Just 20 days...

It is now just 20 days before we leave on our trip. This year, though, is so wierd... first with Lisa being away in Cambodia doing volunteer work, with me being now in semi retirement, with Sebbie now pretty well permanently living in Maastrichtr where he is attending University and Jose renovating the house from top to bottom in preparation for a new project after the holidays, it just does not feel the same as other years as we run down to the beginning of the holiday. And to top it off, I have just been asked to go to Beijing for a consultancy job for 4 days next week. I couldn't have written this script if I had wanted to.
Well, anyway we got to work with what we have.
We will be out of here on June this but don't ask me how!

50 days to go...

Itinerary is finalised now. Have been busy this week getting all the flights organised. With only 50  days to go before we leave, got to admit this is a strange trip this year, what with the Icelandic ash cloud possibly going to return before we leave then with Bangkok in turmoil.
For the moment, we are booked to fly in to BKK and stay overnight in downtown. but might eventually decide to stay out at the airport if things deteriorate.
For the rest got all the flights booked for Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos (I already had Burma) and am now getting places to stay lined up where it is necessary.

Finalising an itinerary

Been busy jiggling around dates and places on my trip spreadsheet....every time we do a trip like this, I make a spreadsheet fill in the dates of the trip then block which dates I think we should be where. After discussing with the family, I then refine the schedule and begin making it real by deciding on which flights, trains or buses we need to book.
Might seem fairly straight forward but it can and usually does, turn into a logistical nightmare with cheap flights not being available and only expensive ones available in the time slot, or buses only running once a day then having to stay an extra day and a night in a place where we don't want to be... those sort of things.
But that's all part of the adventure.
With just 72 days before we leave, I hope to finalise the itinerary this weekend and book the necessary transport.

Preparations

Because of the way we travel... mainly without organised bookings of transport and accommodation, I usually spend a lot of time, myself, to prepare,  figuring out where and how we can take trains, or buses, or boats or planes in the countries we want to visit as well as investigating places to stay en route.

As far as getting around South East Asia, travel  has been revolutionized by:

These guys have allowed millions of people to travel across the region for  a reasonable price making what we do feasible. Without them and the other discount airlines, the trip we are about to make would either be prohibitively expensive for the four of us or would consume so much time as to be impractical

Making progress

Have spent sometime trying to get the structure of this blog right. Beginning to understand how things work but still have a few issues to work out.
Received today from Amazon my Lonely Planet book for Burma. don't usually use these kind of books but going to Myanmar this year, thought it might make sense.

Let's get going...

This is about a trip we are planning to make this summer which will see us travel first to Bangkok then on to Burma back to Thailand and over to Laos and then down to Cambodia