With the one year anniversary of me leaving home passing by last week, I’ve been spending a lot of time reflecting on what I’ve achieved since I left. That’s all well and good, and you can read all about my first year away in my last post. But now I think it’s time to start looking ahead and thinking about what I’m doing next.

My one year Working Holiday Visa expires on the 7th of January, so it’s pretty important that I leave Australia before then. Back in August last year when I booked my Around the World Flight Tickets, the next stop planned was New Zealand, before flying on to Malaysia to start a huge trip around South East Asia. This remained the unofficial plan till very recently, when Jake and I finally sorted ourselves out and locked in some dates for these flights. Since then I’ve been reading non stop about all of our potential destinations.

On the 5th of January, Jake and I will fly from Brisbane to Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand, which is located on the very southern tip of the North Island. Over the next 17 days we will work our way up the North Island through the centre, checking out geothermal pools, mountain crossings, beautiful bays and islands, and of course a particularly famous movie set.

On the 22nd of January, we will fly from Auckland to Kuala Lumpur. And so begins our trip through Asia, with stops in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Japan. When reading up on all these countries, it’s so hard to limit yourself to visiting just some parts of them – you could travel around this part of the world for years. Part of me wants to see everything! Unfortunately we can’t because of our budget. But that’s fine of course, you don’t need to see everything to enjoy a trip here. We’re just so lucky that we get to spend so long there – about 4 months! With obvious must see destinations like Angkor Wat, Ha Long Bay, Koh Tao and Bagan, as well as the amazing cities of Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Phnom Penh, Hanoi and Tokyo… a 4 month itinerary soon fills up.

Needless to say we’re getting extremely excited. But at the same time I need to remember to make the most of the remaining time I have in Brisbane. Life has settled into a nice little routine, with my 27 hours of work a week from Thursday to Sunday and my three days off… I get to spend lots of time with Jake and my new friends at the Diner, and I also get plenty of opportunities to laze in the sun. Although Brisbane is getting super hot now and the humidity is rising… the days of me complimenting the weather may be coming to an end!

P.S. None of the pictures in this post are mine (obviously – I haven’t been to these places yet). On that note, my phone’s camera has broken so that’s why I haven’t uploaded many new photos recently!