My backpacking route- 6 months on the road!

MY ROUTE

Where to go?

For me deciding where to go was a BIG job, mainly because there are so many places I wanted to go!

Up until the age of 17, I had only actually left the UK once, and that was for my uncles wedding so it didn’t really count (sorry Phil!). From school I went straight to college and worked through any holidays I had, then from college onto full time work with studying alongside (god I sound boring). This meant my opportunity to travel was limited, and hence the list of places I wanted to visit just kept getting bigger!

I also had to think about the time of year I was able to go, and how long I could go for due to work commitments.

So how did I decide?

I wrote down a list of all the countries I wanted to visit on a spreadsheet, then the months of the year I was able to take off work to travel (Yes, I love a spreadsheet I am an accountant remember). I then began the long task of googling the weather and best times to visit of all the countries, creating what I can only describe as a colour chart, i.e. red bad time to visit, green good time to visit, an auditors dream.

This immediately ruled out some on the list, progress I thought.

With my new list that included the countries below I then began to map out which would countries I should visit when.

Australia
New Zealand
Singapore
Malaysia
Cambodia
Thailand
Vietnam
Laos
Indonesia
Hong Kong
Japan
India

Given that I didn’t want to cram to much in and not really get to experience the places I was going to, I knocked off Hong Kong, Japan and India (don’t worry I will get round to them next time!) .

So that was that, I was to spend 6 months travelling around Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and indonesia.

Mapping my route

Now I am not going to lie to you, my geography skills are somewhat lacking, but with a quick google image search I pulled up a map of the world and homed in on the countries I had selected. Armed with my colour chart I experimented with various routes, looking at which countries were close to each other.

To me it was obvious that I would group together:

• Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia
• Australia and New Zealand
• Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia

The next questions was just just what order to do those groups in?

This thankfully was essentially decided for me.

Dominque a friend I was meeting for 3 weeks mid-September, wanted to do Indonesia. Emily, a school friend, would have just finished Indonesia at the start of my travel time and wanted to do Malaysia.

So that was that, I would start in Malaysia with Emily, stop off in Singapore to see another school friend (Aime), move onto Indonesia (and some other bits of Malaysia) with Dom, cross over to Thailand, complete the loop of Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, before flying to Australia and then onto New Zealand.

See my planner below for a rough idea of where i will be when!