Some background to this year’s adventures:

( My apologies for not getting this 1st post on the blog well before this. My plan is to post every 2 days as long as I have about 3 hours in the evenings to post. That will be easy to do in the first part of the trip knowing there will be ready access to wifi in each of the countries, But, when we reach Laos and Myanmar, I understand that wifi access will be very spotty and/or nonexistent. I thank you in advance for your understanding.) 

 At long last our second long trip around the world, starting westward this time, has finally begun after many months of planning and countless hours spent online. This year’s adventures will take us through, in order, Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar (formerly known as Burma except by the US Government and most US media outlets who still use the colonial name), Malaysia, Nepal and India with one final night in London before heading stateside again on December 18^th.

Many of you may be asking yourselves how we came up with this list of countries to visit. We knew from the get go that we wanted to explore Australia and return to Southeast Asia since our first foray to that part of the world in the fall of 2013. On that trip we had ‘only’ discovered Thailand and Cambodia, enough to know that we wanted to come back to the region sometime soon, God willing. Steven traveled to Laos, Myanmar, Nepal and India almost 45 years ago but hadn’t spent the time in each then we will have plus we’ll be seeing new cities and areas in each country so hopefully it will be like visiting the region for the first time for him!

All of our long trips start out much shorter than their eventual lengths – we sure didn’t say to ourselves, well, we have this arbitrary 112 days this year to ‘hit the road’ and where shall we go to fill up those days? It was much more a matter of having a ballpark idea of possible countries, looking endlessly online at Trip Advisor particularly to see what other travelers raved about, where that fit into our broad interests of cultural and religious sites, getting out of our comfort zones and being adventurous, getting off the beaten track in between seeing some of the world’s great cities in SE Asia, and also finding inexpensive flights to get from Point A to B to C. For example, neither Singapore nor Malaysia were on our radar at all and were only added because it was cheaper to get to Vietnam from Indonesia from Singapore and, likewise, to fly all the way south to Malaysia from Myanmar to Nepal. So, we decided in those cases, to make the most of it and spend a few days in each city.

We know many long haul travelers prefer to have a few flights and accommodations booked along the way and leave the rest up to chance and a come what may attitude. Every summer for 33 years, Steven and I have traveled at length in the US and Canada and we’ve always knew at least roughly where we’d be every night along the way. We like to plan our trips/vacations/adventures as much as possible before actually taking them so we don’t, in our minds, ‘waste our time’ on the road planning what we’ll be doing and where we’ll be staying. For us old folks, it’s reassuring coming into a strange city often late at night and know where we’ll be resting our weary bones! The same philosophy applies with knowing what day trips have been planned and we can look forward to the next day.

We are so thankful that we have both the financial resources and good physical health to embark on such an extended trip like this. We are also very appreciative of all of you who have wished us safe travels and those especially who helped us get ready for this adventure. Knowing some of you will keep an eye out and on for our youngest and also on our home while we're traveling the world gives us a profound sense of peace and thankfulness.