Our Year in the Merde

We can hardly believe it-- today marks our one-year anniversary of travel!

Saturday, January 20, 2007 was the day we finally packed up our gear (and left a lot of it behind as well), dragged our families and friends to the airport for sad goodbyes, and hopped on our Cathay Pacific flight to Bangkok. It didn't feel real until well into the 22 hour flight, and somewhere along the way we even lost a day (so tomorrow will be our first Jan 21 in ages!). We arrived sleepy, confused, and overwhelmed in Bangkok... and you all know the story from there.

It's been a fabulous year! We've learned more than ever this year that plans will always change, and to "carpe diem" every day of our lives. If you want to go somewhere, go! And if you see something cool in a shop, buy it (unless it's zillions of dollars, or something)! There is something to be said for hard work, but what's the point if you don't enjoy it afterward? These have probably been our most important lessons this year. And saying that, we've STILL left places and things to do till "later"...

And as for keeping flexible-- well, we certainly never envisioned ourselves as cherry pickers, construction workers, living four months in the tropic jungle, flitting off to Hong Kong for 10 days, camping for almost three months, moving into a cottage in the country (with the biggest spiders we'd ever seen!) and then, never really getting out of Queensland. But it's been awesome anyway.

For those of you who keep asking the BIGGEST question of all : "When are you coming home?" We really don't know. Now that we've slaved away on the harvest trail for our three months, we'll be applying for our second year visas soon, and we'll probably stay as long as we can in Oz. We also didn't realize before we left Canada that this country is massive, and that there are fabulous things to see at every end of this land. Daisy's just resting up now for the road trip of a lifetime-- we still plan to travel around the centre (Uluru!), Northern Territory (Crocodile Dundee land), and Western Australia (an untouched beauty and THE place to explore here nowadays). And then who knows? Tassie's still on the list, New Zealand's just a short plane trip away, and then there's all the wonderful countries between here and Canada.

Only now we're starting to run into all the lovely hassles of long-term travel: expiring health insurance, OHIP paperwork, invalid return flight tickets, expiring credit cards and drivers licenses (Adrian's a Queenslander now), and digital cameras going wonky (and there's a wee bit of occasional homesickness too). But we'll tell anyone who's thinking about doing what we're doing: IT'S ALL WORTH IT. Because you just never know when Australia will be too dried-up, Hong Kong will be too polluted, or the political climate of some other country will be too dangerous to go. And with technology today, mail travels halfway across the globe in two weeks, email keeps us instantly close, and cheap long-distance calling can keep us chatting easily for hours.

If anyone needs any travel ideas, there's heaps of exotic destinations you'd never think of and gorgeous photos in Lonely Planet's The Blue List. Adrian quite enjoyed reading about tourism, Kim Jong-il-style, in Tony Wheeler's Bad Lands, and Dayle's just starting to read Long Way Round, Ewan McGregor's travel memoir chronicling Ewan and his best mate's motorcycle ride around the world. Three cheers for travel!

T-Minus 2 days and counting...

Hey all, it's getting very, very exciting.

I'm 97% packed up, and shelved away my old life here in Canada. It's weird when you've sold off all your old stuff, everything about your old life seems to be paper work, taxes, and personal mementos.

Basically my Canadian life is sitting in two bankers boxes and an old GL2camera box. I'm keeping some old books that I recieved as presents, and such. Some of my clothes as well are in the same closet, but I'm taking my prized OK47 t's with me to Australia.
Packing was a real issue, not knowing what to take, but I found a great resource online, it's kinda hardcore, but practical. It all depends on what kind of traveler you are.

I've been going over my old list of stuff to do to! Here's a taste: 5 packages of our itinerary and personal info for each family, close bank account, get travelers' cheques, open credit card to ATM access, malaria pills (which I don't think we'll need - they cost $136 bloody dollars!), fix parent's computer, get rid of old phone contract, and the list goes on and on and on.

Now it's all done and I can relax for a little bit. In fact my parents met up with her parents, tonight at Boston Pizza in one of the malls by the 401. We chatted and it was all very nice to see everyone and share a meal, it also was a good chance to swap information with the families and give them all an idea of what we'll be doing and where we'll be going.

We've changed our route a little as well, Dayle called me last night and we had an emergency overhaul of our original travel plans. Our 1st trip route took us through 4 countries in less than 4 weeks, after breezing through some travel forums we've come to the conclusion that this is possibly 2 countries too many - so we've dropped Laos and possibly Vietnam from the trip.

On the Lonely Planet website someone similar was trekking through the same itinerary but with an extra stop in China, but the same time frame. There was an overwhelming number of people urging him to slow down and enjoy a few countries (1-2) at a leisurely pace rather than rushing through. I wouldn've hated to find a really awesome place on a Thailand beach and stay only for the night before rushing off to another part of the country. Besides Laos, and Vietnam aren't going anywhere.

I have a few days left and I hope to post some more before I go, something more useful to other travelers. Seems I just walk around my old neighbourhood and hang out with my parents before they go to bed, so I've started making some notes about what to blog next so it's a little more structured.
My first note to self: Don't ramble and post at 1am when your juiced on so much pop I can hear my teeth screaming to stop already! And from playing guitar hero all night!

Love you guys, and travel safe.
-Adrian Questionmark