My trip to Southeast Asia - Prologue

I love this feeling, when the airplane is about to land in a country or city you haven't visited before. It's a mixture of pleasure (because you will have the chance to discover the unknown) and fear (because you must face the unknown).

I have no idea what is going to expect me on my next trip to Southeast Asia. Maybe if I knew it, the whole trip wouldn't make any sense. Why all this? Why giving up everything? After thinking about it, the answer is not: I need to relax, I need recovery. I could have done this in an annual leave staying at home, stop working for two or three weeks, without quitting my job. What I need is the opposite: I need to wake up in the morning without knowing what the day holds ready for me, the positive stress related to getting food (without making you sick), find shelter and maybe most important: find companionship. It makes you feel that you are alive.

Not long ago I had a discussion of whether it is a good sign that time has passed by fast, the typical question raised at the end of the year. A friend recommended the book "The Magic Mountain", written by Thomas Mann, with "time" as central topic. I haven't read it yet but the subject seems interesting. Obviously by doing new thing or other things you are changing the perception of time (shouldn't be a big surprise). Looking retrospectively at time, you have the impression that a year full of variety has passed by slower compared to a year full of daily routine. That means that psychologically you can extend your lifetime - what a great perspective! Doing other things can be pretty much everything, in my case it's travelling. After all I can say that from this point of view it's a good investment. I am able to buy time, the most valuable thing you have in your life.

As departure comes closer, you start to imagine how Asia is like. There is one city, whose name has always attracted me, whose name has always stimulated by imagination: Bangkok. It's not rationale, maybe reality will disappoint me, I don't know. Another city which has provoked a similar feeling was Buenos Aires (what a beautiful name!) - it hasn't disappointed me. I will not principally be travelling to see cities but my imagination starts to create pictures associated to those names I have heard of before many times.

Tomorrow I will have my backpack ready! I hope you will enjoy my blog!

Please don't hesitate to comment on my posts. There may be larger periods without entries depending on the availability of internet connections but I will try to catch up on everything once a connection is available.