50 days and counting

It is now exactly 50 days before my flight to Bangkok and my jittery excitement is slowly morphing into a, slightly manic, nervous energy.

I recognise this feeling from my previous, seemingly erratic, spontaneous life decisions to uproot my life and move to a different country. This is noticeably different though. I’m not uprooting to settle down somewhere else. It’s more like digging up my roots, and cramming them into a backpack to leave them in there for the unforeseeable future. I never had too much of a structured plan as to what to do but at least I knew approximately where I would do whatever it’d be I’d end up doing. Now it’s all open which is at once, incredibly exciting and terrifyingly nerve-wrecking. I can’t wait for the adventures and challenges ahead. Can’t wait for the new people I’ll meet and the new experiences, good and bad, that lie ahead of me.

So far I’ve “planned” the first three weeks of my trip. Flying into Bangkok I’ll stay there for a few days to see the sights and get over the inevitable jet-lag, then one night in Phitsanulok (however one is supposed to pronounce that), on to Sukhothai and Chiang Mai, just in time for the famous Loy Krathong / Yee Peng Festival, and finally one week in Pai where I’ll be residing in my own (dirt cheap) double-bed-bungalow with pool view. After that the adventure continues for approximately another ten days in the north of Thailand before moving on to Laos (via two day slow boat which will be an entirely separate story to tell I’m sure). Until then however, I have 50 days to work, meet up with friends for goodbyes and see-you-laters and resist the temptation to plan every detail. There’s lots of things to sort out still. I need to pack, unpack and then repack, my tiny (and yet surprisingly plentiful) household in order for it to be sent from one country to another, need to buy any last minute necessities, like mosquito repellent and all the sunscreen I can feasibly stuff into my backpack, and need to sell various bits and bobs for some extra pocket money.

50 days sounds at once like forever away and ludicrously close and tomorrow it’ll only be 49 and so on and so on.

In any case, I am so ready for this adventure to begin.