First there was the winning of the $2500 travel voucher for "NZ Community Leader of the Year Award" from Microsoft (thanks Darryl). The expiry date for that was looming and the idea of using it on Surfers or some tropical pacific beach just didn’t really appeal to either of us (only those of you who have done a little backpacking will understand this).
Then there is the fact that we have been so busy raising kids and running the business over the last 7 years that we haven’t actually stopped for a serious break. Now the kids are old enough to be left with their Nana (Delwyn’s mum Sheran) for a couple of weeks without too much hassle (at least we hope...)
So we wanted to go somewhere adventurous, and when we think back at our last Asia trip (back in 1 B.C. - thats Before Children), Vietnam was one of the highlights for us. It was one of the places we felt we just didn’t spend enough time in.
We did the nice cool north last time (Hanoi and surrounds), so have decided to do the hot hot south this time round (starting in Ho Chi Ming City). But this time we want to do it a little differently, in two key ways:
- More time, less places. We saw lots on our last trip (8 weeks from Singapore to Shanghai through 8 different countries) – but too much of it was from buses and trains. It was something like 18 places over the 8 weeks – which averages roughly 3 days per place, not including the time spent actually travelling between each. This time we want to soak up more of each place, so have chosen three key places which we will be much more relaxed about chilling out and getting a feel for.
- Pushing ourselves beyond our comfort zone (the title of this blog!). It’s our intention to get more food poisoning, more ripped off, and make bigger fools of ourselves in front of the locals than last time. When you first start adventure travelling you don’t quite know what to do and how to act, so you take more of an observation role. Everything is a bit scary (theres a reason they call it culture shock), so you tend to walk around suspicious of all food and all touts (for good reason too – most of the time!).
But this time we want to really push ourselves to eat more of what the locals eat (like a good Pho (noodle soup) for breakfast on a busy street corner), and interact more with the locals (laugh with them - at us... “ha ha, you stupid westerners!”). We want to experience more and really push ourselves out of our comfort zone. We know that the cost of this can be high (getting sick, getting lost, getting ripped off, getting arrested... that sort of thing), but we also know some of the best travel memories we have are when we did exactly that (funny how the diarrhoea memories can be so vivid so many years later!)
Bring it on!
Will post on our rough itinerary (the three places we have chosen) soon.
