It's crazy to think that I could still be in Tennessee right now. Good thing I'm not. Everything happens for a reason, and I'm very grateful to be in the comfort and safety of my own home. AND ... looking forward to a trip to Asia in a month from today!! :)
My family and I have been talking about going back to visit our relatives in Indonesia for years. When we were kids, we used to travel to Indo every three summers and we would stay for a month. But we all grow up, go to school, get jobs, and are out doing our own thing, it's been difficult trying to get everyone's schedule cleared to take such a big trip. Not to mention the cost of buying airfare alone. Round-trip tickets to Jakarta on http://www.orbitz.com/ are at the very least $1,500 per person, and at the highest I've seen at well over $7K. That's just ridiculous. Fortunately for us, we snagged multi-city tickets for a whopping total of $7,500 for the four of us, and this includes travel insurance.
It's no secret that the US dollar stretches long and far in most of Asia. Both Indonesia and Malaysia remain one of the best-value travel destinations there. Thailand can be pretty cheap too depending on where you stay, what you do, what you eat, and how you eat it. Why travel in luxury when you can spend as little as $20-$50 per day? All I need is a clean room at a clean, non-smoking hotel in a safe location. As long as I have a bed, a private bath and access to all the activities outside my door or am within walking distance to public transit to get to all the sights, I couldn't be happier. Sky train vs. taxi? Uh, doesn't the sky train sound more intriguing (not to mention cheaper)! Street food? Yes, please! I think the more you live like a local, the less you will spend on money. And why spend all that cash on a hotel room when you're most likely going to be out all day enjoying the sights, the sounds, and yup, you guessed it, the food and well ... more food! You can bet that once I get back from Indonesia, I will have consumed 95% of these. My mouth is already salivating just looking at the photos. Can't wait!
If you haven't already guessed it, we're going to Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. We'll be gone for 21 days, and tackling three countries in three weeks will be quite a challenge. Lucky for my family, I've already put an itinerary together much like a tour operator would for a tour group. Most of my research, hotel and transportation bookings took place before I left for TN, so the hard part is over. So, where are we going exactly?
We'll fly into Bangkok,
spend two nights there before we ride the train down the peninsula to Butterworth,
Malaysia, where we will hop a ferry to spend a night on the island of
Penang. We then continue on our train journey south to Kuala Lumpur to stay a
night before we fly into Sumatra, Indonesia to visit family and celebrate the
end of the Holy month of Ramadan. From Medan we fly to Yogyakarta, Java to
visit the Buddhist temples of Borobudur before we board another train eastward
(with a day trip to Surabaya) to the very tip of Java where we will take a 30-minute ferry to the western edge
of Bali. We'll stay in Pemuteran while we snorkel the Menjangan Island off the northwestern coast
of Bali before we base ourselves in the artistic and cultural center of Ubud. It's a pretty packed three weeks, but of course I've left room for spontaneity. That IS one of the points of traveling, right?
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| The Grand Palace, Bangkok. |
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