BootsnAll Travel Network
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about us & our blog:

Malia & Jess are coming home! Our five month adventure has taken us through Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Bali, Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji. You can view our most recent blog posts here on the home page or view posts by city/location, author, posts with videos, etc. by using the categories listed at right. Feel free to check out our itinerary and our latest pictures by following the links as well. Thanks for coming along for the ride!

maui christmas, everyone!

December 24th, 2007

it’s christmas eve and i’m home on maui. things here in makawao are soooo slow… just finished reading the beautiful and damned (my brother is a major f. scott fizgerald fan so i always steal from his library) and now i’ve the dilemma of what to do with the rest of my afternoon: nap? take muggsy out for a walk? listen to the rain falling through the gutters outside my window? hmmm… all very tempting but i’m constantly thinking about things for our trip, so my brain just won’t slow down to makawao-pace!

i purposely left my southeast asia guidebooks in honolulu (in futile hopes of finding some christmas-inspired maui zen), so instead i ended up spending the last few hours on the internet… researching places to stay in hong kong (still no decisions), luggage requirements for the airlines we’re flying (less is apparently more!), and what the weather will be like when we land (kinda chilly! i guess i will need some sweaters after all) haha. leave it to me to take the perfect peace and quiet of an afternoon in makawao – christmas eve, no less – and fill it with internet research. haha. god, i’m a dork.
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t-minus six weeks and counting

November 28th, 2007

yesterday jess and i went to get passport-sized pictures taken for some of the foreign visas we’ll need on our trip. standing in costco waiting for the photos to develop, we realized it was a tuesday! we leave on a tuesday! so we busted out the calendar and realized that we were at 6 weeks to takeoff. can you believe it??

we’re starting to get all the loose ends tied now, planning places to stay, picking out our travel insurance policies, taking care of all our shots and vaccines, getting rid of the excess stuff (still! i know, why oh why do i have so much crap?) and planning LOTS of good-bye parties. haha… i can’t believe that in six weeks at this time i will be on a plane heading to hong kong.

(well, actually i CAN believe it. i’ve been planning to do something like this forever… i’m just so excited to be finally turning my daydreams into reality!)

i came across this idea on the lifehack website this morning: “If you only had six months to live, would you do what you are doing now? You can only answer ‘yes’ to this question if what you are doing matters to you. Doing what matters to you is a sure way to excellence since you will do it with all your heart. But you need the courage to be different and follow your heart. Do you have it? I hope your answer is yes. Life is too precious to be lived in mediocrity.”
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two tickets to paradise

October 23rd, 2007

malia and jess

so jess and i are counting down now, i picked up our tickets today at the airtrek office in san francisco. in just a few months we’ll be off! can’t wait!

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a journey of a thousand miles…

September 28th, 2007

… begins with a single step. =)

and that first step was booking our tickets! it’s official, we’re now confirmed for the trip of a lifetime… if i’m MIA until january, it’s because i’m saving up for our five month adventure!

here’s the itinerary in case anyone wants to join us!!

1/8 honolulu to hongkong (via taipei) – arriving 1/9
1/15 hongkong to bangkok (thailand)
4/14 bangkok to singapore
4/22 singapore to bali (thru jakarta)
5/21 bali to sydney, australia
5/27 sydney to aukland, new zealand
6/10 aukland to fiji
6/17 fiji to honolulu

another thing that has changed since we started planning this trip is that i truly have come to value “things” less and experiences more. i’ve been trying to get rid of a lot of my possessions because i don’t want to have to put a ton of stuff in storage while we’re gone. once i started, i couldn’t stop! there’s so much crap i’ve accumulated for no reason. my house is so tiny, yet i’ve still managed to pack it full of things i don’t really need. it’s refreshing to be eliminating the clutter and making room for new and exciting experiences…

i’m so excited!! =)

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it’s official!

June 26th, 2007

so its official… just pressed “send” on the email turning down a job offer for january since i won’t be here in january… and guess where i’ll be????

on an around-the-world journey that’s been my whole life in the making… i can’t wait! i’ve always loved to travel and i’ve always said i would love to just take some time off to travel, but never quite put it into action. i was bitten by the travel bug the first time i left the U.S. when i was a sophomore in high school… it was japan that summer, france the next summer, and europe the summer after that… then the “real world” hit and there was school or work or relationships… always something to keep me rooted to the ground, although i tried to go on my little adventures when i could and my main purpose in working and saving money was always to fund my excursions… but its just not the same when you’ve got a maximum two week time limit. the summer between high school and college, i spent almost 3 months backpacking through france, spain, italy, and the czech republic… i’ve always wanted to do it again. and now the chance has come up and so this time i’m gonna take it!
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