Before I go...

Hello,

This is the first post on my blog, and as it said on my intro page, I’m off round the world, getting away from months of data cleansing – that’s right, I didn’t even get to enter it, I just had to cleanse someone else’s data!

Just to let you know a bit about me, my names Ian, I’m 22, 23 in a couple of weeks, and I graduated from Kent Uni in 2004.  I’ve been working here and there since but decided that before I start paying off my debts and get stuck in a job, I’d better head off around the world before its too late!

I’m travelling on my own, hopefully not for too long, but all my mates are either still at uni, working, or just coming back from their travels, so it left no other option than to get up one morning and head off to STA Travel, (most likely still drunk form the night before).

My route is fairly similar to everyone else’s first time round the world, although it seems to be in the complete opposite direction! I’ll be travelling from London to LA for a couple of days stop over. I don’t hold much hope for this after reading about the area from other people on the site, but you never know, then my next port of call will be the Cook Islands, where I’ll spend about 5 days relaxing on the beach.
I’ve purposefully not looked into the Cook Islands at all, so they will be a total surprise to me when I get there! From there I move on to Fiji for a couple of weeks, and then down to New Zealand.
I’ll be spending two solid months in NZ, and will be spending a big lump of my hard earned cash on risking my life as often as possible – sky diving, white water rafting, ice climbing (if there’s any ice!) and bungee jumping (if I have the bottle – or at least a few bottles of beer!!)
If I survive I’ll head over to OZ, Sydney first, from which I’ll do a surfing course for a week, really looking forward to that! Then I move up to cairns over the next 5 weeks and check out as much as I can on the way.

The final section of my trip is the most exciting as its not really planned, but I’ll be heading over to Singapore and doing a tour to Bangkok, then counting up my small change, and visiting as much of the rest of S.E Asia as I can afford before heading home. I hope to get a bike maybe to get around a bit, thought it would be more fun than trains, and then I want to head down to get onto a dive course somewhere around Ko Pha-Ngan.

Hopefully Ill bump into some of you guys on my travels somewhere; I’ll have to keep checking the Message boards here when I get to a new town.  I can’t wait to go now, I’m counting the days, and I’ll try to get in as much entertaining and crazy stuff here for you to read as possible – with loads of photos to back it up!

Hiya Ian

Welcome aboard! Your plans sound pretty cool. When are you heading off?

Dan

Just read your profile thingy- so you are from Enfield are you? Im just up the road from you- i live in Hoddesdon which if you know it is a really shite town hence giving me reason to travel.

Where bouts in Enfield are you from. I have a mate who lives on Carterhatch lane and my cousins live in Edmonton.

Dan

Really cool round the world travels mate, please keep us updated with all that is going down on your journey!