Last Day of Work, Last Day of the Year, Last Three Injections

Well, yesterday saw us both getting the last three of our nine injections - so that's us now hopefully immune to a lot of nasty diseases!! Tomorrow sees the last day of 2008 and also the last day of work for the next 6 months or so.

Now we can look forward to our leaving do on the 10th and start to think about packing – although admittedly, finding the time to fit things into a small rucksack won’t be that difficult!!

Now the countdown begins proper!!

Getting Ready to Go, Mapping Update & Injections

Right - thats us all booked up so I've added our stop off points onto the route map - Pink means we haven't done it yet, Blue means that we have

We go on 15/01/09 and the tickets ended up costing £2200 each including all taxes not bad for all of the flights we are getting!

We've now had 6 of our 9 injections, we opted to go for Hep B, Rabies and Japanese Encephalitis - we get our final injections on 29/12/08. With the anti Malaria stuff we ended up paying £320 each - a bit steep but then again, I don't fancy catching any of these diseases

Mapping

For those of you who have made an effort to look at this blog, you've probably though "Hey - how am I going to know where Hayley & Dave have been on their travels?" Well here you go - Thanks to Google I've added a map. The idea is to make it like an Indiana Jones travel map like the one below (Remember the movie?):












Have Fun

Dave

Injections

I didn’t actually realise how many nasty things were waiting in other countries to infect you and make you ill!!!

Last week I visited our doctors surgery and filled out a form which states where we are going to be going. The practice nurse gave Hayley a phone and asked her a few questions:

Do you want to be immunised against Rabies?

Do you want to be immunised against Hepatitis B?

H was a wee bit unsure, so we need to discuss our holiday optional extras when we see the nurse, but my opinion is that if it’s out there and a vaccination exists then inject me – to be totally honest I don’t fancy getting Rabies.

So today I picked up our prescriptions and we are getting injected with two things for starters. One called Viatim and one called Revaxis.

I now need to make an appointment with our nurse, go collect the prescription the day before the appointment, store the drugs in the fridge overnight and then take them to our appointment where the nurse will stab me in the arm a couple of times and we’ll talk about any other injections we may need.

Dave

A Plan Comes Together

How do you plan a world tour?

Set yourself some ground rules. Mine were:
Decide how long we’re going for
Decide what dates we’re going
We need to avoid war zones
We need to avoid areas prone to natural disasters

Admittedly, the last two points rule out half of the globe, but we at least want to try and plan to make it back to the UK in one piece.

Sitting down, I came up with a rather loose plan which encompasses Australia, a move up to Malaysia, onto Thailand, jump into Nepal and fly down to Goa in India before returning home. Simple.

So now we know where we’re going when do we do it? Well it seems sensible to visit the Southern Hemisphere whilst it’s their summer and our winter so we plan to leave on 5^th Jan and look to return at the end of April.

Right – so the biggest part of the trip was Australia and we decided that we need to work (we have to fund our combined alcohol problem somehow!) To work means we need a work visa so a few minutes online (and £90 each) and the Australian Government have allowed us a Working Holiday visa – Great Success

I priced up a few flights on Opodo, used the Lonley Planet website for living costs and we now have a rough cost for the 4 months that we plan to be away.

Total Cost at this point for food, accommodation and Travel is estimated £5200 each – Ouch!!

Dave

A brief introduction.....

Well, here I am setting up a Blog for our up coming world tour - never done a blog before but there you go; that’s that ticked off the list!!

So why am I here writing this? Well it all started 4 years ago when Hayley and I started working for Lloyds TSB Registrars (we've always worked together). LTSB decided to sell Registrars and the business is now owned by a private equity company.

The new company has now decided to close the Edinburgh office where we work and centralise operations elsewhere.

This makes us both redundant - no bad thing as it was probably time to move on anyway

So with no job, no babies and no real commitments (apart from each other), we’ve decided to go tour the world!!

And this blog will be our story of our adventures….

Dave