It has been five months since I last wrote, which naturally and obviously, was the last time I travelled. Back then, I took a sneaky trip to Leipzigbefore starting my new job – five months later, it was time to get away for my first holiday since starting work again; the first time I have worked for almost three-and-a-half years. The holiday was well and truly deserved. About a month after I had started, I was put on a big project and the long hours, combined with the stress of delivering the project on-time and performing my job to high enough a level to pass my probation period, left me absolutely exhausted. This was on top of getting used to working life again, remembering how to do my job, settling into a new city, establishing new ... read more

789 days. That's two years, one month and twenty-eight days during which I was on one continuous journey, the longest stop of which was a mere 36 days. My adventure took me 83,161km, through approximately 231 towns, settlements, villages and cities in 53 different countries. It was, without any literal exaggeration, the journey of a lifetime. Back in Bali, the journey had now come down to the last flight. Well, three technically; Air Asia may have been the cheapest way to get back to Auckland but it meant flying away from my final destination for three hours to Kuala Lumpur before catching flights to first the Gold Coast, and then finally to Auckland. I thought maybe that I'd have a lot of emotions and feelings running through me as I boarded my last flight; that as ... read more

So here I was, on the last little leg, the last week of my journey that started just over two years ago as I boarded a flight from Barcelona to São Paulo. When you're exhausted after so long on the road and you literally can't wait for the end - when the much anticipated relief of getting home overrides the excitement of exploring somewhere new and seeing some amazing sights - this is when you know that it is time to stop. I now just had one week to go. With my cash budget almost exhausted and my body too, this therefore explains why I had chosen to fly in and out of Flores rather than taking a four-day boat from Lombok or what would have been the longest bus ride of my entire trip. I ... read more

A combination of jetlag, all-nighters in Tokyo, bedbugs and sleeping late, saw me end up with a nocturnal body clock in Ubud; more bedbugs and a power cut then combined with my grogginess for a less than ideal morning when it was time to finally leave Ubud. The power cut in the hostel meant that the card machine wasn't working, which meant that I needed to make a mad dash to the ATM in order to get the cash to pay for my stay, before getting picked up by my shuttle. This sort of thing can happen when you're on the road but after two years of it I was just sick of it. Thankfully, the hostel worker was helpful and gave me a ride to the nearest working ATM, which ensured that everything was done ... read more

That is a deliberate, pun-tastic misspelling in the title by the way - read on and it will make sense... Tokyo. One of the world's great cities. I have been to my fair share of mega cities on this trip; São Paulo, New Delhi and Shanghai, to name a few. But still, I was in awe as I rolled in on the shinkansen and saw all the glass office towers clustered around Tokyo Station. I had an excited travel moment. "Wow, I'm in Tokyo!" I thought. It's good to know I can still have moments like these. For some reason though, I always seem to arrive in places at rush hour and Tokyo's rush hour squeeze is notorious. But before diving into the city headfirst... read more