5 days till D-day

Wow I have neglected this blog!

Since I last posted a lot has happened over the past few months. At about the end of June I went ahead and booked my RTW tickets. I had finally made my mind up on where I wanted to go. The destinations I choose in the end where South East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and the States, traveling for around six months. After checking out RTW ticket prices I arranged a meeting with a STA (travel agency who specialize in travel for people under the age of 36) rep at there Convert Garden store. After a quick chat about where I wanted to go and rough dates a basic flight itinerary was drawn up. The thing that most impressed was the price, nearly £1.600 cheaper than what I had been quoted elsewhere. Later that week and after a few dates had been changed I happily purchase my flight tickets and travel insurance - D-day was set as 19th September!

My trip is as follows:
Start: LHR - Bangkok (Asia - 6 weeks)
Bangkok - Perth (Oz - 2 months)
Sydney - Christchurch (NZ - 2 months)
Auckland - Nadi (Fiji - 1 week)
Nadi - Los Angeles (USA - 5 weeks)
Finish: New York - LHR

As you can see I will be doing a lot of overland travel.

In the end I decided that my adventure would begin doing a tour around South East Asia. Through STA I arranged a tour that would spend 30 days taking a circuit route starting/ending in Bangkok through Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. This was booked with Gap Adventure tours, there Indo-China Discovery tour. The reason I choose to do this was because I knew it would take me a couple of days or weeks to get into the backpacking mindset, being on the move getting use to a new lifestyle. Being on the tour meant I would only have to worry about be food and drinks. Apart from this, this is the only tour I have booked so far. Overall I have a number of things I want to see in each country and will be making up my plans as I go along.

Of course since I booked the flight tickets I have been getting prepared for my trip. Vaccinations have been injected; contacts lenses ordered, teeth checked and career break at work taken. My career break started two weeks ago so I have mainly spent the time since shopping and sorting out Visas. The main thing to buy was my backpack, after reading various sources I had decided on aiming for a 45-50 ltr one, but true to form I ended up buying a bigger one - the Berghaus Verden 65+10 Mens Rucksack. The reason why I went big was for the added space, I'm going to be doing a lot of hiking at some points on my trip so the extra space will come in handy I'm sure, especially if I end up buying loads of gifts!

Anyway as I write this I currently am counting down the 5 days till I leave, the next chapter in my life is about to begin. Have I planned enough, probably not, but in the words of one of my heroes Roald Amundsen - ‎'Adventure is just bad planning'. I'll soon find out!