As part of my preparation for my journey, I’ve been buying a few Lonely Planet books. I’ve bought Europe On A Shoestring, South East Asia On A Shoestring, Japan, and now I’ve just bought China. As preliminary research, I’ve been reading about the different places, cities, towns and destinations that seem interesting, and there are just so many places I’d like to go and see in China.
I know I want to go everywhere, but I just can’t help it. I’m trying to narrow it down to a total of two months (-ish) split into two journeys. The first will be up the east coast, visiting all the big cities like Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing, before I fly onto Japan. The second part will be going from Beijing to Lhasa overland, after I come back from Japan. The second half I’m really looking forward to, as it will involve a lot more culture, history, etc. Should be very interesting 
If anyone has any suggestions for must-sees or must-dos in China, please leave them in the comments!
Just a quick note here before I fall asleep. I’m considering writing a book of my travels. I’ll write it as I go or maybe when I make it to the other side, I’m not sure. But it should go well with my love of writing 
Goodnight everyone!
At work today I used my spare time in between serving customers to make a tally of how long I’d be spending in each country and how much it would cost. I got to a year and then stopped and guess how much my estimate was, including flights? only $20,000.
That’s Australian, mind you. Which makes it about $18,500 USD$. Now that is without giving myself any lee-way for splurges or emergencies, but add on $5000 and $25,000 is still not all that much for a year’s living - especially living where ever i want, whenever i want, just traveling and exploring. Sounds like the life for me.
To put this into context, that’s only about $2100 each month which is a fair bit less than most people’s income. So, my question to anyone who reads this is; Do you think you could survive on $25,000 a year?
I’m an avid reader. I read all the time. I used to go through at least one book a week. I would sit on the way to school, on the way home, after I’d done my homework, and read. I still love to read, but I’ve started, instead of reading fiction or narratives, reading Lonely Planet guides to the destinations I want to go to at the end of year 12. I haven’t actually bought all those guidebooks myself, I’ve only bought South East Asia on a Shoestring, Europe on a Shoestring and Japan, but my parents have a collection of about a dozen (mostly the UK and continental Europe, but also Egypt, Africa, etc) and the school library has a very interesting collection. They even have a second edition of South East Asia on a Shoestring. Now if only i could find a copy of “Across Asia On The Cheap”…
Anyway, as I read these books, I jot down anything important or useful, like a place I definitely want to go, an important tip, etc, etc. And with all this information, I’ve been slowly, ever so slowly, planning my trip. I’ve been doing a few things to try to cut back on spending as well, like brining lunch when i go to work (or trying to remember to bring lunch…).
I’ve been setting up and working on a website or two as well, which will hopefully bring in a little bit of money to go towards those savings…
Anyway, the point of this post is…I’m obsessed. Everything I do is somehow related to or will somehow influence my travels…I just had to let it out.