"Dickon Wandering the World" Day is drawing ever closer.
Upon further investigation I have come to the realisation that through exorbitant prices, lack of a local friend when I get there and the desire to be home before I go completely grey have meant that i have to curtain my original route, now missing out all of Africa, Easter Island and my childhood beloved Galapagos Islands.
Plotting the new route on my wipe clean map of the world, it appears much more like a classic round the world trip and less like an old soak meandering old soak his way home after leaving the pub from the rear exit and staggering off in the opposite direction.
As I have been reliably informed, the South American countries are still fairly isolated from each other train wise, and so the best way, though far from cheap, is to fly from city to city, and for this reason I am using my various local contacts to try and have a travel agent form out there to get in touch with me and book them at local prices in advance.
Once I reach Singapore then my wings will be clipped for the duration and from then on I plan to keep both feet firmly on terra firma, excluding the two ferry trips to get to and from Japan.
The upside of this is that I get to see how the general working and middle class populace of Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, China and the Republic of Southern Korea go from place to place and at a price that is dwarfed by a single flight in South America.
The downside is that I will have to time my journey times carefully so that I do not miss too many days stuck on a train, hopefully I will be able to make plenty of overnight journeys and cut down on bed in hostels at the same time.
I think at least once a week I will try to grab a nights sleep in a cheap hotel that washed laundry, so that I can keep my rucksack light and not worry about taking more than the minimum clothing required.
Meanwhile ... back in good old blightly, my leaving preparations are in full flow.
The letting agents have been and viewed the property and took pleasure in saying that my house was in fine shape and only needed a hand rail to the cellar and a gas certificate before they could start moving tenants straight in.
The insurance people have stated that the outside repairs works to my property are minimal but not covered as they are wear & tear instead of storm damage, so I have also got an appointment for a builder / roofer to come and quote for the works this Friday.
With friends and family coming up trumps in the storage department, I now have enough boxes to store all my stuff and enough industrial rolls of bubble wrap to cover the statue of liberty, so its all hands to their stations and I am packing as much as I have time for during the evenings.
My amazon book and dvd sale is off and running, with over 25 purchases in less than two weeks, so I am confident that this month at least I will smash the minimum number of sales in order to benefit from the economies of scale one off payment for their fees.
For some reason, I cant see why, but none of the London women have taken up my offer of a quality relaxing reflexology foot massage ( for a very modest fee ), though I am happy to report that my advert for travel buddies did much better as I am now in regular correspondence with a few potentials candidates.
Next month I am having a trial run of getting to Dusseldorf, both to see my good friends there and also to try and make sure that when I do go I at least get to the first check point before I am completely in the dark and pinning all my hopes on my gut instincts to get me all the way without unnecessary hassle.
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