One week and counting...

Mary and Neil leave a week from today and we leave two days later. We are in full packing mode now and it is unbelievable how Parkinson's Law (the job expands to meet the time allotted) has reared its ugly head. Practically every waking hour is spent either thinking about, moving about, or buying, some item deemed necessary but probably isn't. The trick is to take as little as possible and still have everything you need. Shoes are my biggest quandary (no way to get by with the recommended three pairs) and Tom is stuck on shirts. You wouldn't believe how much room pills take (at our age) and you can fill a whole suitcase with all the other non-wearable necessaries like bug spray, sun screen, hand sanitizer, bandaids, skin stuff and cosmetics. I won't overwhelm you with the rest of the ugly details--suffice to say when the weighing in ceremony takes place, pray that we are not overweight. And I don't mean our bodies!

Less than two weeks to go....

Our first destination is the beautiful island of Kauai and less than two weeks from today we will either be lying by the pool at the Hilton sipping a mai tai (is that Hawaiian?) or driving the back roads of Kauai enjoying its legendary beauty. From time to time in the blog, I will insert a link, so that if you are interested, you can learn more about where we are at the time. Here is a link for Kauai.

Our Itinerary

Perhaps a word about the itinerary would be appropriate here. Tom and I are going to Hawaii first (we've never been!) and will spend 3-4 days on Kauai. Mary and Neil are going to Shanghai first (they've been to Hawaii) and then we are all meeting in Hong Kong on March 9. After several days in Hong Kong, we go to Siem Riep, Cambodia, to see the Angkor Wat (a Buddhist temple complex larger than Manhattan and a man-made wonder of the world). Then we go to Central Vietnam including Hue, Hoi An and Danang. We will take a two day cruise on a Chinese Junk to experience the World Heritage Site called Halong Bay, and then on to Hanoi, the Paris of the East--a nickname Hanoi shares with at least two other Asian cities. North of Hanoi is Sapa, a lovely mountain town on the Chinese/Vietnamese border which is home to several hill tribes who sell their wares in colorful markets. We will travel to and from Sapa on a "Orient Express" type overnight train which should be quite an experience.

After Sapa, we leave beautiful Vietnam for Northern Thailand, specifically Chiang Mai and its environs, also home to a number of indigenous hill tribes. We are scheduled to vistit an elephant farm during which we will be invited to take a ride on the 12 -foot high beasts and I hope I have the courage to do it when the time comes.

Then on to Bangkok where we are staying at the world famous Oriental Hotel. Mary and I had dinner there with our friends on our previous trip to Bangkok and vowed to return as guests one day. As previously noted, Bangkok has about four hundred temples and I can't wait to visit as many of them as possible again, this time with Tom in dutiful tow.

After four days in Bangkok we go to the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan which only allows about 9,000 visitors a year all of whom must be under "custodial care", i.e., with a guide while in the kingdom. Considered the last ShangriLa, it should be a highlight of the trip.

Then mainland China! We begin in Beijing, where modern skyscrapers contrast with a warren of "hutongs" (ancient traditional neighborhoods), and of course the home of the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. And did I mention shopping? After Beijing, on to Guilin (home of the limetone karst mountains), and then Xi'an with its terra cotta army (8,000 life-sized soldiers have been excavated so far and no two are alike), and then finally back to Beijing for our long flight to London and ultimately landing in Cork, Ireland. We will spend about ten days in Ireland exploring the south, lovingly called the Irish Riviera, and then continuing on up north to County Monaghan where the McQuaid family has lived and died for a couple of centuries. If we are lucky we will "stand at the foot of the graves of the sainted ancestors" of my dear husband and perhaps maybe make the acquaintance of a bona fide live relative or two. At one point, Tom was in touch with one Plunkett McKenna, a local guide and self-proclaimed historian of the area, who promised to squire us about and help us find the aforementioned graves if and when we ever made the trip, but he has been incommunicado lately. Alas, we fear the drink may have got to him, a common malady in the chilly north of Ireland. We will keep you posted as to Plunkett's whereabouts.

Home to Dallas on April 28, with a trunkload of memories, stories, new friends, trinkets and souvenirs, and hopefully in more or less the same condition in which we left.

Mary and Neil

We are thrilled that our traveling mates, Mary and Neil, are joining us on this adventure. Here is a picture of Mary and Neil with Tom on a recent trip to New York.

Sara and Tom

This is about as cleaned up as you are likely to see us from this point forward.

Just a simple little Buddhist Temple...

Today we have one month to go before we leave on our trip of a lifetime. We've been planning and packing for months. How to take as little as possible is one big challenge, but learning how to do this blog may be the biggest challenge of all. The picture you see here is one of the four hundred temples in Bangkok taken on my previous trip to Southeast Asia several years ago. Note the big guy on the right . Be sure and click on the pictures for a better view.