Where I'm headed next...

I realize that I've made exactly three blog entries in one day, after not writing for a week, and there are no guarantees as to when I will write again, due to the crazy schedule that I'm currently keeping, but if three entries is too much to read in one day, just read one, come back in a few days and keep plugging away at it until you manage to catch yourself up. In the meantime, it is very likely that I will not have written a new one so please, take your time. I just wanted to give a very general outline as to where I am headed next... I am flying back to Manila tomorrow morning for one night, then I will fly to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for one night, and onto Siem Reap, Cambodia on Saturday, January 20th. I will spend two nights, maybe three in Siem Reap looking at the ancient temples of Angkor Wat... I will then head to Phnom Penh on a bus and stay there for a few days before entering Vietnam. For those of you who were paying attention to what I might have told you when I was home for Christmas, yes... I did say that I was going to Thailand and Laos and I did not mention Kuala Lumpur. Thailand has been post-poned to a future date that could be anywhere from 6 months to 30 years from now and so has Laos...there just isn't enough time, and The Philippines sort of sucked me into it, in fact I could have stayed here the entire 5 weeks, but I am trying to strike a balance, by cutting out some, while still keeping other essentials. Anyways, I plan to be in Vietnam for two weeks from the 25th through the 8th, when I will fly back to Manila via Kuala Lumpur (don't ask; it was the cheapest flight available) and on February 10th I am off to Hong Kong for 5 days before landing in Seoul on the 15th and flying home to Jeju Island. My mother wrote me an e.mail and she had obviously been looking up some of the places that I have been visiting and she asked a very good question: "How do you choose the places that you are going to?" I am not sure I have an answer to that question... it ends up being a combination between amount of intrigue combined with feasability and speculation as to the amount of other tourists that will be there. The level of intrigue comes from what I read in my travel book and on the internet, as well as what I hear from other travelers, the feasability is in regard to amount of time it will take me to arrive and whether I can afford it, which in these countries I usually can, and I can only speculate as to how many other travelers will be there through what I read in the tourist book (Lonely Planet's Southeast Asia on a Shoestring). All of these work together also, because if there will be a lot of tourists, I may still go, but will try not to stay as long (this is the case with Angkor Wat) and usually the harder it is to get to a place, the less tourists that will be there. I also try to get as much geographical variety in a country as is possible in the amount of time that I have, in order to expand the scope of my overall experience. I know that this sounds very scientific and in fact it is (I use an excel sheet, to plug in the figures and determine my next destination, just kidding). It is a good question, and it's funny, because usually what happens is that I think I know where I'm going and then I speak with someone who says it's raining there, or there are tons of people, etc., so I change courses, but once I decide for sure, there is nothing stopping me from getting there. It becomes a mission and no matter how many hours on the top of a jeepney or a winding rough mountain road, there is NOTHING that can stop me from getting there. I do have moments when I sort of have these slight out of body experiences, (an exaggeration, but the best I can explain it) and I'm sort of looking down at myself laughing... because I'm not sure it's worth it... the sunburn, the strenuous transportation, not being able to stop and urinate for hours, the smells, the sickness, whatever it may be...all to see some rice terraces and an underground river that I could've looked up on the internet, but it is the journey itself, the adventure, that I find the most intriguing and maybe the most rewarding, so I just keep on moving and each destination that I arrive at only makes me hungry for more.