The Journey...
Select a Day:
Select a Day:
Part One
Europe
Europe
Part Two
Asia
Asia
PROLOGUE
Welcome to the second edition of my world travelogues - “Round the World in 100 Days”. This travelogue is a daily account of my experiences as I traveled through Europe and Asia in the summer and fall of 2007. I like to think it’s more than just a journal of where I went - I tried to make it a narrative telling the story of my experience. Included in the 100 days of the trip, I did two tours - one with Contiki (the company I traveled with in 2006), and Intrepid. This prologue is intended to give an overview of what you’re about to read, so I’ll begin by describing some of the major aspects of the travelogue:
Pre-planning
I knew that I wanted to do a tour to Scandinavia and Russia with Contiki on this trip, but I also wanted the entire experience to be much longer than the last. I traveled for 73 days in 2006, and I wouldn’t have settled for anything less this time. Besides the tour, I was having trouble planning out the rest of my travels. Originally, I decided on doing Contiki’s Spanish Spree tour before going to Scandinavia, then visiting the Baltic countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and the former Yugoslavia after. I was happy with my plans, but executing them was a different story. There weren’t many major travel companies that went to the Baltics and Yugoslavia, and I didn’t want to go alone, so I had a difficult time figuring out how I was going to do this. I researched many different travel companies and re-arranged my itinerary plans a dozen times, but nothing ever felt ‘right’. I just felt like this plan wasn’t meant to be. That’s when I started thinking about my other options, and remembered a tour company I’d been browsing for the last few months.
The tour company was called Intrepid - and while looking on their website I came across a tour to Southeast Asia that looked completely awesome. I knew I wanted Asia to be my next continent after Europe, but I didn’t think I’d actually go this soon. On a whim, I figured out how much it would cost to do this Southeast Asia tour after my tour in Europe - and it not only worked out to be cheaper, but it felt like this was the right thing to do. It was decided - I was going to Asia!
I planned my flights on a website called AirTreks.com which specializes in round-the-world tickets. I was able to choose where I wanted my layovers between flights, and could extend them for several days giving myself a chance to see the cities (practically for free). I had several different layover options flying from Europe to Asia - among them were Athens, Greece; Amman, Jordan; Manama, Bahrain; Doha, Qatar; and Dubai, UAE. I’d been to Athens before and the other cities were places I wanted to visit some day, but the one I wanted to go to the most was Dubai. I’d seen so much hype about it in the news and read so many fascinating articles about it on the Internet, so I couldn’t wait to see what it was really like. In hindsight I should’ve gone with Amman.
I didn’t have as many layover options on my way home from Asia. I would be going through Hong Kong for sure, and my other options were either Beijing, China or Taipei, Taiwan. It would’ve been too much hassle to enter China just for a layover, so I decided on Taipei. At this point my trip was 99 days (and this travelogue would’ve been called “Round the World in 99 Days”), but while I was traveling one of my flights got pushed back by one day - extending my trip to 100.
As usual, I also made plans to spend a few days visiting my friend Marion who lives in Lille, France. She has been the one constant during all three of my trips to Europe. She was an exchange student at my highschool in my senior year and we became best friends. The year after graduation, in 2001, I went to visit her in Lille for three weeks. I also spent time with her at the end of my trip in 2006.
With my tours and flights booked, I left home for this adventure exactly one year, one week and one day after returning home from the last. That year seemed so long with the anticipation of the next approaching. A few things changed during that time, but not a lot. I gained more responsibility at my job after our general manager passed away while traveling in Brazil, I bought a new car (with a bank loan, of course), and I wrote my first travelogue. I knew I would be writing a travelogue for this trip too, and gave myself a head start by having some initial planning done before I even left home.
Part One: Europe
In 2006 I traveled through Eastern and Western Europe, so during this trip it was time to check out the north. Even before leaving on my 2006 trip, I knew I’d be doing this tour next - Contiki’s 32 day Scandinavia & Russia (click HERE to see the itinerary). It started in Copenhagen, Denmark and went through Stockholm, Sweden, all of Norway from the south to the northern peak of Nordkapp, and down through Finland encompassing all of Scandinavia. The only Scandinavian country it didn’t visit was Iceland, so to complete my northern country exploration I decided to go there on my own before the tour started. On the 18th day of the tour, myself and 16 others from the Scandinavia tour joined another Contiki tour and continued on to Russia - visiting the former Soviet Union’s major cities. After, we continued through the northern European cities of Minsk, Belarus; Warsaw, Poland; and Berlin, Germany before ending the tour back where we started in Copenhagen. On the way I saw some of Europe’s most spectacular sights, as well as making life long friends.
This tour is no longer offered by Contiki. In fact, my tour was the very last one. Instead there’s a revised version that visits many of the same places, although much shorter. As you will soon read, this tour was very different from my last experience with Contiki, although no less spectacular. I’ve tried to explain the experience in detail as much as I could, but like anything in life nothing compares to experiencing it for yourself.
Part Two: Asia
I look at this as my next step into world travel - leaving the normality of Europe and venturing into some of the less-traveled places in the world. This was my first time traveling with the Intrepid tour company, on a 38 day (now 40 day) tour called Indochina Encompassed - visiting Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. Intrepid is much different than Contiki. It’s geared towards more serious travelers and comes as close to independent travel as a tour can be. Instead of traveling with 50 other people on a coach, the tours are limited to 12-16 people and use public transport or small hired vehicles. After experiencing this form of travel, I’ll never go back to coach tours again.
Southeast Asia has a ‘rawness’ to it - which made the experience even more rewarding. I was able to see parts of the world where humanity is still developing, and it opened my eyes and changed me more than anything has before. It felt like a personal challenge to go for over a month without many modern conveniences and ‘roughing it’, and as you will read, it was one of the greatest times of my life.
I don’t want to talk too much in this Prologue since there’s so much to read in the daily entries, but I’d just like to stress that this travelogue doesn’t even come close to doing justice to the experience. There’s so much more than what’s written, but I at least hope that it provides a good description of what the experience was like. I covered the major events that happened every day, which is probably only half of the big picture. There’s a lot of stuff that can’t be described well in writing - such as the friendships, conversations, and all the smaller things that happen on a daily basis. If you really want to know what world travel is all about, then I encourage my readers to go out there and experience it for yourselves. It’s easier than you think!
This travelogue got it’s name because I really did fly all the way around the world - traveling east the entire way. I started in my home city of Moose Jaw, Canada and set off on my 100 day adventure. I hope you enjoy reading about my journey as much as I did writing about it.
To begin the journey, continue to DAY 1.
Pre-planning
I knew that I wanted to do a tour to Scandinavia and Russia with Contiki on this trip, but I also wanted the entire experience to be much longer than the last. I traveled for 73 days in 2006, and I wouldn’t have settled for anything less this time. Besides the tour, I was having trouble planning out the rest of my travels. Originally, I decided on doing Contiki’s Spanish Spree tour before going to Scandinavia, then visiting the Baltic countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and the former Yugoslavia after. I was happy with my plans, but executing them was a different story. There weren’t many major travel companies that went to the Baltics and Yugoslavia, and I didn’t want to go alone, so I had a difficult time figuring out how I was going to do this. I researched many different travel companies and re-arranged my itinerary plans a dozen times, but nothing ever felt ‘right’. I just felt like this plan wasn’t meant to be. That’s when I started thinking about my other options, and remembered a tour company I’d been browsing for the last few months.
The tour company was called Intrepid - and while looking on their website I came across a tour to Southeast Asia that looked completely awesome. I knew I wanted Asia to be my next continent after Europe, but I didn’t think I’d actually go this soon. On a whim, I figured out how much it would cost to do this Southeast Asia tour after my tour in Europe - and it not only worked out to be cheaper, but it felt like this was the right thing to do. It was decided - I was going to Asia!
I planned my flights on a website called AirTreks.com which specializes in round-the-world tickets. I was able to choose where I wanted my layovers between flights, and could extend them for several days giving myself a chance to see the cities (practically for free). I had several different layover options flying from Europe to Asia - among them were Athens, Greece; Amman, Jordan; Manama, Bahrain; Doha, Qatar; and Dubai, UAE. I’d been to Athens before and the other cities were places I wanted to visit some day, but the one I wanted to go to the most was Dubai. I’d seen so much hype about it in the news and read so many fascinating articles about it on the Internet, so I couldn’t wait to see what it was really like. In hindsight I should’ve gone with Amman.
I didn’t have as many layover options on my way home from Asia. I would be going through Hong Kong for sure, and my other options were either Beijing, China or Taipei, Taiwan. It would’ve been too much hassle to enter China just for a layover, so I decided on Taipei. At this point my trip was 99 days (and this travelogue would’ve been called “Round the World in 99 Days”), but while I was traveling one of my flights got pushed back by one day - extending my trip to 100.
As usual, I also made plans to spend a few days visiting my friend Marion who lives in Lille, France. She has been the one constant during all three of my trips to Europe. She was an exchange student at my highschool in my senior year and we became best friends. The year after graduation, in 2001, I went to visit her in Lille for three weeks. I also spent time with her at the end of my trip in 2006.
With my tours and flights booked, I left home for this adventure exactly one year, one week and one day after returning home from the last. That year seemed so long with the anticipation of the next approaching. A few things changed during that time, but not a lot. I gained more responsibility at my job after our general manager passed away while traveling in Brazil, I bought a new car (with a bank loan, of course), and I wrote my first travelogue. I knew I would be writing a travelogue for this trip too, and gave myself a head start by having some initial planning done before I even left home.
Part One: Europe
In 2006 I traveled through Eastern and Western Europe, so during this trip it was time to check out the north. Even before leaving on my 2006 trip, I knew I’d be doing this tour next - Contiki’s 32 day Scandinavia & Russia (click HERE to see the itinerary). It started in Copenhagen, Denmark and went through Stockholm, Sweden, all of Norway from the south to the northern peak of Nordkapp, and down through Finland encompassing all of Scandinavia. The only Scandinavian country it didn’t visit was Iceland, so to complete my northern country exploration I decided to go there on my own before the tour started. On the 18th day of the tour, myself and 16 others from the Scandinavia tour joined another Contiki tour and continued on to Russia - visiting the former Soviet Union’s major cities. After, we continued through the northern European cities of Minsk, Belarus; Warsaw, Poland; and Berlin, Germany before ending the tour back where we started in Copenhagen. On the way I saw some of Europe’s most spectacular sights, as well as making life long friends.
This tour is no longer offered by Contiki. In fact, my tour was the very last one. Instead there’s a revised version that visits many of the same places, although much shorter. As you will soon read, this tour was very different from my last experience with Contiki, although no less spectacular. I’ve tried to explain the experience in detail as much as I could, but like anything in life nothing compares to experiencing it for yourself.
Part Two: Asia
I look at this as my next step into world travel - leaving the normality of Europe and venturing into some of the less-traveled places in the world. This was my first time traveling with the Intrepid tour company, on a 38 day (now 40 day) tour called Indochina Encompassed - visiting Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. Intrepid is much different than Contiki. It’s geared towards more serious travelers and comes as close to independent travel as a tour can be. Instead of traveling with 50 other people on a coach, the tours are limited to 12-16 people and use public transport or small hired vehicles. After experiencing this form of travel, I’ll never go back to coach tours again.
Southeast Asia has a ‘rawness’ to it - which made the experience even more rewarding. I was able to see parts of the world where humanity is still developing, and it opened my eyes and changed me more than anything has before. It felt like a personal challenge to go for over a month without many modern conveniences and ‘roughing it’, and as you will read, it was one of the greatest times of my life.
I don’t want to talk too much in this Prologue since there’s so much to read in the daily entries, but I’d just like to stress that this travelogue doesn’t even come close to doing justice to the experience. There’s so much more than what’s written, but I at least hope that it provides a good description of what the experience was like. I covered the major events that happened every day, which is probably only half of the big picture. There’s a lot of stuff that can’t be described well in writing - such as the friendships, conversations, and all the smaller things that happen on a daily basis. If you really want to know what world travel is all about, then I encourage my readers to go out there and experience it for yourselves. It’s easier than you think!
This travelogue got it’s name because I really did fly all the way around the world - traveling east the entire way. I started in my home city of Moose Jaw, Canada and set off on my 100 day adventure. I hope you enjoy reading about my journey as much as I did writing about it.
To begin the journey, continue to DAY 1.
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