Adventure at an end

With my journey at an end and finding myself back home in sunny Iceland, it’s time to reflect a bit on my journey through Asia. This really was an amazing journey. Along the way I saw some of the most amazing sites. Meet some great people, whom I’m forever grateful for giving me some of their time and making this trip so memorable. Even made some new friends. Some times a journey into weirdness, but more often I found myself reflecting on how easy it was really to stay in your own culture zone. Which makes little or no sense to me, but some people seem to want to travel half the world over and then seek out the comfort of the known. There were two things I must recommend to anyone who plans to travel. First is Couchsurfing.com which provided me with contacts in all the places I visited. While I didn’t go so far as actually use the couch request function, as I felt that my budget didn’t require it, it really is just an amazing tool to get in touch with local people. Not only do I intend to continue to use it, but I intend to become a more active member of my own local CS community. Besides, next time my budget might look a bit different and I think it would be an added bonus to actually live with a local. The second resource that really provided me with some great info was Wikitravel. This provided me with everything from must see things to warnings on things to avoid to places to stay. As with everything Wiki this is a hive effort, but it did provide me with a lot of good advice.

I also found myself wishing that I’d taken this journey sooner. There were so many things that I liked about the places that I visited, that I only wished that I’d been there sooner. For a vacation that lasted longer than any that I’ve taken in a long while, it was with really mixed feelings that I returned home. I knew I had to start to prepare myself for my new and upcoming challenges. But I’m a little sad that I didn’t get to spend more time in Hong Kong and wish I had taken time to visit Taiwan. Hong Kong really turned out to be the surprise of the trip. The feel of the city was simply amazing. From the peak of Hong Kong island and its amazing skyline to the neon of Kowloon, this was a city that I somehow felt at home in. This is a crowded city of skyscrapers and apartment blocks, but it’s also a city of amazing green zones. It felt safe and gritty at the same time and it offered some really interesting places to explore. From mall shopping to markets it’s nearly impossible not to spend money in Hong Kong and it offers some of the best food variety and quality of any place that I’ve visited. Doesn’t hurt that I actually liked all the food I tried there. Finally it was the people there that completed the picture. Not least thanks to Couchsurfing I got a chance to meet some locals that turned out to be both friendly and interesting. I’m definitely going back to Hong Kong.

I don’t want to make it sound like the rest of the places that I visited weren’t nice. Not at all. All of them turned out to be worth a visit. Japan, Singapore and Thailand all have their charm. Japan for its amazing culture, Singapore for the variety you find there and Thailand simply is one of the most welcoming of places. I’m not in the least surprised that Thailand is considered such a great destination. It really has friendly people, great food and the variety of things to do there means that it offers something to everyone. Which was kind of the problem. I wasn’t sure sometimes if what I was getting was authentic or simply geared to serving the multitude of tourists. But overall I was really impressed with all of these places and now I just can’t wait to go back.

Ummæli

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