Around The World In 72 Days - A de-I / Wife Travel Adventure - The Concept

 It has been quite some time since Wife and I did any serious, multi-country travel. The last few years, we were focusing on our experiments with staying in one country and even one locale in a country to see if we liked living there. With our deciding that was not a practical dream, we started to consider going back traveling as we'd done before. 

One of the bigger questions was would we physically be able to travel as we'd done in the past. We'd been looking at long-term stay travel in large part because diminishing physical ability had made our prior style of travel more difficult. But, offsetting that were a number of things we wanted to accomplish because of disrupted plans in 2020. These included a trip we had planned with two of our grandchildren, 2.2 and 2.3, and a first trip to Ghana for Wife. Originally the logistics of this were easier as the grandchildren of daughter #2 and husband 2B, were in Ukraine. Now they are living in China. Then there was a desire to visit China one more time since #2 and 2B were living there but are scheduled to leave this summer.

Put China and Ghana on the map and decide you want to do this in one trip and you get...

AROUND THE WORLD!

This has been one of my dreams for quite some time. To accomplish the goal of doing something with the grandkids (now 18 and 17 respectively) we decided to stop in Taipei. That's an easy flight from Shanghai where they live. The first phase of our trip then is in Taipei, Taiwan. We were there in 2017 and loved it. 

Then we've decided to head back to Shanghai with the kids where we will be cashing the frequent travel points we've earned with Poo Lee Shah Travels (you earn triple points with them when you agree to go via crazy Asian discount airlines or if you survive the Asian Granny Elbow Fight Boarding Process) to stay at the (according to the marketing material) 'Palatial Poo Lee Shah Shanghai Gardens Resort and Cat Haven'. You may remember the fabulous service and exquisite suite when we went on with them to Hong Kong. So we are excited beyond belief. We are going to spend 3-weeks in the Middle Kingdom, where we will be going all over the place. I will layout the specifics of that itinerary when we arrive there.

If one has experienced the pleasure of an intense Poo Lee Shah Travels trip, it will not surprise you that Wife and I decided we needed to go somewhere simply to relax and recuperate before heading on to the final leg of our trip, Ghana, because I know that any trip to Ghana would not be particularly relaxing given all we want. I really wanted to go to Sri Lanka where we'd never been but the logistics and cost of the airfare to get there were not practical. After researching options in both Malaysia and Thailand, we settled on two-week stay in Krabi Thailand. Seriously, in planning this trip, I figured that getting sufficient rest would be critical to maintaining our health.

After our Thai beach interlude, we are on to the last major part of the trip, Ghana. The goal for Ghana is multi-fold. First, Wife has never met any of the people whom I've been working with these last five years. So her meeting and seeing things first hand is one reason. But also, I've never actually done any touring in Ghana. My whole experience has been Theodora, going in and going out to do the work. We are going to be scheduling three-weeks visiting the capital city Accra (which, of course, is where I spend most of my time), the West Coast Takoradi area, and the old Ashanti Kingdom capital of Kumasi. To get to Ghana, we're taking Turkish Airlines. We were able to get a fare that allowed us to stay in Istanbul for a day and two nights and have added that into the itinerary. 

I am writing this from Taipei and will be getting you all the information of our getting to and getting settled in Taiwan in my next post.