Do it up, do it big, do it right

To me, the number of posts is not necessarily a seal of quality for the poster
I don't know if you ever visited this forum before it closed down temporarily, but in the "good" old days, we had these branches called Women Traveller's and Your Choice. So you don't need to tell any of us "normal" regulars that the number of posts is no guarantee for good quality content.

And you, Lucapal, Mikehuxley and Aribo, where would you go if you had to do a RTW with $25.000 and 6 months? To add some challenge, I would add that you must go to at least 2 different continents on that trip(excluding your own continent of departure). Where would that be and why?
First of all, I would not commit myself in advance to something like "you must go to at least 2 different continents" - I'd think I had the right to decide where to go and for how long entirely by myself, if I were to spend 25K of my own money on a trip.

I would first fly to the area I've always wanted to see the most - which in my case would probably involve training it from the Netherlands through Russia and Mongolia to China, then on to SE Asia overland. Where I would stop and for how long would depend entirely on how much I like the place; I might like, say, Beijing so much (not very likely, but hey - we're speaking hypothetically, right?)
that I'd decide to settle down and do a few months' course in Chinese there.
Or I might fly to South America or Africa and make an overland journey instead; anyway, I assume you got the point.

As for the touristy part of the journey, I would mix a few days sightseeing with a few days lounging - I'm not a beach person but I do need to wind down every now and then with a good book and a cold beer.

Yesterday I was at the airport after a long weekend with friends and I got a chance to read this thread. I read the whole thing and then typed out a long response on my phone. It didn't post or save and I lost the whole thing. I'm not going to try to rewrite it as it got pretty passionate but I will breifly touch a few points.

I may be new here but I'm certainly not new to these kind of forums. I don't know you and you don't know me. If you want me to listen, then speak like an adult. Personal statistics, tenure on a website and post count on a message board hold little value to me. Good advice will always fall on deaf ears if its delivered poorly. Remember, it doesn't matter if you're a jerk with 10 posts or 10,000. You're still an jerk.

Whether you like it or not, new members to a community are more important than the old ones. Because without new people and ideas, you'll just be left with stale content and your community will fizzle out. Don't shun newness. Embrace it.
Anyone and everyone can disagree. That's what makes this exciting. But it's how you disagree that makes this work. Be cool, and people will listen. Be a jerk, and everyone will only see you as a jerk regardless of what you have to say.

Thanks for the input everyone. I hope we all learned some thing here.

For those who say six months is far too short, I don't think so as my own RTW was 6.5 months long. Nice would've been longer but I unfortunately did not have that luxury of time.

The way I did it was two months SE Asia, 3 months Europe, and six weeks in southern Africa (start and end in the USA, so I did actually go all the way around). I felt like 2 months was about right per region because I got a good feel for a region without getting too bored with it- after 2 months in Europe I had to stay on for reasons I won't go into instead of heading to Africa as I'd wanted, and I was pretty itching to go onwards. But put it this way, I don't like everyplace in every region equally (so I was, say, more keen to check out Italy instead of making the 'logical' choice of going to Vietnam after my Thailand/Laos/Cambodia loop), so if you have the funds who cares.

To be fair if I had six months NOW I'd probably devote it to two regions- actually what I'd probably do is start in Alaska and see if I can make it to Antarctica in that time. But doing that RTW the way I did it wasn't something I've regretted, and it didn't feel too rushed (never planned ahead but I fell into a four nights per place on average rhythm).

Oh and if I was determined to spend that much money folks are right in saying you'd be hard-pressed to use it all (unless the stops were Europe followed by Oz/NZ with a bunch of adrenaline activities), so I'd just devote some of the funds to business class on the long haul stretches cause why the hell not. ;-)

'New members are more important to a community than old ones'

Not if they don't contribute anything,they're not.

How much advice have you given Shades?

How many travellers have you helped on here?

All you did was ask a regular,slightly dumb question and then attack people who had a different opinion to you!

I attacked no one and stated more than once that I had no intention of making a negative atmosphere. But that is what I found and for that I will more than likely step away from here.

Carry on

So I've just finished up my 'gap trip' and if i had to do it again this is what i'd do:

1) i'd hope on an international flight within the first week.
my biggest regret was spending too much time in my own backyard. If I had to do it again. leave exploring the states for when you get back. you're gonna have a major case of the travel bug at the end (it doesn't go away after travelling, it gets worse), and doing the smaller trips around the states might help you deal with it all being over come Nov 2014

2) generally the best priced RTW tix will make you fly in and out of the same city in europe - so with that in mind - i'd head to zurich or some other 'centrally located city'. I'd give europe 2 to 2 and half months to go in a loop around. You don't need to have anything really nailed down - which is the beauty of europe. you can hope on and off trains and find really cheap flights.
so this stage doesn't really need planning. you just gotta get yourself there and then jump on every affordable opportunity that comes your way.
This is what I did at the end of my trip when I finally made it to europe and it was my favorite portion.

3) from euope I'd move on to Asia. I'd go to Indonesia for some island hopping (Lombok/ Bali / Flores - which will get you to Komodo and to the Kelimutu craters on the other side of that island). With island hopping in Indonesdia - all the flights are $15 - $20...so you can get around easy.
I'd then go to Malaysia, Thailand, China (hong kong/ shanghai/ beijing).
If you wanna be different - do a quick stop off in Mongolia. There isn't an awful lot there so you don't need to give it much time. Just pay any random to take you to the desert, find a nomad and ask them if you can spend the night in their gir.
And finally on to Japan.

4) I'd skip Australia since it's a bit of a dead end when it comes to a round the world trip. It's not a convenient stop on a RTW trip. and it'll winter there...and not even there real kind of winter where there's snow. The only way it'll be worth going to australia is if you head to NZ (which as an Aussie, is sacreligous to say...but it's the truth).

5) I'd recommend considering pushing back the travel dates if you're a snow fiend. Which would then see you in Japan around the start of their season - and Japan is one of the best kept secrets when it comes to snow sports. They snow fall is without equal.

Thanks for the great OP ShadesPG. Members of our online editorial team have been following it with interest. It was great to see some thoughtful debate before this thread turned into an new vs old-timers argument.

I'd like to remind the regulars of our community guidelines. Specifically: 'Welcome newcomers. We love it when another person catches the travel bug.'

The problem with being such an established forum is that the same types of questions come up over and over which can be tiresome for regulars.

Sorry if this experience on the forum has put you off contributing to Thorn Tree in the future ShadesPG.

I don't agree with libero on that point...I thought the OP was ok.

I also thought that the 'regular's' replies were fine.....answering a question by saying you wouldn't do it like that is a perfectly fair argument.

Many people also explained exactly why they wouldn't do it like that...

I DO agree with libero on the wider point......New members are only valuable if they 'give' something to the forum.This OP has (as yet) given nothing,and seems to have no intention of doing so.

Erm, Im with lucapal here katija, and feel slightly insulted that you feel the need to apologise for us 'old timers'. The OP asked a question and we answered it honestly and tried to give sound advice. Just because certain people took that as an attack and decided to get defensive, that frankly is their problem, and their approach was to be insultingto those of us by dismissing our advice and essentially shouting 'your way isnt the only way!!!'

We are generally very welcoming of newcomers and give advice and share information of our own free will and time on a daily basis.

As lucapal said, we have contributed a lot to this forum and it isnt nice for us to
have someone who has contributed nothing shout the odds in that way. So where is OUR apology!?