It’s almost a year to the day since I flew to Singapore to spend a month backpacking around Southeast Asia. Though fairly nervous about traveling solo for the first time (ignoring a couple of city breaks to Europe) everything worked out great. Even better, I wasn’t mugged or kidnapped even once.
After chatting with other backpackers who were in their 2nd, 6th or even 9th month of traveling, I decided there and then that I should be trying to do the same. A year later I’m working out my notice at work with a one-way flight to Bangkok booked for January.
I’m not planning too much in advance, just a rough itinerary of countries so I can work around visas and border crossings. So far it’s looking like:
- Thailand (1 month)
- Laos (1 month)
- Cambodia (1 month) - Possibly visiting some islands
- Burma (2-3 weeks) - Probably nipping back to Bangkok from Siem Reap to get a visa
- Malaysia (1-2 months) - Also want to get out to Langkawi and Borneo
- Hong Kong (about a week) - Enough time to see a few places and pick up a visa for China
- China (1-2 months)
That’s anywhere between 5.5 and 8 months, but we’ll see how it plays out. It should be a good trip and I’ll be posting more in January after a couple more months of work (and Christmas!).