Where are we going?

This story was posted under the categories: Big Asia Trip

The question i get asked most these days is “Have you decided yet where you’ll be going”? Of course, people are referring to our 6 month trip across Asia. It’s really surprising how some people think that we have planned everything day by day and others think that we’re leaving without any plan whatsoever. The truth of course, lies in the middle. Here are the plans so far…

We’ll be starting out in China, Beijing to be precise. We’ll probably hang around for a month, going from Beijing over Xi’an to the south of the country. That’s where, we’ll be facing our first challenge, as we’d like to fly into Indonesia from there (if we go any later, we’ll be in the middle of the rainy season), but we’re not so sure that there are affordable flights between the south of China and Indonesia.

Anyway, supposing that we’ll make it to Indonesia, we’d like to visit most of the archipel, starting from Jakarta – over Bali and Komodo - up to Flores. This will probably take a whole month and depending on our lust for more beaches and jungle, we’ll either head out into Papua New Guinea, Borneo and the Cooks Islands, or we’ll backtrack North to Vietnam (which is more likely).

We’ll then embark on a classic visit of Indochine: Vietnam, Laos & Cambodja. If the situation doesn’t escalate, we’ll visit Burma and be back just in time to catch our plane from Bangkok, Thailand back to Belgium.

We have no idea whether this planning is even realistic. Are we trying to fit too much into a 6 month trip? Or too little? Are we underestimating the distances and should we plan more downtime to relax. I guess we’ll see once we’re out there!