Tainted Faith

I am uber excited!! One of my really good friends from school who I haven’t seen for 6 years is going backpacking with me across South East Asia for 3 weeks this summer. I’ve been working on an itinerary for us which is looking shit hot and figured it might be useful to other folk planning a trip over there. Here’s a rough sketch for ya.

We’ll start off on a flight from Manila to Thailand (he lives in the Philippines and my mom will be moving there this summer) and spend the night at Artist’s Place which is a total artsy hostel in Bangkok. After a day wandering about the city we’ll get on a night bus to Trat and catch the morning ferry to the beautiful beaches of Koh Chang. We’ll spend a couple days lazing on the beach with drinks and going on elephant treks through the mountains. From there we’ll backtrack to Trat and chill out for the day, catch the night bus to Bangkok and party hard for a night.

The next day we’ll be on the jungle train. First stop is Butterworth, Malaysia where we’ll catch a ferry to Penang for more partying and beaching. Then we’ll get the night train to Kuala Lumpur where we’ve got some friends who will be our tour-guides and give us a taste of Malaysian life. Final stop is Singapore and we’ll probably spend most of our time beaching on Sentosa Island. I also have to go the Butterfly Park and Insect Kingdom which sounds ultra cool.

From Singapore we’ll take a ferry to Batam, Indonesia and then a flight into Jakarta where we’ve got another friend to show us around. We’ll take a quick side trip to Bali with Air Asia (super cheap - only 23 quid return!) for some more beach bumming. Finally we’ll head back to Jakarta for one last night of partying and then back to Manila.

The whole trip from Bangkok down to the final stop in Jakarta, including all transport and accommodation for 3 weeks, comes to a grand total of ₤150!! How cheap is that! A major plus is that we save money by travelling at night. I may be knackered by the end of it, but it’ll be worth it. Can’t wait – I’m so excited! I’ll certainly expand on all this once we actually go, so stay tuned.