Post-Semester Plans ...

... Have seriously changed about 15 times since Day 1, but now I think I know what I'm doing. Maybe? Anyways, I went from spending a summer in Europe to flying just to Amsterdam to going back to Thailand to going to India and China to going to China Taiwan Korea Japan to hiking up the Mekong to going to the Philippines ... but now I think -- keyword think -- I know what I am doing. I only have twenty days, which is ideally how much I would like to spend in one small region alone, but I am strapped for time so I will have to make due. So, as of now, here's my plan.

25 April - Fly to Ho Chi Minh City. Spend a few days there until I get a good feel for the city, then take a bus up to Hanoi, stopping in Hue and maybe some other villages. I'm only going to spend a week here, give or take a few days, so I won't be able to stop in more than one or two villages.

After that - Go overland to the Yunnan Province in China. I haven't decided what I will do here but I'm planning to spend most of my trip here. I especially want to trek the Tiger Leaping Gorge. Ideally I would like to plan a trip of a few weeks to explore the entire province, but there have been talks of constructing a dam through here which would completely change the landscape. And it's gorgeous! So I want to see it while I can, since I have no idea when I will make it back to China.

After that - Spend only three days in Beijing. All I really want to see is the Great Wall and Forbidden City, but really I could skip Beijing all together. But since I'm probably flying out of here I might as well look around for a few days.

Pics of the Tiger Leaping Gorge on flickr:

Places I won't get to:
Bali - I don't really know anything about it but I hear it's amazing and one of those places you just have to visit. If it's so great, then I can easily plan a vacation here someday. No big deal if I don't get to it.
Philippines - Okay so I really wanted to go here, they've got some gorgeous sights and I really wanted to hike up Mount Apo in Davao. Unless I spend a few months traveling around Southeast Asia, which I am really hoping to do someday, I don't see myself in the Philippines -- it's not somewhere I would fly to for a week then come back to the States. Well, maybe.
Borneo - I hear it's really fun and pretty, but I hear that about everywhere. I wanted to visit the villages in Sarawak (I hear they have severed heads still on display on wooden posts in some spots) and hike up Mount Kinabalu.
Rural Cambodia and Laos - We'll see how far we get next week when Quinn and I head up there. I may stop over here from Vietnam, but that depends on how much time I have / how ambitious I'm feeling / how complicated the Visa situation may be.