Travel & Holidays Travel

OMG that is terrible. Best way home direct from Sapporo is Cathay Pacific as they fly Sapporo - Hong Kong - Perth and do it in around 15hrs. We are going to fly back to Tokyo, stay at Narita airport hotel and fly again home in the morning.
Quickest airlines are Garuda, Cathay and Qantas at around 13-15hrs for Perth to Tokyo or Osaka.

 

what..... Australia does not do it?

I am mixing it with Australian trips, there is just so much to see, we have an extraordinary country and with the AU$ falling its making sense to travel in our own country. All to their own, I plan to do Tassie, am told is magic and Darwin very much interests me. Love Port Douglas and need to do more in WA, Kimberley area - look at this Bungle Bungles


kimberley scenes bungle bungles - Google Search

 

I wont fly Garuda, they have a bad safety record??? once they landed on the wrong airstrip and there have been a few other incidences?? call me chicken I want to get to my destination

 

Sorry - I just checked - its 18hrs. Not great... but not sooo bad.

Mum wanted to stop in Singapore for a few nights to take a look. Which limited the options.

Blacky

 

Kids club doesn't interest us as one child needs proper supervision due to a medical condition. Even if it wasn't the case we probably still wouldn't dump them there. We enjoy spending time with our kids.

 

You can spend as much or as little time you want with the kids... you might find the kids just want to go to the kids club though on sea days, and then talk to you about their day over dinner! When you go off the ship you can go and sightsee/enjoy the day as a family, and you can go and see the shows etc as a family.

 

Has anyone taken the trans Siberian or trans Mongolian rail trip?

 

Kids LOVE kids club!

Teenagers club was pretty good too!

d

 

Not that specific trip.
I did travel from Atyrau (Kazakhstan) to Moscow by rail.

Blacky

 

Interesting - part the way there. Was it just transport or a 'holiday' type trip?

I'd like to see Siberia, but guessing on a train there's a lot of nothing in that part of the world. Perhaps shorter train trips combined with flights might be better.

 

Garuda had a pretty dramatic turn around in the past few years and have won quite a few awards for their customer service and products Garuda Indonesia Score Skytrax’s Highest 5-Star Rating. We've flown Malaysian Airlines prior to the 2 incidents and probably would again.

 

Yeah.
It was a combination of holiday and neccesity. We were traveling to Moscow, but Mrs Blacky was heavliy pregnant - so couldnt fly. We figured a train journey would be something different.
We werent on a luxury train. No 'dinner' cabins. Had to take your own. Also no showers on board (2days). We booked 4 'sleepers' so we had the entire cabin to ourselves. It was still under $200 for the trip.

There is a whole lot of nothing for most of the way. Though it is noticable when you cross the border in Russia. There is some fantastically fertile lands close to the boarder. You can even see some abandoned equipment on the Kazakh side where farmers left in the 90's at the time of the collapse of the USSR. Then you cross the boarder and it is broad acre farming.

It was good to do once.

I wouldnt mind doing a trip into Moscow then train across to St Pietersburg. That would be a good journey.
For the more adventurous there is the Mongol Rally. UK to Mongolia in a vehicle not more than 1.5l. That would be fun.

Blacky

 

That's incredibly cheap. 2 days is short enough that if you don't like it it doesn't matter. 2 weeks on the trans-Siberian and not liking it would suck.

In other words it was krap?

 

I have SO many places I still want to visit.

Not that I've ever added it up, but I feel like compared to many I might not be the most well-travelled person in terms of total number of countries visited. But, I have lived & worked in a few different countries for extended periods. I think this has influenced my desire to do longer, slower trips to places to be able to gain more of a feel for the culture and lifestyle of an area.

So I hope in the future to be able to do many-week long trips, preferably at least a couple a year. Pretty much all of Europe, Russia, North Korea, China, etc etc etc... it's a long list!

But there are still definitely regions that I have no desire to go to - SE Asia for one holds no attraction for me.

 

It was good. But there is just nothing to do. You stop a long the way at some small villages, but its rarely for very long. You cant really get out and go look around.
2days was a good length - I wouldnt want to do a 2 week journey - no matter how nice the train is.

A long story but we ended up getting stuck half way back in a little backwards town called Aktabunsk (sp?). We were there for about a week, and by the end of the week I was known as "the foreigner" around town. I had the florist take a selfie with me and post it on the window of her shop (probably with the slogan "The foreigner shops here").

Blacky

 

why not airasia stopover to kuala lumpur then direct to sapporo. most flights require stopover to tokyo narita

 

Anyone been to Morocco?
Another fascinating place to visit

 

your right
I am a mess when I see any cruelty to animals, I won't go to various countries for this reason. Did not witness this in Morocco myself

 

Yep, have seen stuff that I still remember from 20yrs ago. Each to their own but I want to come home from holiday with nice memories, not PTSD type flashbacks of cruelty.