It's actually slightly over two months. We leave May 17th and return July 23rd.
The first leg of the trip is to get us to Kyrgyzstan. We'll be there for a month in a Russian built UAZ Bukhara camper van!
Then we fly from Bishkek direct to Chengdu, China. We were originally planning on flying to Beijing, but the flights were expensive so I started looking at other options and came across this oddball Chinese airline called Loong Airlines. Kind of reminds me of when we took a flight on Turkmenistan Airlines. Anyhow, I couldn't book it direct through their sketchy website. And one of the only third party sites that does a lot of China travel stuff is trip.com so I booked it through them. Fingers crossed!
Mexico City to Madrid, to Ankara, to Bishkek to Chengdu.
Chengdu is more in the area of China we wanted to be in the first place. Then when we're finished there, we'll take the train to Beijing and fly to Tokyo, Japan.
We're only going to be a week or so in Japan. There are a couple of reasons for this.
The first is that we want to bring our Starlink internet system to Kyrgyzstan. But the Starlink is not allowed into China. So we will have to ship it by DHL from Kyrgyzstan to Japan and pick it up there. Yes, it sounds complicated, and we wondered if it was really worth it. And we're aware that it may not go to plan. But how else could we bring you live beautiful photos from the mountains of Kyrgyzstan??
The second is that getting direct from China to Mexico isn't cheap. There are direct flights available, but they are a ridiculous price. Far cheaper to do a hop skip and jump flight from Beijing to Tokyo to Vancouver to Mexico City.
Our return to Mexico City.
Beijing to Tokyo to Vancouver to Mexico City.
Turns out we've got one full day and night in Vancouver. I haven't checked accommodation prices there yet because I'm afraid to!
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And in Canada...
Of note: we found out after we booked that local flights in Japan were free if booked at the time of original flights (or something like that - I don't know the details as it was too late for us) We travelled a fair distance and ended up taking a flight from Hiroshima to Tokyo (Haneda) Airport with Japan Airlines, and oh my gosh, great service and lots of leg room - what a difference compared to WestJet from Calgary to Winnipeg in every way possible... and cheap! For two people, under $250 all in (and we weren't looking for a deal, just had to get back to Tokyo to get our flight home) I think ANA was even cheaper, but I had dificulty booking online from Canada. Safe travels! Lots to see and do in Tokyo.
ReplyDeleteIIRC I booked ANA from Tokyo to Vancouver because their leg room was 33 inches versus Air Canada at 31 inches (according to google flights when i was booking)
ReplyDeleteCheck out the website Super.com for hotels around Vancouver airport. We found them to have cheap rates. We stayed at the Grand Park Hotel, has free airport shuttle. Rooms were decent and clean.
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