As most everyone who knows me knows I am about to embark on a 4 month trip to Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia! This blog is meant to be a way to keep in touch with people while I am gone and will hopefully answer the question "I wonder what the heck Rachel (and Hannah and Cori and Caitlin and Tiffany) is up to?!" Hopefully it will also help me when I am old and decrepit, I can look back and think "man, my life was pretty sweet way back when!"
Now, I do realize that these travel plans are probably all wrong, and we are going to be most places at the worst time of the year, and we will never have enough time to see everything we want to or money to do it all, but really, I don't care! I have 4 months off work and am going with some of my favorite girls from all over the world, so it is bound to be an amazing adventure.
Here's an overview of the trip:
I'm meeting up with Hannah (we were flatmates when I was studying at UEA in Norwich, England a few years ago) in Sydney. She will have spent 1 month traveling around New Zealand with her ma, who flies back to England before I arrive. Hannah and I are going to do anything and everything our hearts desire for about 4 weeks- probably see the Blue Mountains, spend lots of time on the beach (hope it is still warm enough!) hang out at Byron Bay, and eventually end up in Brisbane.
Cori (friend and fellow equestrian from Clark) arrives in Brisbane the beginning of June. She will go visit Sydney with her Aussie friend then spend time with me and Hannah bumming around and possibly heading north to the Whitsundays for a week of snorkeling, island hopping, and tanning.
Caitlin (my sister from NYC) arrives the middle of June. We will absolutely visit the Australia Zoo (home of the late Crocodile Hunter) and say goodbye to Cori and head north to Cairns for a few days of scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef and checking out the waterfalls and rainforest of Northern Queensland.
Hannah heads home and Caitlin and I will meet Tiffany (my roommate from college) in Wellington, NZ. The three of us have 2 weeks for the North Island where we are planning on staying in a WWII airplane (http://www.woodlynpark.co.nz) and on an alpace farm (http://www.alpacas.co.nz)!!!! (any guesses on who's idea that was?)
After Catlin leaves Tiff and I will have a few weeks on the South Island (winter, I know, but we survived Worcester!). Then we are checking out Tasmania and a few days in Melbourne, AUS, on our way to Asia!!
The plan is to fly into Singapore for a few days, bum around on the beaches of Malaysia and/or Southern Thailand for a little over a week, then meet up with our tour where we will visit Bangkok, the Angkor Wat temples in Cambodia, and Luang Prabang and Vientiane, Laos. We'll fly back to Sydney for a few days and catch our flight home to SF.
If everything goes according to plan (or some rough semblance of a plan) it will have been an amazing feet of organization- and if not, it will still be an amazing time! So hopefully we will remember to update regularly, and always feel free to drop us a line, give us a call, crash the tour, whatever!
Til then
xoxo
Rachel
