Here I am, sitting in my new house in Melbourne, Australia. Time passes by while I ponder where to start my new “job” as a travel reporter. A certain point in time? A specific destination?

Logic might tell me to just “start at the beginning”. Err… right. Come to think of it, that would take so much serious digging into my memory and scrolling through countless unorganised photo storage devices that I would still be sitting in front of a blank computer screen weeks from now. Or result in random scribbles of scattered thought bubbles from hundreds if not thousands of travel anecdotes.

OK, probably not the best of ideas. Instead, why don’t I start with my latest travel adventure?

Yes! A completely new experience to me.
New, since I hadn’t been full-time traveling for over a year (!). New, as the route zigzagged through Southeast Asia, an area unknown to my travel agenda thus far. But mostly new, because for the first time in my life I did NOT travel on my own. Shocking but true: I had found someone crazy enough to tag along… 🙂

First stop? Thailand: “Land of the Free”.
Siam, as the country was previously called, officially adopted its new name Thailand  – “Thai” meaning “free” or “freedom” – on May 11, 1949, to stress that Thailand is the only country in Southeast Asia never to have been colonized by Western powers.

Other countries I visited on this trip?
Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia.

To keep each report from becoming far too long to read – in other words, to keep you from immediately getting bored and abandoning my blog 😉 – I will divide my Southeast Asia adventures into several blog posts about different sights, cities, or countries, starting with the next post on Bangkok.

* This is a personal (travel) blog. Any opinions expressed represent my own.
** I wish you all lots of fun reading my posts. Please feel free to ask questions or write comments at the bottom.