Preparations II

My second blog entry....as promised, I will post some pictures on the "stuffs" that we bought for our trip. First and foremost.....BAGS:
The darker blue (left) bag belongs to me - I got it from a few years ago; used it a couple of times including a kayaking trip to Abel Tasman with Pok Kern. Yih Jia bought hers 2 weeks ago - we had fun trying out a few bags (or travel packs...as they are officially called) and finally with the help of a Kathmandu staff, we bought the smaller sized one. There are a lot of differences in these bags and YJ actually found a couple of others a bit uncomfortable to use...One was too big for her - the top of the backpack was way above her head...hehe. No pictures of that though...

Check out the goodies I bought from KL during Chinese New Year. A Korjo neck pillow for the 24 hour flight from NZ to London, Yale lock (still the "low chiew pai" ie branded, for those of you who can't speak Cantonese), an international plug converter and the money pouch (which is actually on loan from Edwin, my brother-in-law - thanks man!!).

Btw, does anyone know whether we can access the money from the pouch without looking like we are stripping??

The great thing is that I found all these stuff from a hardware store in Midvalley Shopping Mall....all for a fairly cheap price. It will be much more expensive here in Auckland.

What??!!! Rain Poncho??? Will really come in handy - have to be prepared. My wifey's idea and I think it is a damn good idea!!

We haven't tried the micro-fibre towel yet - it is supposed to dry really quickly. Which will be handy when we move from city to another city....Hey, I recalled hanging wet towels in the car headrest of the front passenger side....

I will write more about the towel once we have tried it. Maybe even time it!!! :-)

And a final picture for this blog posting.....

Yup!! That's my wonderful wifey posing for me...Little does she know that I will be posting this picutre. She is "shy" when it comes to posting her pictures on blogs....but I thought I could not resist it, especially with such a pretty picture of her!!

See you the next time!

Preparations I

Welcome to the first blog on our trip to Europe in June 2009. Joining me will be my wife, Yih Jia, who has done ALL the hard work ie planning!!
I thought that we should attempt to post our trip as we have had trouble with keeping journals in the past....and hey, we have great technology these days, why not use it.
And this is a way to keep our family in Malaysia up-to-date with where we are and what we are up to!
Here are some initial photos of our preparation...

This book is what started it all....bought at 50% discount during pre-Christmas sale at Borders. We had to commit ourselves to planning for our trip after buying this book!!

I bought this book in 2008 after discovering a great deal with Singapore Airlines - a return ticket to Rome with a stopover in Singapore AND enough flight points for a free trip to Australia and back! Only problem - not enough of time and we were planning for our Wedding! Will now come very handy as we are planning a whole week in Italy.

Rick Steves' book caught my eye when I was listening to a talk given by a tour guide. After reading about Rick Steves, we were entralled by his book and the way he relates to first-time travellers. His book is easy to read and somehow I felt less overwhelmed by the information he provided. Sometimes, I get so lost reading Lonely Planet books.....talk about having a simple mind.

And this is our flight ticket - Emirates Airline had a great discount in January; a return flight for only NZD1850 per person....COULD NOT believe it!!!

A Big Thanks to my Dad for telling us to be patient and not rush into buying the plane tickets, with the current downturn/recession!

The price is normally NZD3000 pp....do your maths and cry!!

And finally......a recent purchase......

HP Mini 1001TU Netbook for blogging and a tiny netbook for our travel in Europe!!! It has a 60GB HDD which we will transfer all our photos and video from the SD card, giving us a lot of space to take more pics!!

The next post will be about our "equipments". See you the next time!