Melbourne (Trip Start)

This year hasn't exactly gone to plan. In January I was planning a trip to Madagascar. By February I was excited and looking forward to the birth of our first child and being a father. In March, we were off exploring the South Pacific on a baby-moon cruise. At the end of April our son Hendrik was born too soon and we lost him. It was the worst thing that's ever happened to me. The winter to follow has been extremely tough to say the least. We're trying to be positive now and look to the future. We have the unfortunate opportunity now to get away to enjoy a new adventure and experience together. It's necessary. I have a feeling it's going to be good for us.

I've seen a lot of the world, but there's still much I'd love to see - The Final Continent (Antarctica), Alaska, Canada, more of the US, and certainly Japan. I always figured many of these could be completed easier with children or later in life. Places like Egypt, Central Africa and now Madagascar with it's 'Black Plague' may now have to wait a while... (I'm actually thankful I didn't end up booking to go there this year).

Every trip I've ever done, every place I've ever been, I've recorded with a Travel Blog, including journal entries, maps, names of places, people met, flags, photos and more. From 2006 to 2016, I used the site www.travelpod.com. Early this year, we spent around $800 to have all my blogs made into hard copy books, a priceless life-travel souvenir. Sadly, in March this year the site was 'bought out' by Tripadvisor and closed down. I managed to migrate all my blogs to an archived site which can still be viewed and accessed in their original format at /http://www.travelark.org/traveller/tofor85. Whilst it's great to still have all the blogs online, that archive can't be edited going forward and of course I can't use the Travelpod site to make any new blogs. I scouted around, and was shocked to find how few decent looking Travel Blog websites there are out there. I finally decided on this one, at https://findpenguins.com/tofor85

This site is a little different, and uses something called 'Footprints' to mark where you are in the world. I've taken the time to go back and put 'Footprints' in for each and every place I have ever been. From 2006 onwards the dates are relatively accurate even. I'll continue to cross-link my blog entries of previous trips (located on TravelArk) to this website and try to add a few photos for a glimpse of visual representation of footprints taken around the world. This site is a work in progress, and I'll continue to filter blogs, photos and stories across. It's the sole site I'll use for the Japan adventure ahead.

The trip ahead will be about 3 weeks. We set off 10.30am on Saturday morning, October 21st and return Wednesday night, arriving home Thursday morning 9 November in Melbourne. We're flying direct from Melbourne to Tokyo return with Qantas. We'll start off with a couple days by ourselves in Tokyo. On Monday night, the 23rd we mete up with a G-Adventures Travel Group (12-16 people) which takes us from Tokyo to Takayama, Kanazawa, Hiroshima, Miyajima, Kyoto, Mount Fuji and back to Tokyo. We then have 3 nights/ 4 days by ourselves at the end of our trip based in Tokyo. I'll do my best to post live journal entries, photos and updates on this site as much as is possible. If there's a delay in internet, I will be writing entries on my Samsung tablet and uploading at the first/easiest opportunity.

To navigate this site -
- Click on 'Trips' under my profile picture to sort my travel by trips taken.
- Click on 'Countries' under my profile picture to see where I've been in the world.
- Click on a Footprint to see more information on that trip (if available), as well as photos. You can leave comments on each footprint.
- For previous Trips (prior to Japan) I have included at least an initial and final blog entry list (to take you to TravelArk) for further information/blog entry/photos.Read more