About the Trip

My Plan

The plan is to leave September 4th and arrive in Bali, Indonesia on September 6th. I'm flying from Minneapolis, MN to Denver, CO to San Fransisco, CA to Taipei, Taiwan and finally to Bali, Indonesia. It will take me 30 hrs of travel and a sore tush to arrive at my final destination... that's if everything goes as planned and we all know that never happens.


View Larger Map

(If you click on the 'View Larger Map' and scroll down, you can actually see the airstrip I'll be landing on .)

I will be flying with Frontier Airlines on the first two legs of my journey and China Airlines will be carrying me over the Pacific for the the last two legs. I requested an aisle seat so I'm almost guaranteed I'll get stuck in the middle. I love how airlines work.

Once I get to Bali I'll probably hang around the island until I get acclimated to the surroundings and the god awful humidity this beautiful place is cursed with. From there my only other plan is to be in Medan, Indonesia on November 2nd to catch a flight out to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia before my 60 day visa runs out.


The only reason I booked my flight to Malaysia is to provide 'Proof of Onward Travel.' Since I bought a one-way ticket to Indonesia I felt I should be on the safe side and have this ticket as a security blanket so they won't send me packing back to America. Plus, it only cost me $32 through Air Asia. That's a cheap price to pay for a little peace of mind.

The rest of the trip is up in the air. I plan to go and do whatever feels right at the time. If I meet some fun people and they are heading to the Philippines to do some diving... Count me in if it feels right. That's my approach to this whole trip. I wanted to have as much flexibility as possible which led me to the decision of buying one-way tickets versus the typical 'Round the World' ticket so many people buy.


The trip is sort of a stepping stone (testing the water) to see if I like the lifestyle of long-term travel. If that's my calling, then I plan to do everything in my power to keep it going. I don't want this to be a one year gap thing that I do just to say I did it . I'm hoping it's something I can make a little cash at to prolong it until I feel it's time to settle down. I'm sure I'll be in and out of the US... but then again who knows. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that I could be gone 2 weeks or 2 years and I may stay continuously overseas or I may travel back to the US to refuel before my next adventure. I just don't know. I guess we will find out in the months to come.


That's the little bit of the plan that I know. Stop back to watch how the rest unfolds.

Why did I chose this location?

I chose Southeast Asia and more specifically Indonesia because of the diverse landscape and culture this area of the world offers. Steaming volcanoes, pristine beaches, ancient ruins, and remote jungles are just a few of the highlights boasted by the largest archipelago in the world.

Southeast Asia seemed like a good starting point because it had a fairly decent traveling structure already in place. I wanted to go somewhere that wasn't intimating to me, deep with culture and history and also wasn't too hard on the budget. When I added all of these things together along with a list of some other considerations, Southeast Asia was the obvious choice.