2. "Sounds Fun! Where are You Going"?

 The answer to the question, "where are you going" is complicated due to the extreme geographical space that we are going to cover.  

Our northern-most point will be the main airport in Seoul and the southern-most point will be New Zealand's Chatham Island.  Our western-most destination is Christmas Island, 5 hours off of Australians NW coast, and the eastern-most destination for me will be Papeete, French Polynesia.  Mom will be making a quick trip further west to Nuka Hiva in the Marquesas Island group while I snorkel through the reefs near our Papeete hotel. 

If you are saying to yourself, I have no idea where those places are located, then you are not alone. I, too,  had never heard of many of the small island groups before now, so have been spending a lot of time on GoogleMaps. What's more, I learned about "My Maps" by Google, and set up a site with layers and color-coded markers to share our destination. For reference, black = transportation; purple = lodging; and any other color marker depicts places we plan to visit on tours or by ourselves.

The link to this interactive map is here. Anyone who has the link can view it, but you can't find the site with a Google search.  

I will not be surprised if we pare down our plans after the first few days.  It's a lot to do, and unless I get medication to ensure that I sleep during our many flights, I will be sleep-deprived and jet-lagged for a lot of the trip. Notably, I'm not worried about Mom's stamina.  She can sleep anywhere and is a travel pro. My worry is with my stamina.

We have more than a month until departure, and most plans have been made. After finishing the process to apply for the visa to China, the main thing to do will be packing. This will be it's own challenge, because we will not be checking bags. Forty days worth of clothes in a carry-on? This will be interesting.

1. We Have Lost Our Minds

I think it would be most appropriate to say that Mom has lost her mind, and I'm just in it for the ride. Many already know that my mother is an intrepid traveler. At this point, she has been to every country recognized by the United Nations. (Let that sink in for a minute. Any country that you can think of, she's been.) Botswana? Yep. North Korea? Yep. Iran? Yemen? Nepal? Antarctica? Yes, yes, yes and yes.  She has been a member of both the Traveler's Century Club and the World's Most Traveled People for years (https://mtp.travel/users/22598). She never seems to tire of packing everything she needs for a month in a carry-on-sized suitcase and hitting the skies. 

So, where does the insanity come in? It will come in October. In 2023, she started looking at the TCC list of places that she hadn't been to and decided that she wanted to go to them.  Not just one or two, but she wanted to reach 300 of those places on their list. Having already been to ~260, she ramped up her travel game in 2024. She started traveling in earnest, primarily focused on less-traveled islands and territories. She spent the first half of 2024 traveling to areas in the Caribbean and the northern coast of South America, Africa, and islands in Northern Europe and Scandinavia. Although the general areas of the world are familiar, the actual locations she visited were either not well-known or difficult to get to. During her most recent trip, she stopped by the Faroe Islands, the Isle of Man, Svalbard Archipeligo, 

Åland Islands. You have to make a significant effort to get to these places!

This leads me to our upcoming 'excellent adventure' between October and early November. At some point, her travel buddy and partner in seeing the world (aka "Dad") decided he was ready to tap out. No more big trips for him unless accommodations were 5-star and he could get his bourbon Manhattan cocktail every night. But Alla? She still has places to go and things to see. So I stepped in. 

I used the possibility of being her next adventure companion as a carrot for PhD completion and started looking at her list. I quickly realized what a beast of a trip this would be. In as short a time as possible, Mom wanted to see 19 places on the TCC list. These locations range from Jeju Island in South Korea (37°N) down to New Zealand's Chatham Islands (43°S). We would be moving between eight countries, almost all Indonesian provinces, and more than 20 islands in 40 days. I myself can see that it's a crazy trip. I chuckle that rather than envying me, my siblings are thankful that it's not them. 

After >100 hours working through flight itineraries, tourist entry visas, hotel reservations, transportation arrangements, and finding local tours, I am well aware that this is not going to feel like a vacation.  I'm keeping it all in perspective.  Yes - we are going to be moving quickly through countries, cultures, and currencies and experiencing travel-related stress, sleep deprivation, and GI issues. But - how lucky am I to see these parts of the world and spend 40 days with my adventurous, easy-going, up-for-anything mother? It's a no-brainer.

In 2002 and 2007, I published blogs describing my experiences traveling in SE Asia and the Middle East/Mediterranean, respectively.  I think this trip deserves the same attention. Occasional Facebook posts and captions won't adequately capture the experiences and emotions of this particular trip, so I dusted off my Blogspot account and will be sharing details of our trip as we go. I expect it will be much easier to blog this trip than the previous trips in which I spent hours in internet cafes with my SD card and notes to transcribe into internet posts. I hope that friends and family enjoy the blog, and I hope my words convey what an extraordinary citizen of the world I think my mother is. Vamos!