Asia 2017 – Cities

Asia 2017 Cities

Asia 2017 Cities

I need to make a list of cities that I m-a-y be visiting during the Asia 2017 Trip. There will never be a list set in stone, but once I commit to tickets for a plane into the city, the probabilities go way-up that I will arrive there. It’s not an absolute, but as the price I pay in advance to get to a location goes up the probability I will arrives increases exponentially. So, what’s on my current list?

New Zealand: Auckland, Tauranga, Rotorua, Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown. Australia: Melbourne, Hobart, Sydney, Gold Coast/Brisbane and Cairns. Indonesia: Bali, Makassar, Ambon, Sorong and Yogyakarta. Malaysia: KL (with the obligatory side-trip to Singapore). Maledives: Male. Sri Lanka: Colombo. India: Madurai, Chennai and Kolkota. Bangladesh: Dakka. Myanmar: Yangon and Bagan. Thailand: Bangkok. Taiwan: Taipei. Okinawa: Okinawa. South Korea: Jeju and Seoul. Japan: Tokyo and ?????.

Some of the Key issues in my planning are (1) time – as in movement from one place to another; (2) accommodations – there are lots of places in the world where cheap accommodations are lacking; and (3) air travel – risk of having connection problems when I least expect it. How to work around those problems? First find out how certain the air connections are. If there are flights every day that’s a lot better than having a flight once a week. Next, find out more about the cities and how conducive they are to very short term visits. Can I get in and out with a passport stamp in a relative short amount of time. While I know that violates the spirit of tourism and seems like I’m just going for the passport stamp, the simple truth is that there are some places in the world that I’m interested in spending time in and some that I’m not. Just because I want to go there doesn’t mean I want to spend a lot of time there. Once I’ve solved the issue of how much time I will have to devote to a location due to the number of lights in and out in a week, I can determine whether the costs of accommodations for as much as a few days is prohibitive. At least for my budget and my desire to see a given location.