July 3I'm off again y'all. It's sad to say goodbye to Taipei...but zai jian, I gotta go.
July 3 On Thursday, July 3, I depart from Taipei and land in
Bangkok, Thailand
where I will have my Burmese visa processed. I want to get out of Bangkok as quick as possible. Can't stand that place. Will have to spend the weekend while the visa is doing the beaurocracy shuffle. Hopefully zip up to Ayutthaya
for the weekend. Nice. Pick up my visa Monday and leave the next day, if not that day for
Myanmar
I will touch down in Yangon, capital of Myanmar. Get my bearings straight. Check it out, and do some day trips around the area. Probably no beaches (that comes later), monsoon season making the roads particularly tricky.
Will then travel North to Mandalay and do the circle, or rather diamond. Hopefully a nice riverboat ride to Bagan. Over to Inle lake. And eventually a domestic flight from Heho to Tachilek, where I'm gonna' try, by cracky, and walk across the border to Thailand in the Golden Triangle. (And if that doesn't work, oh what a grumpy backtracker backpacker I'll be...). Depending on how much I like the country, and depending on whether Big Brother really is watching me, I should be in Myanmar for at least a few weeks.
North Thailand
Back in Thailand, up in the hills. Visit some small towns I missed last summer - Chiang Rai, Pai, Chiang Sean - until getting to Chiang Mai for my third time. Love that place. Probably just stay for a few days and then make my way south towards the peninsula and gulf islands, stopping briefly in Sukhothai and Kanchanburi to see the bridge and all that jazz. Oh, dag, and I'll have to make appearance in Bangkok to pick up my diving gear.
My last couple weeks will be spent lounging in a hammock on a beachside hut, and getting some snorkelling and scuba diving in.
And then it's back to that Bangkok place again, for as short a time as possible, to catch my August 18 flight back to
Taipei, Taiwan
I can no longer call it home - I'll just be a visitor for my last week in Formosa. On August 25, I'm comin' home baby! See y'all in Canada for Labour Day weekend.