The time had come to begin the journey!

Christmas and New Year went by and it was the beginning of 2007. The date was 1st of January and the feeling was still unreal. I could't believe that I would leave soon. I started to pack my clothes and everything I would need during the trip. After finishing, my backpack wasn't even halfway full. I was wondering, am I forgetting something important or am I just beeing realistic about my stuff. After checking my things couple of times, conclusion was that I had everything with me.

After waking up the next morning, I started my car and began my journey. The drove from Kuopio to Helsinki would last around 4 hours or so. I managed to get a place to crash from my relatives who live in Lauttasaari, Helsinki. It was nice to arrive and see my relatives again. The evening went pretty easily just chatting and eating good food. It was hard trying to get some sleep around 10 pm...it was probably too early for that and there were so many thoughts in my mind. Wakeup would be around 5am. Alarmclock woke me up precisely 5 o'clock and I was feeling so tired but exited also. Little bit of coffee to turn my motor on and I was ready to move. My aunt was really nice and promised to give me a ride to the airport.

After arriving to the airport, I Checked-in and went pass securitycheck. Noticebord informed me that Finnair flight to Zurich would be leaving on time. That was good news because I only had like 2 hours to chance planes. Enough time for me to do the exchange nice and smoothly. I didn't bring any wintercoat with me so I was bit conserned about the fact that all passengers should move to airfield by bus. Well it went ok, was a bit cold during transport but I managed to forget that. After all I was going to warm and sunny climate so minus degrees didn't bother me that much. Found my seat and started to relax:)
















Zurich Airport

I arrived to Zurich on time. It was pretty easy to navigate in the airport. It wasn't that big that I expected and there were lots signs to help the lonely tourist to go to the correct gate. Continuing flight would be arranged by a different airline, Malaysian Airlines to be exact. I've heard lots of good things about it so I was pretty confident that my flight to Kuala Lumpur would be cozy.
















My plane rolling towards the departuregate

It was my first time ever that I needed to change flights in a foreign airport. Everything went as planned and I noticed that I had lots of time to kill. All the concerning was unnecessary. I listened some music from my mp3-player and checked out what tax-free had to offer. There was really nothing to purchase with that prices. Switzerland is pretty expensive country. That statement proved to be correct at least at the airport.

Well finally the gate opened and I managed to get inside the plane. After finding my seat, I was really amazed about the room that the plane had. It was so comfortable because you didn't need to sit tightly your knees in your mouth:D In addition, staff was treating all passengers really nicely including me and the entertainmentsystem was just great, something I wasn't even ware of before. A fairly good experience after Finnairs "tincans". Takeoff came and that was the end of Switzerland for me. A really quick visit. I was getting really hungry so the first hour went just getting acquainted with the entartaimentsystem and waiting for the catering to begin. Malaysia, here I come!
















Somewhere above Croatia

Decisions

It was the beginning of december when I really started to think about going abroad. It was over an year when I was abroad last time. That time I was in Brazil drinking caipirinhas and laying in the hammock...so I started to feel again that I needed to see something else than rain and slush beneath my feet.

My good friend from Kuopio, Timo had been travelling the whole year mostly in Australia but also in Asia. He had planned to fly to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia the 3 of january 2007 so I had an idea to fly to the same direction at the same exact date. I started to riffle through webpages and tried to find the cheapest flight I could get. After spending hours in front of the computer, I managed to find a flight to KL. The flight would leave from Helsinki-Vantaa airport 3 of january early in the morning and it would arrive in Malaysia around 7am local time. The flight would go via Zürich, Switzerland where I would need to chance to a different plane. The whole traveltime would be around 24 hours before landing and the price for back and forth flight would be around 900 euros.

So it was monday, 18 of december and I was thinking about my decision. All these questions came up to my mind: Can I afford all of this? Is it seriously a good idea to go? How about school? But after a moment of thinking I managed to say to myself that you life only once. I took my Visa out of my vollet and started to pay the tickets. It was really happening:)

The result was that I had bought tickets to Kuala Lumpur and back. The departure date would be 3 of january and the arrival date 22 of January. Almost three weeks of backpacking with my friend sound awesome. This was obviously the best christmas gift I could get!

Hey!

So my name is Pete and this is my blog. Doing this blog is a part of my english course called independent study. The main idea of this project is to tell about the whole trip which I did in the beginning of the year 2007. I spent approximately three weeks backpacking with my friend in different parts of Asia which included two big countries: Malaysia and Thailand.

I'm going do some postings in the blog which contains nice descriptions about various cities and stories about everything that happened during the trip. I'm also going to post some pictures and add some articles in the blog.

I hope you will enjoy reading this site. Let the exploring begin:)