So we’ve 1 month to go until our adventure begins and I thought I’d give a feel for what life is like at the moment. To sum up in one word… Crazy! Life is crazy at the moment but every time it seems like it’s getting too much, this crazy excitement bubbles up inside us. We just can’t believe we’re actually doing it. We’re actually packing in our jobs and starting life again. So here’s a feel of what’s going on so you know what to expect if you’re planning the same thing.

House

We put the house up for rent and really fell on our feet with a lovely couple who are moving in the week before Christmas and taking the house till we come back.

De-cluttering

This is the one task which I’m really surprised about.  I thought packing up all our things to get the house ready to rent would be a nightmare but it’s been really great. Okay I’ll admit, it’s a pain coming in tired from work every day to tackle another press/wall or room. But you get such a great feeling when it’s done that it makes up for the hard work! There’s something really cleansing about de-cluttering. We’ve been spending the last few weeks going through toys and sorting them into 4 piles; bin, charity, pack away and bring. I thought the kids would be devastated by this but they’ve been great. And then doing the same with clothes, books and pretty much everything.

Selling stuff

The attic has been cleared out and anything of value, however small has been sold. Things like baby equipment e.g.  a cot, buggies, nursing chairs, high chairs, etc. My car’s up for sale now so that’s next and a big one for us. You get really addicted to selling stuff once you sell the first item. We sold most of our stuff on adverts.ie, find it great. Here’s the link: http://www.adverts.ie/

Booking flights

I thought we could be a lot more footloose and fancy free as regards flights but it doesn’t seem like that. We needed to have an inward and outward flight booked for each country for Visa purposes so it just seemed easier to get on top of this and book some flights. We also found some pretty great deals so just went ahead and booked them. So far we’ve booked flights from Dublin – London, London – Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka  – Bangkok, Bangkok – Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi – Bangkok, Bangkok to Krabi and Kuala Lumper to Brisbane…. So really we’ve booked the first half of our trip. That’s where we had to stop though… the next leg looks as expensive as all those flights booked together!

Visas

Some of our  visas have been sorted, one for Sri Lanka and our passports are currently in the post to the Vietnam embassy to sort the Vietnam visas out. We can get our Thai visas sorted on arrival in the airport so we should be fine. I’ll put detail on visas in the destinations section.

Vaccinations

Vaccinations are all sorted so now so are all up to date with them. We went through the Tropical Medical Bureau in Dublin. I’ll put up more detail on specifically what vaccinations we needed. The kids needed a lot less than us as the baby vaccinations in Ireland covered most things.

Lists

We’ve got one big huge list going at the moment which I visit every week or so. It covers things like selling stuff, blog setup, renting our house, bills, visas, flights, vaccinations, medical kits and packing….

Christmas

We seem to have picked a crazy time to leave in one way as it coincides with Christmas, so we have all the craziness and fun of Christmas thrown in the mix. Still, I love Christmas as do the kids so I’ll take the business it brings.

That’s about it, we’re looking forward to winding down and chilling out when we finish work in 2 weeks time. It’s hard to wind down at the moment, life as I said… is simply crazy, but hey, who am I to complain?