3.5 month LONE4, comments?
 

Me and my wife have are moving country next year and want to do a trip before relocating. We currently live in London so our trip will start here. We are looking to see as much as possible especially of places far away from Europe that we likely will not return to. It will roughly be a 3.5 month trip and most of the time will be spent in NZ/Aus, Japan and Malaysia/Thailand. We are planning to rent a car in NZ, Aus and South Africa.

I know there are quite a few destinations in our plan, and 3.5 months might seem like a short time for it all, but I believe we both have quite impatient personalities, so this is something we have taken into account when planning our trip. We are quite worried about crime, food poisoning and all the rest so we are mostly looking at visiting developed and safe countries, looking to have a fairly comfortable stay in medium standard hotels. We have a reasonable budget, but we don't want to splash out too much.

I wanted to post our planned itinerary to see if you have any comments on it; mainly in terms of places worth visiting, or if the schedule is not possible to complete comfortably in a 4 month time frame. Also, SCL is a destination I'm not too sure about but there doesn't seem to be any other options from South America to the SWP. As for China, are PEK and HKG good choices? Seems like there are limited flights onward to South Africa from places in China other than HKG. We have planned trekking from SIN to BKK mainly by train, is this a good idea?

Many thanks for your comments.

LHR - GIG
GIG - GRU (Surface)
GRU - EZE
EZE - SCL
SCL - AKL
AKL - SYD
SYD - SIN
SIN - BKK (Surface)
BKK - NRT
NRT - PEK
PEK - HKG
HKG - JNB
JNB - CPT (Surface)
CPT - LHR

There is so much to see on this planet......

A few ideas:
When you are in SCL you should consider going to Easter Island. One of my favoured places in SA. And/or Macchu Pitchu. Easter Island you can to from/to SLC on LAN, MP: Take LAN to LIM and buy an extra ticket from there to Cuzco. LIM is not terrible safe - as most of South America, but you should not be too worried.

SYD is great, but everything else is too far for driving. You should consider flying to Cairns and/or Hobart or Uluru (Ayers Rock).

Also travel in China is cheap, you can always buy seperate tickets there. Try www.zuji.com from HKG or www.elong.com inside China. Xian and Shanghai are two places i would look into.
HKG is one of my favored places, PEK is a bit boring.
If you need some more ideas in Asia look into Vietnam, Cambodia (Angkor What), Laos (Luang Prabang) or even better North Korea (most memorable trip for me in the last few years).

SIN-BKK: CX is flying that route if you don't want to take the train.

I personally are not too crazy about JNB - never feel safe there. CPT is ok, you could take the car up into Namibia (or buy a seperate ticket to Windhoek and go up to Etosha and west to Swakopmund.Nice and safe.

Thanks Unterwegs, great input.

Eater Island is an option I have looked at, but it seems tricky to get from Easter Island to NZ, so in order to pay it a visit it seems necessary to go back to SCL. It does seem tempting though.

This is a good idea. We have planned driving up to the Gold Coast along the Pacific Highway and back to Sydney on the New England Highway. This is something we've planned to do in total in 10 days, it may involve too much driving. Will consider your idea of flying elsewhere in Oz instead.

Surprising and interesting to hear. I thought it would be the opposite. We have planned spending more time in PEK than HKG, maybe we should reconsider. I have also heard good things about Xian from other sources.

Maybe we should skip JNB completely. Heard numerous crime related warnings about JNB. I wish we could fly directly to CPT from Asia.

+1. Well worth the trip. Also, don't overlook the Temple of Heaven in PEK. And the Forbidden City has been restored (for the Olympics) and provides an experience even richer than before.

I have never been sure if you can do SCL-IPC-PPT//AKL-etc... Does anybody know if this is an option?

I almost ticketed AKL//PPT-IPC-SCL a few days ago, the agent didn't said anything about it. It costs about 350 euros pp to get from AKL to PPT with NZ and Air Tahiti.

Valid in MM and you have 2 segments spare. Use these in SA to go SCL-IPC-SCL. Easter Island worth visiting IMHO

Comes up Ok in MM SCL-IPC-PPT-AKL and with PPT-AKL as a "surface segment" (Purchase seperate ticket). However have never seen a report on FT that this has been done.
PPT - AKL may not be valid in a xONEx. QF code share ????

Thanks, will make sure we don't miss these sights. In China, would you recommend going for better known western brand names hotels or for the more local ones?

Quite a nifty tool this I must say. A bit worried about time if we also visit Easter Island. Do you think all these destinations are possible to do in 3.5 months without rushing?

That depends on how you like to travel. For some 3.5 weeks is more than enough for this itinerary. For others even 3.5 years is not enough time.

The main problem in China is that not many people outside the bigger hotels speak English.
And even in the bigger hotels it is hit and miss. Just was staying in the Intercontinental in Chengdu (great hotel, reasonable priced). Call for Turn Down service - the person tries to repeat turn down and you notice she has no clue what i wanted. Call for luggage pickup - and 2 min later somebody shows up to pick up the laundry. And ask for a Latte at breakfast and you get a look like you just ordered a pregnant baby elephant with crispy skin.....

So as long as you don't speak some mandarin i would recommend staying with the better known brads, which are very reasonable priced in China.

Check out the websites of the hotels directly, try agoda.com (only good experiences so far), wotif.com, asiahotels.com, asiarooms.com.

If you are looking for 5 star hotel recommendations PM me. I have been in most of the places you plan to visit.