so it's taken a considerable amount of self-restraint, partner-restraint, sacrifice and season's of how i met your mother to achieve our budgeted target.
anyone considering an adventure like ours, should be warned that it's not all snowflakes and cherry blossoms:
our living environment is ... intimate ... to say the very least. we sleep one floor above the 200-odd children that walk through our doors every week. on either side of our 3 x 5m bedroom, lives another two people in their own 3 x 5m space. the kitchen is four floors down, communal and lacks the general convenience of one's own kitchen. so for this reason, and to save a substantial amount on food costs, we eat in a canteen, along with our colleagues / friends / foes / neighbors / children / management - and not only is the food canteen-quality ... but it's korean-canteen-quality.
the days are long when we work a night shift - but most of the time we view this as a positive way to make the time pass faster.
if you're a whiskey lover, i've got some bad news for you: scotch is so expensive here that there is no way you could indulge your taste buds and save the money you need to. you'll have to switch to the local "beer" which is ... alright ... if you like the taste of synthetic fibers.
if you enjoy a good steak ... i'm afraid there's more bad news on the way. meat is fairly pricey here (compared to back home) and the "meat" in the "food" at the canteen is not the kind you're looking for. trust me.
but all this aside, if you can suck it up for a few months - you can save the funds you need to. and when you do that, you could do something like this:
the F@head itinery:
south east asia
on june 26th fly out of seoul to hanoi (flights booked and paid for).
during july, travel down the length of vietnam and by august, cross the border into the bottom of cambodia, and travel up the country for three weeks.
once at the top border, cross into laos. spend september exploring there, and then enter thailand from the top.
** at some stage, meet up with Fathead's sister and family for their holiday.
travel all the way through thailand for the next month and a half, then cross into malaysia around mid-november.
meet long lost friends from varsity in kuala lumpur and spend 10 days with them as you island hop from langkawi. use the remainder of november to move through malaysia, cross the ocean to indonesia and end your south east asian tour in bali.
on the 10th december, catch a flight out from bali (flights booked and paid for), to sydney. from there, road trip through aus (to brisbane) to spend december and christmas with the Fathead clan.
sound rad?
... yep, i thought so.
I am so jealous!
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