Travel preview: Southeast Asia

We leave for vacation today, so I guess it’s time for a preview! Over the next couple of weeks we will visit the Philippines, Cambodia (Siem Reap), and Thailand (Chiang Mai). The trip was first spurred by my mom, who is going to visit the Philippines in time for a festival and other reunions in her hometown, and Thom and I decided to tag along, as we similarly did this time of year in 2007. It’ll be great to see a bunch of my relatives again. This time, to add some variety, after one week in the Philippines, Thom and I decided to plan a side trip and are going off on our own to some neighboring countries that neither of us have been to before: Siem Reap for the temples at Angkor, and Chiang Mai, one of the ancient cities of Thailand.

(Originally we had planned to go to Bangkok, but given the political unrest there, we finally decided to divert to Chiang Mai. We’ll still fly to Bangkok airport, but just to change flights.)

Quick airline geek-out: our total flight plan to and from SFO and within Asia covers about 18,862 miles on four different airlines–all of which I’m flying for the first time–on aircraft ranging from a Boeing 747 jumbo jet all the way down to an ATR 72 turboprop. And the way it works out, in the middle of the trip we’ll even have a stopover in Singapore, just long enough to see a few sights and rest before continuing on. Map time!

View Southeast Asia 2010 in a larger map

We’ll likely have Internet access for most of the trip, so I will try to at least update status when I can. ‘Til next time!