Flashback: 2002 Australia & Hawaii trip report

In 2002, I got a bigger than normal income tax refund for some reason, so I decided to take a bigger than normal vacation with the money, and I planned a trip to Australia. I loved the accent and it was the farthest place I could go in the world away from my home. In 2002, the internet (as the public used it) and in particular the web was only about 5 years old, so booking international travel by the consumer was still relatively new. I ended up emailing people and companies to send me paper brochures to look through.

The only problem was that a friend decided to get married in early October, which meant that I had to either put that at the beginning or ending of my trip in order to minimize air travel. My liveaboard dive boat on the Great Barrier Reef turned out to be the deciding factor, in that it only worked out for me to put the LA wedding at the end of my trip on the way home. With my frequent flier miles on Continental only getting me as far as Honolulu (from Houston), the best date turned out to be leaving in mid-September, which was late Spring down there - and shoulder season kept the prices there low, too. The exchange rate at the time was only 55 cents USD to the Aussie dollar, which meant great savings.

It was pointed out to me that all my older (2002-2009) photos are hosted on Webshots, which is where I put them before my trip to China in 2009 forced me to buy a Flickr pro account (Webshots is blocked there, Flickr isn't). So while waiting for the plane in the Shanghai airport to take me to Beijing, I bought an account and put up a bunch of pictures.

So, my 3-week journey from Houston to Australia by way of Honolulu. This was originally hosted on Geocities but when they went away so did my trip report, but fortunately I had saved a copy. Had to reformat it a bit for a series of blog posts.