Itinerary Update
by Jason -- November 3, 2009
Greetings from a somewhat frightening bus bound for Guangzhou, China. The bus driver seems to have a tendency to honk violently at people on their mopeds while he nearly runs them over.
On a more pleasant note-we left Macau with money still in our savings account and actually won a little gambling! A shout out to lucky number 9 which came up on my last roll playing Roulette!
I wanted to use this post to update our itinerary plans. After hearing some feedback on our previous plans—mostly commenting on how cold it will be in northern China and South Korea between November and February—we’ve decided to adjust our itinerary quite a bit.
Here’s the updated plan:
Vancouver -> Hong Kong -> Macau (Complete)
Next: Guangzhou then Hainan Island
China – November
Vietnam – December
Cambodia/Some Thailand – January
South Korea – February through July
Japan – April perhaps
Northern/Central China – August through October
Back to Thailand – August through October
Malaysia – August through October
Singapore – August through October
Philippines – August through October
Indonesia – August through October
Laos – August through October
Taiwan – August through October
A few comments on the itinerary:
- We still have a goal of spending some time snowboarding, which is why we’d like to try and get to South Korea before the snow melts in February.
- A potential change of plans may occur with the Chinese New Year. We have not yet done our research, but this is something I think would be fun to experience in China, so we may add that to the itinerary.
- Finally, there are too many places to see in the last planned 3 months of the trip. I doubt we’ll actually go to all of those places; we’ll have to make some tough decisions. For now though, they all remain a possibility. Also a possibility is extending the trip at that point. Only time will tell.
Be awesome and help us share:
Sharon wants to go snowboarding?
I know that Seattle is pretty exoctic and has lots of asians if it so happens to fit somewhere in the end of your trip 
JK…. putochick
A couple of notes on Chinese New Year: it definitely is exciting, but be aware that traveling is extraordinarily difficult. It can take days or even weeks of waiting to get train or bus tickets. If you choose to spend Chinese New Year in China, I would strongly recommend planning to stay in one place. Also, you should know that the celebrations (and the fireworks) go on for three weeks. It is definitely exciting for a couple of days, but by the third week of non-stop (like 6 AM to past midnight) fireworks it gets a little old. Looking at your plan, the timing might work very well to stop in for a few days for the holiday itself before moving on to Korea. It’s usually possible to find quite inexpensive flights from China to S. Korea.
Hello again Sharon & Jason,
So sorry about the typographical errors in my comment awhile ago, frankly, i pressed the “submit comment” button without proof-reading what i wrote, mea culpa…
Please don’t be upset or afraid about the headlines that talked about the massacre in maguindanao province, because firstly the gov’t has things in control now and secondly, the said province is in mindanao, (the country has 3 major geograhical areas, namely: luzon, visayas & mindanao). I live in quezon city, metromanila, which is in luzon, so maguindanao is miles and miles away from our place. Rest assured that metromanila is a relatively safe place to live, just like any place on earth or the U.S. Yes, we do have our share of wierd events, but like i said, such things also do happen in other places on earth…it is just quite sad that the feats accomplished by Manny Paquiao, (winning the world championship in 7 diffirent weight divisions in boxing) and a filipino, efren penaflorida being named by CNN as the hero of the year, were a bit overshadowed by this tragic event in maguindanao! i assure you there are a lot of places of interest which are located in luzon & visayas, so you don’t have to go to mindanao to have your “fill”. Besides, english is understood & spoken by a majority of Filipinos, so you will seldom encounter the “language barrier” that you have now in china!
Thank you once again and God bless!
noel fp. mirasol