Monday 10 March 2008

The Itinerary

Dear Ethel, Family & Friends,

As you may know, we are about to embark on an overseas trip lasting possibly 18 months or more travelling to South East Asia and Europe.

We are now finally out of the house and living with friends and family until we leave the country. It has taken us 3 months to pack up and vacate the house but all the hard work is now over and we have some good tenants in the house.

We gave notice to Australia Post about our postal contracts at Christmas time and I finish up at Easter time and travel to Bathurst to meet up with Louise and her mum for a week before we go.

Our trip starts on 1st April (not sure if that’s tempting fate or not, will let you know). We fly out of the Gold Coast on Air Asia, a new discount international airline to Kuala Lumpur.

Anyway here is a brief summary of our plans so far:

Asia: 10 weeks approx.
Fly to KL and stay for 6 days, then on to Cambodia to see the Temples of Angkor Wat in Siem Reap. We plan to stay 5 or 6 days and get a 3 day pass to the temples.
We travel this first 2 weeks with our friends, Michael and Joyce Johnston.
From here we separate, us to Penang and them to Chang Mai.

Louise & I have enrolled in a month long TESOL English language course to teach English to speakers of other languages. 14th April 9th May. We hope to get work teaching English later in our trip. We have been to Penang before but not for many years, so we look forward to returning. We have booked into a nice apartment for our month’s stay which is across the road from the school.

After we finish our course, we meet up with the Johnston’s again to travel to Kuching, in Sarawak in Borneo East Malaysia for 4 nights. We then go to Kota Kinabalu further to the north for another 4 nights.

Michael and Joyce head back to KL and back home from here, while Louise & I are off to Thailand. We don’t have any exact plans but Ko Sumi, Krabi, Puket and Ko Phi Phi are all in consideration.

We Fly out of Bangkok on the 9th June so we will head there a week before we leave.

Europe:
We fly into London for a few days and see my Uncle Murray, then on to Crete in Greece. We only stay a short time as to travel on to the Peloponnesus via ferry to catch up with our German friends Ralph and Titia who have a holiday house there.

After staying with our friends we will head back to Crete and do a slow tour over the length of the Island ending at the eastern end and catching a ferry to Rhodes and then on to Turkey

Here we plan to do some sailing and see some sunken cities and travel through the Aegean Sea northwards.

From here it gets vague, we intend to get fly back to Germany to buy a campervan, maybe in Stuttgart or even Vienna.

Once we have the vehicle, we return to the Mediterranean coast, maybe Dalmatian coast or strait to Italy, and continue west along the coastline through France, Spain and Morocco.

Well hopefully once we have done this, it will be about October November and we will either stop in Gibraltar or Valencia for the winter and Christmas.

From here we have no further plans, except we hope to get work somewhere and play it by ear. Louise & I are also Race officers for sailing events and will search out some sailing events to offer our help in along the way, so who knows what will happen?

We plan to return to Australia around the world, by Canada and the US or maybe the Caribbean, Cuba or other South American destinations, who knows? But we want to end up in New Zealand as I have relatives there.

Or we may go back to Asia to get some teaching work.

All the best until we know what’s going on.

Ric & Louise