Next destination: Asia... somewhere

When I resigned from work I already had sort of a plan. Well, not really a plan. I knew 2 things: where I wanted to go and for how long I wanted to "be away".

Asia was my choice (as you may have guessed from this post title).
Why?
Because I had never been to Asia. Because it was supposed to be cheap. Because it was supposed to be relatively safe especially regarding female solo travels. Because you could visit a good number of countries without needing a plane.
These were probably the main reasons why I chose Asia in the first place. And this information I gathered from travel books I read in the past, from travel blogs, from magazines/newspapers. Basically any kind of source that could provide me information about travel as an activity per se.

Then I bought a book, a travel guide, about Southeast Asia and found out a number of other reasons to visit this part of the globe: the culture, the people, the wildlife, the beaches, the mountains, the food... There were just so many new things I could experience in "one" place. So the destination was chosen.

Next question, for how long would I travel? This was easy to answer. I wanted to be back home for Christmas and I could only leave my job by May, so that would leave me around 6/7 months to travel which was exactly what I did (6 months and 21 days to be precise).

Now I was left with a few months (3/4 months) to prepare and plan my backpacking trip.
I would say I begun to travel when I started planning my trip: during these months the excitement was huge and the feeling of happiness and freedom was constant.

And I thought the day to finally get on my plane to Asia would never come...

To travel you only need to exist 
(by Fernando Pessoa)

The book after so many travels...