Hope For the Guest

The idea to travel through Southeast Asia was a faint idea but in a couple days it exploded into a plan with a start date. I wanted to leave around my 22nd birthday, I decided that three months before my departure date was set. I had three months to get everything in order for my trip.

I got a job in a week, I started working 100+ hours a week. Before it would have be awful but with this new goal it was easy to find the motivation. Anytime I wasn’t working I was getting my gear, budgeting or trying to get all the vaccines taken care of. I have trouble researching about places and things to do or planning exact routes so I focused on the basics of how to enter each country, the currency and the plants and animals because that is just fun for me.

I started selling everything I could sell, I sold my car my laptop, my bike, and anything that had value that I wouldn’t need.
I got my finances in order, I wanted to have money to come back to that was separate from the money I would travel on, I wanted a small portion of that saved money to be in my brokerage account while I was traveling, I hadn’t set any plans that I couldn’t cancel free of charge so those were easy to stop payments to and mostly I worked as much as I could to reach my goal before I left.

By a week before departure I had nearly everything ready to go. I had made it easy to get up and go by not having many payments to worry about and by saving a portion of my income the year before. When I added the three months of intensive work to that I made my goal no problem.

I left with three months of funds to come back to, and enough to travel for 8 months with a 1k emergency fund. I didn’t went to set myself up for failure so I made sure each estimate and budget I made was very conservative. I didn’t want to be living on the edge of a knife. I heard it was possible to live on around 15-25 a day so I budgeted around 35 per day.
I know the mistakes of shortsightedness my generation are prone to and I don’t want to subscribe to living my life one away from collapse.

It was hard work but hard work isn’t very hard when its for a good reason.

My first reason to travel to Southeast Asia was hearing that it was cheap.
To me that not only means it is less expensive but it means that it is wild and changing fast. I want to see the things that will be gone in a few years. There are parts of this world that simply won’t exist in five years. in 5 years or in 10 there might not be half as many small villages or native languages spoken in the developing world. I want to see some of that before its gone.
I also think that this kind of travel will be more fun for me while I’m young, I’ll leave Europe for the time when luxury is a priority over cheapness. So Southeast Asia sounded like the place for me.

My first preparations started with learning about money and how to be strong financially, I didn’t know it would prepare me for traveling at first I just knew that I hated to feel poor and I wanted to live my life as well as I could. Money would be important, not because it caused happiness but because it made the basics easy so the hard stuff could be focused on. I started with learning about money mindsets, and how to live decently without spending a lot of money. I learned to dislike payment plans, and enjoy finding cheaper ways to live. At first I sacrificed a lot of my time and energy, and sometimes happiness in order to save my money but after awhile I learned that there are two ways to have more money 1- save more and 2- make more. I also learned that money was less important than I originally thought. So now I generally think money follows after becoming an effective person so I spend my money as effectively as I can and I work knowing every hour I spend is irrevocably lost to my history. I will never get back the thousands of hours I’ve spent in pursuit of my financial goals, not a bad thing but something that is true. So when I work I have a damn good reason.

I learned a lot about investing, Grocery outlet, Whole foods, selling things, what is expensive for no good reason and what is worth spending a lot of money on. I learned that there is essentially unlimited amounts of money in the world but only a finite amount of time in my lifespan.
I spent six months learning about business and money. I learned the basics of a couple internet coding languages, and how to draw traffic and up your websites rank in google.
But I have a shortcoming when it comes to focus, I force myself to continue past the point where my happiness is negatively effected. I’m somewhat used to being uncomfortable so I don’t fully notice my discomfort until I am very low emotionally. I got to that place after months of working very hard on business, I got to the point where I couldn’t put much into my projects so I decided it would be better to focus on dealing with my depression. I worked on a better daily habit, I learned that exercise, sunlight, human connection, Omega 3 fatty acids and not too much time to ruminate were suppose to help. I have always struggled to stay happy in one place, I need some kind of immediate reason to get up and go, I used to think I wasn’t motivated but now I think my motivation is acclimated to the dramatic and not the regular. It makes me feel happier in intensity and restless, sometimes moody in the ordinary.

A new dream started to form in my mind, I wanted to travel. I had been working a long time to save up for my next step. I didn’t know what it would be but over those months It started to seem crazy to wait to travel, waiting was ignoring the fact that time is incredibly valuable, maybe the most valuable thing.

I’ve been tracking my spending over the first week of travel. I enjoy this kind of math and I wish there was more information about exact costs when I do research for traveling. I find it ridiculous when travel info websites don’t talk about cost, even a ball park estimate. I know there are many reasons the prices change but for most people the cost is a concern, a defining concern. Its a reason not to travel, the idea that travel is very expensive has probably stopped many amazing trips before they even got to the planning stages.
I would thoroughly enjoy destroying any reason not to travel.

In the first week I’ve spent 577 Ringgit (133USD). 81RM (19USD) per day all inclusive.
I’ve been in Kuala Lumpur, Palau Ketam, Teluk Kemang and Melaka.
2RM (.50USD) for an hour bus ride. 4RM for a couple hours.
7.50RM (2USD) for an hour and a half train ride.
5RM (1USD) for street food.
10-15RM (2.50-3.50USD) for a nicer restaurant.
20RM (4.50USD) for a very cheap single bed room.
40-70RM (9-16USD) for a double with A/C and wifi.
23RM for the Zoo.
15RM for a boat tour.
15RM for a movie at a theater.
2RM for a 500ml water bottle.
4RM for 1.5L water bottle.

19 US dollars is what a lot of people make an hour. But even if you make minimum wage in the US you could save an hour of your pay per day and still travel for a week every two weeks once you have enough for your plane ticket. Which I suspect is a big stopper for a lot of people.

I paid 527USD for my plane ticket from Seattle to Kaula Lumpur. So in total travel cost I’ve spent 660 for a week of travel, or 94USD per day. Not as good as 19USD and I haven’t even taken into account the gear I bought to make my trip a little easier.

I think its about setting yourself up to do the things you want to do.
I will talk about how I set myself up and I can really only give advice for that way of being. I have put a lot of effort into setting myself up to succeed, not just in the short term but in years and decades. I’m not going to say I’m ready to let my setup ride without continued work but I think I’m proud that I’m even thinking of my long term.

I will talk about setting myself up for this trip in a future post.

First thing this morning Kaari and I held a little ceremony to allow us to move into this trip with more clarity. We wrote down what we want to let go of this trip and what we want to carry with us. I’ve done this sort of thing before at the Wilderness school I went to from the age of 9 until I was 17. I always found that it helped me to feel more fully present with my time on the trip.

We picked one item from our belongings to leave behind symbolically and we ate a bit of zucchini bread that Kaari had brought as a snack for the flight. We used the bread as a symbol of things we want to carry with us as it would become a part of us. It was a simple way for me to contemplate why I’m here and how I want to move forward. I’ve often had the experience that I get out of something what I put into it, if I go into a trip without an idea of what I’m trying to do it tends to be less impactful than the trips  I go into wanting something out of it.

I let go of being so cynical, as I’ve grown up many things have turned my expectations lower and lower until expecting bad things prevents some good things from being a part of my life.

I am taking with me a desire to be more compassionate of the people around me. I care a lot but its still easy for me to be negative about people. I want to use this trip as an opportunity to open myself up to connecting with the world and the people around me. I think its a piece of life that I would really benefit from.

I want a lot from this trip and I’m going to mine it for every scrap of growth I can.

There is something hard for me to understand about the limbo state of being in planes and airports. Somehow I took a plane ride at 2am that lasted 12 and a half hours and I arrived at 5am… Oh and I lost a day in the process so its now the 3rd.

I haven’t been able to access how I’m feeling yet. It comes in little waves but nothing very strong yet. So far it doesn’t feel like I am really anywhere. I think I will feel differently when I step out of the airport in Kuala Lumpur.

A couple odd things here at the Taipei airport: they have hello kitty breastfeeding rooms, and every airport employee wears a somewhat stylized uniform that looks something like Anime.

Here it is, all my gear for 240 days or 5,760 hours in Southeast Asia.
I love gear, I’ve always been an obsessive packer. I would pack weeks before a big trip when I was younger. I think it goes along with learning survival skills since I was 9, I can start a fire with sticks but its much easier to carry a lighter.

When I was 15 I did a search and rescue course so I could be a part of the search and rescue operations in the county I lived in. I was already into gear but after that I started to pack my bag for every outing and than come home and unpack. I started to get a good idea about what was actually needed and what wasn’t. I like gear but I really don’t like carrying a lot of it. Everything I have in my pack for this trip is useful but it might not all pass the test of being worth their weight to carry.

I divided my pack into four categories, Clothes, Electronics, Utilities and Hygiene/First aid.
I kept in mind that some things can be bought and replenished along the way and some things are harder to find abroad.

Clothes:

1- Synthetic T-shirt
1-Cotton T-shirt
1-Short Sleeve button up
2-Long sleeve button ups
1-Pair of pants (with passport and credit card hidden pockets)
1-Swim shorts (with zipper pocket for safekeeping smaller items on day trips)
1-Pair of long underwear top and bottoms.
2-Short socks
2-Long socks
3-Pair underwear (synthetic odor resistant, quick drying. lightweight)
1-Hat
1-Pair minimalist shoes (for day trips, water shoes, shower shoes)
1-Pair hiking boots

   
1-Laptop and charging cable
1- Nikon D3300 and charger
1-Shutter remote (for long exposure pictures) 
1-Extra battery for D3300
1-Camera cleaning kit
2-16GB SD cards
1-32GB SD card (good for 2000 pictures without unloading it)
1-Polaroid Xs100 action camera and charging cable (waterproof to 10 meters) 
1-DSLR rain cover
1-Universal plug adapter (kikkerland adapter. good for 160 countries)
1-headphone splitter cable (sharing music on long trips)
1-MP3 player and charging cable
1-1TB external hard drive (For pictures)
  1-headlamp
1-Small flashlight
1-Sewing kit
1-journal
1-Pocket journal  (doubles as wallet)
1-Sharpie
1-Pencil
2-Space pens
1-Tactical pen (For self defense)
1-Pair goggles
1-Tweezers
1-Mosquito head net
1-Sawyer water filter (Filters out everything except viruses)
1- Sweetwater purifier solution (to kill viruses)
5-Extra 1 Quart ziplocs
8- Sandwich ziplocs
1-Sleeping bag liner (55% silk 45%cotton)
1-2 liter water bag
1-Small padlock
1- 15ft paracord (One use is as a clothes line)
1- Wire roll (Good to keep the mosquito net off face)
1-Small roll duct tape
5-Clothes pins
4-Zipties (For repair)
  3-2.5oz mosquito repellent
1-Bottle Excedrin (For headaches )
1-Bottle Aleve
1-Tooth paste
1-Tooth brush
1-Ace bandage
1-Athletic tape
1-bandages (Butterfly and regular)
1-Nail clippers
1-Imodium (For diarrhea)
1-Sunscreen stick
1-Bar of soap
10- Q-tips
1-Shaving razor
1-Floss
1- Chapstick
1-Tube neosporin (Antiseptic)
1-CPR mask
2-Pack Emergen-C


Backpack and Daypack:
1-Osprey Stratos 36L
1-12L messenger bag that I fitted with an anti sway strap.

And after its all packed up:

If you have any questions, I’d love to try answering them.
Gear is a passion of mine so I would be excited to share that.

P.S. here is what the hidden pockets I made for my pants look like:

 I’ve heard that a journey starts when you decide to go, I like that a lot.
Stepping through the gate of decision can make me feel lighter even if the decision is heavy.
In a week I will be taking one of the big steps in my trip to Southeast Asia. Its certainly not the first but it is a very important step and I imagine that stepping onto that plane will start to concrete the feeling of excitement that has been brewing for months.

I worked hard jobs for this.
I quit jobs for this.
I will leave my family behind to do this.
I will miss holidays.
And its what I want to do with my life right now.

I need big steps to remind me I’m still alive. I need to throw myself into the unknown to show myself that I am capable. I let myself get stagnant without my big goals and for me not much feels worse than stagnation.

I will leave at 1:50am from SeaTac international Airport on the 2nd of September.
I have 8 months, or roughly 240 days before I’d like to be back.

Soon I will make a post about my gear and the preparation I’ve done.
I love gear, it calms me down to pack my backpack and Its one of the parts of preparation for travel that I most enjoy.

I’m writing to give a little information about why I made a blog.
My goals are to have a journal-like place to add my learning journey and as a way of opening up connecting with anyone else who’s interest is caught by my thoughts, pictures or anything else I add in the intertwining journey I’m on.

Not to mention I’m leaving on a trip in 9 days and 5 hours so this is a place where I’ll share all sorts of pictures, stories and learning from my trip.

I hope you feel free to ask questions and connect with me here.