On Sat, 29 Oct 2011 17:24:43 +0100, Bob Minchin wrote:

We expect to be away from home for possibly a month with 1 week in San
Francisco/LA at one end of the trip or other.

SF is nice, not so sure about LA.

We plan to book a couple of nights hotel wherever landfall is (Auckland
or Christchurch) into order to recover from the journey and then pick up
a car. From then follow our noses staying in basic motels for about 3
weeks.

That's the way to do it or use public transport (donno what PT is
like in NZ though).Do some homework before hand so you can get an
idea of how long it will take you to get between places and search
out the places you would like to see. Nothing worse than finding out
about a "must see place" 24 hrs before your flight out...

Some one mentioned "round the world" tickets. Be careful of the
restrictions. IIRC you have to keep going in the same direction all
the time, no back tracking, so flying into Bali means you've missed
Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and possibly Beijing... I don't think
you can do overland sections either, you have to fly out from the
airport you flew into. So no landing in Bangkok exploring Thailand,
Malaysia and Singapore overland then flying out of Singapore.

--
Cheers
Dave.