Tuesday 24 January 2012

Day 295: Planning Asia (don't hold me to any of this!)

Taking it easy...  At least I'm sitting out it the garden to pore over my computer!!

We are pretty much alternating a quiet day with a hiking day at the moment, and this is one of the quiet days.  I spent a good part of it sorting out the basic outline of our trip through Asia and our return to Europe.  I haven't got all the details ironed out yet, and the plan is rather constrained by borderline climatic conditions at both ends so lots may change but this is what it looks like at the moment. 
  • June 29 - a cruise ship will deposit us in Singapore
Early July
  • A few days in Singapore
  • Possibly fly into Thailand for a few days
  • Fly into Cambodia for a few days - Angkor Wat, Siem Reap and Phnom Penh
  • Fly to Hong Kong for a few days - we must be the only people in the world who have to go to Hong Kong on purpose because we couldn't fit it in any other way
Late July - August
  • Mike and Antonia will fly to Bali and stay till the end of August (where he has a cousin, for those who don't know)
  • Penny will go to Japan for a month and hopefully Bali for a week or so either before or after Japan
September
  • Everyone will fly to Ho Chi Minh city in Vietnam from where we will make our way overland through Vietnam to Hanoi.  So Vietnam is the country in SE Asia we've decided to pay extra attention to.
  • Train from Hanoi to Beijing - 2.5 day ride
October
  • We will take a 1 month organised tour of China, in what should be near ideal climatic conditions, probably from Beijing to Shanghai
  • Return to Beijing preferably by train
November
  • Trans-Mongolian train from Beijing to Moscow, stopping at Ulan Bator, Mongolia and hopefully Lake Baikal, then crossing Siberia. We are hoping the winter starts late!!!
  • Return to UK - we haven't decided on the details.  We will consider climate and decide whether it is worth meandering through St Petersburg and Scandinavia or whether we had better stick to the Moscow - Paris train.
December
  • We intend to arrive back in the UK by 15 December at the very latest and be there for Christmas.  After which, we will live in London for a while.  We haven't yet decided if we will ask for our house back, look for a house boat, or simply rent some other place.
So that's it!  It's about 2 months less time than I would have like to spend in Asia, but the constraints of us really, really wanting to take the Trans-Mongolian mean that I doubt we should leave much later than early November.

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