A lot can happen in six months. When I left Australia at the end of April, I had a plan, so to speak. A list of countries I’d like to visit, a few flights booked, but nothing concrete. My thinking was that I’d let the people, experiences and events along the way influence the next step I’d take, and how they did. With Jeff by my side in Vietnam, we planned our journey as each day came. When Matt and Alysha turned up in Vietnam, the plan altered again. When I met the lovely Cindy in Borneo, that’s when I found myself really going with the flow of the world (or chasing a pretty girl, you decide!). What resulted was a crazy back-and-forth path through south east Asia, criss-crossed with buses and trains, passing countries by plane that i would visit overland months later. I chose the next destination based on the recommendations of others, trading ideas with Cindy of what sucks and what rocks, last minute embassy visits, and the feel of a place when I got there. Pretty soon Cindy and I had settled into the organic flow of our trip, forgetting that we were on a holiday, forgetting why we were travelling, just feeling in the journey.
By the end of Asia, I began to find the temporary lifestyle of moving from hotel to hotel very wearisome, compounded by carrying an enormous backpack to be unpacked and repacked, daily sometimes. During a mini-tour of Belgium, Holland and Germany with Jeff I realised that the backpacker scene wasn’t really a sustainable one. I decided to stay in one place and use it as a base. It was a great idea!
