50th Birthday in Summer 2025

[StripyZebras]

DH is 50 in July 2025 and we’re looking for a special holiday. He originally wanted to go to Japan but it doesn’t seem to be a great time weather wise.

We will be travelling DC who are late teens. We’d like somewhere memorable. Weather not hugely important in terms of we don’t mind if it’s not hot, but obviously we don’t want extremes of heat or monsoons!

We did a safari last year which we all loved but wouldn’t want to do another one.

Budget somewhere around £10k. We can stretch a bit further if we need to though, and ideally we don’t want to be away for more than 2 weeks but don’t mind a long flight.

We are looking into a Californian road trip - all other ideas very gratefully received.

That's quite a tight budget for a California road trip for four people for two weeks in July. The US is very expensive atm. We did it in 2021 and the flights alone were £5k. So price it up and it depends what standard of accommodation you are happy with - if you're happy with modest hotels/motels and maybe getting the beaten track you might find you can do it. If you want to do San Francisco, Yosemite, Pacific Coast, LA though you'll find it's very expensive.

Places that are good in summer: Borneo, some parts of Indonesia, north and central Vietnam, some parts of Mexico.

Thanks for your reply. We did price up a California road trip for about 10/12k, but that was just before Covid and I guess everything has gone up since then!

Borneo looks like it could be a great place to go. I’ll do some research.

DH has also thrown Canada in to the mix of ideas.

We interrailed through Europe for my 50th with 2 teens. It was amazing!

California was very hot in recent years.

We did East Coast, Boston, Newport/RI, Cape Cod and New York. Just under £10K for 3 of us but that included Virgin Upper Class flights.

And yes, the US is horrendous expensive, no just tourist bits, we have friends with family in the US and they say everything went up in prices.

We are looking at Island for next year when DD did her A-Levels.

I would avoid North Vietnam in July as it’s one of the wettest months. It’s a good time to visit Hoi an and Hue, although can be very hot.
Borneo is dry in July as are Java and Bali.

Iceland is great in August and has fantastic adventure stuff

Borneo, and wider Indonesia is more about nature and just amazing

Peru, great time to visit in August. LOADS to do.