Counting down

We're counting down!

We will soon be leaving for Hanoi to start our 30-day journey from Asia to Europe overland. The travelling will be done by train, (well ok, except for the Moscow-Berlin leg. We're flying that segment as we'll have to travel pass Belarus and the visa to Belarus can't be obtained here and to apply in Hanoi will be risky and expensive. That and the fact that the train costs 5 times more than flying) It was a tough decision to make, but I just couldn't say no to extra 1,000euros for shopping in Paris.

Way way back when I first day-dreaming about this trip, I wanted to start right here from Singapore, taking a train up to Hat Yai and hopping onto another train to Bangkok where we can catch another train to Vientiane. From there, by bus internally in Laos to Vinh, passing Phonsavan. From Vinh a train can be taken to Hanoi, where a train goes to China and we explore Shanghai and Xian before getting to Beijing. And I also planned on stopping in Rome, Naples and Pompeii enroute to Paris. All that would have taken an additional month we didn't have. So I scrapped Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Shanghai and Italy.

Plan B was to just fly to Hanoi and then make arrangements for Beijing from there, get to Beijing and then make arrangements for Mongolia from there, and so on so forth. But we realised that would stretch the journey way too long. The trans-siberian only runs once or twice a week and prior booking is necessary. And we needed to apply for Russian visas which require confirmed and exact entry and exit dates. I tried to recruit the help of a travel agent, but no one can provide la carte bookings, only packages. There's no way i'm gonna do the transsiberian on a package with fixed hotels and fixed city tours!

So now, I've gone the opposite direction and I'm totally micro-managing the process (I've even booked tickets to the Eiffel Tower!) Stopping in 8 different cities required 8 separate hotel bookings and 9 segments of train/plane tickets. That also means I've read at least 50 reviews of hotels/activities/train ticket booking agent per city. And here I am, having just completed the last of my bookings after 5 solid days of sitting here and getting through it all, (ok, except for a couple of hotels and domestic train tickets China).

Anyhow, I am very thankful that I can do (most of) it all from a humble laptop. It's impressive how much we can do on the internet these days. Three cheers for tripadvisor.com, google maps, realrussia.co.uk, chinatripadvisor.com and all other facilities that accept internet bookings.

Many more updates will be coming up. We will blog as often as we have wifi-connection. Stay tuned...

See ya later!
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Bis nachher
À plus tard!