Sayonara!

Reuben;
So after almost 3.5 years, my time in Japan has come to an end. And at just the right time, I would say...I didn't overstay, so I don't hate Japan and never want to come back! But I'm not sad to leave; obviously I'm sad to say goodbye to a lot of good people, and a few very special awesome friends, but I know I'll see them again.

Having left Canada to come to Japan, I have a little experience saying "So long" to people and knowing it might be a long time until we meet again. But when I left Canada, I knew I'd be back someday, and until then, for fairly regular visits. But leaving Japan was different; I very possibly might never be back. Of course I now have "in-laws" there, and lots of friends, but who knows when I'll actually get the chance to return. Someday...

And now we're off on our tour before landing back in Canada. The last few weeks were unbelievably busy! I got back from teaching in Korea late August, and had about 5 weeks to wrap everything up in Japan. Simultaneously, I was working on my application to return to school next year (to hopefully study naturopathy in Vancouver); working on our immigration application for Yoshi to come with me to Canada; selling/packing/giving away 3 years of accumulated stuff; saying goodbye to a LOT of people; and planning 2 months of travels on as little a budget as possible!

Now for those of you who wonder how we have so much money for this trip, the simple answer is, "We don't!" But if all goes well, it won't cost that much. Traveling in South-East Asia is about as cheap as living in Japan; you can get by easily on about $20/day in Thailand, without including extras like scuba diving or rock climbing. But hotel, meals, and some simple bus travel can easily be covered for that price. And we figured the time to do a trip like this is when we're not paying rent. So the only difference is that we'll be unemployed for 3 months. And I can't say I'm not looking forward to it!

Our rough itenerary; we left Japan this morning at 10 am and flew to Hong Kong (HK). The ticket we ended up getting from Osaka to Bangkok (BKK) was with Cathay Pacific, based in HK. So we already had a 2-hour layover scheduled. So we just extended that to 2.5 days so we could see a bit of one more city. Plus we have a friend living here who is letting us stay at his (GORGEOUS!) apartment.

From here, we've tried to balance the culture (temples), city life, beaches and jungles.

On Saturday, we'll fly to BKK and be there for a couple of days. Then we'll take the bus to Siam Reap, Cambodia, to visit Angkor Wat for a few days. From there, we'll fly to Luang Prabang, Laos. Overland travel in that little part of the world is slow and UNCOMFORTABLE! We could spend about 30 hours over 3 days in buses, or we can fly in 2 hours for about $190. Not a hard choice!

Luang Prabang is a UNESCO World Heritage site, with beautiful architecture from when Laos was a French colony. We'll stay there a few days, then go to the north part of Laos to do a 3 or 4 day trek. Then head west to Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand for a few days. We fly out of Chiang Mai on October 21st, to Phuket, in southern Thailand. We'll be there, Ko Phi Phi and Krabi for about a week total, scuba diving and snorkelling in Ko Phi Phi and rock climbing in Krabi; both sites are among the best in the world for their respective sports!

From there we'll go to Pulua Perhentian, on the east coast of Malaysia right near the Thai border. As long as the monsoon season holds off, we'll stay a few days, then go into the interior to Taman Nagara, a big jungle national park, for another 2-3 days hiking and animal watching.

Then we'll spend about 6 days split between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, before we fly to Perth on November 12th. We'll visit friends there until the 22nd, then fly to Sydney to visit friends, then fly to Hawaii on the 29th.

The only reason we even decided to see Hawaii is because that's the cheapest way to fly between Sydney and Toronto; going that way, you fly Jetstar from Sydney to Honolulu, then an American airline on to Toronto (in our case, Delta offered the cheapest ticket!) So we'll spend a long weekend in Honolulu and fly to Toronto (via Salt Lake City) on December 3rd.

So I have my laptop along on the trip, and we hope to update this regularly, with pictures! I hope you all follow along on our trip (sort of) around the world!