I have arrived in Tokyo!

Arrived in Tokyo a few days ago and found time to update the blog while my washing dries (lol)
I decided to stay in a private room for the first night to let myself adjust to a new place. The room was kinda small but that was expected for the price and it had its own shower and bath which was great as it allowed me to refresh after 17 hours of travelling. The Japanese are extremely helpful and kind, as they are always willing to help with any problems I have even though there is a massive language barrier. I'm trying yo learn a new phrase every day to help with this.

I'm now into day 3 of staying in a youth hostel and its pretty hard to sleep because its soooo warm. We left the window open one night and I ended up with the cold which I've almost recovered from. I also found out that they wear face masks here to stop them from spreading their own germs and not because of pollution or in case they catch anything. Heading out to the Studio Ghibli museum after my washing dries which is an hour on the subway so hopefully the journey won't be too draining!

One month to go!

Well one month to go until I leave work then two weeks until my flight. I thought I would give a small update on where I am with planning:

• Handed in my notice at work.
• Booked my outbound flight to Tokyo.
• Got Hep A, Typhoid, Polio, Diptheria and Tetanus vaccines.
• Booked a few hostels for the first week of Tokyo.
• Practice runs of what I will take in my backpack.

As D-day draws closer I will start to update more often!

Route Planning

Started to plan out my route. Started with Japan and looked up the places I want to go to and what I wanted to do there. Ill fly to Tokyo and travel through to Kyoto/Osaka then Hiroshima then Fukuoka. I found out I can get to Seoul by catching the ferry from Fukuoka to Busan and bus/trains to Seoul for about the same price as a ferry to Beijing so thats definitely on the cards.

About this blog

Ok. So Ive added pages along the top for each country I plan to visit and I can add more if needed. I think Im going to use them for somewhere to document what I want to do there or to keep posts separate and relevant to the country for easier navigation in the future. I guess Im just getting the blog ready so I can post with ease when Im travelling.

Changed a few (big) things in my original travel plan.

Lets wind it back to 2012 when I first decided I wanted to travel. I was inspired by stories I heard from a friend at work about his travel tales and it all sounded amazing so I began saving. The idea was to travel around Thailand for 3 months and that was it. I started to add places I also wanted to go to like Vietnam, Cambodia - basically the whole of SE Asia - and changed it to 6 months. Then I added the possibility of catching the Trans Mongolian Railway train from Moscow to Beijing. Then I thought "why not just travel to Moscow through Europe seeing all the countries in between" and then I added from Amsterdam to Moscow inter railing. THEN I thought about the fact that I travelled all the way to Thailand over land, WHY not just island hop through Indonesia to Australia? And that was how I got my travel plans.

The plan was to travel from here (Airdrie, UK) to Australia over land/sea without the use of planes and volunteer in places along the way. Its proven to be harder than I thought to find places along my original route through northern Europe to volunteer and would cost a lot more than I have saved to stay in Europe. So Im looking at cutting that part out and also the train from Moscow to Beijing. So my new plan is to travel from Beijing to Australia still over land/sea. So It would be China > Japan > China again > Vietnam > Cambodia > Thailand > (maybe) Myanmar > Thailand again > Malaysia > Indonesia > Australia over 6-7 months.

The books Ive been reading the past year.