Travels and adventures
Hong Kong airport is so big you need to catch a train to get to your gate. Cebu Airlines is good enough for the price – certainly no free extras. The flight seemed quick compared to yesterday’s flight. We landed in Manila and disembarked. Walking down one of the corridors to immigration we were suddenly…
Quite literally long days when you’re crossing time-zones. At first the flight is great. There is plenty of technology and entertainment to get your head around, and internet on board is great. That takes about 2 hours to wear off, then it becomes very dull. I’m sure plane seats could recline further in the old…
All packed and ready to go, with the average weight under 7kg. This is our first time using packing cubes, and it makes locating things in your bag very much easier. I only wish I’d used them earlier. Each of us has a 2 cubes for clothes, medicines divided to distribute weight, a few electrical…
On previous trips like this half the weight I carried was camera related – camera body, lenses, video camera, chargers… Then there’s the rigmarole of getting the cameras out, looking like a muggers target, stashing it all away again. The more I thought about it the more I wanted a much smaller camera. The other…
In some ways this was the funnest part. By booking so far out (9 months out) we’re guaranteed to get first pick of any place we wanted. By and large I was after places with history and character, rather than places that were either cheap or luxurious. . Coming from New Zealand, where the oldest…
In late August 2018, with about half our budget saved, Cathay Pacific had specials on for around the time we wanted to travel. Unfortunately their algorithmic pricing means if you put in an itinerary and back out then the next time it’s more expensive. I tried clearing cookies, private browser settings and VPNing from other…
The Plan and the Budget are very speculative without an Itinerary. First, make a list of places you’d like to visit. Manila and Hong Kong were a given. My itinerary 20 years ago was Rome -> Naples -> Florence -> Padua -> Milan -> Rome. My biggest regret was not going to the Amalfi Coast,…
Travelling so far it’s easy to look at the headline cost of flights, add on a couple of thousand for accommodation and think that’ll be a rough estimate. Estimating the budget is hard! How cheap can you do it for, and then do you really want to do it that cheap? Optimistic Budget With potentially…
Ten months ago we decided to start saving for a trip to Philippines to visit family, and since we would be halfway around the world already, to tack on a trip to Italy, one of my favourite countries. I’ve been to Italy as a very young child, and for skiing in the Alps, but my…
Mina won a couple of tickets for the ferry to Waiheke near the beginning of the year, and with them about to expire we need to use them fast. The ferry leaves from the bottom of the CBD where parking is a nightmare. So we decided to taken the train in, since the end of…