Backpacking Asia: The Sequel

Posted by James Antrobus on Thursday, October 17, 2013

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!).