|  My girlfriend and I gave up our jobs and sold our house to travel around the world. We started off our travels by flying to Johannesburg, South Africa where we took a 1 month tour on Acacia Africa tours. It was basically a overland vehicle that carried about 25 people where we camped, cooked and travelled on, for the whole month. It's definitely the best way to see Africa and a great way to meet other travellers. We set off from Joburg and went through, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and ended our journey in Cape Town. In that month we saw some amazing sights including animals, such as lions, zebra, giraffe, hippo's but to name only a few. Saw how poverty affected communities and landscape that would blow you away. Africa is by far our favourite place to visit out of all the countries we went to.
After our tour, we flew over to Singapore for another culture shock. From the extremes of African deserts to a busy metropolis, that was the cleanest city I've ever seen. Singapore is tailored to the shopper. Shopping heaven from electronics to cheap clothes, with multi storey shopping centres on every corner.
Here we started our overland tour to Bangkok. On our journey up to Bangkok we called at the island, Ko Pan Yan, famous for the full moon party. Unfortunately it was only a half moon but we still attended the party.
Thailand is great for travellers on a budget. We were basically living on 1 pound a
day and paying around 2 pound for accommodation. When we arrived at Bangkok we stopped in a 5 star hotel. It was so funny walking into the hotel with a backpack and getting strange looks from business men. It is the only time we've ever been able to afford room service with breakfast in bed. Thailand came last on our places to visit. Not because we didn't like the place just because the other countries we visited blew us away more.
Moving on, our next flight landed us in Sydney, Australia where we hired the most funniest looking campervan seen to man. Painted muscle men down the side of the van, we did feel embarrassed by it and wished we had the van with star wars figures painted on. Anyway Australia was fantastic. we spent a month travelling up to Cairns where we saw amazing scenery, lots of dead kangaroos along the side of the road and flies everywhere.
I also learnt to dive in Australia all the way up to advanced level. It was the best experience I could have chosen, as i got to see another world under water.
We decided to drive from Cairns over to Ayers Rock. Here's a bit of advice don't do it! After spending 4 days driving in straight line, at temperatures around 40 degrees, being attacked by thousands of flies, it wasn't the best experience. We found out when we arrived we could have flown over, which is by far the better option. Australia would become our 3rd favourite place to visit.
After learning to surf and having a barbecue on the side of the beach, it was time to move on to our next country. We caught the plane over to Auckland where we would make our way through the North and South islands of New Zealand. This place blew us away with it's rolling green meadows and snow covered mountains. It's the only place I've seen mountains with snow leading down to a hot beach. The scenery is surreal, you can see why they filmed The Lord of Rings there.
We actually visited the location where they filmed Hobbiton and saw the Hobbit holes left behind by the film crew and danced around the party tree. New Zealand is where we did so many things it's hard to list them all but they included, sky diving, swimming with dolphins, watched an avalanche! New Zealand became our 2nd favourite place to visit.
We ended our travels by flying over to Los Angeles where we took numerous internal flights, visiting, Las Vegas, Chicago, Miami, New Orleans, Washington and finally
New York. America, what can I say, tips for everyone. everything is bigger and better and the shopping is great! America was our 4th favourite place to visit.
All in all the whole experience will stay with us forever and has given us ideas on our next expedition.
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