Oxford, UK

C: NEWS FLASH!!!!!!! we've bought the tickets!!!! hip-hip-hippety-hoppety-huppety-HOORAY! yes, today Philippa and I spent all our money on our tickets, and boy is it going to be worth it. In the end we went with Trailfinders because they could offer us a really rather good price. Philippa - would you like to write something?

P: ..........I would like to confirm that we turned down STA in exchange for a pretty good offer. I've also learned the horrible truth about Catherine's issues with flying and if she doesn't go to sleep on the insanely long flights we're going to be on I will not be a happy bunny.

C: Philippa just smacked me!!! anywho, so whoever is reading this may be thinking "for god's sake tell us where you're going and stop blabbering!" - ok...calm down..it's on the left hand side of the screen. As you can see, we're going to Bangkok, overland to Singapore, then flying to Oz and going north to south, and then NZ going south to north, then blowing our remaining budget on a luxury trip to Hong Kong!!! no, that last bit's a lie, we'll be spending a budget-breaking 3 days back in asia - a nice way to round off the trip.

Our ticket cost £1168.10 each, which we think is good considering tax etc. We will now be starting to organise and plan our route and visas and insurance (yuk, boring stuff, but necessary) before we jet off. With the help of the LP guide books we should be just fine! We can't wait!!!! That's all for now, we'll update as we progress......................:)

Oxford, UK

Catherine: After much delay and procrastination we have decided on a potential route! Here we go: UK - Bangkok overland to Singapore - Sydney overland to Melbourne - Christchurch overland to Auckland - Home! It sounds simple, yes, but ACTUALLY it's going to be a mega awesome trip.

Philippa: We're looking to spend about three months in Asia, one month in Australia and one in NZ. Hopefully we'll be booking our flights in about two weeks, and in the meantime we're researching where our overland travel should take us and what's worth seeing.

C: Personally, I'm intrigued to see how this blog will develop and where we'll actually end up......it could be somewhat different. Somehow I can already tell that my entries on this blog aren't going to be particularly useful or coherent or sensible. Oh well, that's just tough.

P: I forgive you for making more noise than sense but would like to apologise to all readers at this point.

C: This concludes our first entry. We promise successive entries will make more sense and be less rambling.....maybe. Bye for now!!!!