A trip of this length is not a normal holiday, that’s for sure. In two or three weeks you will probably not risk being in a bad mood or even getting depressed but if you are travelling for longer, there are good and bad days, like always in life. If you are travelling alone, some days can be really lonely and this shouldn’t be underestimated. Some days you are full of energy and others you’d prefer to stay the whole day in the guest house without doing anything. That’s why having a nice guest house with the possibility to hang out and relax without being disturbed is so important. You need a substitution for the couch you have back home! The best is having a hammock in a nice garden to substitute your couch. The flipside of the coin is that then it’s very difficult to leave (and travelling is actually what you want). The next important factor to reduce the risk of a “bad” day is meeting the “right” people. Normally in a nice guest house, you will automatically meet the right people. Imagine you went to an expensive hotel because you could afford it. You would never be able to meet people in a business hotel without any common hang-out area. Even if there was a common area, there wouldn’t be many people to hang-out! I spent three days in a real hotel and met no one.
I sometimes planned my travel itinerary according to the possibility of meeting people. I did that when I returned to Pai and also when I returned to Melaka for instance. Meeting people and sharing activities can be more important than the visited sights themselves because doing things together is more fun than being alone – that’s not a big surprise. My biggest concern before starting the trip was being alone for very long. Luckily this was not the case. I was alone when I wanted but I also knew where to find companionship.
People now ask me how it was. That’s really a difficult question. Some things were really overwhelming, amazing or stunning but I don’t like these adjectives so much. “Interesting” sounds boring but maybe that’s the word which describes best what I saw and experienced. The Japanese toilets for example are definitely not overwhelming (at least not for me) but they are very interesting. It’s more these little things which make travelling an experience and not so much the world-famous sights. Not because they are not interesting (or overwhelming or amazing or whatever) but rather because you spend comparably little time there. Again, who you meet is very important. I wouldn’t have enjoyed Angkor like I did without the nice companionship and this is true also for many other sights.
Now, the question of all questions: Would I do it again? Are you kidding?
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P.S.: Who read my blog in Russia? I would really like to know that J
