Thursday, February 21, 2008

Second strategic meeting

Three weeks have passed and we are meeting again!

Having met on time as usually (30 minutes later than agreed on) we drove to my house and had a romantic dinner with candles and soft background music. And a dog screwing around the table.

Because of the time pressure, we did not have that much time to do a decent research (Martin did actually most of the work), so we decided to focus on specifying the course of our trip and next steps concerning our fatal summer. Since borders of Myanmar are closed, driving or somehow getting through this country showed to be extremely difficult or even impossible. Therefore we had to replan the trip we are going to take.

You can see the map below.

On behalf of the fatal crew :)
Zdenek

(yellow = country borders, red = long way to take:),
green = facultative trips
, blue = flights)

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

First complications

Two weeks have just passed since our previous meeting and our preparations for the fatal trip continue. Each of us, me and Zdenek, are responsible for half of countries on our actual destination list. It means that we are gathering information about visa, vaccination, the most significant travel sights, country specifics (e.g. culture, accommodation, transportation, politics, climate, currency) etc. to be ready for sharing and discussion during the second strategic meeting (coming soon!).

"My" countries are Vietnam, Thailand, Brunei, Malaysia and Myanmar (Burma) and it is the last one that has caused the first complications. As you may have noticed in the map that was created after the last meeting, we intend to go from India to Laos through Myanmar. To be more precise, we would like to go by train. And here it comes... I found out on multiple channels that most probably it won't be possible due to current military government that block many frontier crossings. It is highly recommended that tourists enter the country only by plain.

If this gets confirmed, it brings many implications, e.g. to fly to Myanmar from Thailand instead of India (because of visa), therefore a need to obtain a double visa to Thailand (because of repeated entry)... and above all to reconsider the order of all countries on our "flight plan".
Let's hope it requires just few slight rearrangements! :)

On behalf of the fatal crew:)
Martin