The first thing that everyone asks when they find out we're going on this big trip is "What are you gonna do there?" Well, some people ask, "why on earth would you want to go to a country with malaria and typhoid fever and possible terrorist attacks" (hi, mom!), but mostly, people want to know what all we have planned.
We've given a lot of thought to how much planning ahead we should do. I'm a planner by nature, especially for trips that require a long plane flight -- I don't like flying, and if I'm gonna go somewhere far, I want to get everything I can out of it! Mu is something of a planner, too -- he looked up train schedules and had a proposed itinerary for us within a few days of getting the international flights! But, he (and I, to a smaller degree) also wanted to have flexibility in case we found things we wanted to do that hadn't been on our original list.
As you probably gathered from the trains post, we did end up planning a lot of stuff ahead of time. The reason we decided to err on the side of more planning is that our priorities (sleeping well and feeling safe on trains), the distances between places (large enough that many trains are overnight), and the fact that Indian and Thai trains both sell out quickly all meant that we really did need to decide which places we wanted to go to. Plus, we're going during relatively high season, so once we figured out where we'd be, it also made sense to book hotels. The balance to this is that we haven't booked very many activities, so that once we get to places, we can decide what (and how much) we feel like doing. The few activities we've booked are ones that we feel strongly about and that are harder to arrange on the spot -- a day of ziplines in Chiang Mai, for example, a tiger safari in a national park in India, a camel trek in Jaisalmer. Mostly, though, we'll probably use our guide book and suggestions from hotels to meander around cities.
I guess all this puts us on the pretty planned side of things. I'm OK with this, though I think Mu would rather we had more time and money and were able to be more spontaneous. I tell him, we can have a less-planned adventure when we've saved up enough to travel for a whole year!
So how do you all travel? Pre-plan, or take it as it comes?
I let you do all the planning, of course. That's what travel agents are for! Haha but if I'm traveling with Eric, I do all the planning or else we end up not going anywhere!
ReplyDeleteHaha, indeed! I like being a travel agent most of the time! But would you guys really not do anything? I can't imagine this!
ReplyDeleteThe first trip I took by myself I pre-planned EVERYTHING way in advance, hostels, buses, tours, etc. Now it's kinda like "I'm starting at X place on Y date, and in 20 days I have a flight home from city Z, and GO!" Sometimes I'll book a place 2-3 days in advance, sometimes not. Depends on if I'm traveling alone, or if it's a busy city where there's big events going on. Trying to find a cheapish halfway decent hostel in Shanghai in summer 2010 was not easy and I'd booked that quite a bit in advance, meanwhile in most cities my partner and I went to in SE Asia we would go to an area that was supposed to have a lot of guesthouses and would pick one.
ReplyDeleteSo excited to hear about your trip :)
-Robin