RONNIE & Michelle
Careering OffAfter over 30 years working, Ronnie & Michelle have decided to take the gap year (or two!) that we missed out on at the usual time. We have had stressful careers in Technology and Finance until now including start-ups and self-employment.
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The kids – Cameron & Daniel – have fled the nest to pursue their own adventures in life, leaving only the cats Tiger and Lexey to tie us down.
Following a health shock and seeing what has happened to many people we know around our age, we decided not to wait until we are in our 60’s and retired before resuming our love of travel and seeing the world. We are in the fortunate position of being able to pause working for a while.
It’s now time to career-off.
THE BLOG
Final group dinner poem
Min-Yon-Mar A poem in the style of Purple Ronnie In Yangon we met our guide called Min Like all Myanmar people with a big grin A land of Temples, some are Stupa And always inside a statue of Buddha Sometime seated also reclining With gold leaf he’s always shining At...
Inle Lake
Our last destination on the tour was Inle Lake. It's the second largest lake in Myanmar and at a height of 2,900 feet. We took a trip on a long boat to various sights on the lake. Inle is a bit like Venice (they need to use this in their marketing!). Houses are built...
Bagan – Pagoda City
We had a long boat journey to Bagan. The Bagan area has literally thousands of Pagodas. A few are Temples, but most are "Stupas", which you can't walk into as there's only room for the obligatory Buddha statue inside. It's popular (and expensive) to take a balloon...
The Flight to Mandalay
We didn’t take the Road to Mandalay. We flew there. Firstly we spent two nights in Yangon. The first day we wandered around town, starting in the market. I find the local markets fascinating for the range of strange foods that we don’t get back home. Yangon has a...
Hong Kong Hogmanay
We spent a night in Auckland before flying on to Hong Kong on 30 December for 2 nights. We arrived late afternoon and tried to go up on the Peak Tram for a night-time view of the lights of the city. There was a massive queue so we went for a few drinks instead to Lan...
Zealandia
The earth moved in bed last night. Unfortunately it was due to an earthquake. It was 3.6 but that's pretty common when you live over a fault. We visited Zealandia for a guided tour. Zealandia is a project to restore an area of nature to it's pre-settler species of...
Kiwi Kristmas
Christmas in the Southern hemisphere is a bit odd. We had to go to the beach on Christmas day. We decided to do Christmas differently and have an "upside down" Christmas. So we did Turkey kebabs on the barbie. In keeping with the Kiwis' lukewarm acceptance of...
Wellington
Wellington is the windiest city in the world. Despite that, most houses are built from wood and corrugated iron. Now I know where the inspiration for "The Three Little Pigs" children's story came from. Fortunately there's no sign of the wolf. I was enthralled by the...
Landed in NZ
We headed off with Daniel on our 29 hour journey to Wellington, New Zealand via Auckland. We have an AirBnB over Christmas big enough for the four of us and Cameron's girlfriend Eithne. We are meeting the two of them when Cameron finishes work. It has great views over...
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