The start of an indefinitely long trip around Asia

---

Despite having spent two months on gardening leave and one month of actual redundancy (with two weeks of contract work for the second half of that), this trip has been put together in rather a haphazard manner.

The original plan had been to spend two and a bit weeks travelling around Vietnam and Cambodia with a couple of uni mates over December and January, and flights were thus booked back in May. When I found out about my redundancy, I decided to see if I could extend my trip by changing my flight dates. Since we'd booked via Air Asia, such things cost more money than normal and would added on another £300 to the original cost. Bugger. Luckily a third friend decided to join the trip and so I transferred my flight to him at the beginning of November and was supposed to book my new flight soon after. Except I didn't.

After much dithering, I concluded that it would be better to book a single flight and leave my return flight open so that I could return when I wanted to, as I didn't feel comfortable committing to a return when I didn't know how I would get on travelling by myself. As a consequence of pissing about, I didn't book my outbound flight until December 8th. Adding to that, I didn't collect my malaria pills until 4pm on the day I was leaving, bought my travel insurance about an hour before I had to leave and finished packing about 15 minutes after I was supposed to leave. As my cousin pointed out, nothing's changed there.

So far I've made it to my hostel in Kuala Lumpur (the lovely Travel Hub run by a family from Sri Lanka - Sinhalese not Tamil though) and played a drinking game with other guests called Fuck The Dealer. You guess the next card the dealer is holding and if you get it right, the dealer has to down two fingers of his drink. If you get it wrong, you drink a finger's worth and the dealer says whether your guess was too high or too low. If you get your second guess right, the dealer downs half his drink. If not, then you down two fingers of your drink. If the dealer manages to survive three incorrect guesses, then he/she passes the cards on to the next person. Sadly, I was the fourth dealer and got fucked. Figuratively speaking of course.

So a good first night, but now I'm drunk and need food. Woo!

---