Hi all

I`m about to take the plunge and book a RTW ticket and i`m aiming to travel around the globe for a year or thereabouts.

I plan on popping into Singapore, Hong Kong and maybe Vietnam and i also plan on visiting Oz and New Zealand. I have been looking at spending 3 months in Oz (most probably driving around by car) and 2 months in New Zealand where i will probably be travelling by push bike.

My question is, is this too much time to be spending in one country?? I also won`t be working.

Thanks

No, I don;t think 3 months is too long. We made the horrendous mistake of jetting into Oz without a guide book or any sort of plan then woke up and realised how damn big the place is! You could easily kill 3 months driving around, although tiring. In the end we took bus/train mainly around NSW but regret not planning properly.

Good luck with the cycling in NZ - gets a little hilly in the south!

You're going to need good legs for NZ. As your other response said, a lot of up and down. But, try to stick to the coastal roads. In the Bay of Plenty (where I live) there is a magnificent coastal route from Tauranga to Whakatane, to Opotiki, to Te Kaha, Gisborne, Napier. An excellent route. In the South Island, try to make sure your time if not during our winter, though spring and autumn you might experience hail storms, and the hail stones are not small. Have a great time.

I always thought cycling would be a great way to see New Zealand but having just been there and seeing how far apart everything is (it's a much bigger country than it looks!)and also seeing the poor buggers struggling up VERY long ascents in atrocious weather there is just NO WAY I would choose this as a means of transportation! Good luck to you if you do it that way though. I think with a car and two months to spare you would have given New Zealand a fair go and at a nice pace, we had half that time and were flat out!

A couple of weeks in Hong Kong would be enough (the YMCA next to the Peninsula hotel is a great place to stay). Singapore? depends where you stay I suppose, if you stop at an Orchard road hotel you will be paying out a lot. I'm not sure what you would do there for more than a few days?

[This message was edited by Mork on March 05, 2005 at 02:12 PM.]