In our blogpost Travel the world: 5 obstacles you must overcome we explained how we have managed to remove the most important obstacles to our travel half around the world. These steps were required before we could actually start planning our travel itinerary in more detail. In this blog post we examine how that worked out.
Which route are we going to take?
Preparing a detailed route gets your mind wrapped around the journey and the excitement level rises. You have to dive into internet blogs, travel books and dig all kind of information to get the route sorted out initially. It turned out that after years of traveling (together Marcell and I have been to 50 countries), planning our route on that scale was a bit more complex and challenging than usual. Besides the longer travel period of 3 months (the longest travel so far was a trip for 2 months Marcell did in South America), now we were 5 people having an opinion and agony of choice started to play tricks.
A good question to start with is:
If you had just one choice to make, what pops in your mind first? What single place would you select for visiting above all else in the world?
These were other questions we asked ourselves to plan our travel itinerary:
- What countries would we like to travel to?
- What places are the Must-sees, what are good for a visit and what is nice to have?
- Are there any events, like festivals happening we could take part in?
- How will we get around (by which means of transport)?
- How is the weather in our chosen destinations?
- Are there safety concerns?
- Does it fit in our travel budget?
No matter how long you travel in the end you probably need to narrow down the places and countries you will visit. And that can be tough. Marcell e.g. in the beginning really wanted to see the famous Comodo dragons (Comodo warans). But after all the island of Comodo in Indonesia was knocked off our travel list, such was Flores and Sulawesi (I´ll come back later to that).
In our travel history Asian countries appear several times. Over the years the largest continent on this planet has become our favorite travel destination. Why is that? Well, Asia offers a colorful mix of rich and diverse cultures and stunning landscapes. In most places in Asia visitor enjoy a developed infrastructure. It´s easy to navigate your way with English language. Moreover, the climate is pleasant and the food is great. Another big attracting factor are the people. Asians, we found out, are generally relaxed, unobstrusive and calm yet open, friendly, curious and busy people. Crime is not a big issue in Asia. One feels generally safe wandering around. And let´s not forget to mention that traveling in Asia is still quite affordable.
That´s why we have been to places like the Taj Mahal in India, the Golden triangle in Thailand, the Halong Bay in Vietnam. It is the reason why we visited Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Luang Prabang in Laos. Some Asian countries like India and Thailand we have visited several times, others could still need a bit of exploration.
Over the years we have developed a sort of addiction to Asia somehow.
So unsurprisingly to us, the answer to the first question (What countries would we like to travel to?) were Asian countries. Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Indonesia topped our wish list. Let me introduce them one by one.
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka has been on our travel radar for the past 10 years or so. The country which shape looks like a tear dropping down the face of India offers everything we look for. And it is not that far away. You can reach the capital Colombo from Germany in 10-11 hours by plane. The island literally got pushed back from the top of our wish list in the last minute numerous times. Everyone who we asked about their travel impressions in Sri Lanka loved it. A term we heard a lot was, it is like „India light“.
In 2018 the country was ranked the top destination to travel for in 2019 by the Lonely Planet which is still one of the world’s best resources on travel. When Sri Lanka was shocked by the terror attacks on Easter Sunday 2019 we discussed whether it was safe or not to pay a visit. We thought about pushing it back again (Malaysia being a potential candidate as a replacement).
This situation reminded us of a similar plot shortly before Irka and I commenced our very first longer trip together to India. Just a few days before our flight to Delhi was supposed to leave terrorists had hijacked airplanes and used them to attack famous US landmarks such as the Twin towers in New York and the Pentagon.
Resulting from the event which later became known as „9/11“ people all over the world reacted in panic and canceled flights. The situation was pretty scary. Our families were concerned about our safety. India was of course not the epicenter of the attacks but intelligence investigations revealed that the brain behind the terror against America was a suspect named Osama Bin Laden and he was hiding somewhere in Afghanistan or Pakistan, India seemed to be very close to the actual trouble. At that time nobody really knew how the situation would turn out over the coming weeks and months. We decided to go anyway with a plan B to leave the country as soon as there are any safety issues on a flight to Bangkok.
The situation after the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka was similar to the situation after 9/11. It was a knock out for the island’s tourism industry. Following the events, an estimated 80% of hotel bookings in Sri Lanka were cancelled, and despite the best efforts of the industry, which has slashed hotel and airline charges, things have improved very little. According to the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority tourist arrivals were down 57% year on year for June, and down 71% for May.
People and their families rely on tourism for their livelihoods. Canceling our plan to travel to Sri Lanka would be another victory for terrorists who try to sow the seed of hate. Back in 2001 the Indian government did everything to make people feel safe and actually we felt really safe while traveling. Today, we believe Sri Lanka is doing the best it can to make sure this won’t happen again anytime soon. Logically, with the increased level of alertness and precautions taken, the country is probably much safer for tourists to visit than it ever was.
That is why in the end we decided to stick to the original plan and have kept the island on our travel itinerary.
We will start our journey with visiting Colombo on December 1st. Did you know that Sri Lanka has about the size of Irland? We thought about 4 weeks would be fairly enough time to explore the island. But we are very sure you could spend months there without having seen everyhting. In December we will celebrate Nishas 6th birthday as well Christmas on a beach in Mirissa.
Myanmar
Myanmar, formerly called Burma (German: Birma) is certainly a place off the beaten track. The military regime which ruled the country until 2010 was not very fond of attracting visitors on a larger scale. But since then the sleeping beauty has wakened up.
A democratization process started which caused the relaxation of international trade blocks and the country got on the international tourist map.
Myanmar first sprang on our travel bucket list when we visited Laos 7 years ago. When we talked to travelers who have been there, they were all telling fascinating stories about it. Marcell remembered talking to a Dutch couple in Vang Vieng who bicycled in 6 weeks all the way through Myanmar. They said how enchanting this journey felt, like traveling back in time. The country Myanmar which has a similar size as France we figured has a rich cultural heritage. Places like Bagan and Mandalay certainly cast a spell on us. And it is quite safe, a bit undeveloped and less crowded. It seems to be a very original and authentic place to visit, an unpolished gem like a rough diamond. The only challenge was to find an affordable way to get there (from Sri Lanka).
Indonesia
While in Sri Lanka and Myanmar Buddhism is the predominant religion, in Indonesia people mostly follow the Islam. Indonesia in fact is the country with the largest muslim population worldwide (12,7% of the worlds muslims to be precise) and it is the worlds largest „island country“ similar in size to Mexico. What got Indonesia on our bucket list was …. again hearsay. As frequent travelers we listen carefully to what other travelers talk about as this is one of the best sources of information available, first hand, up-to-date and free of charge. The people we talked who had visited Indonesia all loved it, mainly for its nice people, but also for the weather, the beaches the food and the rich cultural heritage. One place is mentioned disproportionately often though, Bali.
Bali
Bali is seemingly on everyone´s travel itinerary lately. It´s one of these destinations that you dream about visiting someday. When you tell others that you are to go to Bali they get envious. We picked Bali to explore what the special something is that so many Westerners fall in love over here, as the story goes in „Eat, pray, love“. Also, it´s a well known wedding destination and as such an interesting place to explore business options for us. I remember once Iooking at a book about Living in Bali, some architects have created dream homes on the island, it was simply breathtaking to see. So we decided to book a few days in Ubud, which is what we heard a traveler’s heaven.
Lombok
We also heard good things about Lombok, Balis less known sister island which we imagine as something like „Bali- 25 years ago“. We heard that Lombok is great for surfing so we booked a few days on an isolated beach, hopefully the waves will be good.
Java
Once Marcell read in a book called „1000 SACRED PLACES: A World Travel to Religious and Spiritual Sites“ about Borobudur, the largest single Buddhist temple structure of the world. It is located on the island of Java near a city called Yogyakarta. The place which is better known to traveler as „Jogja“ is a hot spot of the UNESCO world heritage.
In the vicinity of Borobudur there is another temple complex called Prambanan and there is the (in)famous volcano Merapi. We have seen a documentary about the Merapi on TV. It is one of the most active valcanos currently on the planet. It´s quite scary actually to live there. We hope it will remain calm while we visit Jogja. Despite the eminent danger which volcanoes expose to humans who live nearby they are also fascinating monuments of a living earth. In Indonesia, specifically in Java, one can safely visit some of them. We are planning a close encounter with the Bromo volcano on the Eastern part of Java.
Borneo
And we wanted to see orang utans live in nature, (before they go extinct, hopefully not). We figured that the best places to do that are Sumatra and Borneo. In the end Borneo was a bit easier to reach. Therefore we booked a boat trip to see the „men of forest“ on the third largest island in the world.
Originally, we had planned to end our travel half around the world on the island of Sulawesi. We had read in travel blogs like Indojunkie about the Togian islands and imagined us to hang out there a few days at the end of the world, on a perfect paradise sand beach with no internet but these islands we learnt are so far removed from the travelers route, we needed to plan in a few extra days for actually getting there. For reasons we describe in more detail in the next paragraph we have decided to cancel our plan for visiting Sulawesi and the Togian islands. Instead we booked a flight to visit another continent, Australia.
Australia
Australia we also wanted to visit for years. At some point we even looked at options to move there to live for some time (Melbourne sounded very inviting), but then Lily appeared in our life and the dream was postponed. Making such a long journey (from Germany it takes 24-30 hours to reach Australia) for a 2-3 weeks vacation trip during the winter holidays in Germany sounded ineffective, we always favored the easier to get to places in Asia like Thailand, India for that scenario.
When we planned for Bali we realized that Australia is not that far off. So we checked and realized that flights to Sydney or Melbourne are still quite expensive. OK, maybe it was affordable for a single traveler but if you need to multiply everything by five the sum starts to hurt quite quickly. So Australia was unfortunately off our travel itinerary for quite some time.
About 6 months before our travel started a friend of Lily was visiting. We sat together for breakfast and she was curious which countries we are going to visit during our trip. I pulled out a map and showed her the travel route we have planned so far. She was asking:
Are you also visiting Australia?
I answered „No“, with a sighing heart. Australia was still high on our bucket list. I knew, if we would not visit it on this journey, we may have to postpone it to a time in the far future. This question triggered something in my head and I started researching again. All of sudden a promotion popped up on a website for a flight from Bali to Perth. It was a very reasonable price. I called Marcell in the office and asked him, what he thinks about traveling to Australia. He was reluctant. We went through all this before and it turned out that flights would not fit our budget let alone the travel expenses in Australia itself. They are way higher compared to Asia. I told him about the 100 US$ flight from Bali to Perth and we decided to give the idea another chance.
We were both mentally sort of fixed at the East side of the 5th continent, where maps show places like the Great barrier reef, Sydney and Melbourne. We did not know much about Western Australia at all to begin with, but when we started researching we really got excited. It sounded like the perfect place for us. Lots of nature, wildlife, clear blue ocean and one of the best reefs in the world, places to surf and so on.
Visiting Western Australia we thought would be a stark contrast to the Asian cultures. It would feel like another paradise but it would be a destination inside our comfort zone. Maybe that´s too easy? I thought. Then, I had an idea which really got the Aussie ball rolling. I told Marcell about the option to rent a camper for a few weeks. A road trip really got him excited to visit Australia. That was the game changer.
Singapore
We were looking for places for a stopover on the way back home. Spending more than 24 hours on planes and airports were not really appealing to us. There were several options on the table, firstly Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur. Both cities are major hubs for air travel in South East Asia but for visiting the cities were not very attractive for us. When visiting urban life we mainly look for creative and inspirational hot spots with a diverse cultural scene and interesting markets. Neither Jakarta nor Kuala Lumpur seemed to offer a lot of that.
Then I put Singapore in the game as a potential stopover. That city Marcell has visited years back, so in the beginning he was not overly motivated to return to a place he has already visited. He thought that the city would not be a good option to visit with our children, despite Sentosa island, an amusement park, which would surely delight our girls. In my mind Singapore represents a city of the future, with unique architecture and design, a melting pot of ethnicities, short: a place I really wanted to visit some day.
We faced the difficult decision whether or not to trade in a few days of our time in Australia for a 3-days / 2-nights stopover in Singapore. Finally there were a few points in favor of Singapore even over spending more time in Western Australia. What is worth seeing in Singapore? Stay tuned and subscribe to our newsletter to see what we explore.
What countries are top on your travel bucket list? What was your travel itinerary for your trip around the world? Share your thoughts with us and leave us a comment below!
