And now its official!

So, I’ve gone off and done it. I purchased for the grand total of $824.88 a roundtrip ticket to Bangkok on Cathay Pacific airlines. Departing on Monday November 26 from JFK (with a brief stopover in Hong Kong) and returning on Wednesday December 26. This is happening. I’m going to Thailand for a month.

And as I clicked on the “Confirm Purchase” button transforming my daydreams into reality, my excitement transformed into fear. What have I gone off and done, I think to myself. Why on earth would I want to go adventuring off into the unknown, into a completely foreign culture, without a single companion? Won’t I get lonely? Won’t I miss my office cubicle terribly, not to mention my auditing spreadsheets and online fantasy sports teams? What will I do and where will I go when I arrive? Will I find myself shyly hanging by myself nursing a beer in a crowded bar or will I find myself cart wheeling through the streets of Bangkok relishing in the freedom of independent travel greeting anybody and everybody with enthusiastic cries of "Sawatdee Khrab!!” – Which I just looked up to mean hello in Thai. How the hell do you pronounce that anyway? I am going to completely butcher their language and insult any Thai that I run into with my mispronunciations.

The one thing that I am attracted to yet at the same time weary of is the backpacking culture. Being an independent traveler, staying at hostels and being among like-minded individuals who love to travel and seek adventure is obviously a major draw to be in very social environments like hostels. Yet, I have absolutely no experience with them, so I’m not sure what exactly to expect. Unlike traditional backpackers whose goal is to travel for as long as possible for as little as possible and perhaps do things off the beaten path, my goals are slightly different. A month is a long time for somebody like me to take off from work and travel, but a relatively short amount of time for people who have no real commitments and simply life to travel.

Plus, I have more money to spend and thus have no problem doing all the activities I want to do. Take a $400 Scuba Diving Course, sure. Take 3 days to stay in an upscale all-inclusive resort for $500, possibly. Go on a rafting/trekking/elephant riding adventure? What’s $300? And I much rather spend $50 for a cheap flight from one part of the country to another than wasting an entire day on a bus. I rather spend $30 a night for my own room in a more “upscale” hostel with my air conditioning and a swimming pool, than $5 a night to sleep in an open air dorm room with 30 bunk beds. But anyway, you get the point. And yeah, I’m definitely planning on brining all my tech gear – ipod, digital camera, and possibly a laptop to be determined at a later date. There actually is a term for somebody like me: a flashpacker .

The purpose and intended audience of a blog can be three-hold. They are as followed:

A) Yourself (Diary/Journal) – Provide a personal and private reflection upon everyday life or a specific topic of interest for an individual who rather use the Internet as a sounding board than write down thoughts in a journal/diary.
B) Friends and Family (Email) – Instead of sending mass emails, use a blog to keep your friends and family up to date on your adventures or latest news.
C) General Public (Website) – Attempt to build as large a readership as possible by blogging about things that may be of everyday interest to people other than those who know you.

At this point, this blog is looking like Option #B (Hi Mom!!!), but if I really wanted to attempt to branch out to a wider audience than friends and family, then I could attempt to build readership by providing travel tips and advice to the mid twenty to early thirty sect who qualifies as a “flash-packer” and has the extra money to spend, is more established in their life than the 18 to 21 year old backpacker, yet still seeks adventure and has the off the beaten path mindset. Could be interesting; and who knows, maybe I can actual inspire some other people sitting in a cube somewhere watching the last few years of their youth slip away to do something out of the ordinary like temporarily abandon their jobs, put their career on hold, and live a little for a change.