Packing! Folkestone, United Kingdom

Folkestone, United Kingdom

Another foul, wet and windy day! We began packing today for our trip. We are packing in two halves really. Two cases are being packed for the cruise only and these we will take to Southampton on Thursday. They will then be loaded onto Arcadia and sail with her when she embarks on the full world cruise on the 8th. We will next see them again in Hong Kong on the 17th March when we go aboard. So, our evening clothes are in one case plus some more formal wear and cold weather wear that we won’t need in India. We have also packed 10 litres of red wine in boxes and some other “shop case” supplies. Our allowance is 2 x 23kg each.
We are also packing 2 cases plus hand luggage for Goa. This is all our sun product/medicines and lots of hot weather clothes. Nothing at all “posh” required!
We have also booked a few excursions ahead of time. A 2 day private tour in Beijing with a local guide. We have 2 days in Beijing and have opted to stay at a hotel in the city rather than trek back to the ship on the intermediate night. Looking forward to that very much. We have booked 2 P&O tours ahead of time: Ancient Japan which covers Nara and Kyoto and in Aruba we have booked to crew on an American Cup racing yacht for a half day experience. We are mostly doing our own thing in the other ports but have booked a taxi tour in Jeju Doh (Korea).
We have our visas organised now. We went up to London for the day in November and got the Indian visas underway. They came back to us 5 days later. The visas for China are being delivered to us in Hong Kong. In the end we spoke to a visa agency who advised us to get a Chinese Group visa for 2 people which was cheaper than the individual visas and did not involve us sending off our passports because it is a piece of paper rather than a passport stamp. Slightly nervous it wont arrive in HK but if it doesn’t we have time to sort one out there. The agency seem to be ok though.
It will be great to get away from this winter weather which is positively apocalyptic!
This blog will pick up on 13th March when we fly from Delhi to Hong Kong to start that part of our trip. But first…… Goa!