A minor spanner in the works

Here I was thinking that at least some of the planning for this trip might be straight-forward! I’ve just had the first (hopefully not of too many) spanner in the planning-works.

On a whim, I sent an email to the travel company I’d previously been in touch with regarding the ship I was planning to take from Singapore to Fremantle. This is Hamish at Freighter Travel based in Napier, NZ. I got onto them through Friedel and Andrew at Travelling Two took a ship from Aussie to NZ on their big trip.

I emailed Hamish just to check to see if the ship that had recently been going on the route between Singapore and Fremantle still was. Unfortunately it isn’t, and there are currently no other ships going from SE Asia to Australia! It’s especially annoying as it was going recently, so I got my hopes up around it.. Also annoyingly, I’d used it for the design on the header for my website, so I might have to change that!

So now I’m looking into other options.
– The easiest one is obviously to fly from Singapore to Perth, which would be a lot cheaper, and means I wouldn’t have to change my route at all. The downside is that it would ruin one of the goals of the trip- to travel all the way from Europe back to NZ without using a plane…
– Another option would be to take a freighter from Singapore to NZ via some Pacific islands. This would be enjoyable in some ways, but I would miss riding through Australia, which I’ve been looking forward to for a while.
– I could also keep riding through Indonesia to Jakarta or Bali and fly from there to Perth or Darwin. This could be a good option as I’ve heard good things about Indonesia, but again, would break the no-flying thing..
– Finally, I could try and find a sailing ship to crew on that’s going between SE Asia and Darwin. After some brief googling it may be possible, but it’s the option that allows the least planning, as usually it’s about wandering around marina’s a couple of weeks before the yacht is leaving looking for options. Annoyingly, there are also two sailing rally’s going in the opposite direction at that time of year- from Fremantle to Bali, and from Darwin to Dili..

So yes, something for me to mull over while cycling perhaps. I’m not getting too concerned, as it’s still ages away, and there’s always the option to fly. On the positive side, it sounds like there are still ships taking passengers between Australia and NZ, so it might just be that leg that requires a plane..