Overview

The trip we have been planning for the past 12 months is now coming up very fast. We have visited a lot of places during both our expat days in Oman and the years after. We always promised that we would leave the visit to New Zealand and Australia until after we retired so we could spend months there rather than weeks and be able to cover more places and for a longer period. Well we both retired in April 2008 and will be leaving Manchester on the 12th of October 2008 for Hong Kong where we shall be spending 3 days. We haven't been to Hong Kong since the handover to China so it will interesting to see if it has changed. We thought we would try a different form of transport and have booked a 24 hours train ride to Beijing on the 16th of October. While we are in China we will visit the Golden Triangle of Beijing, Xian and Shanghai. On the 26th of October we leave China for Auckland and stay in NZ until the 19th of December when we leave for Melbourne. We will stay in the Melbourne area until the 10th of January 2009 to go to Perth and then travel to Tasmania on the 31st of January 2009. On the 7th of February we leave Tasmania to Sydney for Gareth and Annie's wedding on the 11th of February. Later we drive up the East Coast to Cairns. On the 26th March we leave for Los Angeles and spend 9 days in Arizona and California, 4th April back to the UK . We will be posting our thoughts and experiences on this Blog as we go but don't expect a 'Long way down' quality.