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We are preparing to depart for a 35 day tour of Asia.\u00a0 With 10 days of land travel and 25 days on a cruise, the planning has been intense.\u00a0\u00a0 Originally this trip had been planned for two weeks after our youngest sons wedding day.\u00a0 By January, I knew how stressed I was going to be by the August wedding, so we postponed the trip by\u00a0 months.\u00a0 This worked to our advantage with a better itinerary and better weather in the areas we would be traveling to.<\/p>\n
We are just\u00a0 days away from leaving.\u00a0 We have changed our flight a couple of times, first to upgrade to business class when we realized \u00a0how difficult sitting for 27 hours was going to be, thank goodness for travel miles!\u00a0 We changed the tickets again a few days ago, to allow more time for our connections, because we can see that a weather system may be moving in and we only have a two hour connection. This had the effect of cancelling all of our connecting flights, ten days before we set off!\u00a0 Headache number 1,000 in the planning process of an extended journey! There have been hours spent on the phone with agents, as we finalize the details of our flights, accommodations, excursions etc but we are now sorted out, with seats assigned, a plan in place and suitcases packed.<\/p>\n
I am a planner, which means that I am still trying to think about steps B,C and D if something goes wrong.\u00a0 With just a little more than a week before we leave, I still feel like there are things to do.\u00a0 I am printing out travel packets, downloading useful apps and trying to think through every little challenge we might face, its just my nature.<\/p>\n
As I went to bed last I thought about some advice I was offered by a fellow passenger, while on tour in 2023.\u00a0 Our bus to the airport, sat in a hot parking lot in Dubai.\u00a0 We sat there for an hour after we had disembarked, with no air conditioning.\u00a0 We were waiting for 2 people to join us but they seemed to be stuck in customs.\u00a0 This had the effect of causing the bus full of people to worry about getting to the airport in time for their flights.\u00a0 The heat made everyone grouchy and uncomfortable, except for one elderly lady.\u00a0 I asked her how she stayed so calm.\u00a0 She stated she has been a traveler for years and learned to take each segment of a journey in bite size pieces.\u00a0 If something is falling apart, she said, she simply looks at that segment and determines what she can do about it.\u00a0 In this case, several people had finally gotten off the bus and hailed a taxi to ensure they made their flights, problem solved.<\/p>\n
Yes I was hot and uncomfortable on the bus, but I had no important place to be since we were renting a car at the airport and that could wait for a moment.\u00a0 I finally realized I had options. \u00a0I grabbed a bottle of water and stepped outside of the bus where it was cooler.\u00a0 I passed much of my time standing under a palm tree, \u00a0watching with admiration as people with far more brave than myself, were parachuting from planes circling overhead, likely a high adrenaline tour being offered.\u00a0\u00a0 They were landing in an open space across from the port.\u00a0 Relaxing was the solution to my first piece of the puzzle.\u00a0 I simply slowed down and trusted that everything would fall into place and it did.\u00a0 In the end, the bus left without the 2 passengers, apparently they had gotten on a different bus a couple of hours earlier! It made for an interesting story and we went about our plans to tour one of the most fascinating places we have ever been.<\/p>\n
So today I am packing and planning. \u00a0It is likely we may encounter challenges as we embark on this big journey but I am armed with a new attitude as I once again hear the advice of this fellow traveler\u2026\u201djust take everything in bite size pieces\u201d which reminds me,\u00a0 I think I will pack my snacks today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We are preparing to depart for a 35 day tour of Asia.\u00a0 With 10 days of land travel and 25 days on a cruise, the planning has been intense.\u00a0\u00a0 Originally this trip had been planned for two weeks after our youngest sons wedding day.\u00a0 By January, I knew how stressed I was going to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8,18,20,83,59],"tags":[320,332],"class_list":["post-3116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures","category-world-adventures","category-asia","category-blog","category-dubai-united-arab-emirates-republic","category-pre-cruise-planning","tag-stories","tag-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcexplorers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcexplorers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcexplorers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcexplorers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcexplorers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3116"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/abcexplorers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3120,"href":"https:\/\/abcexplorers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116\/revisions\/3120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcexplorers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcexplorers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcexplorers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}