from expo to embassy
I came away from today’s Travel Expo with an armful of glossy brochures for the children to cut up (coz there’s no way we’ll be booking on any of those tours!) and one important piece of information: it is nigh on impossible to get a one-way ticket to Singapore. And even less likely to get ten of them. It seems the Singaporean government is a tad concerned that once you arrive in the beautiful clean city you won’t want to leave. Don’t they know we are hanging out to get to Mongolia?
And what on earth are we doing talking about Singapore anyway?
I’m a little reluctant to say anything yet for fear that this blog will turn into a record of all the dreams we had, but didn’t fulfill!
Ah well, it’s part of the process….already we have dreamed dreams and had to discard them for various reasons. Here’s the latest. In sobre acknowledgement of the fact that perhaps China is not going to happen, we have begun pursuing other ideas. One year’s Leave of Absence Without Pay is still a happening thing, China or not.
So right now we’re thinking of something even wilder. Instead of taking the train from just Beijing to Moscow (and then on to the UK with a few ferries as well), we’re thinking of starting in Singapore. Singapore to London Overland.
Singapore – Kuala Lumpur – Ipoh – Penang – Bangkok – Phnom Penh (side trip to Kampot) – Ho Chi Minh City – Hanoi – Hong Kong – Shanghai – Beijing……and then on as per the original plan.
An adventure such as that makes three months of teaching in China sound boring! It would almost be a pity to hear that everything has come together and we can go!!!
There’s just one wee problem…….we’re not buying return tickets for the whole family when a) we would have no intention of using them so it would simply be lying and b) it would cost too much.
Hi ho hi ho, it’s off to the embassy we go.
Tags: itinerary, preparation, Travel
rayres
Rach, do you know the friends of the Grahams who live in Phnom Penh? Are you organising anything with them?
Great blog! Nothing is wasted, and the things that don’t seem to be working often lead to things that do, but you would never have got to them had you not gone through the process.
If you see what I mean ;o)
Rob Daniel
Karen we don’t know them, but I’ll look them up now that you mention them! K talks about them frequently.
Rob, sure know what you mean. If the “work in China” opportunity hadn’t come up, we wouldn’t have been planning this trip yet. If it then hadn’t fallen through we wouldn’t be travelling all the way round South East Asia and volunteering at some great places! The process is half the fun!