Introduction: One month till GO!

Today marks the one month milestone. A combination of emotions overwhelm us, excitement at the thought of the adventure that lays before us, nervousness about the possibilities of everything ending up seriously FUBAR (an emotion that is spurned on by every single horror story we have heard over the previous months) and stress, layers and layers of thick and meaty stress. But above all of these emotions is also a great feeling of finality and closure. I guess I kinda feel like a prison inmate who has only one month left to go until they are released back into the wild. For the three years we have worked as the caretakers for DT's there has always been a slight sense of entrapment about our position. But we can see the end in sight now and with just over three weeks left in the DT's Cell Block I think our holidays, no matter how epic they may be, are well deserved.

Which I guess brings us to the plan (or at least Plan A). One month from today we fly to Bangkok in Thailand, exactly two months later we fly to London where we have organised a two year working visa. That's pretty much all that is set in stone at this point. Upon landing at Bangkok we have booked ourselves 5 nights in a very nice looking hotel called Lampu Tree House and we will use the days in Bangkok (I'd like to call it Bangers from now on, but I won't) to do some shopping and integrate with the asian cultures and odours.

From Bangkok we intend to travel east into Cambodia to visit Angkor Wat and Phom Phen, then Head south east to Vietnam and Ho Chi Mihn. From Old Saigon we will hop on and off the train up the east coast to the north via Da Nang, Hue and Hoi An until we eventually reach Hanoi and Halong Bay. (BTW Please exuse any and all spelling mistakes)

At about this point we'll have to do a bit of backtracking south through Vietnam to find a border crossing into Laos that won't cause death or impoverishment, to eventually reach Vientienne. Heading north through a paddock with some old arse jars in it we will reach Luang Prabang and from there we hope to hop on a slow boat up the Mekong to reach an isolated border crossing at the Northern tip of Thailand.

Returning to Thailand we'll have to go south to get north into the mountains and visit the hill tribes around Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, then we will make our way back to BANGERS (sorry) to organise ourselves for the European leg. Or at least that is the plan.

So here we are one month before we leave sitting in a baking tray ladling ourselves with sweetly rich amounts of stress. We have managed to clear out most of our house, pretty much everything we own has now been packed into boxes and shipped to friends and family or turfed out into black garbage bags. But by god do we have a lot of shit. We are on track to get everything organised before we need to move out of our apartment, but the stress involved has been a little uncomfortable, and it is quite common to sit here for a few minutes making lists in our minds of all the things we still need to do until blood starts pouring from our ears.

But the lists are getting smaller...

THE PLAN:

Step 1: Pack.
Step 2: Travel.
Step 3: ?????
Step 4: Profit.


Thursday 22nd October 2009
Depart: Melbourne, Australia 5:05pm
Arrive: Bangkok, Thailand 10:35pm ( 9hrs 30min )

Tuesday 22nd December 2009
Depart: Bangkok, Thailand 12:15am
Arrive: London, England 6:20am ( 13hrs 5min )

Prologue: Part 2- Made Lists

So we find ourselves several weeks after our first post and things are actually starting to move. We have our working visa's for the UK. The turn around time was a long and draining 1 working day. Yes, you read that right. We were warned from the start that the visas could take a full 3 months to come back. Well I guess the UK must just really like us and want to have us over there...maybe.

We find that we've finally made those lists that we were talking about last post. I mucked around with some informal written lists. It turns out Drew is even more anal than I knew. After sticking my lovely colourful hand written lists on the wall Drew decided that it needed to be done properly and promptly replaced them with widely spaced, well designed printed lists. I think this is an introduction to a part of his psyche that I didn't know about.

We are at about 6 and a half weeks from our depart date and we are at the silly point where I couldn't tell you if we are making good time on our packing and organising or if we are woefully behind. Injections are next week and it looks like we have to get all of them at once. That's going to be one massively numb arm. I've also, not yet, given notice at my second job, they might suspect something when I can't even lift my arm to serve customers next week. Well at least I know I am giving notice to them next friday. That means I can stop stressing about it then and continue...packing

Prologue: Part 1 - Making Lists

I guess it all starts with typing something... Now that has been done I suppose we can begin.


It took us about an hour and a half just to come up with the name for this blog. "Pack the Planet" was Prue's suggestion, a play on words originating from the quote "Hack the Planet" from the mid 90's movie 'Hackers'. We were leaning towards "Loosing Face" because we know that was something we'd have to try very hard not to do while travelling through Asia. We threw around a few other silly names before eventually settling for "pack the planet" cause...Y'know...we're backpackers... and we...um...are travelling around the planet... Yeah.

It is about 9 weeks now until we leave and we still have quite a lot of things to organise. We sent away our Visa applications today and we have begun the arduous task of sorting out all of the shit that we have accumulated over the years as we begin to pack everything for storage, throw away the crap that we really dont need and never ever use yet seem to manage to keep holding onto even though it serves no purpose at all. Eventually all our worldly possesions will need to fit into two very fucking heavy backpacks.

Looking around our tiny apartment as we type this it is easy to be overwhelmed at the scope of the task of getting ready, but luckily for us Prue has been quite busy making lists...