Friday, November 26, 2010

Next trip: Thailand or Germany?


The moment I quit my job, I started thinking about my next trip. You know the usual data mining, flights, hotels, things to discover, the whole nine. I had already had another trip planned that I was happy about, but who can be satisfied with one trip if you can have several?

The thing is, I really want to go to Thailand. I want to see Bangkok and then, as it was eventually decided, Krabi and Phi Phi Island. Initially, I also wanted to go to Hongkong (or maybe Kuala Lumpur, or Phnom Pehn), but decided against it because I realized one country would probably do for my first official visit to Asia.

I found reasonably priced tickets, thought things through, came up with an approximate itinerary, booked accommodation in Krabi Town and then we found out my mother has some health issues she needs to take care of. Maybe she's going to have a surgery in December. And maybe not. My sister and grandmother are both willing to take care of her... but do I want to find myself 10 flight hours from home and know my mother just had a surgery and worry sick about her without being able to attend to her? Not really. So even though it's not yet clear how things will progress from here, I've decided to stay home simply because family comes first.

The funny thing of course is that those tickets are still available online, I mean it's just 5-6 days before I would be setting off and these cheap tickets are still out there, on emirates.com! Very, very tempting!

Instead, my new Plan is: I have tickets to Milan on Dec 23 and from Berlin on Jan 7, which was how I originally planned to spend the holidays. But now that I quit my job, there's nothing stopping me from stay longer in Europe and finding good use for my one-year multiple entrance visa to the Schengen zone. So I'm in talks with the airline to rebook my flight back from Berlin to Mar 3, 2011 and basically my trip would look like this:

Dec 23-25: Milan, Italy
evening flight to Cologne, Germany
Dec 26-28: Cologne, Germany (with a day trip to Brussels, Belgium)
night train to Munich, Germany
Dec 29-30: Munich, Germany
day train to Karlsruhe, Germany
Dec 30-Jan 3: Karlsruhe, Germany (with a possible day trip to Strasbourg, France)
night train to Berlin
Jan 3-Mar 3: rent an apartment/room in WG in Berlin, Germany (undertaking trips to Stockholm, Copenhagen and ..?)

Right now, I'm very very happy with this itinerary. So maybe Thailand is not going to work out this time, but instead I'll spend some quality time in Europe, attend the Berlinale and enjoy the spirit of Berlin for a while.

Life is good. Travel when you can!

1 comments:

julochka said...

berlin is WAY better than thailand, even in winter, so you're much better off.

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...