"What!?!"

Mike reading a book on Australia

This is what we are used to hearing when people find out about our "Around the World" trip in addition to: "You are going for how long?" "How are you going to pack?" "Who is going to watch your house?" "Where are you going to stay?"

Michael has always wanted to take an "Around the World" trip. I, honestly, never thought about it once in my life. During our engagement, when Michael proposed the idea to me, I thought, "Hmmm, could be cool," and then forgot about it for a couple of months. It was not until April, in Michigan (my home town), when my Aunt and Uncle asked me where we were going on our honeymoon when the subject came up again. Michael and I were so busy during the year, that we had not discussed our honeymoon at all. I didn’t want to admit this to my Aunt and Uncle since our wedding was just around the corner (August 20th), so I quickly answered, "Michael and I are talking about traveling around the world for awhile." I could imagine how outrageous this sounded to my Aunt and Uncle, to my parents who where also there hearing this for the first time, and I must admit, it also sounded outrageous to me! But at least I had an answer to, "Where are you guys going on your honeymoon." Joy packing When I returned to California from Michigan (I had gone to visit my family for Passover), I brought up the "Around the World" trip to Michael. We sat down, and discussed it. We asked ourselves all the questions that we hear over and over from our friends and family and many additional questions as well. In July, we decided that this trip would be a chance of a lifetime!

The planning begins . . .

First, Michael and I had to decide when would be an ideal time for us to leave. We were getting married on August 20th in Michigan, and than had another wedding to attend in Florida on September 3rd. So, we figured that we would leave a couple of weeks after that. This would give Michael enough time to close any deals he was working on and I would have to take off one full year of teaching. Once we figured out when we wanted to leave, we started searching for information on "Around the World" trips. Michael and I searched yahoo for "Around the World" travelers. We discovered that many people have done the sort of trip that we were planning. We read their stories and starting keeping track of places they visited that also interested us. Next, we found a travel agency called "Airtreks," (also on-line), that specializes in "Around the World" trips. We sent them an email and received a phone call from a representative, Dominic, the next day. Dominic was great (and well-traveled)! He gave us many suggestions (many that we had never heard of) on places that he thought we would enjoy. He instructed us to research these places further by renting videos, reading books from "Lonely Planet," and going on line so that we would know exactly where we wanted to go. Michael and I spent night after night at Barnes and Noble selecting books from the travel section and reading them together while drinking coffee. We also rented several travel videos from our local video-rental store. To be honest, every place looked incredible to me! I couldn’t believe that soon, I would possibly be in the places I was reading about and seeing amazing pictures of. It was very difficult for us to narrow our itinerary down, but if we wanted to be back by the end of January (a total or four months), we would have too. We decided not to visit Europe simply because it would be too cold during our specific dates. We also ruled out India and Nepal. We had to make a decision between Hawaii and Tahiti, and chose Hawaii simply because I have always wanted to go there. We called back Dominic at Airtreks, and told him that we would like to travel to the following destinations: Hawaii, Cooks Islands, Fiji, New Zealand (Auckland and Christchurch), Australia (Sydney, Cairns, and Port Douglas), Indonesia (Bali and Denpasar), Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur), Tailand (Phuket and Koh Samui), Mauritius, Seychelles, Africa (Kenya), Israel, and Turkey (Istanbul). (Dominic helped us with the order.)

Preparation . . . .

So what first? There was sooooooooo much to do! I was in charge of utilities. I scheduled payment in advance with our phone company (but canceled the long distance service), Department of Water and Power, The Gas Company, my car lease, and our gardener. I cancelled several utilities as well such as our cell phones, car insurance, media one, and Arrowhead (purified water). So that was done! We are also having friends and family keep an eye on our house while we are gone. Next, we had to take care of vaccinations (aka . . . . shots!) and medications. We checked out the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) traveler’s health home page and discovered that we needed the following shots: Hepatitis A, Typhoid, Yellow Fever, Tetanus, Measles, Polio, and Michael also needed to get the Chicken Pox shot. Unfortunately, neither of our medical insurance plans covers vaccinations, so we spent A LOT of money in this department. We also got prescription medication for malaria to use before, during, and after our trip. Packing – what a nightmare! We knew that it would be smartest to pack as lightly as possible. We decided to each bring a medium size suitcase with a backpack, and a dive-bag. We put our masks, fins, and snorkel in the dive-bag and planned to ship this bag back to the U.S. once we have left Seychelles. We figured that by then, we would have hit all the main dive-points, and also be "dived-out." We would simply rent equipment if we decided to do any more diving in Africa or Israel. As far as clothes were concerned, we figured that we would buy stuff along the way and even possibly clothing attire that the natives wore. So, we tried our best to pack as little as possible with the understanding that we would do laundry about once a week. It was hard for me to limit the amount of shoes that I was bringing. Of coarse, we each packed an excellent pair of walking shoes, one pair of sandals (well, actually two for me), and our aqua socks. Unfortunately, I couldn’t bring my engagement ring or wedding band, but Michael did get me an additional white-gold band to wear during the trip. Michael also put together a great first-aid kit. It included: Iodine pills for water, Sudafed, Pepto-Bismo, Flagyl, Cipro, several different types of pain-killers, Bonine, Band-Aids, Ex-lax pills, a snake-bite kit, CharcoCaps, a trauma-kit, etc. Michael and I spent day after day on the web researching the places that we would be visiting. We put together a file on each place. We printed out a map, the history, points of attraction, the names and locations of hotels in our budget, tour operations, etc. We realize that we would probably find out much more information once we arrived at all these places, but we still wanted to be prepared. In some places such as Sydney and Bali, we are going to find a hotel when we arrive. In other places such as Fiji and Kenya, we are going to book a hotel/safari a couple of weeks in advance via the Internet. Finally, we had to make copies of all our important documents. We made copies of our passports, dive-cards, travelers cheques, airline tickets, health insurance cards, medications and yellow fever certificates. The only country that we need a visa for is Australia, and believe it or not, we got an electronic one! We gave copies to my parents and to Michael’s parents as well.