambodia
- 3 weeks – Vietnam
- <4 weeks Thai Islands
And that’s it – 17th december we’re back to rainy, cold England. Hopefully with tired feet, some lovely memories and even lovelier photos. Obviously you can follow all the action here and on twitter, rural wifi permitting.
Now where did i put that mosquito net?