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Re-visiting my diary circa 2002

Published
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darcy
on May 4, 2008
in Uncategorized
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In 2002 my family and I left England after nearly six years of living and working in “ol’ blighty” and headed home to Australia. But we didn’t head straight home on a plane or something, we decided to take “the scenic route” - we traveled around Europe for four months, then headed over to the US for two months and then back to Australia.

So earlier today I randomly decided to go back to my diary from this year and start reading it again - just to get me back in the mood of traveling.

Since I’ve been reading my earlier diary, I’ve decided to start posting My Old Journal entries so you can all read through my previous travels. I’ll start tomorrow with Tuesday June 11th, 2002, and finish on December 6th, 2002. I won’t just rewrite my diary entries though, I’ll use both my diary entries and my memory as well as my new knowledge, now that I’m older, to help recount the six months we traveled for in interesting, engaging detail. I’ll also try to post a few pictures by scanning the photos from our old photo albums.

Look forward to reading all about my first long-haul travel adventure starting tomorrow!

Goals: Ten Thousand Things

Published
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darcy
on May 2, 2008
in Random Thoughts
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I’ve recently started a list of things that I want to do, see, drink, taste, smell, or experience in my life time. You can find this list here.

If anyone has any suggestions for additions, please comment here.

Change Of Plans: Ideas?

Published
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darcy
on April 30, 2008
in Before The Trip
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With a possible change of plans, comes a re-thinking of my route and were I’ll go. Since I will likely only have one year or one year and a few months, I’ve been thinking about shorter trips in less countries. Maybe Asia or South America?

I’m leaning more to the asia idea, so I came up with a very basic itinerary;

  • 1 Month in Indonesia
  • 1 Month in Malaysia & Brunei
  • 2 weeks in Singapore
  • 1 Month in Thailand
  • 1 Month in Laos & Cambodia
  • 1 Month In Vietnam
  • 1 Month, 2 weeks in China (East Coast)
  • 2 Months in Japan
  • 4 Months in India

That should satisfy my itchy feet for a while - at least enough to give me three or four years to finish university…then I’ll head back out for a real adventure.

Posts will now be two weeks late…

Published
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darcy
on April 28, 2008
in Random Thoughts
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When I’m traveling, I won’t have access to a computer all the time, so I’ll have to write posts up in bulk after the fact, so you’ll have a steady stream of new reading/listening/watching material. For example:

Basically you’ll read everything 2 weeks after It actually happens. This will give me time to make sure I don’t miss days for posts (though I’m sure this will end up happening) and to make sure I don’t need to worry about getting to an internet cafe at the end of every day.

So, to get into this habit, and to avoid a big gap in posts when i actually start traveling, I’ll start posting now two weeks in advance. This means you’ll see things two weeks late. You should see at least one post every day, though, which would mean there will be nearly 600 posts by the time I actually leave (wow!).

The Problem With Travel Insurance Is…

Published
by
darcy
on April 28, 2008
in Before The Trip
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As anyone who actually reads this blog often (no one) will know, I will be taking an expensive laptop, camera, D-SLR camera and video camera with my on my trip around the world. This, it seems, is a problem for most insurance companies who want to insure a maximum of $5000 personal belongings, with a $750 item limit.

Luckily, I found “1cover.com.au” which will cover everything! They have the standard $5000 thing, but they let you specify extra items to cover - and their limit will allow me to specify everything I want to cover. Whoo! Granted, the cover is about $980 for one year but…I’ll take what I can get.

So if someone mugs me or something, I’ll be covered for all my (very valuable) equipment :) awesome.

After My Trip: University In The UK

Published
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darcy
on April 26, 2008
in Random Thoughts
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As you may know, if anyone actually reads this blog, after my epic 20-month trip across Asia and Europe, I will eventually arrive in the UK, where I wish to attend University/College. I would really like to live in London, just because it looks downright awesome. So much culture and history, the food, the sights, the smells and the people - just everything.

So I was looking around at Universities and the like and I found the London College Of Communication. Quite frankly, it looks great. I’m interested in possibly either their Journalism or Film & Video courses. Maybe even Photography - I’ll just have to see what happens. Film & Video would help greatly in putting together a film/documentary of my travels using the footage I’ll have from my trip (hopefully using the nice JVC i posted about earlier)…

There’s So Much To Do In China..

Published
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darcy
on April 25, 2008
in Before The Trip
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As part of my preparation for my journey, I’ve been buying a few Lonely Planet books. I’ve bought Europe On A Shoestring, South East Asia On A Shoestring, Japan, and now I’ve just bought China. As preliminary research, I’ve been reading about the different places, cities, towns and destinations that seem interesting, and there are just so many places I’d like to go and see in China.

I know I want to go everywhere, but I just can’t help it. I’m trying to narrow it down to a total of two months (-ish) split into two journeys. The first will be up the east coast, visiting all the big cities like Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing, before I fly onto Japan. The second part will be going from Beijing to Lhasa overland, after I come back from Japan. The second half I’m really looking forward to, as it will involve a lot more culture, history, etc. Should be very interesting :D
If anyone has any suggestions for must-sees or must-dos in China, please leave them in the comments!

Who Wants To Buy Me This?

Published
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darcy
on April 25, 2008
in Uncategorized
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Okay, so who wants to buy me this? I’ve decided that this is the video camera I’ll be buying to film my journey. It records in full 1080p High Definition. It has a 120 Gb ( ! ) in-built Hard Disk, as well as a MiniSD slot, which allows for up to 10 Hours recording at full HD. The extended battery also lasts for 2 hours of continuous recording (standard battery = 1 hr 20).

When I get down to using it on the road, I shouldn’t be shooting anything longer than two to five minutes or so, unless it’s a special event, so 10 hours of full HD footage will be great. I’ll also be able to archive it and back up to DVDs and CDs since the file size for 2-5 minute clips shouldn’t be too big.

Now, speaking of videos and such, I’ve decided to video podcast my trip. I won’t be blogging/podcasting/vodcasting the same day as things happen - you’ll be getting updated about two or three weeks after the fact. This isn’t because I want to keep everyone out of the loop, this is simply because I wont have time to write/record stuff each and every day. I’ll just take one day once every so often to relax, take a break from constant traveling, and sit down and blog/edit video/clean clothes/etc. This will be my catch-up day.

The benefit of this is you will all always have something new to read/listen to/watch each day. Sometimes there’ll even be a few posts per day. Should be interesting stuff :) You’ll be getting a daily blog post, as well as podcasts and vodcasts whenever I feel like it. Maybe I’ll just do vodcasts, who knows.

My videos will kind of be like a video blog. It will be what happened in the last week/fortnight/however long, as well as little features on odd things like a local delicacy, festival, etc. I won’t be posting videos online in HD though - it’ll just take way too long to upload in internet cafes along the road. Heck, SD video will take ages. So expect a delay or two!

Finally, on top of the blogging, vlogging and podcasting, you’ll also get a full-on movie/series once it’s all done. When I finish the trip and set up in England, I’ll begin to edit all the footage I’ve got into either a feature-length documentary, or a series, depending on the amount of (interesting) footage I have. And don’t expect to see everything in my podcasts. I’ll post about (nearly) everything in my blog, but videos will skip lots of interesting things, mainly to save on length, upload times, and internet cafe bills.

So what a useless, un-interesting post that was.

Some Photos From My School Assignment

Published
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darcy
on April 20, 2008
in Photographs
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Writing A Book?

Published
by
darcy
on April 19, 2008
in Random Thoughts
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Just a quick note here before I fall asleep. I’m considering writing a book of my travels. I’ll write it as I go or maybe when I make it to the other side, I’m not sure. But it should go well with my love of writing :) Goodnight everyone!