Minor Mishap # 12

They lost our luggage... again. Both the backpacks stayed in LAX on our way home, while we continued on to Brisbane. Of course it really did have to happen. The last flight of our entire world trip needed to be marked by something special.

Moral of the story: ALWAYS pick up your luggage and re-check when transferring through USA especially when traveling either to or from Canada.

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and Judy

The Ranting Entry

We need a place to put all our gripes about the trip. Especially those about our travel agent. The reason I want to put them here is so that all the issues I have are not flying around in my head and affecting the trip in a negative way. Plus, it's good reminders for when I plan another trip. So this blog entry is likely to grow throughout the trip (hopefully not too much!).

Rant #1: When I was picking up the tickets, i.e. 1 week before we were due to leave, we were told that the African Safari we are going on requires us to bring our own sleeping bag and mat... Um, what?... Now, that would have been nice to know BEFORE we booked the thing. That should have been in our agent's spiel for example " This is a great trip but are you willing to bring your own..." instead of "Oh, by the way..."

Solution: We already have some mats and we will buy a cheap sleeping bag in Hong Kong and then get rid of it after if we have too much luggage. Bit of a pain , but achievable.

Rant #2: It was perhaps the wrong choice to go with the manager of the Travel agency. Now you night think you are getting the best qualified person. However, in our case, our agent usually wasn't in the office because of "meetings". Also, managers seem to have this urge to get to the top, and may have just a little too much ambition.

Solution: Next planning of a large trip, I will ask for two travel agents to know all details of my trip. That way if one is "out", I can defer to the other.

Rant #3: Our agent didn't reply to our e-mails. So we didn't know if he had received them. This led to him "not getting my e-mail" for my pickup of the tickets asking for an hour earlier (because I had plans later with a friend). Luckily my friend could re-schedule at last minute and come earlier (As in "He hasn't turned up can we do dinner now?"). He wasn't ready at the original appointment time either.

Solution: Ring and see solution to #2.

Rant #4: Mum's Travel doctor was absolutely terrible. He gave her no choice in the Malaria tablets and gave no details on when and where to use them. Also, there was no discussion on which injections might be good and why. No vaccination plan.

Solution: Get opinions of two Travel Medical Centres. It was lucky that I lived in a different city to Mum so we were forced to get two opinions. That way I could relay all the good advice to Mum that I was getting. We also probably discussed the medication more too.

Rant #5: Geckos tours do not have any included meals and the tour guides do not accompany the group to optional activities, which is not made clear in the trip notes. Also, there are many extra costs that are not indicated in the brochure, which you become aware of only when you have paid in full. We feel we have not been given clear information about tipping (e.g. "You can tip if you want to" with no guidance as to how much) and hotel quality (3 star is not equivalent with our previous experience of 3 star). We took the India Golden Triangle Tour and didn't see any of Delhi because our tour guide scared us into staying indoors and didn't turn up for two appointments for sight seeing.

Solution: Don't Travel with Geckos again.

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Neurotoxin? Yes Please!

Continually firing nerve signals does not sound pleasant... but I don't particularly plan to contract Malaria. The only way to prevent Malaria seems to be by employing a cocktail of compounds.

1: Permethrin or 3-Phenoxybenzyl-(1RS)-cis,trans-3-(2,2-dichlorovinyl)
-2,2-dimethylcyclopropanecarboxylate

Permethrin is an insecticide, and is a nerve agent towards insects. It kills the insect by causing nerve signals to constantly fire. It is also severely toxic to fish and cats. But apparently mammals can metabolise it efficiently. (Hmm, trying to reconcile those last 2 sentances) Taking this into account, we are planning to drape ourselves in clothes which have been soaked in the substance.

2: DEET or N,N-diethyl-m-toluamide

DEET is supposedly the strongest insect repellant out there, and we need to slather ourselves in lotions that contain 30% of the stuff. DEET can damage plastics, but apparently should be fine for our skin. (It is noted in the Medical book that concentrations over 50% are not recommended) DEET works by blocking the receptors in insects which they use to locate victims. Poor little mozzies, gonna be flying around "blind" and skitzed out!

And then of course there are the antimalarials. It seems the way to prevent malaria is to pretend like you have it and treat it... Our antimalarial drug of choice is Malorone. The two active ingredients are atovaquone and proguanil:

3: Atovaquone or 3-[4-(4-chlorophenyl)cyclohexyl]-
4-hydroxy-naphthalene-1,2-dione


4: Proguanil or 1-(4-chlorophenyl)-
2-(N'-propan-2-ylcarbamimidoyl) guanidine

Atovaquone interupts the energy prodution in the parasite. Proguanil inhibits the reproduction of the parasite once it is in the red blood cell.

Umm, thank you very much but I have no intention of letting those protazoa anywhere near my red blood cells!

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1. Wikipedia, 2008, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permethrin
2.Wikipedia 2008, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEET
3. & 4. Wikipedia 2008, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malarone

I am the Immunity Queen

I finally have all my vaccinations!!!

I'm feeling somewhat like a pin cushion. I say somewhat because the first Nurse at the Travel Doctor in the City was absolutely FANTASTIC. The needle never hurt going in, and Rabies and Tetanus didn't even sting! It basically felt like someone was scratching my arm... you know, like preparing it for the injection. And then it was
done.

The sufferring did eventually come for Tetanus. The not moving your arm above your head etc. But I thought I had hit the nurse jackpot.

Then. I went in for my 3rd and 4th injection appointments and I had *gasp* someone else. "No," I thought the first time, "no, this cannot be, how dare she go on holiday and abandon me with someone else." When it was apparent that I had actually been abandoned I tried to convince myself "Perhaps this nurse would be just as capable." I was wrong. Terribly wrong.

Anyhow, below is the evidence of the procedures.

Week 0: Rabies 1
Week 1: Rabies 2 and ADT (Adult Tetanus and Diptheria)
Week 3: Rabies 3 and Typhoid
Week 4: Yellow Fever, Chickenpox 1 and blood test
Week 12: Chicken Pox 2, Meningitis, Cholera

The part I hate the most about injections is the waiting. The opening of the fridge door, then the nurse has to do some writing and a bit of *rustle, rustle, tap tap*. The suspense is nerveracking!

As an aside, I learnt how they generally test immunity. Apparently, they take some of your blood and check for activity against antigens of the disease at higher and higher dilutions of your blood. The higher the dilutions can go with a reaction to the antigen, the better immunity you have. Cool huh?

My Rabies should be at least 0.5 and it's 4.5 (I'm guessing that means dilutions), Hep B 10 and it's 64 and my Hep A and MMR is also good (they are for life). My TB baseline is zero as expected. And the good thing is I don't have to have a vaccination for TB (ha HA!) because the Doctor said the vaccination essentially didn't work adults so we just do a baseline test to compare against when I get back. Since I had to have a blood test for rabies anyway, they did it all at once.

I guess the positive from all the trauma is that I have really good immunity now.

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Everyone's Passport picture looks funny... right?

I had to make sure my passport was going to be valid for the time I was going to be away and I seemed to have conveniently forgotten how bad the picture was. Seeing as I am slightly masochistic and feel like humiliating myself, I thought I'd share it with you...

Whoa! hey... whoa.
Your eyes are kinda... open there.

So this result was actually the second batch of photos that were taken. The reason I am focusing on, let us say, not blinking, is due to the first batch of photos.

Luckily, I can't seem to find this first photo set, so let me leave it at that I looked like I was about to either sneeze, or collapse from tiredness, or have an imminent overdose on whatever drug I looked like I had taken.

Both the passport picture sets were taken on the same day and I was a bit embarrasssed that I couldn't get it right, so I just took the second batch and payed as quickly as I could. Also, I didn't really want to keep spending time and money probably never to get a proper shot. So in the end the photo choice was either "crazed lunatic" or "drugged hippie". Not really sure I chose the right one.

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I went shopping

Kathmandu was having a *gasp* SALE!!! 50% off OMG! So of course I went craaazy and got a pack.

Oooh isn't it pretty?
I shall love it and squeeze it and call it George.
See how the harness has a special cover thinggy
that protects it from catching when travelling as cargo.

Ergonomic harness, niiice.
And look at it's little detachable "mini me", cute!

Mum got one too, in red (so we can tell them apart at a glance). The design is a little thinner than a normal pack, which should help make situations less frustrating, like getting in and out of trains etc.

The plan is to have to practice hiking with them on the hill near our house when I go down to Canberra for Christmas. You know, so they don't look so new when we travel and are therefore less likely to be targets for unlawful behaviour. Plus, we might need some practice hauling them around.

Oh yeah, I got this stuff too.

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I have to do what?!?!

One of my friends, who shall remain nameless (you know who you are) decided to point out to me recently all the injections I will need to have, in order to go to some of the countries we have on our itinerary. Now, I'm what you'd call terrified of injections, which might explain why my mind has never dwelt on this fact before.

The particular thing that is freaking me out is that I haven't had the TB vaccination. We are going to Africa and South America, so I'm pretty much going to need one. The TB vaccination apparently always comes up in a boil and scars... great.

Maybe it can be another souvenir?

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Our Final Itinerary

Well, final as in up to today it is accurate. Below, the Jauntlet map shows the major places we will be going to. Of course exactly what we will do is likely to change. Slide the bar along the bottom to view our destinations and the dates we should be at them.

Below I've gone into a brief outline of the trip plan and some main tourist sights we would like to see. Of course, the plan may change at any time!

We fly out of Sydney to Beijing on the 29th of February, 2008. From there, we join a 10 day tour which takes us from Beijing (Great Wall) through Xian (terracotta warriors), rural Yangshuo and finally to Hong Kong. We will spend a few days in Hong Kong before travelling on to Delhi.

In India we also plan to do a 6 day tour through the Golden Triangle - Delhi, Agra (Taj Mahal) and Jaipur (Amber Fort). The tour takes us back to Delhi where we fly back through Hong Kong in order to get to...

Johannesburg, South Africa. From here we will take an awesome 11 day Safari, hopefully getting to see lots of wildlife. The tour takes us to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe (the world's largest sheet of falling water). We then fly down to Cape Town, South Africa to relax for a couple of days.

Our next destination is Cairo (Giza) where we plan to do an 8 day tour to Aswan and Luxor (Valley of the Kings). A couple of final days in Cairo finish our Egyptian section before we head to London. If you are counting the days, we are up to April 19th.

This marks the beginning of our 10 week UK/ Europe craziness. We plan to hire a car to drive through the UK, taking us through England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Following our roadtrip, we shall take the train to Paris, France. A handy Eurrail Pass will be of great use to help us travel to places such as Madrid, Spain, Marseilles, France, Rome, Italy, Bucharest, Romania, Zagreb, Croatia, Bern, Switzerland and Berlin, Germany. At some point we hope to hire a villa in Tuscany, Italy.

Once our Western European travel is complete we will head to Moscow on the 28th of June and catch the end of the Trans-Siberian Railway to Pskov and St Petersburg.

Nine days later it is on to Santiago, Chile and Easter Island, before Lima, Peru and Machu Picchu. Lots of time is planned to be spent around Cuzco, so as to ensure minimal chance of altitude sickness. On this leg of the trip Dad is planning to come over and join us. Then when we fly to Toronto (Niagra falls) on the 24th of July, Dad will fly home.

Of course we have to go to New York again, as well as travelling to Baltimore so we can visit everyone in Annapolis.

Then finally, we head to Vancouver for a week before coming home to Brisbane, which, all going well, has us arriving home on the 19th of August at six in the morning. (Why do I suddenly have Mr Collins' voice in my head?)

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The Structure of Planning

Quite honestly I didn't think it would take this long to plan our trip. I mean how hard could it be to just put down everything in my head onto paper in a coherent, cohesive form? Apparently, quite hard. We have spent at least 3 weeks planning and there seems to be a very definite process to the whole thing.

It seems the very first thing you do is plan any tours and flights. Forget accommodation or insurance or any other stuff you'll have to worry about. That will all come later.

I like to think about it like drawing or painting (because the more I plan this trip, the more I feel it is like creating a work of art). Lets work with the metaphoric example of drawing a landscape.

So first of all you need a basic structure to your drawing, an outline (the flights). The outline shows you how everything connects in the drawing, just like flights connect destinations. You might fiddle around with this outline a bit, the shape of the hills might be a bit too large (staying too long in a place) or there might be tree that has to go (Nepal *sob*) because it might ruin the drawing as a whole. Sometimes a new sheet of paper may be needed(thank goodness we didn't need that!).

Once you have this basic outline, then comes filling in the background colours - the stuff that gives the drawing depth and dimension, (tours). Again this might change some of the outline structure as you might want more of a certain colour on the drawing than you originally planned.

Then I guess all the picture detail will be like our visas and accommodation and the final adjustments like highligts and lowlights correspond packing and vaccinations.

Wow still a lot to do!

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Are we insane?

So everyone going on major trips usually start their blogs when they go right? Well, I thought this one would start in the planning stage... just so we can share the whole experience.

The reason I've chosen this blogger site is because Google seems pretty robust, and while I know there are a lot of really good travel related sites out there to blog on, with tons of funky travel related application you can add to your blog, I think the blog might start to get a bit complicated. Keep it simple right? I'm sure I'll be able to upload pictures to here and who knows, I might even be able to do a map tracker thing...

So, getting to the plan huh?

My Mum and I are in the middle of planning a world trip, that shall last 6 months. We have both achieved major milestones in our life, so thought a major reward was due. The trip is absolutely being planned with the help of a licensed professional, and when I am not in a cynical mood I think he is actually doing a really good job. We have been through about 4 drafts of the trip now and I think there will probably be at least 2 more.

You see, half the problem is I am a little bit of a perfectionist and I want to have the trip planned quite well... but I know that life in not like that and we are going to have major stresses in the 6 months we are away. Still, there is no harm in wanting to minimise those moments.

The frustrating part with a world trip ticket is there are all these restrictions you need to abide to. For example, 20 total flight limit and within those flights, "sector" limits. It basically means you have to cut things out or pay more. We have already had to cut out some really good places in the revision of the plan. My heart is breaking that we have to cut out Nepal, but it just seems to be one of those places that you need to plan to go to just by itself.

But with all the restrictions and culling, we still have a 6 month trip. And I'm not sure whether I'm panicked or excited.

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