World Traveling Partners: Adventures on the Road
a resource for couples traveling the world

March 01 - 07 California We started our trip in Chico.  Driving to Greagle to store our car at Brian's parent's mountain home.  Then we took off in a rental car to L.A. where Susana's mom met us at the rental car drop off point.  We spent a week in L.A., doing lots of last minute shopping and saying goodbye to Susana's family. For the first part of our round-the-world journey we flew from one country to another on Cathay Pacific airlines.  It was a special deal where you could fly to as many countries as you wanted in Asia in a 3 month period.  You had to stay in each place for at least 1 week and no more than 3 weeks.  You also had to book all flights ahead of time, and begin & end your itinerary at the same city. In our case, it was LAX. We simply decided to abandon our flight home and continue traveling ourselves in SE Asia by land.  This is a much more affordable alternative, as flights to SE Asian islands, Japan, India, and Taiwan are expensive when purchased separately.  We flew to eight countries for 1500 USD each. We boarded a plane on March 7, 2004 via Hong Kong to Bangkok.  The flight was long, but service was great. We explored the spanking new HK airport even though we knew we would transit through many more times to get to the rest of our destinations.