We're leaving on a jet plane...

Hello

This is our travel diary thing, which we hope is an easy and inclusive way to let everyone know we're not dead yet etc., hopefully it won't just be me whittering away and you'll be treated to some entries penned by Amy too.
We leave tomorrow from Heathrow at about 1 (or 2?), and should get into Beijing at 7am Thursday (Beijing time). Let's hope the jet lag stays in its box and we can have a nice day of sightseeing, possibly in the snow... according to BBC weather it's -10 at night in Beijing at the moment, which doesn't bode well for my severe lack of appropriate travel clothing...
Amy's apparently found us someone to take us to dinner in Beijing, I've yet to find out in which back alley she's found this mystery person, but I'm sure it's all legit. Looking forward to three weeks of chinese food morning, noon and night, which might see the old digestive system take a bit of a beating. Speaking of which, I'm pretty confident one of the highlights of the China leg will be an experience of the most advanced toilets in the world, in the Sony Centre, Shanghai. Other than this, I have no idea of an itinerary for China, only that we MUST be in Hong Kong by Feb 7th, otherwise we don't get to finish our trip. Which would be disasterous.
A brief itinerary for you then for the whole shebang, which frankly I'm still amazed we managed to organize at all.

London - Beijing Jan 16th (China & HK)
Hong Kong - Bangkok Feb 7th (Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore)
Singapore - Sydney May 1st
Sydney - Chile May 7th (Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Galapagos Is., Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico)
Mexico City - London Sept 15th

That's pretty much exactly 8 months. Still feeling uneasy by the fact that whenever I tell anyone how long we're going away for, I always get a look of mixed horror and fear. We wanted to make sure we had a fair amount of time in each country, but hopefully won't be staying in one place too long.

Anyway, I think we've done most of our goodbyes, I've done absolutely no packing so I'm going to get on with that. Amy lost her passport in the street today, and ran back to find a stranger holding it... it doesn't bode well, not well at all. Other than that, I reckon we're ready.

To China!

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