Ryan's Around the World Trip

Trip Update

2008-04-28T00:36:00.006-07:00

I'm very behind on blog posts so I figured I would post a copy of the update email I sent out today:

Dear Family and Friends,

I’ve been promising a number of you that I would send an email update about my around the world trip for quite some time so I figured I better get around to it sooner rather than later.

The trip so far has been fantastic. I am in Singapore at the moment, I’ll be here until Wednesday when I head to India for a friend’s wedding and related travel.

This past week I passed the halfway point of my trip both time wise and distance wise. To quickly recap the trip I spent a little more than a month in Japan with Miho. The time in Japan was really great, it gave me a chance to see and do many of the things I meant to do when I lived there but didn’t get around to at the time. Miho and I took a trip to southern Japan to see Miyajima (click here for photos), Hiroshima (click here) and Nagasaki (click here). I spent the rest of my time hanging around Tokyo with Miho and visiting friends, which was a lot of fun (see here for favorite pics from Japan).

In early March I wrapped up my time in Japan and flew to Seoul, South Korea for a few days. This was my first time in Korea and it actually wasn’t originally part of the plan for my trip. It turned it was cheaper to get from Japan to China via Korea so I spent a few days exploring Seoul and seeing the DMZ. (see here, here and here). I really liked South Korea, the food was great and the culture was very interesting it was definitely a really worthwhile side trip.

After spending a few days in Korea I moved on to China where I spent a little more than three weeks exploring the country. My time in China was fantastic, I honestly wish I had a couple of months to explore China. I started my time in China in and around the Beijing area (click here), where I visited the Forbidden City (click here), hiked the Great Wall with a few guys from the hostel (click here), saw the summer palace (click here) and generally explored the city. Beijing is a very interesting and dynamic city, especially right now with the preparations for the Olympics. One not so great thing was that my time in China happened to be when the crack down in Tibet occurred. The day the Tibet protests broke out I was in Tiananmen Square and I saw Chinese police and soldiers beat an old women, it was one of the worst things I have ever seen and definitely made me a big supporter of the protestors and their cause.

From Beijing I continued on to Xi’an where the Terracota Warriors are located (click here). The warriors were amazing to see, Xi’an was definitely one of the highlights of my trip. I then took an overnight train to Shanghai (click here) where I met my Dad who joined me for a little more than a week in China and Vietnam. Dad and I took a side trip to Suzhou (click here), a very beautiful town outside of Shanghai full of world heritage listed gardens and cultural sites.

My Dad and I then flew to Hong Kong where we made a very brief stop between our flights and then continued to Vietnam. We spent most of our time in Hanoi (click here) where we toured around and I started working on a project with the NGO. My Dad and I wrapped up our time travelling together with a trip to Ha Long Bay (click here) which was amazingly beautiful and very relaxing. We also had the amazing experience of having a live aboard boat all to ourselves, there was supposed to be 8 people but we had the boat to ourselves. I spent the following week working for the NGO which sent me to Hue, Da Nang and Vientiene, Loas. I didn’t take many photos that week because I was working but a small set can be found here.

When my time in Vietnam came to an end Miho flew in from Japan and met me for a trip to Cambodia. We started in Phenom Pen (see here) where we met her friend Crystal and Sandra a friend of hers. The four of us then travelled to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples. The Angkor area is unbelievably beautiful and amazing, it’s hard to find words to describe it, it definitely was one of the highlights of my trip (see here and here).

I’ve since travelled on to Thailand and now Singapore but I haven’t had a chance to put the photos on the web so I’ll include that in a later email. For those who’d like to see all the photo sets in one place, please click here. I also have my travel blog at www.ryansrtw.com but I am very behind on blog posts. China blocked my blog so I fell behind while I was in China and I haven’t yet had time to play catch up, sometime soon I will get the blog back up to date.

I hope all of you are doing well, drop me a line and let me know how life is treating you.

Ryan

Seoul Korea Part 1

2008-04-02T18:28:00.000-07:00

I didn't actually intend to visit Korea as part of my RTW trip, but it turned out to be cheaper to fly from Japan to China via Korea than to take a direct flight. So, I flew via Korea and decided to take a few days and stop to visit the area in and around Seoul while I was passing through. My first day in Seoul was a Sunday which was great, the city had a lot of open air markets and other outdoor activities as can be seen in the photos below. The full set of photos can be seen here

I was staying in Insadong, a famous neighborhood with street shopping, arts and crafts and traditional restaurants. It's famous for it's street shopping as you can see below it was crowded and busy on Sunday:

Insadong had all sorts of things going on in the streets, everything from a person in a robot costume who was offering to dance with passers by (I have no idea what the deal was with the dancing robot but it was very entertaining):

To traditional foods in an outdoor market:

There were also a lot of local people hanging out and enjoying a leisurely Sunday, the group of old men below were having some kind of round table discussion/spirited argument, I really wish I could understand Korean what ever they were discussing seemed interesting:

The Insadong area is also very close to Jogyesa Buddhist Temple, which was really cool to see:

They are in the middle of redoing the roof of the temple so they had the dragons shown below sitting next to the building, I really liked the way they look, it was great to see them up close and personal rather than on top of the roof where they normally are:

I wandered through the city for the rest of the day and went to check out what's left of Namdaemun Gate. Unfortunately a few weeks before I visited Seoul the gate, which is one of the most famous landmarks was burned down, by the time I got to Seoul it had been encased with the wall shown below so they could begin sifting through the wreckage and begin rebuilding:

On the outside of the walls Korean children (and adults) had posted drawings and writing about the gate:

Across the street from the gate there's a really famous market, Namdaemun Market. The market was really crowded and had pretty much everything you could ever want for sale, as you can see below it was full of people:

There were lots of colorful things for sale including the home made candy shown below, check out the full flickr set to see other photos of the market

From what I saw while I was in Korea it looks like people are very into ginseng, the market and many other places I visited had the roots packaged in jars for showing:

I rounded off my first day in Korea by climbing up the hill in the center of the city to the base of Seoul Tower the whole hill is a park with a trial/stairs that lead to the tower at the top. It was a nice day so I hiked up the hill:

When I got to the top I saw the locks below locked to the fences around the tower, I've seen these elsewhere in Asia. Young couples buy locks and write something along the lines of "Jack and Jill love for ever" and then lock the lock to a lucky place and throw away the key, the idea being to lock their hearts together forever:

I went to the top of the tower which wasn't all the exciting because a sand storm in China combined with the smog from Seoul made the view not all that great.

The tower had signs showing the distance from various places, as you can see below it's a long way home.........

One really funny thing happened while I was at the top of the tower. I decided to hang sit down and relax for a while. I had my Nintendo DS with me and had been playing it a lot since Miho gave it to me a few weeks before. I had just finished winning "The New Super Mario Brothers" and I was playing it. A couple of Korean kids came over to see what I was playing and when they saw that I had won the game they called their friends over. I quickly had six Korean kids between the ages of 5 and 10 surrounding me and leaning in closely to see how to win levels in Mario. We couldn't talk to each other due to the language barrier but they kept pointing at levels and asking me to play them. Every time I won the level they thought it was amazing and got very excited. The thing I thought was amazing is the differences between the concept of up close and personal in Japan and Korea, half the kids were between me and the DS and it was in my hands, I could barely even see the screen. It was very entertaining.....

More Trip Updates Coming Soon

2008-04-02T18:23:00.000-07:00

A number of people have asked me recently why my blog suddenly stopped earlier this month. I've been in China and it turns out that the Chinese government blocks google's blogger blog hosting platform, so my blog was blocked. I'm now in Vietnam and able to get at the blog again so I should have more updates soon, in the mean time I have been able to get photos onto the web here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rrbhs99/sets

The trip for the past few weeks has been fantastic, I spent a few days in Korea and then about three weeks in China and I recently came to Vietnam.

Korea

2008-03-16T07:51:00.001-07:00

On March 8th I packed my bags and headed out to Tokyo Narita airport to continue my trip with a fairly short flight to Seoul, South Korea. Miho was planning to join me for a few days in Korea but the logistics got a bit mixed up so I flew on to Korea on my own with plans to meet her again soon. I will be posting photos from Korea shortly, I am lagging behind on my blog posts and I'm paying the price for it, I'm writing from China where the Chinese internet controls make outside connections rather slow and interestingly I am blocked from reading my own blog but I am able to post to it, it's quite random and makes blogging a bit tough.

Japan Favorite Photos

2008-03-16T07:31:00.000-07:00

I sorted through all the photos I took during my month in Japan and created a favorites set in Flickr, it can be found here. I posted a few of the favorites below:

Sick on the road

2008-03-16T07:28:00.000-07:00

The day after our Mt. Fuji day trip I started to get sick and within a day or so came down with a really nasty cold. Being sick is never fun, being sick on the road is even less fun. I didn't really do much of anything for the last week of February or the first few days of March, I just laid low and tried to get healthy in Tokyo. I even delayed my departure from Japan by a week, being sick in my next destination, South Korea, a country I had never visited would have been even worse so I waited until I got better before moving on.

Mt. Fuji

2008-03-16T07:10:00.000-07:00

Mt. Fuji is very close to Tokyo and I've always loved mountains so I've kind of fallen in love with Mt. Fuji in the time that I have been living in and visiting Japan. I climbed Mt. Fuji a year and a half ago (see http://www.ryanstokyoadventures.com/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/rrbhs99/sets/72157594229751090/) but most of the time that I was living in Tokyo the mountain was not visible. In summer it's cloudy and hazy but in winter the mountain is generally visible most days and it looks really nice with snow on it. Miho and I decided to rent a car so we could take a day trip to the Mt. Fuji five lakes region to check out the view, it was beautiful, it was also very cold. You can see the photos below and the full set here:

Rainbow Bridge and Odaiba Island

2008-03-11T08:20:00.001-07:00

When I was living in Japan I always wanted to walk across the Rainbow Bridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Bridge_%28Tokyo%29) to Odaiba Island (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odaiba). The bridge crosses a part of Tokyo bay and like the Golden Gate Bridge in my hometown you can walk across it. I finally got around to walking across the bridge when the weather became unseasonably warm for February, it was a great walk and the view was fantastic as you can see in the photos below, the full set can be found here:

The bridge as seen from the Tokyo side at the start of the walk, there is an elevator that takes you to the bridge deck:

Tokyo Tower and the city skyline as seen from the bridge:

The Bridge from the far side:

The city of Tokyo brought in lots and lots of sand to make a really nice man made beach on Odaiba Island, it's great looking, unfortunately for sa

Strangely there is a replica of the Statue of Liberty on Odaiba Island, one of the more random things in Toky:
I went up to the top of the FujiTV building into the sphere (see photo below) where you can see them film live TV, I ended up in the audience for an afternoon TV show that was being broadcast live throughout Japan, it was entertaining to watch even if my rudimentary Japanese prevented me from fully understanding what I was watching:

The view of the Tokyo skyline from the top of the FujiTV building after sundown was fantastic:

Random Japanese Stuff in Tokyo

2008-03-11T07:59:00.000-07:00

During the time that I was living in Japan I fell in love with some of the quirky things that you find in Japan so I often go looking for them during my visits to Tokyo, here's a few that I found this time around that I really loved:

There is a statue of a peeing child on the yamanote line train platform, it's really random:

I also happened to come across a place on the top floor of the Tokyu Hands (a department store) in Ikebukuro that let's you rent cats, or more precisely rent time with cats. You pay 600 yen for an unlimited amount of time in the "cat house" which is literally three big rooms with 20-25 cats living in them. You can play with, pet and otherwise hang out with the cats for as long as you would like, it's like a cafe except it serves cats instead of coffee. Japanese apartments are very small and often have pet restrictions so you see things like this as solutions

People playing with the rental cats:

There are glassed in areas where the cats can go through cat doors and be away from people when they want a break from all the attention:

I also always laugh about the fact that I am WAY too tall for Japan, as can be seen in the photo of me on a bus below, my knees were about the same height as the head of the woman who had been sitting in front of me:

One thing I also always love to see are the vertical car garages, space is at a premium in Japan so you see a lot of garages like the one shown below. The cars are driven onto an elevator and then automatically put onto big shelves in the garage:

I also saw this sign, I took the photo from a moving train so it's a bit obscured, there are a lot of English speakers in Japan and unlike stereotypes the vast majority are pretty good, but you still do see some funny signs like the one below with reads:

"What is soul?
It's like electricity
We don't really know
what it is."

Around Tokyo Mid Feb

2008-03-11T07:43:00.000-07:00

I'm playing catch up on the blog posts so I will group the next few together and make them shorter so I can catch up, the full set of photos for this post can be found here.

Miho and I did a number of things around Tokyo in Mid February, we watched the Tokyo Marathon which was a lot of fun. One of my favorite days in New York has always been marathon day and it was interesting to see a marathon in Japan. It also brought up an interesting possibility. For several years I have been thinking about running the New York City marathon for my 30th birthday, the only problem is that my birthday is in February and the marathon is in November, now that I've discovered that the Tokyo marathon is less than a week after my birthday I may switch my goal to the Tokyo marathon (check back in three years to see if it happens);

We also went and checked out the newly opened (re-opened in a new location) train museum, I've always been a big fan of trains so I had a lot of fun, it's a great museum:

I've always enjoyed photography and one of the things I love is night time photography so I spent some time taking photos in Shibuya:

Also here's a video of the crowds in the famous Shibuya Crossing, which is one of my favorite places in Tokyo:

I spent some time exploring the Tokyo International Forum, a really cool place and then did some more train watching because the forum is right next to Tokyo Station

Tokyo International Forum:

Tokyo Station from Above:

A Shinkansen:

Senso-Ji and Mt. Fuji Sunset

2008-02-26T01:48:00.000-08:00

Since I've lived in Tokyo I haven't been playing tourist as much during my time here, a lot of my time has been spent visiting friends and relaxing. But some of the time I've played tourist, especially with places that I didn't see or couldn't spend as much time visiting in the past. The photos below are from two places like that. The first is Senso-Ji temple (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sens%C5%8D-ji) which is one of the most famous temples in Tokyo. I've visited Senso-ji plenty of times while I lived here, but the thunder gate, the huge gate shown in the photos below was being refurbished while I lived here so I never had a chance to see it. I also spent an evening watching the sunset from the top of the Tokyo Metropolitan Building in Shinjuku. When I lived in Tokyo my desk at work had a view of Mt. Fuji (when it wasn't hidden by clouds which is most of the time in summer), I used to love the sunsets behind the mountain but never really had a chance to take photos of it. You can see the full sets of photos here: Senso-Ji Full Set and Mt. Fuji Full Set

The Thunder gate at Senso-Ji:

The approach to the ga

The top of the Temple building, the sky was a very beautiful blue that day as it has been many days recently, winter is a great time in Tokyo:

Another view of the gate:

The sunset with Mt. Fuji, someday I need to come back in October/November when the sunsets right behind Mt. Fuji to take a photo I've seen it from work and it was amazing:

Nagasaki

2008-02-25T18:31:00.000-08:00

My time in Japan continued with a trip to Nagasaki which a lot of people say is similar to my home town (San Francisco). After spending some time in Nagasaki I can understand why people say that, it's a nice city with rolling hills overlooking a nice bay, it's like San Francisco on a smaller scale. My photos from Nagasaki can be found below, as always the full set can be found in Flickr here.

For a very long time Nagasaki was the only port in Japan open to outsiders and trade with the outside world so there is a lot of foreign influence, one of the things I hadn't expected to see was a large number of Catholic Churches, Catholicism came to Nagasaki with Dutch traders, one of the churches can be seen below:
There is a park above the church called Glover Garden where the houses of dutch traders from the 1800's have been preserved, I thought it was hilarious that in Japanese fashion the outdoor park is full of escalators:

Nagasaki bay has a lot of shipyards as can be seen below:

The view of the city and the bay from Glover Garden:

The bridge as seen from the Garden:

Like Hiroshima, Nagasaki still has it's old trams:

Due to my height, I am constantly running into funny situations in Japan that remind me that I am not the right size to fit in, as you can see in the photos below the hand holds on the tram are a bit low:

Nagasaki has a lot of Chinese influence, it's the closest part of Japan to China, you can actually take a ferry from Nagasaki to Shanghai. It's also been the only port of trade between Japan and China for long periods of history. At the time of my visit it was Chinese New Year so the city, and especially Chinatown, was fully decorated for the celebration:

Chinatown had an outdoor market for

There was a citywide "Lanternfest" as part of the Chinese New Years celebration, the whole city was covered in beautiful lanters:

One of the parks in the city was decorated with animals for the New Years Celebration, I thought this panda was funny I've never seen a panda with nasty fangs like that:

The park also had a temporary Shrine for the New Years celebration that had a huge number of pig's heads, the heads had the tail from the pig stuck into the head, I would love to know the significance of this, I'm at a loss to explain it:

Nagasaki like Hiroshima was the site of a nuclear bombing during world war II, the monument below stands at the site of the bomb blast:

The remnants of a Catholic cathedral destroyed in the bombing:

The peace cranes offered by Children as part of the memorial, like Hiroshima the memorials and museums are very sobering:

Nagasaki is at the far end of Japan, quite a ways from Tokyo. I had planned to take a Shinkansen (bullet train) back to Tokyo but discovered it would take 8-10 hours which would have then left me at Tokyo station 1-2 hours from my destination in Tokyo so I did some research and found a new Japanese low cost start up airline and flew back (not on the JAL plane shown below), it was a nice flight:

Hiroshima

2008-02-22T03:18:00.000-08:00

Miho and I continued our trip through southern Japan with some time in Hiroshima. Hiroshima is obviously famous for having been the target of the first nuclear bomb dropped on Japan during world war two, its now a very big cosmopolitan city and really quite nice. Hiroshima has great atmosphere and also great food including Okonomiyaki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okonomiyaki) which you can see in the photo below being prepared. The Hiroshima version of Okonomiyaki involves making the “pancakes” with nothing but egg, the fillings are yours to choose, the Okonomiyaki was fantastic in Hiroshima.

Hiroshima is also famous for it’s street cars, most Japanese cities used to have street cars but have since gotten rid of them. Hiroshima still has them and they have an interesting mix of old and new trams as you can see in the photos below:

We spent a good amount of time visiting the nuclear sites which are quite sobering and at times very depressing, the photo below shows the rubble inside the A Bomb dome:

The A Bomb dome up close (you can see the reinforcing structure which was added to keep the building from falling down):

The dome along with the river and surrounding park, it was very surprising to discover that the dome is right in the middle of the modern city, right across the street it looks like any other modern Japanese city:

The dome as seen from the peace park:

The mound below is the burial site for many thousands of people who died in the bombing, it's in the peace park:

The children's peace memorial:

The monument and everlasting flame:

One of the old trams:

The grounds of Hiroshima Castle:

A family headed to the shrine:

Hiroshima castle

The full set of photos can be found here

Miyajima

2008-02-20T15:23:00.000-08:00

Miho and I took a day trip from Hiroshima to Miyajima Island for my 27^th birthday on the 10^th to see the floating Torii at Itsukushima Shrine. Most people have probably seen pictures of the Torii in airline and tourism adds for Japan, they have been designated a world heritage site and one of Japan’s top three views (the designation of three views is a very Japanese thing), for further info check out Wikitravel at http://wikitravel.org/en/Miyajima.

The island itself is very beautiful and fun to visit, at the time of our visit they were holding a big festival for oysters which are grown in the surrounding waters, they had huge crowds of people waiting in line to eat the oysters prepared many different ways.

As you can see in the photos below the Torii and the rest of the island are quite nice, you can see the full set of pics here:

Miho and I with the famous Torii:

The shrine is actually built on stilts over the water:

The pagoda shown below is very famous because it is square at the bottom and round at the top which is very rare:

For reasons that I can't explain Miyajima is famous for rice scooper's, meaning the tools you use to scoop rice out of rice cookers, they sell them all over the island, they have usable scooper's and also decorative scooper's like those shown below:

The island is also home to a large number of tame deer like in Nara, Japan:

Since there is no rabies in Japan you can pet and touch the deer, they generally cooperate:

One of the temples on the island has spinning prayer wheels on it's stairs, prayer wheels like that tend to be Tibetan rather than Japanese, I've never seen them in Japan before:

More prayer wheels at the same temple:

When the tide goes out the Torii is no longer under water, while we were up the hill the tide started going out:

Miyajima has ski resort style gondola's that take you to the very top of the island where you can see the inland sea, the surrounding islands and back to Hiroshima which is shown below:

Some of the oyster farms in the surrounding waters:

When we got back to the bottom of the hill the tide was completely out, as can be seen the Shrine was no longer in the water:

With the tide out visitors can walk on the tidal flats out to the Torii:

I'm not sure why but visitors have been piling rocks on the Torii as can be seen below:

A huge rice scooper, it's about 12 feet long:

Nagoya Shinkansen Trip to Start the Southern Japan Side Trip

2008-02-13T18:27:00.000-08:00

On Friday night (2/8) Miho and I took a Shinkansen from Tokyo to Nagoya and spent Friday night into Saturday afternoon there on the way to Southern Japan to visit Hiroshima, Miyajima and Nagasaki. Riding the Shinkansen is always exciting. It snowed on Saturday (2/9) so the Shinkansen had to slow down, here’s some pictures and videos from the journey (you can see the full set here and the full video set here):

Shinkansen in Tokyo Eki:

Shinkansen in the Snow on Saturday:

Shinkansen Arriving at the station, it always amazes me how long the trains are:

Another video:

Snowy Japan as seen from the Train:

Tokyo the First Few Days

2008-02-13T18:19:00.000-08:00

Since I have lived in Tokyo I am not in much of a rush to play tourist so for the first few days after I arrived I took it easy, relaxed and spent time wandering around the city at a very leisurely pace. I was still adjusting to the time zone and also getting used to the fact that I don’t have to go to work which has been very nice. I took a few random photos in those few days, see below:

The Golden Gai in Shinjuku:

A funny bumper sticker:

One of Tokyo's city parks:

Siberia and the North Pole from the Air

2008-02-12T17:40:00.001-08:00

When you fly from New York to Tokyo the flight goes very far north, depending on the winds the plane will fly anywhere between southern Alaska to very far north to the point that you end up hundreds of miles off the north coast of Alaska fairly close to the north pole(see my photos of Alaskan mountains from a flight last year here).

When I flew to Tokyo last week we ended up taking the extremely far north route which put us quite a ways north of Alaska. Given that it’s winter we were farther north than the sun shines, when you look out the window on the south side of the plane you can see the glow of the sun as though it's about to rise from the south except that it never does it just stays that way for hours. On the north side of the plane you get an even stranger view, you can see the night on the far side of the planet. The sky to the north is purple fading to black close to the horizon where it’s night time for the far side of the globe (which is not so far away up there), it’s very odd to look at.

The other interesting thing that happens when the plane goes that far north is that when the plane finally turns south you end up flying over Siberia. I’ve flown over Siberia a few times but it has always been cloudy or dark (when you fly in the opposite direction back to the US), but this time the sky was clear so we had an amazing view as you can see in the photos below. What amazed me was how rugged Siberia looked and the fact that we flew over mountains like this for a VERY long time and never saw any trace of people, no roads, no pipelines, no settlements, nothing (See the full set of photos here):

The river looked like it was dry from the air but it is just frozen over:

The winds must have been very high, snow was blowing in a number of places like this:

The rugged mountains went on and on as far as the eye can see:

When we reached the coast I was amazed to see that the mountains continued right up to the water:

As can be seen the ocean was frozen over in many places:

We finally saw signs of people when we overflew the Russian controlled islands to the north of Japan, these islands are very rich in natural gas, you can see the seismic exploration lines in the photo below:

Trip Prep and the First Flight

2008-02-12T17:31:00.000-08:00

A number of people have asked me how I packed and prepared for the trip given that I will be on the road for about five months. The answer is that I have been thinking about this trip for a long time and as my family and friends know I’ve been traveling a lot in the past two years. Long story short I’ve been buying, using and testing travel gear in my travels over the past two years and I’ve built up a pretty good collection. For this trip I actually took it a step further and tested a couple of backpacks on recent trips (as you can see in the photo below I had them sitting out while I was packing).

The rest of the travel stuff I’ve been accumulating in a couple of boxes and taking as needed on trips in recent years.

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I started packing for this trip by sorting through all those items, the hardest thing about packing for this trip is that theoretically I need probably everything I’ve accumulated from the trips to various places over the past two years. I need items I've used in my Africa travel (tropical weather gear, needles/developing world first aid gear and other 3rd world gear), Asia (skype phone, USB memory keys, dedicated travel clothing from when I spent 7 months on the road, dry bags), Caribbean (underwater camera cases), cold weather skiing clothes and items from pretty much every other climate. I basically spent two days sorting through everything and eliminating items until I got to the point that I could fit it all into my big backpack and my little backpack (which I use to carry high value/non airplane check able items). I also brought an extra bag with lots of books to read due to the fact that in Asia it can be tough to find English reading materials. The books are on a one way trip meaning I will be abandoning them as I read them and then the bag will be mailed back to the US.

When all was said and done I headed to Newark airport and jumped on the first flight which was to Tokyo, I do have to admit the travel is easier than it sounds, I used miles for the tickets and was able to arrange to fly in Business class most of the time. Although after I saw how much my bags weighed when continental checked them I have to say I think I will be shedding a good deal more stuff, my big bag weighed in at more than 60 pounds, I will be mailing a number of items home before I leave Japan……

The continental 777 I took from Newark to Tokyo:

The Start of the Trip

2008-02-07T17:05:00.000-08:00

As many of my friends and family know I have been dreaming of doing an around the world trip for a number of years. The trip is finally actually happening, I turned in Delta airline miles to get a ticket and as of this Tuesday I have started the trip. I will be using this blog to provide updates for those who are interested, I pasted the itinerary below although some of it will change over the coming months. So, please keep an eye on this page for photos and stories for my travels. I will also be posting my photos from the trip to flickr (see link below) where you can already find photos from my previous trips:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rrbhs99/sets/

The route:

NYC->Japan (2/5/08)
Japan for the remainder of February
Japan->China (approximately 2/29/08)
China for most of March traveling overland from Beijing eventually coming out at Hong Kong
Hong Kong->Vietnam (approximately at the end of March)
Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos/Thailand/Singapore (full month of April)
Bangkok->Mumbai, India (4/30/08)
India (most of May)
Mumbai -> Moscow (5/25/08)
Mocow->Kenya (6/1/08)
Kenya (two weeks) (May change to another African destination due to current political violence)
Kenya->Prague (6/14/08)
Prague for about a week
Prague to NYC (6/20/08)