Sunday, January 28, 2007

It's safe, only the landmines...

My friend Maureen and I are planning a pretty awesome trip to Southeast Asia for spring break. We've got 3 weeks to travel, and we're going to use every bit of it.

When we first started planning, we both had places we wanted to go. I wanted to go to Thailand and she wanted to go to Vietnam, so those countries were on the list of places to go for sure.

After that, we weren't sure where we wanted to go, because there were so many places that sounded good. However, we went to lonelyplanet.com and soon found out many places we wanted to explore were in political unrest and maybe not the safest places for 2 white girls to go alone. We have finalized our list now, but when we were still debating, one bullet point on our list said this:
*Cambodia--it's safe, only the landmines.

Are we going to Cambodia? Well, I'm up for it still, because they say the landmines are just on the unbeaten path so we could try and stay on a very beaten path, right?
Yeah well, Maureen says no...and just in case, I now have to walk in front of her everywhere we go.

Our decided destinations: We'll start out in Singapore, make our way to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) and then fly to Chiang Mai (Thailand) from there. We'll probably take a day trip up to the northern border at Myanmar (Burma) from there. After Thailand, we'll fly to Hanoi (Vietnam) and make our way down to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) before returning to Singapore for our flight home.

Am I a little excited? Yes, I am.

"The greatest though often most elusive benefits of travel are, after all, friendship, romance and a first-hand understanding of the rest of the world. Our times are admittedly troubled, so we could do with a lot more of all of these, which might lead to something called wisdom, an attribute lacking in both government announcements and media reports. So browse the warnings before you go, but go."--Jeffrey Taylor

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