Lets get plannin' and packin'

Hi everyone!

This is my first of hopefully many posts in my exploration of the food, sights, peoples, and culture of Asia. For those of you who may not know, I'll be taking the opportunity of a lifetime to travel around Asia for the next nine months or so, experience the magnificent cultures, and eat the exquisite cuisine. I decided to use a blog so that I can give my limited short term memory a rest but also to provide you, the reader, some insight into my travels and an escape from the realities of work :).

I'm spending my last week in the states before my trek around the world getting immunization shots (6 at a time!), lining up a sublet, a property manager, packing and moving, and tons of other things that I haven't even thought of yet. The magnitude of my travels hasn't quite hit me until recently when I started to formulate the itinerary for my trip.

Thai-bodi-pore will be broken up into three segments:

Segment 1 - 3 weeks
My brother Dan and I plan on seeing Hong Kong, Japan (Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto), Indonesia (Jakarta, Kuta, Seminyak, Ubud), and the Philippines (Manila) in a three week period. So needless to say that this will be the whirlwind section of the trip.

Segment 2 - 2 months
I plan on visiting Hong Kong, Thailand (Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Ko Samui, Phuket, Karbi), Laos (Vietntiane), Cambodia (Siam Reap, Phenom Phen, Sinhoukville) Vietnam (Hanoi, Saigon), Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, and maybe India.

Segment 3 - 6 months
I plan on living in Shanghai and traveling to Tibet, Nepal, and other locals in China while teaching English and brushing up on my Mandarin.

Thats all for now...look for more posts to come once we hit the road on May 12th. Cheers!