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We're off to Bali! And then Australia. In 1999-2001 we went in stages overland from Beijing to Bangkok, on the way to Australia. But we got sidetracked. Now we are at last picking up the trail again. We've just completed the first 600 km of our overland trip from Bangkok to Bali (midway to Australia) and where we will make a long stop. It is a minimum of 4000 km (2500 miles - Chicago to LA) and we guess that with inevitable twists and turns and side trips it will be more like 6000 km.

We're in Ranong and left Bangkok this morning. This first day, in which we travelled 8 hours and did 10% of the entire journey, will undoubtedly be a record — we usually prefer to travel no more than 3 hours per day. Bangkok lies at 13.74 degrees N and Ranong at 9.73N. In other words, we went south 4 degrees in a single day. (That's 1/90 of the way around the world. Not quite as fast Phineas Fogg's average of 1/80 per day.)

Our expectations are that we will continue south along the Thai peninsula to Malaysia (border at 6.5N - almost next door), then after a visit to Georgetown on Penang, cross to Sumatra at Medan. From there the future is muddier, but we will probably go half the length of Sumatra before crossing for a short visit to Singapore (1.28N). This is needed to extend our Indonesian visa, which otherwise has a maximum of 60 days. From Singapore we return to Sumatra and continue on to Java; there our two main goals are Jakata (6.2S) and Yogyakata (7.8S), the later being the site of the great Borobudur Buddhist Temple. We'll continue more or less easterly from Yogyakata to Bali (Denpassar is 8.7S) and explore as much as our visas allow. From there it is about 1850 km by air to Darwin, 2600 km to Perth, and 4600 km to Sydney. Air fares and the weather will probably determine our entry point.

Tomorrow we hope to cross the border into Burma and then back into Thailand to get another month visa so that we can spend time in both Phuket and Krabi. It seems that the Burmese border is open on an off and on basis. If it is closed it won't be a disaster as we've saved a few days in our current visa to get us in a relaxed manner to Malaysia.