Travel Prep

     Now, it wouldn't be a vacation without some intense planning beforehand! In this blogpost, I want to outline how I planned my trip to Japan, Thailand and Vietnam, from deciding which countries to go to, down to buying plane tickets, where to stay and the like.

     First off, perhaps the hardest part of travel planning, in my opinion, is deciding where to go, and for how long. The first thing we (my two travel partners and I) ironed down was how long we wanted the whole trip to be: about 3 weeks. Next, we debated how many countries we thought we could reasonably hit in that time. As a rule of thumb, the longer one stays in a foreign country, the more likely it is that they will have a deeper understanding of the language and culture of that place, thereby providing a more wholesome, rich experience. As we mulled over countries to visit, we also considered this proposition (we didn't want to be in a place for too short a time, but we also wanted to see as many places as possible). After much deliberation and reaching out to friends about their travels in Asia, we decided to travel to three countries: Japan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Japan!

     We decided to stay in Japan first and for the longest amount of time, about a week. This was due to a multitude of reasons; the three of us were planning on meeting up in Japan, so the more time we had to settle and meet up would for sure aid in our travels, my two travel partners knew a lot and were seemingly interested the most in Japanese culture, and we had the most connections in Japan.

   Besides Thailand and Vietnam, we discussed adventuring off to many other countries, such as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and even New Zealand. However, we decided to venture off to these two countries mostly because they weren't expensive to travel to, a few friends mentioned that these places were fun and safe for tourists, and Thailand has amazing beaches (who doesn't want to go to the beach)!

     After ironing down which countries we wanted to go to, we started to look at plane tickets, and arranged our trip loosely based on when it was cheaper to fly where. For example, we originally planned on going to Vietnam before we went to Thailand, but based on plane ticket prices, it was much cheaper for us to go to Vietnam from Thailand.

Beaches with my beaches

     Now for planning where to go when we did finally make it to these places; we took many recommendations from friends as to where to go, and looked on google to see what other tourist attractions were popular in the area. Now, I did not go so far as to plan exactly what we were planning on doing which day (In my opinion it makes no sense to plan out every day of our trip down to the "t"). Instead, I just took my list of things to do out and asked how my fellow travelers felt that day and made it happen!

Come on, could you really go to Vietnam and
not eat a single bahn mi

   
     Side note: another list to make (it's not necessary unless you're a foodie) is all of the local delicacies; imagine traveling to a place and missing out on all of the local food!

     After planning out where we wanted to go in each country, we started to look at where to say. In my opinion, paying the extra money to find a hostel by certain tourist attractions is really worth it; it's not worth spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to get around a foreign country if you don't have to, especially if you are not planning on staying for longer than a week. With this being said, we booked all of our hostels through Airbnb, and had no problems. We easily found cheap places that were in close proximity to the tourist attractions we wanted to visit.

A short sample of what our itinerary looked like

    It is important to note that I put every detail (travel dates, flight numbers, hotel information, lists of tourist attractions and food) into a comprehensive google doc to share with my friends and family that they could access without the internet to keep everybody safe and in the loop.
     And just like that, our trip was planned! Many of you might be curious about what sorts of things I packed for this trip, but to be honest, there really is nothing special that you might need for a trip like this, just pack using common sense. Toilet paper and hand sanitizer might be nice to have, but pack for the summer weather, bring an extra pair of warm clothing, two different pairs of shoes, something to read, as well as all of your toiletries and a towel, and you're ready to getti spaghetti!

     Thanks for reading, and please feel free to leave a comment or question down below! Next blogpost, I'll be discussing what it felt like to leave China and my first few days in Japan!