Introduction and Background

Location: Christchurch, New Zealand

First post! Welcome to my blog, where I will be attempting to record my experiences and adventures as I expore the world. I started this blog because several friends hassled me into doing something like this, so that they could keep in contact with me, and follow my travels through the portals of cyberspace.

A bit of background: I'm a 25 year old male, who graduated a few years ago from Canterbury University with a degree in Electrical and Electronic engineering. I have spent the last couple of years working for a government research institute, doing various embedded systems and software engineering work. However, the world is a much bigger place...

I have always wanted to go travelling, and besides a short school trip in '99 to Nepal, I haven't really been anywhere exciting. I have always wanted to go travelling, and like so many other young kiwis I planned on going overseas after uni. However, it is too easy to get stuck in the day to day rythmns of life, and before I knew it, a few years had passed since graduating, and I was still in New Zealand. Not that my life is boring, far from it. I am very busy, and those who know me personally can attest to this. But one day in the middle of 2007, I realised that your dreams don't come to you, you have to go out and grab them head on; I would go and explore the world!

Europe has always been the destination of choice for me. Even though I am an engineer by trade, I have always loved history, particularly medieval history, and so naturally Europe and all its rich cultural heritage was the prime attraction. I figured I would do the traditional 'young kiwi' thing and go an OE, move to London, get a job and then explore Europe at leisure...

Travel plans, it seems, have a mind of their own. When I first started thinking about all this, one of the first things I did was check out flights to London. Obviously, due to the shoddy engineering quality of those inferior 'mechanical engineers', aeroplanes cannot fly directly from NZ to the UK, and so I needed to decide on a place for my stop over. Enter wikitravel (like wikipedia, but for travel stuff). Bangkok looked pretty cool, so did Singapore. I did more reading and travel research about the South East Asia area. This is an area of the world which I never really had much interest in before, but the more I read about it, the more interested I got.

A two day stay in Bangkok turned into a one week stay, which turned into a three week explore. The whole area was so cheap! For a few hundred NZ dollars, I could travel around for weeks! Suddenly, Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were options. Then I got a whiff of the Trans-Siberian Railway, and I was sold. With the help of the fabulous Man in Seat 61, an ambitious plan started to formulate in my mind. A plan that would bring me adventure and excitement. A plan that would require courage, but reward it endlessly. A plan to change my life.

The plan, quite simply, is to fly one way from NZ to Singapore with a small backpack, a change of clothes, a camera and a very rough idea of a route. This route will take me through several different countries, cultures and places; Singapore through Malaysia, through Thailand and up into Laos, all through Laos by river boat and into Cambodia, down into the south of Vietnam, then all the way up through Vietnam into China. Karen will fly directly into Hong Kong and we will meet each other there. The two of us will travel together through China (probably hitting Beijing at the time of the Olympics), into Mongolia, and then on the Tran-siberian railway across Russia. By the time we get to Moscow and St Pietersburg, we will probably have run out of money, and so we will go directly to the UK, and try and work. So an ambitious plan! I have no set timetable or itinery, but I figure the whole thing will take several months.

I have spent the last seven months saving every last dollar, and making preparations to leave my entire life behind. I handed in my notice at work a few weeks ago, and am counting down the time I have left. Karen and I have been very busy sorting out all our possesions, we are going to get a few precious things sent over to the UK, but everything else must go! Its amazing how much 'stuff' you can collect in even a few short years, particularly if your hobbies involving making stuff, and I am a bit sad at seeing some of it go. However, it is also very liberating to be freeing yourself of all your possessions. As Tyler Durden said "The things you own end up owning you". And to tell the truth, I'm quite looking forwarding to living for a few months with only a scant collection of possessions in a backpack.

16 days, 0 hours, 36 mins left until I finish work.
32 days, 8 hours, 30 mins left in New Zealand.