Schedule Squeeze

2011-10-05

6 Weeks of traveling should feel like more…

I started looking more closely at when we arrive and leave at various destinations.  And things are looking tight.  At the beginning, the flight schedule seemed to say things like: 3 days in Barcelona, a week in Thailand and 4 days in Siem Reap.  But, traveling takes time.  We are gone from Canada for 41 days.  Looks like we are going to spend 31 days (1+6+5+2+17) being a tourist and 10 days on planes and airports.  I wonder if that is a typical ratio.

3 Days in Barcelona falls to about one day.  We arrive at noon, have one whole day to explore, and then leave the next day at noon.  So, we have one day.

8 Days in Rome falls to 6.  As always, we arrive and leave around noon.  Haven’t planned this one yet, but we are going to have to push a bit to do Rome, Pompei and the Amalfi Coast.

7 Days in Thailand falls to something more like 5.  Although we arrive at noon, and leave at noon, we lost a whole day traveling from Rome.  And we want to spend time in the south, in the islands (at least a 3 day kayaking trip).   Time-wise, we can’t afford to spend the 14 hours on a bus going south.  I suspect (and hope) that we fly.  So, I predict that we fly in to Bangkok, and immediately hop another flight down to Phuket, arriving Nov. 24.  Then we have an evening to see Phuket, and the next day, we are picked up and begin 3 days of kayaking and 2 nights in bungalows on Yao Noi, then back to Phuket at 5 pm on Nov 26th.  Maybe fly, maybe overnight train to Bangkok.  I want to do the train, but have heard portions are flooded right now.  Then we have 2 days, the 28th and 29th to do stuff before we fly to Siem Reap at noon on the 29th.

4 Days in Siem Reap falls to 2 days.  Again, we arrive at noon, then have 2 full days, and then leave at noon to start the plane hopping to New Zealand.

19 Days in New Zealand drops to 17.  Not significant, we arrive and leave mid-afternoon.  And we join up with Kim and Karin.  Maybe this is where we finally have a chance to slow down?  No plans yet.

All this scheduling and planning is kind of foreign to us.  We consider ourselves good and comfortable with stumbling around from sight to sight, with no real plans, and changing our mind whenever we see something interesting.  But in this case, I think we might miss out on a lot if we don’t push hard, especially for the first half of the trip.