And it finaly begins

When I decided that I was going to take the trip of my life, I told myself that I would wait until I had purchased my ticket before starting my blog. I figured that once I'd have my plane ticket, that only then would this adventure be for real. Maybe I didn't want to jinx myself, or maybe I didn't want to jump the gun... but I really thought that I was going to wait.

Obviously, that's not what happened! The thing is, I have been shopping for my plane ticket for well over a month now. I was given some amazing quotes, and unfortunately, they were all too good to be true. how several travel agencies could disregard entirely the fact that I am going on a 8 month vacation and quote me for much shorter (i.e., useless) contracts is beyond me. Of course, it was always blamed on me... or on china!

And so here I am, still waiting. Still searching... and getting pretty discouraged. I think that I was expecting a lot more out of travel agencies. I figured that they'd have suggestions, expertise, something! But all I got was stare blanks, refusal to help and my emails and requests were not answered. All of this incompetence always ended up being blamed on me, the common theme being that I was asking for something that doesn't exist, that was ridiculous. I was asked: "how did you come up with this itinerary?" and in my head I'd answer: "how can no one have thought of this before?"

Now you must be thinking that that must be one crazy plane ticket that I'm after. But not I all. I want to tour Asia and Australia, mostly by overland transport. Flying out of Vancouver, I will visit Japan (1 month) and Beijing (1 week). From there, I will either embark on a 4 + day train ride to Laos, or fly into Vientiane. I will then spend 2 weeks in Laos, cross overland to Vietnam (1 month), then to Cambodia (1 month), Thailand (1 month) and Malaysia (1 month). I'll spend a couple days in Singapore and maybe catch a ferry to a couple of close-by Indonesian islands. Then, I will fly into Darwin and the entire coast line of Australia for 1 1/2 month, before flying back home to Vancouver. As you can see, I plan to fly in at the top of Asia and go down to Australia, in one pretty straight line, with very few plane tickets. Am I crazy, or does this make perfect sense? I can't be the only one to have done this trip before!

OK, so maybe I'm just frustrated about the whole thing, blowing things up out of proportion. Maybe everyone has a hard time finding a good ticket if they don't want to fit in a pre-determined itinerary. I'm saving my money, buying guide books, and trying to plan the biggest, scariest yet most rewarding travel adventure that I'll probably ever embark on and I can't find a reasonable ticket! I know I'll get there. But I just can't wait until it all finally begins.