Here we go again...

Been a while coming, however tomorrow I should be boarding a flight to Hanoi after which I'll have four and a half months of meandering around South East Asia by bicycle before flying out of Kuala Lumpur at the start of April. Circumstance has left me temporarily mortgage free and with an unpaid sabbatical from work so time to carpe that diem. The original plan was to cycle Cairo to Cape Town however recent events in Egypt have put me off that idea, so a few gentle months in Asia beckon instead.

I'm a bit ambivalent about restarting the blog. The first time I went travelling was backpacking in Africa in 1990/ 1991 and part of the romance of travel lay in the only contact with home being a six week turnaround in letters being picked up from post restantes in far flung cities: "If you're writing to me in April, address it to Post Restante in Kampala, I should pick it up in June". Travelling then was far more of a intensely personal thing, nowadays it's easy too pick up ones email on a daily basis and that isn't really getting away in my books. I was in Asia last winter and my travelling companion was on Facebook every day... I mean, really?! You're in Angkor Wat and you're glued to instant updates? Seriously?

However, all that being said, I will blog away and probably occasionally Facebook to boot. The world has moved on and continues to shrink. And some folks genuinely want to know what I'm up to as well, so the old blog is reborn. Stick with me on this, it could be fun.