Tipping Point; May 13

In every trip we get to the point when we may not have everything done, we may be missing stuff, not have all the confirmations we need-- but we have enough. Tickets, visas,passports and enough clothes. We can go.

In Iowa May 10

Hello from Iowa!

We packed up the 5th wheel with bicycles and motorcycle, hooked up the pick up and left Pecos, Texas. Two days later we backed into Carol's daughter's driveway.

Now we're frantically trying to get to final items done, flight out of Jordan,(bus through Syria-not a good idea), need a Lonely Planet for India,trying to back up stuff on the computer and still need to call Verizon and suspend our service.

April 22, 3weeks,3days

How do you pack for a trip through 8 or 9 countries, 24 time zones, 4 1/2 months long and several climates? Lightly, very lightly. Extra coat, socks, underwear, pants or shoes weigh much more than the credit card that you carry to buy this stuff if you need it. And used clothing is cheap, new clothing in Vietnam is cheap-it's where Mal-Wart goes to supply their stores.

If you look at our backpacks and say "how can you take so little stuff?". then you don't know us. If you know us, you'll say "why are you taking so much?"

One more big roadblock out of the way, I got my passport with India visa back yesterday,

. If Carol's passport comes back as fast once she gets back from Canada, then that's the last of the pre-travel visa's needed. The rest are at the boarder visa's.

http://www.rei.com/product/709210/pacsafe-140-security-web-x-large

This security net came today, both our packs will fit in it. May supply a feeling of safety when we leave our packs in a hotel to travel around a city.

Seven more days of work, then get the RV ready to move and store and finish packing.

Where am I blogging?

I went to the top of my page and clicked "next blog"---hmmm, WTF???

April 10, 5 weeks to go

The Consulate of Thailand, Houston, deserves kudos-got our passports back with visa's attached in record time. Sent them on Friday, back by Wednesday. Now let's see if Travisa can do the same for our India visas.

Reserved our flight from Des Moines, when we leave our 5th wheel in Glidden Iowa, to LAX where we leave for Ho Chi Min City on May 16th. We decided not to go by bus through Syria to Turkey, so we need to get a flight from Amman, Jordan to some city in Turkey. One more flight from Rome to Paris and we will have completed the continent. Then New York to Iowa makes the circle complete. We also want a hotel reservation for HCMC so we don't get too stressed after our first leg.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1ygTiW3vGk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOCK3Kf0gY0

March 30, visa's and such

We did a one-day turnaround to El Paso to visit the passport agency yesterday. It seems that even though we checked and made sure that our passports don't expire for the next five years, we recently realized that we only have four pages open for visa stamps-that's eight entries and exits if they stamp between the lines, which they don't always do. Incidentally, one can get a second passport so one can visit a country, (like Israel), on one passport then go to a different country,(like Syria) on the other. We have to go back and pick up our old passports with new pages in them tomorrow, $150 lighter, each.

With over a month to go, we didn't think visa's would be an issue. Oops. Vietnam uses a service business that provides you with a letter of approval so you can get a visa stamp at the airport. No such thing as "visa on arrival". Paid $40 for that yesterday. Once we get our passports back, we need to send them to Thailand's Consular office in Houston to get 60 day visa's, you can get 15 day visas at the airport on arrival, but we need more. Turnaround on that is 2-4 days or 2 weeks, depending on how one does it. then when we get our passports back from them we can start working on the India visa. That is probably going to have to go in the next post.

March 17-St Paddy's Day

Whew! My credit card is smoking! We bought the air fare tickets this weekend after pricing several web pages that advertised RTW. Airtreks was the cheapest and even though they padded their bets with "depending on the dates you leave", it still came to pretty close to what they said it would be. Los Angles to Ho Chi Min City--overland on our own to Bangkok. By air to Kolkuta (used to be Calcutta), then Mumbai, (used to be Bombay) to Amman, Jordan. Overland to Rome for our cruise then somehow to Paris (haven't figured that part out yet) and then Paris to New York City. Four air legs for $2700 a piece. Then we paid for the cruise out of Rome, another $1836 each. Even talked to the Syrian Embassy yesterday and found out about Visas. Closer every day.