I'm leaving for Asia tomorrow!

Well hello there! That's right, the countdown on the right will probably self-destruct sometime soon because my visit to see Taylor in Indonesia starts TOMORROW!!! I seriously doubt I'm going to be able to blog while I'm there (more because Taylor will mock me mercilessly if I try to use any of our precious online time blogging than because of lack of internet access....), but I promise to give a good recap when I get back, complete with photos. Before I go though, I thought I'd give you an idea of what I plan to be up to.

I'll be overseas for a total of about 3 weeks. Here's the breakdown:

I leave tomorrow at 12:30pm from Detroit on Northwest. My first leg is 13 hours and lands in Tokyo at about 3:30pm local time (that includes the 14 hours time difference). Then, I have a 2 hour layover in Tokyo before I fly to Singapore. That flight is about 8 hours and lands in Singapore at 12:35am local time on January 1 (35 minutes after they ring in the New Year in Singapore). If you're sitting in the U.S., think of be and Taylor being reunited after 5 months at 11:30am on Wednesday (2 days from now!!!!!!)! I can't wait!

So, after a very exciting reunion (my fiance has requested it not be tearful, but I cannot make any promises!), we're heading to a hotel called the Far East Hotel: Chiang Village. It's just a few miles from the airport in Singapore. Taylor will have arrived and checked in already, so we should be able to just head to our room for a nice shower (I'll be feeling pretty icky after 24 hours traveling!). We decided we should try to celebrate the New Year a little, so we're going to go out somewhere at like 2am just to hang out for a couple hours :)

On Thursday (January 1), we're going to get up and check out of the hotel and find our way to the bus station to get a bus to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. See, we wanted to go somewhere else in Asia, and KL (as they call it) is only about a 5 hour bus ride. We have a hotel reserved for the nights of Jan 1 and Jan 2 in KL and then we're planning on staying in Malaysia 2 more nights, though we haven't decided if we want to stay in KL or go somewhere else. I have some recommendations from friends and I'm going to call another friend who lived there for a year today to see what they think we should do!

On January 5, we're heading back to Singapore where we'll stay for 2 nights with our friend Wayne from Vanderbilt. We don't have too much planned for these two days but I know we'll find PLENTY to do in Singapore.

After we finish our visits to Singapore and Malaysia, we'll head to Indonesia for the rest of the trip. We will arrive in Surabaya, Indonesia on January 7th and spend a week in and around Taylor's home in the mountains outside Indonesia. I think we have plans to climb a volcano and go to some hindu temples. Should be fun! Plus, I'll get to see where Taylor has been living for the past 5 months!

The last week, I think we will be splitting our time between Taylor's village, Bali, and a quick trip to Jakarta for a gathering Taylor has to attend.

Well, folks, you won't be hearing from me for a while, but never fear, I will return with plenty of stories!!

Happy New Year,
Carissa