Vacation to Asia/South Pacific

saint2e

Hello gang,

First time starting a thread here in H/A I believe, but I thought I'd do so now as I'm really confused with the amount of options I have for my upcoming planned vacation. Some background: I'm a Canadian citizen living in the UK, and I'm moving back to Canada at the end of this year. I'd like to have a "Last Hurrah" trip to Asia/South Pacific that will last roughly a month. Ideally I'd like to leave from either London, UK, or Toronto, Canada, and wind up in Toronto.

I'd like to ideally see:
Australia - Sydney, Cairns, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Alice Springs
New Zealand - Auckland, Christchurch, Queenstown, Milford Sound
Tokyo, Japan (Optional, but would really like to visit)
Hong Kong (Optional)

Now, I've never been to any of these places, and I really don't want to take the "arrange everything yourself" approach that I've been doing here in Europe. I'd like a package deal (flights/hotels/tours/excursions/some meals included). I've found a couple of good sites for this, but I'm just wondering if anyone else knows/has used other sites out there.

Sites I've checked out:
www.coloursofoz.co.uk (So far I'm really leaning towards the Oz/NZ tour they have listed)
www.trailfinders.co.uk
http://www.statravel.co.uk

The latter two are getting into more customization needed, and since some tours have very specific dates, combining them into one trip becomes difficult.

Just wondering if anyone has done a trip like this before, and what advice you all can offer. Perhaps even pass along some web sites for me to check out.

I appreciate any input you may have.

Djinn

Theres no way in hell you can see all of those places inside one month and do them justice. I would select maybe four or five, give youself several days in each. For example: several days in tokyo, several days in sydney, a week around alice springs, and a week around milford sound.

saint2e

Djinn wrote: »

Theres no way in hell you can see all of those places inside one month and do them justice. I would select maybe four or five, give youself several days in each. For example: several days in tokyo, several days in sydney, a week around alice springs, and a week around milford sound.

It's true, a month is pushing it, which is why I don't think I'll get to Alice Springs, or Perth, but stick to the East Coast of Oz, and spend about a week in NZ. I plan on spending 3 days in each: Tokyo, Hong Kong, Sydney, Queenstown, Cairns and Brisbane.

But yeah, I realize I'm not going to do them justice.

Carnivore

You could spend the whole month in New zealand, and I highly reccomend it.

What you need to do is halve the trip, double the time. So instead of visiting like a dozen places, pick 6 and spend twice as much time in each. Or maybe pick 4 and spend a solid week there.

Honestly, I know its tempting to try and pack everything in seeing as you are over there, but maybe doing an Australia/New Zealand holiday is enough. Then, another time, do the Asia route with Tokyo/Hong Kong for like a week each.

Though really, the big cities are quite inviting for a whistlestop tour of maybe just sydney/tokyo/hongkong/auckland etc. Make it a purely urban holiday which could work.

Solvent

Wow. Doing all those Australian locations, the travel time alone will fuck you. This place is pretty big. Nice locations with incredibly mind-numbing expanses of nothingness in between them.

East coast of Aus and some of New Zealand in a month would be do-able, yes, clearly could be better served by having more time, but you could get to a lot of places in a month if not truly able to see all of them properly.