Hello to anyone who reads this. This is the start of the planning process of our 'great adventure'. For those who don't know us we are Mandy and John two sixty somethings who have a bit of a thirst for adventure. John is retired, well almost, his life has been spent in education mostly in Oman in the Middle East, he has been home for the last three years and does some student support work at the local University. Mandy has worked in Probation for the last 20 odd years and is currently coming to the end of a four year secondment to the Ministry of Justice, retirement is weeks away and the great adventure will start for us then.

We have started on the plans which will be to leave home in October 2010 and return in March 2011. We have a broad plan but still need to fill in some of the gaps so once you have read our plan and have a bit of useful knowledge for us do let us know, we are very open to suggestions of how to do things, what to see, what to do, and things to avoid!

We will start our journey from Moscow, we have not yet decided if we will travel to Moscow by train or plane. Train is exciting but plane is cheaper so this is still to be decided. On the 12th October we will board the Trans Siberian Railway through to Bejing where we will stay for a few days. Travel from there will be to Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand Hong Kong and then back home. We are hopefully meeting up with friends in Cambodia and going to Phonm Penh to see the Boat Festival. We are also planning to meet up with relatives in Australia, other than that the plans are pretty fluid.

I think that is enough by way of a start to this blog, will update our plans on an occasional basis before we go.