Following is a first cut at our 11 week itinerary for early next year. At this stage I’m really just blocking off chunks of time and will develop them more as time goes by – I’d appreciate input as to the overall sense of the itinerary plus time spent in each place.
I’ve organized the trip in three parts, in this order:
1) Asian destinations – January 10 - 31 2) New Zealand – February 3 Australia - March
The reasons for the order are as follows:
We leave Toronto in early January so I’m trying to maximize the weather in each of the three areas – the Asian destinations are at their coolest earlier in the year; New Zealand is fine in the middle and Australia will hopefully be cooler by March. Also, at this point I think we’ll be using the Star Alliance Circle Pacific Fare and the above itinerary works with its rules (that’s subject to confirmation but I think so).
Details are:
Hong Kong 6 nights Bangkok 6 nights Siem Reap 4 nights Singapore 3 nights
Questions re above – considering side trips from Bangkok – enough time? Singapore is an add on due to the Circle Pacific routing – too many nights?
New Zealand 4 weeks
Following are preliminary thoughts for this period – for the first two weeks we’ll want to be in one place, with a kitchen, so we can relax after the 3 weeks of travel in Asia – still looking at north versus south islands – would like a big enough town for good market shopping and we’ll likely rent a car the second week to do day trips. The next two weeks we’ll likely travel around by car.
Also – I think we’ll fly to Norfolk from Auckland – 4 nights.
Australia 4 weeks
Our list of things to do in Australia (so far) looks like this:
Tasmania one week – maybe fly from NZ to MEL then take the ferry Sydney 5 days Melbourne 5 days Great Barrier Reef one week Unscheduled one week
I’m tempted to leave the Australia portion unscheduled until we’re in New Zealand…..we did that last year in South America – got our sea legs the first 6 weeks and then planned our 4 weeks in Chile. Part of my thinking is the weather – see how it’s shaping up – we’d very much like to dive the GBR but if conditions are poor we can make changes on the fly.
Slow Travel Talk 
