The day before...

It’s the morning of the day before and we still have so much to do! About to head off to Boots to get our mossie nets and repellent, suncream and malaria tablets. The malaria tablets aren’t needed until we hit China sometime late next year but we thought that it would be better to sort out over here in the UK as our doctors told us they’ll be a lot cheaper on the NHS than they are in the private healthcare culture of Australia. Talking of the NHS we’ve also had all our jabs done (well almost all, Alex is going to have some done in Australia once we get there as he started his course a bit too late). We’ve had to have around fourteen in total although, again, these are probably not going to be needed (hopefully never) until much later on in our travels.

Finance and insurance, the dullest part of travel prep but probably the most essential; you ain’t going anywhere without money after all! We decided after some boring discussions to go with the devil you know school of thought and have both STA travel insurance and STA travel cards. The STA cards are a bit of an experiment and we’ll see how they do on the way over to Australia. As for the insurance let’s just hope that we never have cause to use it!

Enough of the boring travel details. As we’re flying from good old Brum, Rach has already said goodbye to her Geordie friends and had a last good night out. We’ve got a meal with Rach’s family to look forward to tonight and a goodbye meal with Alex’s tomorrow.

Rex’s Rules of the Road

• For the boring stuff travel insurance is a must, still undecided on the travel cards (we’ll let you know).

• For peace of mind check out jabs and tablets before you go and if you do get jabs start early!

• If you are more laid back, no worries, most things can be gotten abroad.

• Make sure you have a damn good night out to say goodbyes, it’s going to be your last sesh on home turf for a while.