North Hertfordshire District

So in a few hours I will be boarding a plane to Beijing and it's fair to say I'm nervous as hell. It's been 5 months since I booked my flights and this is the first week I've felt nervous. I guess it's only natural considering I'm away from my family and friends for at least 6 months. I know I will be fine once I touch down in Beijing.

So I thought I'd write my first blog about what I've been up to leading up to the trip. In summary, not a lot. I've been off work for 4 weeks and the plan was to spend that time working on my beach body, catching up with friends and family up and down the country and research as many of the countries as possible so I wouldn't miss out on anything whilst I'm on my trip. Well putting my back out, Japanese man flu and pure laziness put a spanner in the works so I've not done as much as I would have liked. Although in this time I have become a valued customer of Amazon and eBay.

So I only really started my research a couple weeks ago to find out that China is a heck of a lot bigger than I first thought. Now I knew it was big but not that big. So not only did I discover that I would spend day's travelling I was also arriving at the 2nd busiest time of the year after Chinese New Year. They are having a week long celebration of their 65th communist anniversary and whole of China is on holiday. Google the pictures of China National Day and you see what I have to contend with. Poor planning on my behalf and this has probably set the tone of the trip. Oh well it'll be an experience. That's as far as my planning has gone. I'm just hoping I meet someone on the first day that's super organised and doesn't mind me tagging along.

Although the lead up to the trip hasn't gone to plan the people I have had a chance to say goodbye to have been amazing. Thank you for all your support and the fun nights out over the last few weeks. I am lucky to have so many amazing people in my life and I have started to question recently why I'm going away to leave this all behind for a few months but I keep going back to when I made this decision...

...my quarter life crisis... I think everyone knows that I'm not particularly fond of my profession. Don't get me wrong I don't hate it but it's hard to enjoy a life behind a spreadsheet. Working at Fox was by far the best job I've had to date but I knew it was time to move on after 2 years, whether that was in to another finance job, starting a new career or go travelling. Guess which one I picked. I had just come back from an amazing trip in Cambodia & Vietnam over Christmas and then shortly after I went to Iceland in February and it's fair to say that swayed my decision to go travelling. I have met so many fantastic people and had the best experiences (though sometimes very weird, I'll write these up another time) when I've been away but my trips always felt to short. I didn't want them to end. So I was at a stage in my life where I had no mortgage, I wasn't in a relationship and I had already decided to leave my current job. This opportunity, freedom may never happen again so I popped into STA travels one day whilst I was shopping to get a rough quote. At this point I had no intention of committing to a decision, I was just weighing up the pro's and cons's. I had no idea where I wanted to go in the world but I winged it and before you know it I'm handing over my credit card to the agent. I was committed, there was no turning back and now I find myself a few hours from departure writing this blog. We'll know in 6 months time if this will be a good or bad decision. Even if it doesn't work out I will never regret this decision. You have one life and it's all an experience, good or bad, these experiences help you learn and develop and hopefully become a better person.

So the next time you hear from me I would have hopefully avoided falling off the Great Wall, not fallen into the Tiger Leaping Gorge and safety negotiated my way to Seoul.

Bye for now Xx (and sorry for the poor spelling and grammar, I usually work with numbers).

Link to my rough plan:
http://www.travellerspoint.com/member_map.cfm?u…Read more