Advancing on SE Asia

The next leg of my journey will take me to SE Asia.

I flew back to Sydney last night from Tasmania just in time to return to an airport.

There is no plan yet, but I do have a flight to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, one Southeast Asia on a Shoestring Lonely Planet Guidebook, about two months time, and a whole lot of options.

Admittedly, I probably won’t crack open my guidebook book until I’m sitting at the airport, but I feel a two hour wait and five hour flight is ample time to plan my initial few days. I will let the plans develop from there.

The exotic nature of SE Asia – Bali wood, elephants, bright colors and foreign languages – is very exciting, but the next 24 hours look dreadful.

I have an evening flight out of Sydney to Melbourne, then I will be waiting around the Melbourne airport from 7 p.m. until I board my 1:30 a.m. flight to Malaysia. The flight is 5 hours, which means I will be coughed up on the streets of a foreign world at the early hour of 7 a.m.

The timing doesn’t worry me as much as the flying does.

I’m a nervous passenger of the skyways, not because I fear falling, but because I fear everything else that could go wrong. In fact the only time I relax is when the plane is pulling away from the terminal, the jet engines blasting the ground further and further away.

I worry that I won’t know what I’m doing through the airport, and that I will look like a moron or get pulled aside by security – my bewildered look of cluelessness being easily confused with “suspicious behavior”.

I will wait at the wrong terminal and miss my flight.

Then upon landing, my fears escalate. What if I did something wrong – didn’t get the right visa, or worse, what if I can’t get the visa upon arrival like the guidebook said I could and I’m not allowed to enter the country?

Honestly losing my luggage is the lease of my concerns. (My bag is too heavy anyways…I’d be much more mobile without the added weight.)

Deep breaths!

I’m not sure yet when I will be meeting back up with Katie and Brian. We are all planning on traveling SE Asia together but I haven’t heard from them, so I’m not sure if they are on my flight to Malaysia or if they are meeting me in Kuala Lumpur.
Don’t worry though…once I get out of the airport unscathed I’m able to hit the ground running. I’m a resourceful traveler, alone or teamed-up, and my fears end once the immigrations officers release me into the swell of life outside the airport.

So as long as I end up on the other side of this ordeal with my nerves intake and most of my luggage then I will consider these upcoming flights a success!