In the summer of 2016, the girlfriend and I were sitting on the couch and she turns to look at me and says, "What are you plans for the future?", as any other typical guy would think, I assumed she was talking about marriage, kids, family etc. She then continues to say, "Besdies the obvious kids, marriage, family(KNEW IT!)I mean, is there anything you have always wanted to do but haven't yet?" The first thing to pop into my mind was travel. I responded with "Well I believe 30 is a good age to get married and start a family, but I always want to do a lot of traveling" She replies simple with"You know you are almost 30 right? Seems like you made your goals at 22 and just never adjusted for your age" And that is when we started our planning and saving for our month long trip to southeast Asia
Before I get to carried away, I would like to let everyone know that I will tell you the trip we took, the stuff we like, what we didn't like, where we would have made changes, stayed longer here, skipped there. I will also add in stuff for both people that are reading that are couples, singles, party people, relax and site see people. We did the relax site see route, but we had a lot of option to do the party route. So with all that being said, let us begin :)
After our little conversation, we began to research how much it was going to roughly cost us for one month over there. Our original plan was to travel to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. We both have had friends travel to Thailand, and a few of my friends have done the month or longer journey's to those areas. Around Christmas 2016 with all the information that our friends gave us and a few things on the internet, we had our foundation to begin building and planning our trip around.
With all the sites out there about backpacking around southeast Asia, it was a lot of information to sort through, but luckily it all had roughly one thing in common. How much per day it will cost. The average we saw was 100$US per day. The girlfriend and I agreed as much as the hostel accommodations have been improved in that area for large amount of backpackers that travel around there, we would like to have a room to ourselves, not have to worry about anything being stole(which for everyone who says it doesn't happen, it does, period, no arguing) and be able to have a full night of sleep at the end of the day. Now if we were there to have a more of a party experience, hostel all the way, you can get a room to yourself in most, but you are more staying there for the party, meet people, and they are more set for people on a much tighter budget. We both agreed that we would be able to do 150$US a day(these prices are including everything, from your room, food, travel, shopping etc.)
Now that we had a budget per day, we had a minimum price we needed saved in order to be on our way. Lucky for me the girlfriend is in the finance field, and once the daily budget was set she had the minimum needed already set(god I love her) and how much we needed to put away each month. Next step was planning our route.
(not my image, got off google)
With the countries set, we needed to figure out what cities we wanted to visit, and what we wanted to do at each. Original route :Bangkok, Phuket, Pattaya, Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Luang Prabang, Vang Vieng, Vientiane, Halong bay, Ho Chi Minh, Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and then back to Bangkok. But we immediately realized that this was way too much for one month. I started bring up most popular and attractive locations for each country. The Places that stood out the most were Bangkok, Phuket, Chiang Mai(Thailand), Luang Prabang, Vang Vieng, Vientiane(Laos), Halong Bay, Ho Chi Minh(Vietnam) and Phnom Penh, Siem Reap(Cambodia). So already we cut out a few cities. If you are going for a party, Pattaya is a must go see, huge party city, better than Bangkok on the mainland.
Next was planning what to do at each location and how long to stay at each place. We recorded everything that we found interesting, or caught our attention in our travel binder(a must for planning big or long trips) After getting some points of interest, figuring out where they are located to which city, we now had a rough idea on how long we wanted to stay at each place. At this point we figured all we had left was find plane tickets to get there, and found out how best modes of transportation to get around while over there. Thank you Rome2Rio!! For the ones who don't know about this site, or for the ones that do, it is amazing for finding the best way to get from A to B on a trip. You enter in the cities you want to visit in what order and it will give you the best mode of transportation to get there, price, how long it will take, and it gives you options for other means, say you don't want to fly because its hundreds of dollars, you can set it up so you bus to and from those locations. It was a great help on this trip.
Around April we managed to find our plane tickets to get us to Bangkok, for only 1000$ a person we were able to fly to and from. There are better deals, but that was the best we found with an airline that was highly recommended to us(Qatar). Now with our tickets booked, it was time to start finalizing everything.
This is where we encounter our first crossroad. Around July 2017, we had all our information on the countries, the cities we wanted to visit, how long and what we wanted to do at each location, we just need our transportation around each country. I plugged all the cities into rome2rio and it turns out, we were going to lose almost 5days from traveling, possible 7days depending on where we bused or flew. With that time lose, we would only be at each location max 2 nights. It was going to be way to much traveling, not enough time to really enjoy and take in our vacation. Something had to go......Vietnam drew the short straw.
Main reasons for cutting Vietnam out, yes it was going to be probably one of the cheapest and have some of the most beautiful scenery we would get to see there, but the trip planned out better going Laos to Cambodia then going back up then down again by going to Vietnam. As well it was expensive to fly into Vietnam from Laos. I tried many different routes to try and find the best solution and it almost always came up with Vietnam being the odd country out. We will come see you eventually Vietnam, just not in 2017 :(
So now Vietnam was out, it gave us almost an entire 4days extra. Bring in Kho Phi Phi island!!!! The girlfriend had a friend who went there and strongly suggested it to us. So after some research and some re-route planning, Kho Phi Phi Don was added to our agenda(highly recommended, for both party and relaxing) With Kho Phi Phi now in, the route was finally prepared, and the dates were set(almost in stone, as anyone can tell you, plans change while over there)
Our itinerary looked like this :
Bangkok 3rd to 6th
Phuket 6th to 10th
Kho Phi Phi 10th to 14th
Chiang Mai 14th to 18th
Luang Prabang 18th to 22nd
Vang Vieng only a day time stop
Vientiane 22nnd to 24th
Phnom Penh 24th to 27th
Siem Reap 27th to December 1st
Bangkok 1st to 2nd
By the end of October 2017, we had our itinerary planned(roughly) our tickets bought, our micro pig at the babysitters, and our bags were packed. We were ready to commence our first long voyage together :)
Now a lot of you are like, wtf, there was nothing in here about traveling in asia at all, I just wasted all this time reading for nothing. Well I find that planning for the trip is more important then anything, sure you can head there and wing it, but we preferred to have a more clear idea on what we wanted to get out of the trip.
Next episode will have what all of you are expecting out of a travel article don't worry. So stay tuned, and thanks for reading, until next time, safe travels everyone :)