Partial Itinerary

There have been questions about just where we're spending the next six months. Okay, a partial itinerary.

Oct 1st we fly to Las Vegas to stay for 4 days. Not only is it actually cheaper than direct to Hawaii but some timeshare company is giving us three nights at the Luxor just to try to talk us into yet another timeshare. Okay, 3 or 4 hours of sales resistance for a few days in Sin City. Since we both consider gambling and the casinos boring, we'll probably walk the strip for a night trying to collect the full set of cards ( it seems the hookers in Vegas feel the need to advertise) then check out Red Rock Valley and revisit Zion National Monument. Then fly to Hawaii, stay in a timeshare for a week. Then it gets a little loose. We have a month in the islands and intend to spend as much time as possible seeing the usual tourist stuff without breaking the bank. Probably camping out and staying in hostels, which Hawaii has in plenty.

Then it's onto a cruise ship, the Celebrity Century (again courtesy of a bargain offered by Liz's timeshare company RCI) with four stops in French Polynesia and ending 19 days later in Sydney. We stay with Evergreen Bed and Breakfast memebers, Ray and Wendy Volpatti in Sydney for the first 2 nights we arrive. Then we rent a car and drive for another week in a timeshare near Batesman Bay, south of  Sydney and east of Canberra. Then we drive along the Great Ocean Highway and see penguins and Melbourne. We get on a train to Adelaide and then up to Alice Springs. We spend a week there, probably take a bus see Ayres' rock (Sorry, Uluru - the aborigines insist). Between Christmas and New Year's we fly to Auckland, New Zealand. We're not firm on what to do with a mere 2 weeks there. We want to see the fjords near Queenstown so there's not time to see north and south islands. We're leaning to a bus tour of the South Island.

From Auckland to Singapore, 4 days. Then fly to Bali for a week. Devil-may-care's that we are, we'll see about lodging when we get there. Back to Singapore. Train through Malaysia to Bangkok, then Chiang Mai (where the Thais go to vacation). We intend to find some sort of semi-permanent lodging there and find tours (bus, train, boat, whatever) through Southeast Asia. Then if we tire of that, and aren't homesick yet, a couple of weeks in India (Hell, I don't know where). We can't buy return plane tickets yet (six months out is max) so we don't have anything like a firm return date. April or May.
Liz promises that we'll be back before Mother's Day for mothers' sake.

We'll undoubtedly spend the rest of our lives defending  what we DIDN'T see. "What do you mean, you were only seventy miles from the biggest hornet's nest in Asia and didn't go?"  Well, it's our trip and there'll be memories aplenty.