Return to Southeast Asia

Much of the last couple weeks has been spent preparing for our return to Southeast Asia. Of course, this has meant too much time spent on runaway thoughts of tropical adventures, and not enough time on more practical matters like school work and keeping my room clean.

After a couple marathon sessions at the very resourceful Central Hong Kong library, pouring over maps, travel guides, and road atlases, we finally came up with a plan for the trip. I think we bit off more than we could chew. 18 days to cover a region the size of two Texases. But we were gonna take an early bus to the border between eastern Thailand and southern Lao. Then it was 250km (150m) straight across Lao, until reaching Vietnam. Then perhaps another 100 km to the coast of central Vietnam. Then we’d head on back by bus, and meet my aunt in Pattaya, Thailand, about 150km southeast of Bangkok. After they left it would be off to Siem Reap, Cambodia, to spend a day or so at Angkor Wat, before once again returning to Bangkok, this time to fly back to Hong Kong.

Some comprises had to be made in the planning, and it took us a while to figure out a way to ride bikes in all three countries — of course we’re bringing our bikes with us — but over the last week I think our plan had really grown on us. Then last night, instead of just getting rest before class, I was up reading about bike touring, when I decided to check temperatures for some of the larger cities we’d be near. Turns out where we’d begin riding in Lao has daytime highs around 35C. Ya, I didn’t really register what that meant. And it’s not like we hadn’t checked weather for this time of year. Just for us silly Americans, with everything being in metres and Celsius, it gets confusing to keep track of accurate units. So it wasn’t until I properly converted to Fahrenheit and saw that this was around 100F+ that I freaked a little.

3 or 4 days of riding inland with 100+ degree weather. I like a challenge, perhaps even more than some. But this just didn’t sound that fun. This morning I told Christy what I had realized. For a while we didnt talk much about it. Around noon, it kind of settled. So even tho we had spent many hours of planning, and invested in visa’s to Lao and Vietnam it was back in front of the computer, and back to the bookstore. And tho there was a bit of dragging our feet at first, it seemed prudent to make a last minute change.

Now the plan is to ride along the southern coast of Cambodia. Because of time, a trip to Vietnam will be rushed, and require more money to get a second entry visa to Cambodia, so Vietnam is currently an unknown. Then hopefully we will loop thru Cambodia, stopping at Angkor Wat before returning to Thailand to meet my aunt. After, it will be probably be off to Lao, mainly just to make use of the visa we’ve already paid for.

Thats a rough guess of our plan for how. Who know’s what’ll actually happen. I’m just excited to be riding my bike.