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.

Bangkok We had an early morning departure from our Taipei Airbnb, we were outside waiting for the cab at 4:30 am. We are headed to Nepal (thanks to Pat and Liz for the inspiration) with an overnight in Bangkok. We decided to spoil ourselves and booked the Vie Hotel Bangkok and even better, breakfast buffet at the Vie.

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.

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.

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.

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.

10 days in Tasmania wasn’t enough. We could have easily spent at least a couple more weeks to exploring this lovely island but we only had a short time left on our Australian visas. It remains one of our favorite places… even though we landed during a massive rainstorm and spent the day hunkered down 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 inland, but we ended up sticking to the coast. The reasons: a random message allowed us to reconnect with some great people—and why not? We really enjoyed some of the places on the way up anyway.