Where Do We Go From Here?

The obvious question…where do we go? We spent many summer evenings drinking some cold sangrias discussing destinations. There are many factors which come into play but let's just say follow your heart and budget. For us, South East Asia was the choice, we haven't been there, the weather is good, and it is relatively inexpensive. South America was another possibility, and we will likely revisit it next year. Our original thought was to spend a month in each country, concentration on beaches and comfortable living but as usual, the lure of hard travelling always seems to prevail. So, we decided on Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia.

The first step was to start monitoring air travel websites for alerts and special offers on flights to Bangkok. We soon received an email that Air China had flights for $850 round trip going through Beijing (with a long layover). We decided that this would probably be the best deal we would see, so we booked. We were right, flights started to climb up, and I just checked, it is now double. The lesson is to book at least 6 months before your departure. Because of the long almost 24 hour flight, we decided to add an extra couple of nights in Bangkok to recover from jet lag and acclimatize to the time difference. It is a luxury to travel for an extended period as it allows for these types of decisions.

Once the flight was booked the trip became real. We now had 3 months to visit the four countries and swing back to Bangkok for our return home.

At first, we thought we would travel in a, more or less, counter-clockwise route. But the more we researched and talked about all the factors, we switched up to a clockwise direction heading straight north from Bangkok by train. We will be travelling from Thailand to Laos, to Vietnam, to Cambodia back to Thailand.

We should mention that one of the significant factors for this change was the Vietnam New Year’s celebration called Têt.

Local travelling becomes difficult, as a good part of the local population is on the move (more of this later). Kind of like American Thanksgiving and the Christmas Holidays combined. This just underlines the importance of research and much discussion, as plans will change as you get more into the planning and we think it's important to keep an open mind and to be flexible. In our case, we are travelling by train, local bus, and slow boats but there are choices. It's really up to you and your comfort level.

~Travel like nobody's watching~