May 20, 2007

Some other places that I would really like to go since I am blogging about expensive places is the Far East. Japan, Malaysia, Bangkok for instance. Yeah, I know this may be getting old but I have had a pretty cool time posting pictures and reading about some of the countries that I will end up visiting sooner or later.

When I used to commute 75 miles each day to work I listened to a lot of Talk Radio. One of the shows I would listen to on the way home in the afternoon was the Clark Howard show. Each year he takes his staff on a really cool vacation and one year they took flights to Japan. I was really jealous. I darn sure don’t see my boss taking me to Japan any time soon.

This is a picture of Mt. Fuji, the highest point in Japan, with Sakura and the Bullet Train in the front.

Since I was already starting down the road I figured I would do some reading on the other places as well and price flights to Malaysia. Malaysia is a confederation of thirteen states located in Southeast Asia. It’s a pretty diverse place and actually takes up two geographic regions. Malaysia gained independence from the UK in 1957.

This is A Famosa, which was built by the Portuguese in the 1500’s.

This next one is the Ubudiah Mosque.

The last “window shopping” I did was to price flights to Bangkok, although in the past I generally took the train on more than one occasion if you know what I mean. I haven’t done that in quite some time though.

Bangkok is the Capitol of Thailand, right near the Gulf of Thailand. It’s also the 22nd most populous city in the world right now.

This is pretty cool. It is the Vimanmek Royal Mansion, which is the world’s largest building made of teak wood.

Anyway, that is probably all of the virtual sightseeing I will do tonight, although you never know.

Yeah, this has been an extremely long hard week. All I am thinking about is vacation time. I have had to bump mine from the scheduled week in the middle of June to just after Independence Day. I don’t remember the last time that I actually took a vacation in July. It’s been quite a while though.

Any time that I start looking for a vacation spot I get online and the first thing I do is look at the places I know I can’t afford. Stupid, huh? I have actually found some pretty good deals this way, some of them I CAN actually afford. Before the end of the year the wife and I will have up to date passports, as with the new job I will be able to travel a bit. The trick is to get the extra time off, but with the addition of one ten day vacation each year that pretty much solves the time-off issue as well.

A friend of ours from that we met back in September of last year in Helen lives in Canada. There are always pretty cheap flights to Canada to be found, particularly in the fall and winter. I tend to try and visit places in the non-touristy season because rates are always the best then. There are also some really good rates on flights to Caribbean areas right now as well, even though it’s still pretty busy down there in the summer.

I would really like to get down to the Caribbean at some point, or if not, then at least Key West or the surrounding areas. What would be really cool is to have a blogmeet down there. Get some of the Jawja bloggers down there as well as some of the others that I know from overseas. It would be a blast. They should be able to get decent flights to USA airports at a good rate right now too.