Travel Planning - International date line

I'm really shocked that I don't hear about more people getting lost on the international date line.  I haven't been posting much here trying to figure out where we're going to travel next year.  Take this with the knowledge that I am still not done planning all the details for our trip to Bali & Hong Kong in about 6 weeks.  I like a little bit of pressure to really get my focus on planning all the details plus starting to get excited about the upcoming trip.  The other, less emotional part of it is wanting to have the most current info since I plan everything down to the restaurants that we eat at to the shops, the time to visit the museums to exact hour.  I realized that one of the tours that I had planned time around in Hong Kong (Kung Fu in the park) is no longer available and now I am desperately trying to find an equivalent replacement.

The other version of planning is the FAR out planning.  I found this to actually be more difficult because I get so excited about a trip and then realize that I still have to wait a really long time for it to come to fruition.  Then I start to think, what if I want to change my mind?  What if there is a better deal?  Last year I actually had to change 2 sets of our airline tickets to not only different dates but different gateways. 

Yet, future planning is unavoidable.  I have to have some semblance of a plan as Mr. Thief and I do have actual jobs and can't just jet off whenever we want (though we have been accused of this frequently).  It takes a lot of man hours just to figure out how much I can cram into seeing a destination in a short amount of time, how likely I will be to go back, etc.  Then I have to compare the seasonality to when we can get to these places.  THEN I have to figure out how to actually get there.  Take the example of FIJI.  Mr. Thief lets me dictate where we are going, but I badger him until he picks something or keeps saying "I don't care.  I don't care. IdontcareIdontcareIdontcare..." and so on.  Or Germany.  He always picks Germany.  Color me delighted when he sent me an email out of the blue and said "Here is a bird-watching resort in Fiji that popped up in my feed.  I'd like to go here".  I was incredibly happy - A week in Fiji!  Great!  I can so do this!  And then I started to look at how to get there.  There are like a bajillion islands that make up Fiji and there are basically zero ways to easily get there from the US...or I should say few ways that don't include a hundred connections, layovers or a bunch of $$$.

Which brings me full circle to my international date line comment.  I am so confused about what days the flights operates and arrive to the US - I think there's one that departs Fiji on a Friday early AM and then arrives to the US on the previous Thursday night.  Then, trying to move the flight a day later, there's a connection through Seattle back to Honolulu and then the US.  I don't even know what day that got back because it was all "I before E except after C" and I tried to use PEMDAS that I learned in match class to puzzle it out.  If my flight plans work, it is going to be super crazy, but an affordable adventure with a lot of things.  More content coming soon. At the very least, some exciting trips on the horizon!

Comments