Tomorrow, Curtis and I embark on a six-month journey through New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Singapore, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea.
Wait… SIX MONTHS? I know I’ve been talking about this trip for a while, but when I really think about it, I can’t fathom living six months out of a couple of bags. I’ve backpacked for a few weeks, but six months??? Well, guess it’s time to but on my big boy pants (so long as they are not too bulky) and live the unfathomable.
This trip will not be a vacation (is what I tell my mother 😉). It’s a quest for discovery. It’ll be a blast for sure, but traveling while curious expands the mind. After just a few weeks in Peru this past spring, I thought differently about spirituality, the ever evolving relationship between nations and First Peoples, and how an adoration for ingredients leads to exceptional culinary experiences. This trip will be Peru x10.
Which is why I’m writing this newsletter. So that my experiences don’t pass me by. I want to take them in, peel back the layers, share them, and then get your take. Travel is dialogue. It’s dialogue with culture. It’s dialogue with people about the travel. And dialogue evolves perspectives. And evolving perspectives elevates living.
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How’d I even get here?
September 2021: I’m working as a marketing director at Verizon managing eighteen incredible people. I’ve just accepted a generous retention bonus that will pay out in two years. On paper all is amazing. But it’s really not. When I log in to work (because most days are still remote) I’m anxious and complain way too much. And a complaining boss ain’t good for anyone. But it’s worth it for the money, I tell myself. And I’ve got a great thing going with my team. Pull it together. You can do this.
I’m cooking a Blue Apron for Curtis, likely something with Salmon and farro, while he lies on my white pinstriped duvet after a long day working with oncology patients at Sloan Kettering. Given that I’m living in a Williamsburg Brooklyn studio, we are just a couple feet apart.
“What would you do if you landed a good chunk of money?” I ask.
“I’d quit my job and travel,” he replies.
I turn away from chopping, look at him, and laugh the kind of laugh that suggests, yeah right.
“No really,” he says, with a serious, unflinching look in his eyes. “Why not?”
His look of absolute earnestness triggers something in my brain. Synapses connect in new ways. In a millisecond, I go from skeptical to believing it’s the only logical path forward. I’ll quit my job in two years to travel.
Over the next few days, when I think about my new future, it’s not me traveling that I imagine. It’s me writing. Free to think of a life unfettered by corporate ambition, I realize that when I’d left academia, Ph.D. in hand, to rejoin the marketing world over a decade before, I’d buried something deep. I’d spent the decade before that researching the history of New York’s Union Square and while I never felt like my dissertation was the best vehicle for the stories I’d uncovered; I knew they were stories I needed to tell. So, I decide that when I quit my job I want to write a historical novel. Then I’ll travel, but first, it’s all about novel.
October 2021: It’s early morning. My phone buzzes. Jeremy, my childhood best friend, has died. But wait, I think. After years not talking, we just got back in touch. Curtis and I are traveling to Atlanta next weekend for a music festival, and we are meant to get together. That’s why he hadn’t returned my last text message?
I’m devastated. I think about my mortality, of course, and making the most of my precious time on earth, but I also think about the long conversations Jeremy and I had when we were younger. He was excited for me to move to New York after college, saying he wished he could be so bold. Something always held him back, although he could never quite identify what it was, so when I’d move somewhere new, or travel somewhere interesting, or even when I went to grad school, he was always there rooting me on, proud of me for going for it.
My plan to quit, write, and travel solidifies. There can be no backing down. If only for Jeremy.
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August 2022: I relish my weekends because I spend them working on my novel. The archives are my happy place. I love building worlds through writing. It’s been almost a year since I accepted my bonus, and my two-year commitment to Verizon feels like an eternity because I’m keenly aware that I’m not doing what makes me happiest. And what if the day I collect my retention bonus I get hit by a bus or am diagnosed with a debilitating disease? I’d have wasted precious time.
I open an email to find my lease renewal. I face a choice. Renew and stay at Verizon until next October, knowing at that time I’d collect my bonus, or don’t renew, quit my job in a month, turn my back on all that money, and live what I believe will be a happier life. I’m fortunate to have enough money stored away to survive for a while, especially if I’m not paying Brooklyn rents, so I decide not to renew. Come October, I’ll leave Verizon to become a full-time writer. Not sure where I’ll live, but I’ll figure it out.
September 2022: Enter Curtis, once again. He’d been around the whole time, but this was another path altering moment. This time he’s not lying on my bed but sitting at my round wooden dining table, also just a couple of feet from the kitchen. I’m cooking another Blue Apron, probably some chicken and Brussel sprouts concoction. (Curtis cooks too, by the way.)
“I’ve been thinking,” he says. “You know how I used to be a travel nurse? Two benefits are that they pay for housing and they pay well. My lease is up at the end of December. What if I work as a travel nurse for a year so that I can save money, you write, and at the end of the year we travel?”
December 2023: So here I sit, writing this newsletter, having completed a draft of my novel and querying agents, about to embark, with Curtis of course, on a six-month trip to the other side of the world. It’s all happening. Jeremy would be proud.
So, what’s the plan?
From the moment we started discussing our trip, we homed in on SE and E Asia. Neither of us had been, both were dying to go, and spending months there would be the best way to dig in. Thousands of years of culture. Elaborate temples representing fascinating religions. Glorious hikes. Bustling cities. And the food…
I’d been to Australia, Curtis had not, and neither of us had been to New Zealand, so we added them both to our itinerary.
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New Zealand (via 2 days in Tahiti)
Auckland 🚘 Rotorua 🚘 Wellington ⛴️ Nelson 🚘 Franz Joseph 🚘 Queenstown 🚘 Twizel 🚘 Christchurch… 🛫
Australia
Sydney 🚆Canberra 🛫 Adelaide 🛫 Melbourne… 🛫
Thailand (pt. 1)
Phuket 🛫 Bangkok… 🛫
Malaysia
Penang 🚆 Kuala Lumpur 🚆Malacca… 🚍
Singapore… 🛫
Thailand (pt. 2)
Chiang Mai 🚘 Chiang Rai 🚖 Chiang Khong… ⛵️
Laos
Luang Prabang 🚆 Vang Vieng 🚆 Vientiane… 🛫
Cambodia
Phnom Penh 🚍 Siem Reap… 🛫
Vietnam
Ho Chi Min City 🚆 Hoi An 🚆 Dong Hoi 🚆 Hanoi 🛳️ Halong Bay… 🛫
Hong Kong… 🛫
Japan
Tokyo 🚘 Nikko 🚘 Hakone 🚆 Kyoto 🚆Osaka 🚆⛴️ Naoshima Island ⛴️🚆 Hiroshima 🚆 Fukuoka… ⛴️🚆
South Korea
Seoul… ⁉️
How’d we plan such a trip?
It starts with the calendar. About six months ago, while I was head down writing, Curtis researched itineraries. What are common routes? What are less common but interesting routes? He then dropped his proposed itinerary into a calendar, which has been the foundation for all our planning. Thank you, Curtis!
Tip: Add at least one extra day to the number of days bloggers and experts suggest one should spend in a place. Cause what’s the rush?
We embraced Wanderlog as our travel planning tool. It’s not perfect, but it makes planning incredibly easy. It logs and maps housing, transportation, and activities. Built in guides make it easy to research activities and restaurants, and just a click of a button drops them into our itinerary. We organized activities by day, which automatically color codes them, helping to group them geographically.
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We will NOT be doing all the things we’ve captured in Wanderlog, but each day we’ll know our options. If we want to move activities around, we can. If we learn about something new, we can disregard what we’d mapped out. It will not constrict us. It will only empower us.
Tip: Invest in Wanderlog Pro for $49.99 per year. It provides offline access when signals are spotty, exports places to Google Maps for ease of navigation, and automatically scans emails and adds reservations into our itineraries.
Planning sessions: Curtis would drop activities into Wanderlog. I’d drop activities into Wanderlog. And then on weekend afternoons, we’d sit across from each other, pick the next spot on the calendar that needed planning, and dive in. It was fun. It was bonding. We loved our planning session. They never felt like work. We both embraced the discovery. Occasionally there’d be healthy debate, but we were mostly in sync.
We’d usually start our sessions by watching YouTube videos. The top 10 things to do in… Why you shouldn’t miss a visit to… The lengths these creators go to capture, edit, and story tell is astounding. I’ll stick to writing about my travels, thank you very much, but thank goodness for them. Here are a few of my favorites (any others we should check out?):
World Wide Hearts: Zac, who narrates, has a super calming voice, and Ine has great sensibilities.
Adventures of A+K: Adam and Kathryn share equal billing and after all their travels, they haven’t lost their sense of wonder. And how they find new ways to describe the food they are constantly tasting is impressive.
Paddy Doyle: He’s funny and charming and goes to interesting places. A bit more memoir than travel guide, but there is plenty to learn by watching.
Peter & Yen: Love their laid-back New Zealand vibes.
Most activities we’ll do on the fly, but some required booking in advance because they sell out. For instance, we’ll be trekking the largest cave in the world in Vietnam, which sells out a year in advance.
![Milford Sound Cruise, NZ. Photo by Timo Volz on Unsplash - Song Dong Cave Trek, Vietnam. Photo by Hoi Pham on Unsplash - Angkor Wat Tour, Cambodia. Photo by Paul Szewczyk on Unsplash](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F715ae51d-9738-40be-abb7-272d7d996be3_1080x1619.jpeg)
![Milford Sound Cruise, NZ. Photo by Timo Volz on Unsplash - Song Dong Cave Trek, Vietnam. Photo by Hoi Pham on Unsplash - Angkor Wat Tour, Cambodia. Photo by Paul Szewczyk on Unsplash](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F876e0d3c-0328-4506-8a85-cfa32984337f_1080x810.jpeg)
![Milford Sound Cruise, NZ. Photo by Timo Volz on Unsplash - Song Dong Cave Trek, Vietnam. Photo by Hoi Pham on Unsplash - Angkor Wat Tour, Cambodia. Photo by Paul Szewczyk on Unsplash](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F229ee59b-80d4-4747-ae0c-32f35661c47d_1080x720.jpeg)
After we’d mapped out our actives we’d investigate housing. Curtis would search Hotels.com. I’d search AirBnB. We’d compare options and if deciding on a hotel, we’d use Google to make sure we were getting the best price. Hostels were not in the mix, because as an ALMOST fifty-year-old backpacker I’m not feeling the hostel vibes. No offense hostel peeps, but been there, done that. We’ll just have to meet fellow travelers and locals in other ways.
Tip: Book housing five to six months in advance. We found great options at reasonable prices, and many are fully refundable. Our average per person, per night is about $75, which is not nothing, but far less than my Brooklyn rent.
I don’t think we booked a bad spot, but these seem especially awesome:
![AirBnBs: Queenstown, NZ - Chiang Mai, Thailand - Hoi An, Vietnam](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F65812c4e-b1d4-4f7b-a49f-98c2359b18c5_720x480.webp)
![AirBnBs: Queenstown, NZ - Chiang Mai, Thailand - Hoi An, Vietnam](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8c412f59-3eaa-4ab8-b0be-f424a91920ee_720x480.webp)
![AirBnBs: Queenstown, NZ - Chiang Mai, Thailand - Hoi An, Vietnam](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5815ba4b-a64f-427a-955e-7c98ed4b14ee_720x480.webp)
![Hotels: 58 on Cron Motel in Franz Josef, NZ - Cheong Fatt Tze in Penang, Malaysia - Rommai Villa in Chiang Rai, Thailand](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdbeb7f38-dfa0-4586-9004-4d28c5375e25.avif)
![Hotels: 58 on Cron Motel in Franz Josef, NZ - Cheong Fatt Tze in Penang, Malaysia - Rommai Villa in Chiang Rai, Thailand](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faa896a62-afce-4e4f-ab1a-1f7ad69cebc9_1200x801.webp)
![Hotels: 58 on Cron Motel in Franz Josef, NZ - Cheong Fatt Tze in Penang, Malaysia - Rommai Villa in Chiang Rai, Thailand](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5bce7d25-9def-4b5a-884e-8be12f2fe800.avif)
We’ve also booked cars, planes, and trains. Not all, but some.
How are we packing for six months on the road?
When you're an ALMOST fifty-year-old backpacker, you also use a roller bag. That’s why I’m bringing my Gregory Zulu 30 liter backpack and a Briggs & Riley carry-on spinner. Curtis is bringing two large backpacks because he doesn’t want to be the guy loudly rolling his bag along cobblestone streets. But he’s going to be walking next to a guy loudly rolling his bag along the cobbles, so it appears he won’t be avoiding said fate. Sorry, Curtis.
I packed eight days worth of underwear, socks, and t-shirts, and plan to wear bulkier items a few times per week. Even though it’s summer in New Zealand, it could be chilly, so I’ve packed a fleece, a compact puffer jacket, Uniqlo base layers, and a sweater.
Other items include my laptop, adapters, an Osprey Ultralight daypack that folds up tightly when not in use, a Black Diamond headlamp, a portable phone charger, a B&O portable speaker, a Steripen UV water purifier, a Nomadix travel towel, and toiletries.
Sound perfect. You must not have a worry in the world?
Have you met me? Actually, many of you haven’t, but trust me, I’m a worrier.
I worry that despite all the planning, we’ll run into issues along the way. Hopefully, nothing that we can’t adapt to. If we need/want to change our plans, many of our bookings are refundable. If they aren’t, nothing costs a crazy amount of money (except for a few flights and the cave). We also both have travel insurance if we lose baggage, need to cancel a leg, or run into a health emergency. We did all this planning so that we can just be, and not have to be planning along the way.
I’m also worried about being far from family and friends. Lots can happen in six months, although fingers crossed it’s drama free on the homefront.
I might be most worried about how much I’ll miss Mabel’s sweet face, even though I know she’ll be in great hands with Curtis’s folks.
But I know how lucky I am. This trip is a privilege, and I don’t take it for granted.
I’m excited you’ll be following along and hope you’ll actively participate. Please leave comments in Substack with thoughts and suggestions. If you get this as an email, click the title and it’ll take you to my page. I will read them and I will respond.
If you can’t wait two weeks for an update and want to follow along more closely, I’ll be dropping pics regularly onto my IG.
So, off we go… 🛫
Wish us luck.
Next issue of Adventures of an ALMOST fifty-year-old backpacker: New Zealand’s north island 🇳🇿
So nice to meet you two. I look forward to reading about all of your past, present, and future travels. Happy travels!
Loved every word. Enjoy your trip to the max. What a wonderful, once in a lifetime experience! (Also loved the pic of 'Germany' & Jill) Best wishes for a life changing adventure!