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I was surfing the net yesterday and came across a great price for a 34-day cruise from Seattle to Singapore and turned to my wife and asked if she'd like to go. She said yes and I booked it just like that.
No wondering whether we had enough vacation time to take an extended voyage.
No wondering whether anyone in our respective offices had already asked for that particular time off.
No wondering whether we had too much work at the office or whether this was a particularly busy time at work.
No asking her (former) supervisor if she could take five weeks off from work. (And her former supervisor's supervisor.)
No asking my (former) supervisor if I could take five weeks off from work.
No nothing. Just us deciding to go and making the decision.
Twelve years ago, my wife and I traveled to Asia when Cathay Pacific ran a promotion allowing unlimited air travel for 30-days for the low price of $899/person. Unfortunately, my wife was only able to get three weeks off from work at the time, so we had to eliminate our planned trip to Japan and limit our journey to Hong Kong, Bali, Singapore, and Bangkok.
Last year, we took a 30-day cruise to Hawaii, Tahiti, Bora Bora and other South Pacific islands to celebrate our 30th anniversary, and it took weeks to get all the authorizations. This is the number one reason why we retired as soon as we were financially able to do so while still in our early 50s. Our time is our time to do with as we please. No more asking permission to travel where and when we want. This is also the number one reason why I don't understand why others continue to work when they don't have to. Why would anyone want to have to ask permission to take a vacation? Or even ask permission to take as little as one day off?
I understand the limited time off all too well. You are also very fortunate to be able to afford such a cruise. It sounds wonderful. DH and I are still part of the work force and will continue to work for the next 9 years. We are also going to Asia in September. Our daughter/grandchildren live there. We've been once, about 2 years ago and limited our 12 days to Hong Kong and Macau. This trip we'll do Shenzhen, Bejing and then fly with the family to a small Chinese village in the mountains for a few days. We had to request the time off way ahead of time and cannot take more than 2 weeks at a time.
One thing is for sure - when it comes time for each of us to draw their final breath, no one - I repeat, NO ONE - thinks "gee I wish I had spent more time at the office".
During most of my career we had two approved 'leave' periods each year where my employer allowed people to take leave. Both approved leave periods were 2-weeks long and they were set 6-months apart.
Asking for leave outside of those two periods was automatically denied, and would require extraordinary circumstances to 'justify' why you felt that you needed leave at some other time. Our chain-of-command would require that to approve a leave request outside of the scheduled leave periods you must have already accumulated 2 years worth of unused leave on your account. [we were 'entitled' to 30-days of leave each year. We were allowed to accumulate up to 90-days of leave on our account before those days were 'lost']
Upper management always assumed that everyone would use 4 weeks of leave each year. Upper management decided when they wanted their leave to be, and that became the 'approve leave periods'. They assumed that everyone else would 'lock-step' and go on leave at the same time. The problem was that for lower management they also scheduled mandatory training and schools during these leave periods. So unless you were at the bottom of the ladder, or at the top of the ladder; you were already obligated to be in school during these leave periods. Therefore we were rarely allowed to take leave.
After my first 5 years, I had 60+ days of leave saved up, and it worked out that I had a lot of saved up leave during my entire career. It was almost always a fight to be allowed to take leave, it usually required documentation from outside sources to justify why I wanted leave.
In my former occupation it was almost impossible to take more than a week of annual leave off at a time due to occupational pressures and the times I could take leave were very limited as they were tied to a legislative calendar. I usually had to content myself by taking a few extra days at a time in conjunction with holiday weekends. My wife also had the same constraints.
Now that we're both retired we have the time and freedom we want and even simple things like shopping, appointments or going out for dinner are easier and less stressful because we don't have to wait for weekends when everyone else is off.
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.....I quit my job 
.......I am happy 
