PRELUDE
TOWNSVILLE (Australia)
Monday October 15th, 2012
TODAYS MILEAGE – 0 miles or 0 kilometres
TRIP MILEAGE – 0 miles or 0 kilometres
Greeting & Salutations Culture Vultures,
As early preparations for heading over to Japan, with the Alice Springs Dingoes, for the 19th Annual World Golden Oldies Rugby Festival in Fukuoka, a few of us put our heads together for a pre or post festival trip.
The general consensus was to try and visit somewhere prior to playing, so that if someone is injured ½ of their trip won't be ruined. In hindsight, how prophetic did that statement turn out to be?
A few places like Thailand, Bali and Hong Kong were bandied about and different package pricing was tabled over a couple of weeks. In the end I suggested Vietnam, as I had visited the previous year and found it affordable, easily accessible and I had absolutely loved the joint when I was over there.
I started off with nearly a week on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, before jetting off to Singapore to meet up with the rest of the Dingoes, at Changi Airport
The plan was to follow pretty much the same footsteps as I had on my 2011 By Any Means trip, with the exceptions of bypassing Hoi An and visiting Nui Dat instead.
It was a pretty full 8 day schedule in Vietnam, finishing with a red-eye flight to Fukuoka (Japan) via Shanghai (China).
We then had 8 days of the 19th Annual World Golden Oldies Rugby Festival, culminating with a couple of free days at the end, in which I organized a visit to Hiroshima, via the bullet train.
Enjoy the trip – as I certainly did! 