Another Step

The deed is done.

I cashed in 160,000 frequent flyer miles for a 10-month round-the-world ticket.

I have either one more, or maybe two more stops to add. I can change the dates for free so long as it's 21 days ahead of time, and I have to pay $75 to alter the route.

I do want to alter the route already, but the Continental agents advised I ticket ASAP to confirm the trickiest legs, and then screw around with the route later. And do it once, and well, and then leave it be.

Here's the current itinerary.

Newark-Malaga, Spain. March 1.

(overland)

Cape Town to Madagascar. June 3.

Madagascar to Bangkok. June 17.

Bangkok to Tahiti. November 17.

Tahiti to New York. November 25.

I'm not really leaving Tahiti on November 25. But the airline on that leg hadn't published its flights for December yet, so we had to get the latest one we could, with the plan to change it as soon as they release those seats. And I'll probably add Fiji or Tonga in between Bangkok and Tahiti, or maybe try to get somewhere in Central America on the way home.

Or...I don't know. I'm tired of looking at all the options. Someone else got any bright ideas? I can't go in reverse, say the fare rules.

Today's Forward Movement

Star Alliance was able to add Madagascar to my round-the-world itinerary.

I don't think I need quite this long in Madagascar, but I can fiddle with the dates a little later.

Thanks, Peter, for the push.

Big, Big World

I'm not too shabby at planning. But when my choices include the entire world, I get as overwhelmed as your average non-passport holder looking at a map of Cancun.

A few days ago, I was definitely going to take a Star Alliance Round-the-World flight on my mileage. This means six stops and only one open-jaw (meaning I have to fly in and out of the same cities except for once, which enforces a hub system on me). I have to fly in one direction which means no flying west.

I was looking at this:

1) NYC-Spain
--ferry to Morocco, overland to Cape Town via West Africa over 14 weeks (that's the open-jaw leg). It's more-or-less this route that Mali's Sleeping Camel/Surfing Camel trips follow, without the southern Africa legs.


2) Cape Town-Singapore.
--using Bangkok as my base, I'd spend at least 3 weeks sleeping, catching up, and going to doctors for whatever illnesses I've acquired in my travels by then.
--Loop up to Tibet via Thailand/Laos/China and then come back via Nepal, making my way to Bhutan, and maybe Bangladesh before using a one-way budget flight back to Singapore.
--Rest up for a few weeks in Ubud, Bali.

So far so good, right? But...what about Madagascar? I'd like to go to Madagascar. What would I do there? This? These? Does Star Alliance go to Madagascar?

No.

Sigh.

How does one get to Madagascar? More research required.

Planning an extended trip requires persistence. Links lead to links, clicks to new ideas, and wham, there I go down the damn rabbit hole again.

Let's say I found a way to Madagascar outside of the constraints of my RTW flight. It could happen.

So then we'll change #2 above to this:

2) Johannesburg-Singapore. We're making that change because JNB is the regional hub. If I end up paying for a flight to Madagascar, it's going to be out of and into JNB.

Back to Asia now. We've rested, recuperated, seen the $13 dentist, zapped all my excess parasites, and I've slept for several days straight. Let's pretend I've gone to the Thai massage pavilion at Wat Po 20 times in July and eaten so much mango and sticky rice that I've got a distinct orange sheen. Then, we've made the loop north and come back south and we land in...

Singapore.

--Singapore to Borneo and back on AirAsia.com. I've been admiring some group trips in Borneo. Some with my old friends at Intrepid Travel, and a few with Canadian operator GAP.
--Singapore to Denpasar, Bali by budget airline. Round-trip. Because after that loop around Asia, I need to sleep some more. I know it looks like I'm sleeping around the world, and I am, but I promise you it's needed. It's on my list of most important planning items. Quit job. Sublet apartment. Get vaccines. Remember passport. Plan to sleep a lot.

And when I'm done sleeping and fighting with pesky monkeys, I use the budget airline to go back to my hub of Singapore and resume my RTW ticket.

3) Singapore-Fiji. Or Singapore-Tahiti.

The Fiji thing is a bit of a whim. People like Fiji and recommend it. If I have a stop left after all this, it's on the top of my list of spare stops.

Otherwise...

Tahiti.

I don't need to go to Tahiti itself. Tahiti is a regional base. My local hub.

From Tahiti, I want to go on a trip freighter-cruise to the Marquesas island on the Aranui 3 ship. I initially thought I couldn't afford this ship, and then I looked at the costs of doing the same trip independently.

I can afford the ship.

Then I'll use my BA or AA mileage to get a roundtrip ticket to Easter Island.

And finally, I'll get to the end of the trip. If I went to Fiji previously, I have only one leg left, and that's from Tahiti to New York.

Damned if I can't make the Star Alliance booking engine do that though. Maybe it isn't possible. Which would throw a wrench into the works, to put it mildly.

At the end of all this, I have another thought that I can't quite shake.

What if I went from Tahiti to South America? And threw away my last ticket, and just went overland, including sailing around the Darien Gap?

Or...wait. I'm down the rabbit hole again, aren't I?

Hippos and Sporks

Resolved for 2011: Marie will be sillier.

Route Map

I made a potential route map for my trip, which starts March 1. This might work. I have the frequent flyer miles to get the blue lines free, and then I have to add on the orange lines.

2010: A Look Back

Ah. Here we are.

Again.

My annual complaint list.

This blog...it's really five years old? Seems like just yesterday I had my inaugural New Year's Eve meltdown, right here with you guys after the worthless German guy split on me after I was in the hospital in Namibia, right after he dumped me for being...well, you know why. All that stuff in Uganda. We all know why, though I can't quite bring myself to say it. Good times.

A year later, I was still pretty raw, though I'd had some recovery time in Kuwait. Not a lot happens in Kuwait. It's a good place to recover. I mean, if some young rich Swede isn't kissing your ass trying to convince you to be his gal so he can dump you five seconds later when his ex-wife yanks the old leash. Screech...whoa...what? Again? Can I please develop an alcohol habit now? Oh hell, I don't drink, do I? No problem, this old friend of mine is in New York over New Year's to help me by...getting drunk and trying to kiss me? ARGH, cut it out!

Yeesh. What's a gal gotta do to get a break?

2007. Where were we then? Ah, yes. The next genius move. Does it even matter? Have we noticed a pattern by now?

My next male-related scheme involved fragile-me looking for something less risky...I'm all grown up now, right? I can just, er...look past someone's weight or hair loss or cringe-worthy picking of teeth at the table, right? And I know...someone who actually lives here. In my country, right across the river. Someone employed at a major news organization. Hey, a job and health insurance! My, how my standards have changed.

This seemed like a reasonable choice, but he might have been worst of all. Okay, second-worst. He was pining away for his ex-wife too. Am I now totally scared off of divorced guys? Yeah, maybe. He even managed to call me at the last minute on New Year's Eve to say he'd changed his plans and was in Brooklyn with friends, so our dinner was off, but he'd be in later to go to that party for a little while, where he'd check his phone the whole time because he couldn't wait to race back to see the friends.

This behavior turned out to be typical for him.

And it still took him six months to dump me. Yes, that's right. Dump me. You heard it here first. MARIE WILL PUT UP WITH ANYTHING.

Gah.

After that, I decided "Screw New Year's Eve," and went to Bolivia the next time. I sat on Facebook melting down in a hotel room while firecrackers went off in the street. Then next year, I went to a large foreign island south of Florida and...well, you know the drill by now.

Melting down in a hotel room. Questioning my choices, beating myself up for having not written another book, beating myself up for not moving forward in some manner and just treading water. For having whatever problem I have that men think I'm some kind of brilliant goddess that would make a great...friend. For not creatively moving forward. For allowing my brain to atrophy as I went through the mechanics of daily routine.

I don't want to sound overly dramatic. Actually, I already have. But I think it's clear that I have a dysfunctional relationship with New Year's Eve.

Not to mention with most men.

This year, I stayed in the US. I am taking myself to a party. No old friends are here to surprise me with sudden declarations of...well, not love, because it was more like "I'm drunk and you're in front of me." I can't say that I'm particularly strong and recovered from my years of whining and being a creatively spent deer-in-headlights. But I'm in my office in New York, and I'm not melting down, and I think New Year's Eve is silly, and I hope to get on the train before the masses do right after midnight.

It's something, right?

Oh, and did I mention that in 2011, I am going to do a 10th anniversary round-the-world MariesWorldTour.com?

That's why I don't care that it's New Year's. Because this year, I actually have something incredible to look forward to.

Family Holiday

My mother posted this day-after-Christmas photo on her blog. Or on Facebook. I forget.

It looks fine of me, and pretty good of my mother. My sister looks like hell and is horrified at it. To which I remind her that she shouldn't have let her dog eat my shoes when I was 14.

Happy Holidays

It's THAT time of year again.

God, how I hate it. I spend money, get involved in complex travel arrangements, and the worst part is thinking about what I have done over the past year, which means thinking about what I haven't done over the past year. And I am not the type of person who triumphantly crows about the glass being half-full.

Nope, it's not in my DNA. All I can think about is the unfinished book proposals and the brilliant-but-broken people I know whose problems I tend to make my own instead of running away screaming. (This is also in my DNA. My sister does it worse than I do—hey, look, I just saw a glass as half-full. Maybe I'm not hopeless.)

But this year things are going to be different. This year I'm going to do something about it.

You'll see soon.

The irony here is that what I'm going to do about it is what I always going to do about it. But louder.

Maybe this time it'll stick.

The Bounty

Christmas, 2010.

I am now the proud owner of three sporks.

Two are titanium. One is BPA-free.

Because a girl can never have enough sporks.*



(*not actually true.)

Class Final

Here's my final project for my SVA woodworking class.



And here's how I carried it home on the PATH train.



And here's the edge detailing that the teacher helped me with. It's just an angled cut with the table saw, and then a lot of sanding.



Woodworking school was excellent. I will cry every day now that it is over.