Success! Well…

… sort of. We have been in China for nearly three weeks now, and for the first time today we have managed to get a bill in a restaurant after asking for it in Chinese! I know this does not sound like much of an achievement, but so let me explain.

First of all, our previous attempts at asking for the bill (apparently ‘maiden’ in Mandarin Chinese) have resulted in many things being offered to us by bewildered waitresses – soy sauce, the menu, beer… we’ve only managed to get the message across with detailed charades, pointing to someone else’s cheque, or the restaurant finding someone with a few words of English to help out! So it’s quite a step forward to be understood for once – well, sort of understood. Gary’s linguistic attempts to pay did give the staff the giggles…

So why is this a problem? Normally when we go to any country the first thing we do is to learn a few words and phrases – please, thank you, hello, good bye, yes, no – simple things like this. It’s not much effort, and it’s usually appreciated as a politeness even if the people you speak to can understand English. But things are a little difficult in China, and to be honest we’ve struggled. Really struggled.

I suppose the main problem is there is no such thing as Chinese. There are about a billion different ‘Chinese languages’ – every region has an individual dialect, which may be completely incomprehensible to anyone from another region. And within the regions themselves apparently there is huge variation from place to place. So even a Chinese person will struggle to communicate verbally with the majority of people in China unless they know more than just their local dialect. Now we’re travelling around of course, so we can’t get the feel for words in even one place…

Actually I’m not even sure if the number of dialects is our main problem. Perhaps it is that all of the Chinese dialects are tonal. In other words, they have relatively few words compared to most languages, but the meaning of each is changed by the tone in which it is said. So say the same word in a flat way and it will have a completely different and unrelated meaning to that word said with a rising tone. Or a falling tone. Or a tone that goes high-low-high… This is completely unintuitive to us, as of course in English we use tones for expression – for instance we would usually say a statement flatly, or a question with a rising tone at the end. So whenever we ask a question out here we naturally use the wrong tone (even if we’re trying not to) and no-one has a clue what we’re going on about! Worse – Gary managed to reduce a poor girl in an ice-cream parlour to a severe fit of giggles today by trying to ask where the toilet was. She had to run away to recover. I don’t know what he said, but it probably had nothing to do with finding the gents!

And finally, to top it off, the written word in Chinese is a mass of complicated symbols. So trying to check that you’re on the right train, street, etc is a nightmare, and reading signs that tell you about changes, where to go etc downright impossible. So you could say we’re struggling.

However, we have found amusing ways around our problems. We have managed to work out the numbers one to ten, so at least can give the correct money at a newsagent when buying a drink (usually). Gary is persevering with speaking to people – he’s got a better memory for vocabulary than me! But I have got very good at miming what we want (which usually works better than the linguistics). And, when buying tickets at railways stations I’ve worked out that we actually sort of get what we want if I copy down the symbols for the place names and carriage class along with dates, times and train numbers onto a piece of paper to hand the attendant. I’ve got quite artistic about it! Trust me, we’d have no chance at just speaking to them. We tried once, and failed dismally to get beyond ‘hello’.

Anyway, if any of you have any suggestions as to how to speak at least Mandarin Chinese (the most widely spoken dialect) we’d be really grateful. A few weeks ago I’d have never thought I’d say that I miss being able to understand people as much as I did in Japan! Now Japanese seems easy peasy. And that’s saying something!

Scary Chinese Food

Now I know we typically give a list of all the weird and wonderful things at the end of travelling through a country rather than the beginning. This system usually works well – some things you might meet with horror initially you get used to, and even make sense after a few weeks or so. Others remain pretty terrifying – or at least bizarre! That’s part of the beauty of travelling in strange countries after all. But we have met one thing in China already that we find so disturbing that it deserves a mention of its own.

I read somewhere a long time ago that in some regions of China the people would eat anything whose ‘back faced the sky’. That doesn’t leave much does it? I never took it literally though, but now I think it might be accurate. What crosses your mind when you read the word Scorpion? Deadly sting? Evil-looking leggy thing? Poisonous arthropoid monster? Tasty snack?

In Beijing there are stalls that sell kebabs of various meats and candied fruits. Unfortunately they also sell a local delicacy that puts you off these a bit - a scorpion on a stick! Yes, they have scorpion kebabs. And what’s more, when you purchase them the scorpions are still alive and wriggling. I haven’t actually seen anyone buy one, let alone eat one, so I don’t know whether or not they deep-fry the little devils before presenting them to you, or whether you have to bite the creature while it’s still wriggling - carefully avoiding the sting!

Ah well, on the plus side at least the skewered scorpions make the sea-horse kebabs look tame. But I think I’ll be sticking to a nice bowl of noodles and some Dim Sum myself.

Leaving Japan

I know we’ve only spent 2 weeks in Japan, but we’ve packed so much into them it feels a lot more. We’ve travelled over 2000 miles here, seen some truly weird things, and eaten very odd food. And Gary’s run away from the odd monster crab or two.

As for the highlights, well, we love Tokyo for its liveliness, but it was a great contrast to see Toyako Onsen for its remote, very Japanese serenity, and of course it’s welcoming film crew! I loved the volcanoes, lakes and monster crabs of Hokkaido, but then again it was really good to see the elaborate shrines and temples of Nikko. I don’t know, but even though I can’t wait to explore China I’m really sad to be leaving Japan. We will definitely come back here in the future.

Anyway, after India we thought we would construct a good versus scary list for each country, so:

Some things we’ve found great…

1. The Japan Rail Pass. This wonderful little card with a nice picture of a Tsunami on the front gives you unlimited travel on all Japan Railway trains (except Nozomis). This means you can wiz up and down the country on the Shinkansen seeing loads of different places for a reasonable price. Try the Shinkansen without it only if you’ve recently inherited a fortune or two from a long lost Aunt.

2. Food. OK, I know a lot of you aren’t fans of raw fish (even though we think Sushi and sashimi are delicious), but even so I’d recommend trying some Japanese dishes. The variety is startlingly good. For instance, noodle dishes with Udon or Soba are great served in hot soups or cold with dipping sauces – I know this sounds vile (the first time we had it was by mistake from a menu with no English!) but its actually really nice. These are great with tempura, lightly battered and deep-fried vegetables, fish, prawns etc. Or another type of noodle soup would be ramen, a clear broth with a host of vegetables, meats, seaweed and even the occasional egg floating on top! And if you don’t like noodles there are rice based dishes, or yakitori (meats or vegetables barbequed on skewers), or even simple things like Teriyaki chicken which you’ve probably all tried. OK, there is one serious deficit in Japanese food, varied though it might be – sweets. See below.

3. Lively cities. Really clean, bustling, easy to navigate – a pleasure to explore. With really helpful, friendly, courteous inhabitants.

4. Temples. Japanese temples and shrines are generally beautiful and serene. OK, the magnificent complex in Nikko was anything but serene due to golden garnishing and the hordes of school kids, but generally temples are remarkably peaceful places. They often have very beautiful gardens attached too.

5. Gardens. Simple, in a very high maintenance (and elaborate) way! Japanese gardens are very distinctive with their tranquil ponds, giant carp, beautifully manicured miniature trees and painstakingly weeded shrubberies. Bizarre.

6. Mountains. Particularly volcanoes – especially if they are actively steaming, and preferably situated around lakes. Toyako Onsen was the very good for this, and had the added benefit of hot-springs too.


And some scary things…

1. Crabs. Especially the ones in Hakodate with legs over a meter long. These things did not originate from this planet, and should not be seen on it. Especially not hanging out of your bowl of miso soup!

2. Octagonal things. Glutinous, grey or green. And we think you are meant to eat them. Don’t try it! Japan may have some of the most delicious food I’ve ever tasted, but it also has the most stringy, gloopy, slimy stuff too. And loads of innocent things such as ice-cream and iced coffee are contaminated with green tea. Why? It makes them vile!

3. Japanese sweets. Who came up with the idea of red bean paste as a replacement for chocolate? Not the best move. Especially as they are roughly the same colour, so on pictures when ordering you can easily make a mistake!

4. Japanese writing. It’s very beautiful. Artistic even. However, given a menu with no English and no pictures makes for an interesting meal! Getting off at the right train station can be similarly challenging, especially if you are off the beaten track.

5. Pachinko. We vowed to try this, but chickened out! We can’t understand the attraction of sitting in a smoke filed hall, deafened by noise, watching a series of little steel ball bearings fall down something that looks a bit like a slot machine.

6. Japanese TV. It all seems to be game shows! Lots of canned laughter. But they lack the appeal of the truly awful camera work you see in Indian soaps.

7. Toilets. Warm seats, flushing noises played automatically as you sit down to spare embarrassment, bidet jets, shower jets, and some mysterious vacuum suction called the ‘powerful deodoriser’! And much, much more! With control panel instructions only in Japanese of course. Use at your peril!


Anyway, we would love to see you out here if you get some time free. Let us know! Oh, and please keep in touch. We’re just sorting out Skype out here, so should be able to make free phone calls to anyone else who has it installed on their computer (and a suitable handset – ours cost £3). Install it, let us know your account name and we can catch up properly!

Japanese Bathrooms

Japan is great. Strange, totally incomprehensible in some ways, but great. It has some of the best food on the planet - and on the other hand, it has some of the most terrifying food on Earth too! It has beautiful scenary, spectacular cities, and as people are usually very friendly it’s a brilliant place to wander around it. However, some things about Japan really really scare me from time to time.

For instance, toilets. Now it can be a little difficult to believe when you walk into a plush department store or hotel that the traditional Japanese toilet is a squatter. The loos installed in these places look as if they`ll launch you into orbit!

We went to a department store in Sapporo today and used their toilets after lunch. In the ladies they had a whole selection of goodies for children: little urinals for little boys visiting with their Mummy, mini toilets in the cubicals next to the real sized toilet for little girls, a baby holder seat in each cubical to keep little devils from wandering around while Mum is otherwise engaged… And the toilets came accompanied by some fun things too – toilet seat disinfectants (which are a bit boring now we’ve seen them in the UK) and an ‘auto steriliser’ – some mysterious device you seem to activate by putting your hand over the back of the toilet to give it a mini-flush!

As for the toilets themselves, well, as you might expect they are the highlight of any Japanese bathroom. They vary a bit in complexity, but the ones we just met in this department store were some of the best I’ve seen. First, the toilet seat is warmed for optimal comfort. And as you sit down it flushes a little water to make sure everything is clean (a bit disconcerting before you get used to it – I jumped up the first time wondering what was happening!). Then you have a whole control panel of different options at your fingertips. As you can see from the photos, the ones in this store were scarily all in Japanese characters, so you wouldn’t have a clue what you were pressing. Very dangerous! I know for past from more helpful control panels with English text or pictures some of the things these loos can do. They can play relaxing bird song or the sound of the sea washing against the shore to cover embarrassing noises. You can control the temperature of the seat in case it gets a little chilly. And most terrifying of all, you can use them as a bidet! At the touch of the wrong button these evil things will launch vindictive jets of water up out of the toilet bowl at you! The diagrams I’ve seen imply that you can of course choose the ‘aim’ of the jet and the ‘water pressure’ as you desire. And people use these things to feel cleaner afterwards? Euagh!

Anyway, I hope this is a useful warning for anyone coming to Japan. On the plus side, going to the toilet in the UK is never this interesting, whereas here the sheer weirdness of it can make it the most memorable thing of the day!

Moving on

Hello! Just a quick update – we’ve changed our flight plans slightly. The main reason is actually that we were stuck in Delhi for the remainder of our time in India as the trains north to Shimla were full. So, we move on from India to China – Hong Kong. Yay! We’ve enjoyed travelling in North India, but with the temperature here in Delhi hitting over 40 degrees each day now we think its time to move on to somewhere a little cooler…

We found India a weird place to visit. We’d highly recommend seeing Jaipur, Udaipur and Jaisalmer, but to be honest there’s not much to Agra excepting the Taj Mahal, or Jodhpur except the Fort. And Delhi is a bit smelly.

Some things we’ve found great…

1. Tandoors. Great kebabs – chicken, and paneer especially. And I love proper naan bread. I think tandoor food is definitely my favourite type of Indian cuisine. And it’s so much better out here than in the UK.

2. Colour. Everything is so colourful out here – particularly the women during festival times. And you can get lovely hangings and scarves and things (I hope our purchases survive the post back to the UK…)

3. Forts. Really big and impressive ones! We have nothing on this scale in the UK – our castles are really pathetic by comparison. The lived in one in Jaisalmer is vibrant, the huge one in Jodhpur impressive, Agra’s is more like a palace… Wonderful.

4. Palaces. They have some really silly, completely over the top palaces – sometimes in the forts, other times in the town, on mountains, lakes, wherever. It seems that each Emperor / King / Maharajah could not possibly be happy until he had built a bigger palace than his Dad / predecessor / whoever he conquered. And there seem to have been loads of Emperors, Kings and Maharajahs…

5. Mountains. Particularly around lakes. Udaipur does this particularly well.


And some scary things…

1. Facial hair. OK, I know this is a matter of personal taste, but the moustaches out here are impressive. Particularly the ones which get really long and bushy, so their owners twist the ends to make them stand up!

2. Big turbans. Really really big, colourful, and in lots of different styles of course depending on religion, region etc. The colourful thing isn’t always a good move however – particularly shades of pale pink…

3. Water. And food for that matter. It often tastes great (except when they try to westernise food), but you may regret it the next day! They have some serious bugs to challenge the GI tract around here. And on top of this, why is the Indian version of Fanta a particularly violent shade of radioactive orange?

4. Roads. Lane discipline? Nah, that’s for wooses! Plus it’s much more manly to drive the wrong way up roads, especially duel carriageways. Everyone wants to get you to give them huge sums of money for a 10 meter trip in their rickshaw / tuk-tuk / taxi / whatever Oh, and don’t forget the cows wandering down every street, or the carts drawn by ponys, cows, or camels!

5. TV and Film. And adverts. OK, now I know that we don’t understand Hindi, however, staying in a lot of hotels we’ve seen some TV over the last few weeks. And flicking between the few English language channels, we’ve seen a fair sample of Indian TV and films. You could say there are a few things we don’t get. For instance, in Indian soaps, why does every scene seem to be a hugely over melodramatic collage of the characters facial expressions, mixed in with a few epilepsy or nausea – inducing camera effects? I’ve never seen anything like it! And I’d also like to know why there seem to be so many men dressed in really bad jumpers with big patterns on them in films? Usually jumping around with paint-brushes or chairs or something to some song or other. Weird!

6. Sport. There is lots of sport coverage out here. Loads. But we could see interest in only one sport. Tell me, is cricket the only sport they play in India?

Anyway, here is a list of our new flight dates if you need them for any reason, or are tempted to come out here! Hope you are all having a good time at home.

26.4.08 : Delhi - Hong Kong

9.5.08 : Hong Kong - Tokyo

24.5.08 : Tokyo - Beijing

30.6.08 : Shanghai - Hong Kong

11.9.08 : Singapore - Perth

25.9.08 : Perth - Brisbane

31.10.08 : Sydney - Aukland

5.12.08 : Aukland - Tahiti

11.12.08 : Tahiti - Easter Island

20.12.08 : Easter Island - Santiago

12.2.09 : Lima - Mexico City

Scared

OK. Let me start this entry by saying I’m scared. The past few days have held a number of terrifying experiences for us. Well, one or two anyway.

Point One. Flying. Planes should be nice and big and have nice big jet engines. And there should be no such thing as turbulence. And there should definitely be no such thing as small propeller driven planes WITH turbulence. That is a very very bad idea. It feels like your itsy bitsy teeny weeny plane is falling from the sky after hitting a brick wall. Or is about to flip over sideways because of a random gust of air. Not nice.

Erm to explain, we flew in to Amritsar via Delhi from Udiapur in two very small aircraft. With propellers. A bit traumatic! Oh well, we got here I suppose. And actually the airline people (Jet Airways) were some of the best we’ve flown with – really helpful, nice and courteous.

Point Two. Indian food. I’m really really fed up of having stomach upsets. There is something seriously wrong with this country’s micro-organisms. Don’t ask me what, but they really don’t agree with me. Or Gary. Or anyone else from the west that we’ve spoken to for that matter. Saying that, the food can taste great. And I don’t think it’s the style of food, as very similar Indian food in the UK is fine. Also, we’ve never had any trouble with food in the Far East – China, Thailand, Japan, Cambodia, Vietnam… There is definitely something about India!

Also, although the food we’ve had here has usually tasted good (and occasionally brilliant), it can go very badly wrong. As far as I can see, there are four basic categories of food available in restaurants or cafes in India: Non-Indian food for Non-Indians, Indian food for Indians, Indian food for Non-Indians and Non-Indian food for Indians. The first three are usually delicious. The last is vile. And unfortunately not always easy to recognise when you walk into a restaurant or look at a menu. We’ve just had a very bad experience in a very popular restaurant – food which we thought would be Indian-style was horribly mutated by bad interpretations of western cuisine (basically putting large quantities of evil, thick, smelly, gelatinous sauces on everything and boiling all vegetables, rice, and anything else to oblivion). Yuk! Yet loads of locals seemed to love it…

Ah well, at least most of the time we have fun! But I must admit, I’m looking forward to having dim sum in two weeks time, and sushi a week after that! Anyway, hope you all are having a good time, and will post some pictures of colourful Amritsar at Vaisakhi soon.

A room with a view - and changes to plans

We arrived in Udaipur yesterday. After one of the most bumpy bus rides of my life (7 hours of winding over mountain roads)! And when we got here, the hotel’s pick-up service from the bus-stop was completely destroyed by the fact whoever was on duty at reception when we called spoke no English. So we then had to struggle 4km with our bags through town, harried by some particularly persistent rickshaw touts determined to rip us off!

But it was worth the trip. This place is truly beautiful. The town is on a lake surrounded by mountains, containing an island or two of palaces. The view from our room is breathtaking – see the photos. We’ll stay here for a few days and relax, do some work, and wander around the area before retuning to the hustle and bustle of Delhi.


On another note, we’ve decided not to go to Nepal – due to the present situation in Tibet riots have been sparked in Katmandu, complete with terrorist bombings. This is apparently typical during times of unrest in the area, although Nepal itself is normally safe to visit. Another time maybe. Instead we will go north of Delhi to Punjab and Himal Pradesh, and plan to see Shimla (a hill town) and Chandigar (the most modern city in India apparently). I’ll let you know how we get on!

Itinerary

As we’ve said many times, you’re welcome to join us on this trip if you wish. To make coordination of this a little easier I’ve included our itinerary of flights below:

17.4.08 : London - Delhi
30.4.08 : Delhi - Hong Kong
07.5.08 : Hong Kong - Tokyo
21.5.08 : Tokyo - Beijing
30.6.08 : Shanghai - Hong Kong
11.9.08 : Singapore - Perth
25.9.08 : Perth - Brisbane
31.10.08 : Sydney - Aukland
5.12.08 : Aukland - Tahiti
11.12.08 : Tahiti - Easter Island
20.12.08 : Easter Island - Santiago
12.2.09 : Lima - Mexico City

Let me know if you need further details, and I’ll email then to you (times, flight numbers etc).
At the moment we’re in Jaipur, and have found a lovely hotel, but since our train broke down here on route last night we haven’t had much chance to look around the town yet. We’ll post something about it when we have!

Delhi

So it begins - I can’t actually believe it. Somehow, even though I’m sitting in an internet café in Delhi with cows wandering the streets outside, and drumbeats making the windows shake, I STILL can’t believe I’m doing this trip! I keep on thinking I’ll have to come home next week. I think I’ve planned it too long – should have gone years ago! Oh well, I suppose I’ll just have to get used to it J

One warning – our mobile phones do work out here, but it costs £1.40 a minute to call or receive calls. And the voicemail facility doesn’t seem to work – so if you do want to get through by phone try texting as that does work.

I’ve made my first really entry on the trip and posted a few piccys on the Asia page – see on the left of this screen or follow this link. Most of the info on the relevant bits of the trip will be on the Asia/Oceania/South America pages, and I’ll just post general things here. Please keep in touch too, and let me know how you all are!

Love, Vicki

Egypt

As we weren't able to go to Africa as originally planned on the trip, we decided to go on holiday to Egypt instead. And we've just come back from Cairo and Luxor. Ancient Egypt is amazing, but the main impression I have of modern Egypt is of touting, lots of locals trying to sell you something you don't want... 'You want felucca ride?', 'No thanks', 'It's very nice evening for boat ride', 'No thanks', 'Very cheap price', 'No', 'You know how much?', 'GO AWAY!!!'. 'Yes? Yes? Very cheap price', 'Grrrrrrr!'. Only they pester for far longer than that! (a felucca is the kind of boat in the photo).

Anyway, I've put some more pictures on the 'Africa page' - see the link on the right hand side of this page.

Over the next few weeks I'm going to try to make this site usable as a means of communication for when we're away, so please give me any suggestions, ideas, criticisms etc. And I'd be greatful if someone would post a reply - I don't even know if the setup works for that yet!

More trip details

The rough time scale is this - we'll be leaving mid March, will be in India and Nepal until the end of April before spending the next 2 months in China and Japan. We have to make it back to Bangkok by the end of July, and then we'll spend August traveling through Malysia and Singapore to Australia (and maybe learning to scuba dive). We should stay in Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific Islands until the end of November. Then its approximately 1 month each in Chile, Peru and Mexico. What do you think?!

My only regret is that we couldn't fit Africa into the trip. Its a real shame, but we were already pushing the upper limit of mileage allowed on this trip (and had to tinker with out route until we were just under the 39,000 maximum) - and to be honest, I don't think we'd have had the time to do everything. To compensate we've decided to go on holiday to Egypt this December/January so at least we can see the Pyramids!

The tickets are booked!

Well, its done. The tickets were booked, and (hopefully) paid for yesterday! The route is finalised - at least the places we're flying to and from - all dates for flights can be changed as we wish. Which is just as well as we'll probably get stuck somewhere remote at some point... I'm so excited about this! We leave on the 17th of march 2008.

The rough route should be shown on the map (click to enlarge, blue = flight, red = overland route): London --- Delhi (see the Golden triangle, travel to Nepal and then fly back to Delhi). Delhi --- Hong Kong (short stay to sort out Chinese visas). Hong Kong --- Tokyo (catch the shinkansen north to Sapporo and back). Tokyo --- Beijing (travel overland by train: first north to the wall, and then south via Xi'an and the Yellow river gorges to Shanghai). Shanghai --- Hong Kong (hmm, couldn't get to Hanoi on this ticket, so we'll have to make it there some how from here... will probably fly direct or via Bangkok. Then travel overland from Hanoi through Laos to north Thailand - Chang Mai - and then down to Bangkok. Then onwards overland through south Thailand to Malaysia, seeing Kuala Lumpa and Singapore). Singapore --- Perth (I don't know whats in Perth! Must be something to do there though). Perth --- Brisbane (then travel overland to Sidney). Sidney --- Auckland (travel round New Zealand's islands probably by road). Auckland --- Tahiti (laze about on South Pacific beaches). Tahiti --- Easter Island (more paradise in the middle of the ocean). Easter Island --- Santiago (then travel overland - don't ask me how - to Lima in Peru, seeing the Inca trail of course). Lima --- Mexico City (have fun in Mexico for a few weeks - including my 30th birthday party). Mexico City --- London (damn).

As you might have guessed, I can't wait. Hope you can join me for bits of the trip. Look forward to hearing from you - let me know if you have any ideas about the places.

Unemployed... Free!

You know, I never realised when I was a student just how fantastic it is to be able to lie in bed until 9am. I took it for granted that weekends would be free. Then I started work as a Doctor. Enough said really.

But now I've finally decided to leave - no, as you know I decided to take a break to go traveling a long time ago - now I've finally gone and left work its amazing how much more life I seem to have. It was the most liberating (and scary) feeling in the world to turn down those jobs I didn't really want! And now its so nice just to go for a walk into town on a sunny day. I can see friends, go home to Wales, go on holiday when I want to rather than scrabbling to get leave with medical staffing. And best of all, no bleeps!

Now I've got other projects of course:

• Arranging the world trip
• Seeing people I haven't seen in ages
• Playing guitar (trying to finally get a few songs down definitively)
• Submitting papers
• Teaching undergrads
• Looking after Gary (the poor dab's on nights at the moment)
• Trying to decide what the hell I'm going to do when I get back

which are all great - I can choose what I want to do when I want to do it. But to be honest, in some ways I feel as if I'm living on borrowed time while I haven't got a job. Do you think this feeling of freedom will last? Answers on a post-card please!

I'm going to start trying to fit the trip around the world together in a bit more detail over the next few weeks now that I've got the time. I'd really like to know if any of you would like to join me - or do specific things. If you would, comment on this post. I might also start a random pictures gallery for entertainment value...

With any luck this project will start to make a little more sense soon: I now have four other sites which can be reached by the links on the right (but only when I let people see them). They now have geographic maps of the areas (or bits of the areas) we hope to travel through. And soon I'll try to draw on the maps and write about our planned routes below. When we have plans that is - at the moment I want to go everywhere!

In the meantime here's a place I will return to on this trip: Hong Kong. Fantastic place, especially vibrant at night...

Warm-up trips

The plan is to depart on a trip around the world in March 2008: spending 2-4 months in Africa, Asia, Oceania and South America. Each of these areas will have its own mini-site for planning / maps /etc - see the left of this page. Some of these are more developed than others at pressent, but hopefully they'll improve.

In the meantime we've visited othe nice places because March is a long time away. Hawaii for instance...