Anticipation

 We're off again!  On Friday, November 25, the day after Thanksgiving, we have a 6:00 AM flight from Rochester to Newark, and after a short layover, we'll take a non-stop to Singapore on Singapore Airlines, scheduled for 18 1/2 hours.  We leave at 9:45 AM and arrive at 5:15 PM on Saturday the 26th, with a 13 hour time change.  It's hard to imagine that a plane can take off with enough fuel to fly that long.

It's interesting to visit flight tracking web sites and look at the route.  It must be quite dependent on the winds, as sometimes the plane goes due north over the north pole, and from there south over Siberia and China, while other times it goes more easterly, over Europe, the Middle East and India.

We'll spend a couple of days in Singapore recovering from the flight, and then on Tuesday the 29th we'll fly to Bali, Indonesia, where we'll meet our National Geographic/Lindblad tour.  We'll spend a night in Bali and on Wednesday the 30th we'll board the National Geographic Orion (102 passengers) for the next 2 1/2 weeks.  Our itinerary will take us east, to multiple Indonesian islands, including Komodo where we'll visit Komodo National Park to see the Komodo dragons.  From there we'll go further east, to the Molucca archipelago (the Spice Islands), to Raja Ampat, Asmat, and then to Papua New Guinea, ultimately ending our trip in the Solomon Islands.  On December 17 we'll fly to Brisbane, Australia, and on the 18th home (Brisbane-Singapore-Newark-Rochester).  

I hope to have good enough internet access and bandwith to blog almost daily; I look forward to sharing this adventure!