Travels across South East Asia - Setting Forth

I did mention that I would blog about my South East Asia trip and today I post the first of many posts.So here goes...
I have always had a fascination for the West; nay let me put it more strongly, I love the West. So when I heard that my charming cousin had no qualms in hosting me in the UK, I shot off from my chair straight to the VFS global office with my visa application. I even planned an entire backpacking trip of Europe in my ridiculously imaginative mind. In retrospect if I had taken some more time in filling up the visa form or maybe added a tome on why I wouldn’t settle in the UK along with the form, I might have not ended up in Thailand or Malaysia or Singapore for that matter. I would have been writing something about the French or the Spanish. I might have written reams on my first Ashes experience but the Emigration Control Officer at the UK visa office had his own take on my brilliant plans. So he rejected my visa application.

I had tramped all the major bookstores in Bombay and spent countless hours poring over the Lonely Planet Europe guide. But then the best laid plans of men who look like mice almost always go astray. So instead of enjoying an English summer, I decided to pack my bags and go off on a semi-guided, semi backpacker tour of the Far East or as some prefer to call it the South - East of Asia.

I had created quite a lot of buzz with my plans of the Eurotrip, and when the whole trip came unstuck many a friend and acquaintance had a hearty laugh at my expense, Schadenfreude I say. So I was rather discreet about my new plans! I would leave for Thailand on 17th July and be back on 28th July, just in time for my date of joining Godrej IT on 1st August.

The Thailand trip happened, the Godrej IT joining didnt! But more on that later...