Asia...

Well in case you didn't know, we are heading to Asia in about a month. We are going to be gone for about 5 months (I know only five!) and in that time will see a decent amount of stuff over there. I've already talked about why we are doing it but we never really discussed what we are doing...

Read the rest...
To put it bluntly we are traveling. We are taking time, loading up backpacks and working our way through a part of the world we know little about. We will be traveling overland as much as possible (yeah for trains, buses, and tuk-tuks!) and working our way west from Hong Kong (give or take... its not quite as simple as that) to our final destination in Bangalore India.

In general we will spend most of this time in transit as well because despite the five month length of this trip we are covering alot of ground and in order to see what we'd like to we have to keep moving. The advantage of this is that we will get to see alot of places and experience alot of new things, the downside is that we won't be spending much time in each place (a week to two for most). There are different mindsets when it comes to travel, most people either spend their entire time in transit or find a far flung exotic location and stay put for a period of time... needless to say this trip is the former. I also find it rather odd that we will be gone for so long and yet our excursion is really a series of week/two week trips. We've talked about cutting out some of our destinations in order to spend more time in the places we do have but we always decide that we'd rather see what we can, even if that means that we feel a little rushed at times.

Anyway, here is a basic layout of where we are going, first the list of locations/countries (in chronological order):

Hong Kong
Thailand part I
Cambodia
Vietnam
Laos
Thailand part II
Malaysia
Singapore
Indonesia
Thailand part III
Burma (Myanmar)
Bangladesh
India part I
Nepal
India Part II
Sri Lanka (Maldives)

The basic idea of this trip will be starting (and ending) in Hong Kong. From there we will fly into Bangkok and work our way overland and counter-clockwise through the southeast Asia. So after a brief stay in Bangkok we'll take off for Cambodia and then carry onto into Vietnam. We'll work our way north in Vietnam and then head west into (and through) Laos. This brings us back into Thailand, where we will work our way south to Malaysia. We'll spend some time in Malaysia and take some shorter trips into Singapore and possibly Indonesia. Then we have to head back to Bangkok because we'll have to fly to our next location.

From Bangkok we'll head to Burma(or Myanmar... the name depends upon the regime and I don't really like present one). Burma is a pain in rear country in several regards... most of which involve their oppressive government. But we have to fly into Burma as they don't allow border crossings via land. So we will have to fly into and out of Burma on our way to Bangladesh. (Side note, almost everyone we know keeps asking why we are going there. Our pastor (who is Indian) asked "Why are you going to Bangladesh?" When we were at the travel clinic our nurse muttered under her breath "Bangladesh... no one goes to Bangladesh, why would they go to Bangladesh...)

From Bangladesh we will work our way north and into India. We'll only be there a bit before we head off to Nepal. We'll head out of Nepal going west and back into India. Once there we'll hit parts of northern India and then basically hug the western coast as we work our way south. We'll end up in Bangalore, where we have some good friends. This last place we'll go is to the Maldives to scuba dive and sit on a beach for a while. Then back home for two weeks before heading off to England for a year... wow.

P.S. All makes me think "Man I'm going to look forward to having a house someday...."

P.P.S. A map of this will be made sometime... just not now