First time 3 Month Travel.

For some reason obrip32's post was flagged; but I read it before it moved into limbo.

Obrip32, you are unlikely to visit Australia since that country, as of Friday, won't allow non-nationals to enter.

If you need to return to Edinburgh by a certain date, you should make plans now, knowing that those plans may have to be altered. Airlines are drastically reducing flights; and the flights that you've booked could be canceled. You need to have alternatives in mind.

I returned Tuesday from a month-long trip to India. The flights I had booked were canceled (one two days in advance of travel; the other the day before).

Thanks for this!

Ill repost when I have time.

I dont have to be in uk until middle of May.
Luckily I dont have any money worries so I think even if stranded we will be fine.

We will review our return / next plan after 3 weeks here.

Hope you had a good trip!

Quoting karazyal

I figured obrip32 will still be on the Asian leg of his journey. Yeah, it will be nice to hear how things are going. Good thing China wasn't on his list!

Thanks for this!

So we had an amazing time, we are now home (a month early) and it feels like it was all a dream! I feel like it never happened, like we never left the house.

I was quite upset that we made a 'grown up' decision, and decided to come home a month early. I mainly made the decision as we were on an island in Indonesia and I knew it would take us over 2-3 days to get home. I had been reading things online that the UK would most likely shut their borders and we wouldn't be able to get home in May. This coupled with the fact that all my good friends ad family were telling us we should perhaps come home, everyone we met travelling were also already home as well.

Looking back now I wish we had stayed on the island for longer as all I want to do now is go back their. UK life seems tedious and cold, especially when we are now on lockdown.

I thought I would give a rundown on the trip and some highlights!

India
Mumbai - 3 days - It was amazing, it was dirty, delicious, smelly, fragrant and colourful. An absolute melting pot of people, we done a morning tour of the city near us in Colaba starting 6am we seen the city wake up. We had a great tour guide called Dillip he took us to a super busy flower market, fruit and veg market, fish market, had some marsala Chai with some locals and we went to the laundry. The people were friendly and everyone had something to sell, everyone.
We decided to walk to the beach at night, and we kept thinking there was an odd smell in the streets, it was getting more pungent as we were walking and basically it turned out to be coming from the beach. It was crazy to us, we had never imagined the sea to smell so fowl, and there was so many people as it was a celebration day! Anyway we walked back and found some nice smells on the way as well.

Fort Kochi and Alleppey - Backwaters

Kochi was a lovely seaside town and we had some great food, found spice markets, and everything was so cheap! Food was great everywhere here.
Alleppey was a gem. We had booked a hotel right on the river and sat and watched houseboats all day, relaxing, as when we went anywhere else nearby we just wanted to go back to our deck chairs.

One day Kuala Lumpur!
Loved KL. We loved the contrast of being in the bustle of India to the going to modern KL.
We only had 24 hours, so after a nap we went to the bird park and it was lovely. Got to feed some parrots, and there was so many city monkeys stealing the bird food and causing a riot. Entertaining to watch. Food we seen and had in KL was great.

Onto Cambodia;
Overall I probably wouldn't recommend Cambodia, we some highlights but overall it was overpriced on the streets, everything was messy, and run down. The roads were all dirt tracks apart from main cities and just overall we didn't enjoy as much.

We went to;
Phnom Penh - I think 2 days here is fine, its not an exceptionally nice city, but good to see
Kep/Kampot - again 2 days would be fine here, Koh Tonsay was a lovely island nearby.
Koh Rong Island - BEAUTIFUL place, shame about the amount of rude tourists. We had a great boat trip though! Wen snorkelling and had bbq on the boat. Swimming in the sea loads. Went Kayaking and more snorkelling too. I could have stayed here for longer.
Siem Reap- Probably more preferred city on the route, lots of nice cafes, we cycled around and went to Angkor Wat. My main highlight in SR was Kulen Elephant Forest, it was amazing to have a trek with the elephants, felt like talking a big dog for walk. We got to feed them loads too, and be super close, but we felt the sanctuary had good rules in place to make sure they were not over worked.

Next Vietnam;
Hanoi - Totally lovely, we had only planed 2 days, but you could easily stay more and just enjoy the city. City Bus was great for us.
SaPa - Beautiful place, weather was a bit foggy ( like cant see 3 metres in front of you) for the first 2 days we were here, but 3rd day cleared and we got on a hike and seen the great views the place offers.
CatBa - We planned to visit Halong bay from here, but weather was torrential, we stayed 4 days to try and have 1 good day, but it wasn't meant to be! so we moved on
Ninh Binh - Stunning place for scenery we had such a good time riding around on a scooter. Took us ages to get anywhere as the views were so good we kept having stop stop to take a picture! So much wildlife and nice people. The walks up the Mua caves was a great day out, and a small boat ride on the valley was amazing. We also went through many tiny caves ! it was crazy the caves 5 people on a small boat can fit through!
Dong Hoi- moving to Doi Hoi i'm glad we did and but we did have an unfortunate event also. After a day chilling we decided to take a tour to some big caves. Paradise cave was amazing and huge. And you cant even comprehend that this cave is not the biggest in the world, you ave to pay £4000 to get into that one... Anyway after our tour ended we were told we had to spend 2 days in quarantine as a couple on the tour had been informed they had been on a cruise with a couple had been confirmed with the virus. This was a pain, but we made some great friends with a couple, so if that hadn't have happened, we wouldn't have had fun together.
Hue- Imperial city , very lovely place to explore! we stayed just 1 day.
Hoi An- so beautiful, we loved it stayed 3 nights. It is touristy but I just loved all the lanterns, I think there should be more lanterns in the world. We went to the Golden Bridge and the place was deserted so we have great pics of us being the only ones on the bridge. We took a scooter around and drove a lot, but I would reccomend to get home before dark, as that place ha some crazy drivers. I think I thought we were going to die a handful of times, and we weren't even driving fast!
Ho Chi Minh- Felt like we were back in Mumbai but without the nice surprises. Every where packed with bikes, hard to cross the street, mess everywhere. Perhaps we just weren't in the right place. We liked how the communities would come and exercise together, and we love the shuttle 'Keep Up' game! We bought 3 to bring home!

Then to Indonesia
Bali- Kuta- nice beach, we went surfing, we would note thought that pandemic had started sending a lot of tourists home at this point, so place was empty! all restaurants empty, and this is where we were starting to revise plans.
Lombok - lovely and jungle-esk. We passed thorugh, but I think it seemed less touristic than bali.
Gili Trawangan- ABSOLUTE PARADISE. As stated at the start this places stole our hearts, and we wish we were still on the beach. We completed our Open Water Scuba Dive certification, and went on some dives. I want to go live here it is just a dream.

We ended up having to pay over £4000 just to get home. We had 3 flights cancelled, and weren't allowed to transit through Singapore. It was relentless. Landing in London instead of Edinburgh and having to get a train. It was absolutely not worth it, and I really hope we get our money back as it cost as much as the holiday (without the flights...)

Anyway hope you like my thoughts on my travels.
I have no idea what I want to do now and feel a bit empty but hopefully I will find some inspiration soon.
Peace and Prayers, hoping the virus will disappear soon so we can continue exploring.

[ Edit: Edited on 30-Mar-2020, 15:09 GMT by obrip32 ]

Thanks for the trip report. Sounds like you had an interesting time.

Hopefully this "virus" stuff will be over before the end of the year and all of us can get back to normal holidays again..

obrip32, wow, thanks for sharing that.