In December, Col and I were forced to cancel our trip home for Christmas.  Partly cause I’d just had major surgery and was told to take things easy, and partly cause, well, major surgery is expensive and had we made the trip home, we’d probably have put ourselves into more financial straights than it was worth.

I don’t mean the cost of flights, I mean the fact that Col is paid in dollars and going to the UK, means the exchange rate doesn’t work in our favour.  The cost of gas alone is something like $8 a gallon (probably more now!), not only that, but we’d have had to hire a car and we’d have had to travel the length and breadth of the country, like headless chickens, like we did year before – only a few weeks after having surgery? A surgery, which I might add, took it out of not only me, but Col as well? No thank you!

We decided, for a change, to do what was best for us, put ourselves first.  It felt weird at first, but we settled on having a small, quiet Christmas here in Texas and not go to the physical and emotional stress or expense of dragging ourselves 5,000 miles from home for Christmas.  As it turned out, we really enjoyed our first ‘us’ Christmas, and, although we were a little afraid we’d regret our decision, we didn’t (though I really could have done with some snow!)

The airline company was very understanding of the fact that I’d fallen sick and had needed immediate surgery, they informed us that we could just cancel our flights and we’d have a credit with the airline for the amount we’d paid for the flights (they didn’t tell us that it’d be $250 pp change fee but how-and-ever, we could have lost it all!)

Anyways, once the new year hit, we gave some thought to our honeymoon.  Our original plan was a West Coast hockey road-trip, flying to Edmonton and driving along to the west coast and right down to Vegas.  We decided that this trip was able to be done in a series of shorter trips (I.E like our January trip to Seattle) and that we wanted to do something, BIGGER.  Something further afield.

Since we’re hoping to start a family (sooner rather than later), we figured we needed to go somewhere, or do something that was easier to do without babies, than with, and so, we got to thinking…

In our Q&A section of our wedding programme, one of our friends asked us

‘What are the top 3 things on our mutual bucket list?’

Our number 1 answer was to visit a middle/far Eastern country to go and see a Formula One Grand Prix – so, that in mind, our plans changed for the second time.

We moved from our West Coast hockey drive, to an Easterly GP trip – polar opposite sides of the globe, yet still in keeping with the sports theme – I know, not quite every woman’s dream vacation but I’ve never been one for sunning myself on a beach for a week!

We looked at the F1 calendar and settled on Japan in October of this year – with, perhaps, a stop over to Korea, as their Grand Prix was only a week after that of Japan’s.  Col had done most of his research, he’d gotten Japan and Korea tourist books for his birthday from a friend and we were almost good to book.  Only a day or two before the earthquake, hit we had contemplated buying track tickets, but we got distracted and didn’t.

Not to downplay the awful disaster that occurred or make a country’s devastation all about me or anything, but once the earthquake struck (and the nuclear uncertainty which followed), we had to re-evaluate our decision to visit Japan.  We decided that there was a chance that the GP wouldn’t go ahead in October and the chance of waiting to find out and then ending up not seeing any GP this year at all was too great a risk – so it was back to the drawing boards, again!

Our options were limited, we didn’t want to do a European GP (as we could do that when we are moved home), we couldn’t do the Australian GP (as it’s this weekend), our options were Malaysia, Singapore or Abu Dhabi – or, abandon the far East idea altogether and just go with somewhere like Brazil.

Col did a lot of homework (as he tends to do!), Malaysia seemed like the best alternative, although it’s in a matter of weeks, flights are relatively inexpensive (the credit we have with Continental definitely made it a heck of a lot easier to commit to!), the track tickets for the Sepang circuit Grand Prix are a LOT cheaper than those of Japan (and, as it happens the Singapore, Abu Dhabi and Brazillian GP’s are 3 of the most expensive on the F1 calendar!).

The tickets for the Japanese GP, would have cost us around $600-$1000 PER PERSON (EEK!), the tickets for the Malaysian GP cost $270 TOTAL – and that’s for similar seated tickets, it’s not a huge down-grade or anything.

Accommodation in Kuala Lumpur (KL) is also a lot cheaper than it would be in any of the other GP cities.  The hotel we’ve booked, the Sheraton Imperial, is a 5 star hotel, coming in at $100 a night (we barely got 3-3.5 star for that price in Seattle and in Singapore it’s triple that for a 5 star hotel!).  I’m SO excited, it’s is ranked 6th out of the 148 hotels in KL, with a score of 4.5/5 from 562 reviews on Trip Advisor.  It’s all starting to come together nicely! WHOOT!

Tourist wise, KL is a shoppers paradise, with a huge variety of cheap-as-chips touristy tat for me to indulge in and they have a lot there to see and do.

The Grand Prix weekend itself, takes up 3 days of our 7 day trip (it’s technically 10 days but 3 days will be spent travelling there and back so that cuts the trip to 7!).

Col looked at the schedule last night and we get some local Grand Prix racing, a performance by what I understand to be the Asian version of Justin Bieber and a few short demonstrations by the air force – it looks all kinds of cool and has definitely gotten Col as excited as a small child on Christmas eve waiting for Santa to come down the chimney!

We have tickets for section F at the top right hand side of the track map above, apparently you get great views of a number of parts of the track – I can’t believe I’m going to my first ever, live, Grand Prix!

In case you can’t tell, I’m excited! lol!

In fact, I’m thrilled! Cause when Japan got hit with the earthquake, I (selfishly, I know) thought I’d not be getting any honeymoon at this rate – and now,

we’re off to Malaysia!

And soon…

13 sleeps until we take off!!

Col has come up with a girls name in case we happen to conceive in KL (quite Beckham of us eh?), his name is ‘Kayelle’ and he’s trying to think of a boys name (his first try was ‘Kale’).  The lesson here is – don’t let Col go to the registry office on his own when we eventually have our kidlets!

Only 13 sleeps! EEEEEK!!