Who We Are and the Rough Plan

We are a process engineer and a piping designer embarking on a journey beyond our professions, driven by a desire to explore the world through our other passions – food and photography.

The (Rough) Plan


Uncharacteristically, we have opted not to plan our trip to the nth degree. But we do have a rough idea of where we are going, and where we’ll be for the first month is pretty much sorted.

After visiting our families and friends in Victoria and New South Wales we start our international journey January 2012 with a flight from Brisbane to Singapore. From there we’ll head up Peninsula Malaysia, reconnecting with Tia’s extended family over many meals as we travel north. Then it’s on to Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. We have allocated 5 months for this region, but with no flights or bookings we are looking forward to simply letting each place tell us when and where to go. 
If we manage to find visas, we will then travel through southern China to Hong Kong.

May 2012 Update: We were hanging out in North Vietnam when we decided that we had had enough of the thick smoke-filled haze that seems to just sit on Southeast Asia during dry season, obscuring views (with photo opportunities) and not really that pleasant to breathe. Continuing on to Laos and southern China at this time seemed pointless when we really wanted to see the region at a different time of year. This, combined with the benefits of avoiding peak summer European travel and a beneficial shift in timings for UK and Hong Kong family reunions meant the decision became obvious, shaving two months off our Southeast Asian spree for a European spring start.

To mix it up a bit the next step is to fly to the UK for another family reunion and a much-anticipated meeting with our newborn niece or nephew. We chill there for some weeks, swap our warm weather clothing for cooler climate gear, and then go back to China. With a bit of luck we will zigzag overland from Beijing to Nepal via Tibet. A good old multi-week Himalayan trek should test our fitness levels. We’ll check out of Asia (for a little while) after exploring Japan, and land in Canada by winter.

August 2012 Update: So we were going to spend more time on Russian trains than in Germany itself, Tibet was put into the too-hard (with unethically expensive bureaucracy) basket, Japan and Laos were put into the ever-growing see-you-another-time pile, and somehow a two week dose of raucous north Indian culture was going to transition us into clean-cut Canadian society. It seems that the countries originally on the top of our to-go list had been buried by a stack of countries that we never thought we'd see, lost to time, with lots of inefficient moves in between. There was a method to our madness, we say to ourselves, as we struggle to remember why we made each crazy decision.

By this time we would have been unemployed for close to a year and will most likely need some money ... we hope to find engineering work in Vancouver.

December 2012 Update: Despite the odds with this global economic turndown, we have both found professional work in Vancouver! Relief to the nth degree, plus it means we can stay and explore this fine country for long while yet.

The road from here is hazy – we may stay, we may come home to Australia, or we may keep travelling. We know not yet who we will become after our travels, and we dare not attempt to predict what this new couple will do with the rest of their lives.