Sri Lanka! It wasn’t originally on our radar but our friends, Judy and Carl, had raved about their experience there so we thought hmmm… why not? Plus the photos they had sent made it look really good and they were able to give us some great ideas on places to go… so why not?

There was a delay in getting our flight out of Kathmandu, which apparently isn’t unusual. About an hour later, we were able to board the Air China flight to Chengdu. There were only 3 people in the business class area so we had room to spread out. We still think the co-pilot was also handling service but could be wrong. The flight was smooth and we landed in China! We had to get on a bus and were driven to the terminal, we were only transit passengers so expected to just go to the next gate. Unfortunately that didn’t happen, we ended up having to get stamped to enter China! The guard was very confused and kept asking us how long we were staying, we kept saying 2 hours and catching our next flight. Finally another guard stepped in, his English was a little better and we were able to sort things out. We were stamped in and entered China!

Bangkok

After an early morning departure from our Taipei AirBnB, we were outside waiting for the cab at 4:30 am. We are headed to Nepal with an over night in Bangkok. We decided to spoil ourselves and booked the Vie Hotel Bangkok and even better, breakfast buffet at The Vie. Even though we got to the hotel at 7AM, they let us check into our upgraded suite a few hours early. The benefits of regularly visiting a hotel. We spent the afternoon in Bangkok looking for gear for Nepal and going to a movie (Black Panther, we liked it better the second time). After a nice supper at Muay Thai we headed back to pack and relax at our room. The next morning we were up early to gorge ourselves at the breakfast buffet before heading off to the airport and the second leg of our flight to Nepal.

After the Philippines, we decided to do a stop in Taiwan. A good friend of Helen’s is from there and we know several people who really enjoyed it. We managed to get a good flight from Cebu, to Manila to Taipei on EVA Air using only a few thousand Aeroplan miles so off we went. We did have a little hitch thinking the flight departed Manila from the same terminal we arrived to from Cebu. Unfortunately not the case and after 20 minutes trying to figure it out we realized we had to head to terminal 3. This involved finding the inter-terminal bus, a long bus ride between terminals, with 2 stops before we were dropped at the proper area. We also hadn’t done an online check in so we went from hot bus, to line up, more line up in customs and then we were able to relax at the gate. Note to self, nowhere in the departure area sells gluten free food and everywhere has a minimum amount for credit or debit so you can’t even get chips… unless you kept some local currency aside.

Cebu

We decided after all our driving around in Oz and NZ, that we needed some beach time. We’d heard so many awesome things and seen great photos so decided the Philippines was the next stop and used some of our precious mileage points to fly business class to Manila from Auckland, with a stop in Singapore. After some research, we didn’t even leave the airport in Manila as it is supposedly a sketchy shithole, and just headed over to get a flight to Cebu. We were lucky that our flight was in the same terminal so we didn’t have to deal with buses or traffic. We did have to deal with the check in process which was very unorganized and somewhat hectic but we made it. The A/C was out in the area that we were in so that was awesome… said no one ever.

The Ferry

We had booked in advance to get the ferry so with tickets in hand we headed over at the recommended time, strangely we were some of the first people there. I needed coffee but Paul didn’t want one so I ran into a little trouble when I went to order. I only brought my credit card and needed to have a minimum purchase to use it at the coffee place. I didn’t want to walk all the back to the van for cash, so bought two coffees and a cookie. Paul had the cookie but still refused the coffee… I spent the rest of the day being hyper.

When we were in Australia, hiding from the rain for a couple of days in Alva Beach, we organized Tasmania and determined our next stop should be New Zealand. We organized flights with Jet Star and rented an older camper van from CampaSouth. We were able to fly from Hobart to Christchurch, with a short stopover in Melbourne. We had some issues in Melbourne, going from the domestic terminal to international isn’t a long walk but was very challenging. We had to do a desk check since they wanted proof on onward travel, luckily we had that. Then the luggage system was down so we were told to leave our bags in piles, Jet Star is 7kgs of luggage so we checked our bags. Getting through security was a gong show and we literally had to run to our gate as our flight was boarding.

10 days in Tasmania wasn’t enough. We could have easily spent at least a couple more weeks to explore this lovely island but we only had a short time left on our Ozzy visas. It remains one of our favorite places… even though we landed during a massive rain storm and spent the day hunkered in the van. 🙂

Australia Part 2 was us heading back south from the Daintree down to Melbourne and beyond. The original plan was to head back inland but we ended up going back along the coast. The reasons… a random message allowed us to reconnect with some of our favorite people and why not? We really enjoyed some of the places on the way up. Plus we needed to test out the Zombie Apocalypse machine that we saw on the way up. Seriously, Zombie action? Head to Australia during Sugar Cane Harvest.