The Clark Family's Amazing Adventures

Our adventures so far …. the second year

Latest Update 11.07.14

Today marks the end of our second year of travel! 730 days on the road. Where did it go?!? We’re still trying to write up all our stories and post them, but meanwhile, here is an up to date snapshot of the journey in year 2! I’ll be adding a mix of posts for older and more recent destinations as the mood takes me!!! Currently working on the last few months in India, Thailand Cambodia, Vietnam, China and Japan then I will loop back and fill in the rather blanks for the Pacific, NZ and Australia!

You can see the same completed for year 1 at Our adventures so far …. The first year

July 2013 to August 2014

One year into our travels, it had taken a year to get half way around the world and so it seemed obvious to take another year to get home across the other side… You can read about our decision to travel on in Martin’s post   ‘Breaking News…‘

So here’s where we have been in our second year …….

In summary

 

July 2013

New Zealand – Tonga

August 2013

Tonga – Fiji – Vanuatu – Australia

September 2013

Australia

October 2013

Australia – Bali (Indonesia)

November 2013

Bali (Indonesia) – Singapore – Sumatra (Indonesia)

December 2013

Sumatra (Indonesia) – Malaysia – Singapore – Bali (Indonesia)

January 2014

Bali (Indonesia) – Borneo (Sabah, Malaysia) – KL(Malaysia) – Sri Lanka

February 2014

Sri Lanka – The Maldives – South India

March 2014

South India – Thailand

April 2014

Cambodia

May 2014

Vietnam – Hong Kong

June 2014

China – South Korea – Japan

July 2014

Japan – Taiwan

In detail

New Zealand

11 July – Our 1 year anniversary of travelling – celebrated in Rotorua – for details of the first year – see ‘Our adventures so far …. the first year’ 

13 July – Auckland

Tonga

25 July – Nuku’alofa, Tongatapu

30 July – Neiafu, Vava’u

10 August – Nuku’alofa, Tongatapu

Fiji

13 August- Nadi

15 August – Pacific Harbour, Coral Coast

19 August – Sigatoka and Nadi

Vanuatu

20 August – Port Vila,  Efate

23 August – Tanna island

24 August – Port Vila, Efate

Australia

26 August – Marrickville, Sydney

4 September – Mosman, Sydney

9 September – Edmonton, Cairns

13 September – Tinaroo

14 September – Edmonton, Cairns

19 September – Darwin

 20 September – Kakadu NP

22 September – Katherine Gorge NP

23 September – Litchfield NP

24 September – Darwin

25 September – overnight on Ghan train

26 September – Erldundo, (south of Alice Springs)

27 September – Yulara (Uluru)

29 September – Kings Canyon

30 September – Alice Springs

3 October – overnight on Ghan train to Adelaide

4 October – Adelaide

7 October – Geelong

10 October – Seddon, Melbourne

14 October  Philip Island

15 October – Lakes Entrance

16 October – Cooma

17 October – Canberra – Goulburn

18 October – Mosman, Sydney

19 October – Indian Pacific train (Sydney – Perth , 3 nights)

22 October – Perth

Bali (Indonesia) 

28 October  – Sanur, Bali

5 November – Ubud, Bali

Singapore 

27 November – Lavender District, Singapore

Sumatra (Indonesia)

30 November – Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia

2 December – Bukit Lawang

5 December – Tangkahan

Malaysia

7 December – Penang

17 December – Johor Bharu

Singapore 

19 December – Chinatown, Singapore

Bali (Indonesia)

 22 December – Penestanan, Ubud

11 January 2014 – Amed

13 January – Lovina

15 January – Ubud

Sabah, Borneo (Malaysia)

16 January  – Kota Kinabalu

18 January – Sandakan

20 January – Kinabatangam River

21 January – Sandakan

Malaysia Peninsular

22 January – Kuala Lumpur

Sri Lanka

24 January – Kandy

28 January – Nuwara Eliya

29 January – Ella

1 February – Udawalewe National Park

2 February – Mirissa

3 February – Hikkadewa

5 February – Kandy

6 February – Negombo

Maldives 

7 February – Villimale

10 February – Maafushi (Mo and Lara.   Whilst Martin Ben Zoe remain in Villimale)

12 February – Villimale

India

13 February – Kochi

19 February – Chenamkary

22 February – Allepey

24 February – Kerala Backwaters Houseboat

25 February – Varkala

4 March – Trivandrum

7 March – Kovalam

11 March -Kanyakumari/Cape Comorin

12 March – Madurai

15 March – Auroville

18 March – Pondicherry

19 March – Chennai

Thailand

24 March – Bangkok airport – transfer to Kanchanaburi

27 March – Bangkok

Cambodia

30 March – Siem Reap.

Vietnam

30 April – Ho Chi Minh City

9 May – Hoi An

13 May – Hue

16 May – Hanoi

Hong Kong

19 May – Hong Kong

China

 

28 May – Guangzhou

4 June Guilin – Ping An Rice terraces minority village

5 June Yangshuo

8 June – Kunming – Lijiang

11 June – Shangri’La

13 June – Chengdu

16 June – Xi’an

17 June – Beijing

22 June – Shanghai

South Korea

24 June – Seoul

Japan

 

 

26 June – Tokyo

4 July – Kyoto

7 July – Osaka

Taiwan

8 July – Taipei

 

 

 

 

 

 

And what next ?

As we enter year 3 of our travels, we have just a month to go until we get home to the UK, and to our home, family and friends in Sussex. We’ve been leaving plans of our final journey home fairly flexible based on time, cheaper flights and passport space!

In January we started to panic when we realised that Zoe’s passport was suddenly looking crammed with only 3-4 full blank pages left. She should have exactly the same as Ben but it’s just been unlucky that her pages have been stamped in a more spread out fashion!

Knowing that places like India and China needed a full page fo the visa and many other counties on our list are half page visas, we started looking at how we could get new passports if needed. It takes about 4-6 weeks to sit still somewhere while your paperwork and old passport is sent off via Hong Kong. We didn’t want to sit still that long so started to wonder if one of us should get a cheap flight back to the UK and get new passports in the fast track service in London. In the end we have begged and sweet talked every immigration officer who has to stamp anything in our passports to be as frugal as possible and squeeze their stamp into a tiny space on a used page. We altered the itinerary slightly to leave out a couple of places we might have gone for a few days to save us space but the immigration folk have been very accommodating and so far we’ve been able to keep to plans made in 2013 without any major revision, even adding/keeping China once we got to Hong Kong and still had space to get a Full page China visa. Zoe has one page left to get home on so finger crossed we don’t have any final hitches ….

Our plans still change on a pretty regular basis and our final route home is still not completely certain but the very latest as at July 11th, 2014 looks something like this……

July

Taiwan – North India – Jordan

August

 Israel – Germany – France -UK

Hope we might still see a few of you on the road, or back home in just over 4 weeks!