Travel Adventure after graduation (june 08)

[ur54sold]

Hi everyone, I've just spent the last 3 hours lurking through the 225+ page Thailand thread and it got me to thinking about my plans for next year. First off, I am going to SDSU and am graduating next semester. I find it incredibly depressing to think about going right into a career and staying in America. I got a taste of travel when I was 14 and went to 6 countries in Western Europe with my parents and brother. I cant even express how much it changed how I thought about people and the world and I loved it. Then 2 years ago I read "Into the Wild" and got it stuck in my head that I needed to have a "self-awakening" journey of my own (not to say I don't want to have great times along the way.. i.e. get drunk in the bars in Thailand and have orgies). So a few months ago I decided I wanted to travel to as many places as possible after I graduate with no set return date and put my dream into action. To my surprise my family was completely supportive. I really want to travel while I am young and still impressionable, as well as physically capable of exhausting travel. I started saving money about 5 months ago and have a decent roll for the trip. Right now I'm working a standard hosting job at a local restaurant and dabble in online poker to keep building my travel roll.

Anyway, I want to start developing a basic itinerary for my trip. I am fairly certain that circumstances and people I meet along the way will side track me quite a bit, but nevertheless I would like to have a basic blue print of what I want to do. The main locations I want to hit so far are... Brazil, Western/Eastern Europe, Thailand, Japan, Australia... possibly South Africa. Conceivably I would like to fly into a central point that might serve as a base camp for my journey and go to the other locations from there. I know I just named basically every continent on Earth but I'm sure theres got to be some people out there who have attempted something like this and can give me some advice, I'm really looking for any useful tips or recounts of experience here [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]. Aside from the locations I am a bit concerned about traveling alone for legs of the journey. My trip to Europe was with my family and I felt very comfortable. I have 2 best friends who each want to go to some of the locations I mentioned with me during different spans of time. I love to discuss experiences and share experiences with friends of like mind and that speak English (a necessary component for deep/meaningful conversations in my case).

I become a bit uneasy when I think of traveling in a foreign country by myself, as I am a very anxious person thanks to my dad (genetics). But I also have a side of me that pushes my limits and I learn a lot about myself in those situations. I moved from Washington to California by myself to go to school, but that pales in comparison to being in Thailand for example by myself. So any suggestions about travel companionship would be nice and dealing with anxiety while traveling? Lastly, it would be great if someone could share a checklist of some kind listing all the essentials needed for living out of a backpack for an extended period of time (during my Europe trip my whole family had nothing but 1 "Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back door" travel backpack a piece and did fine). I know I will need a passport/visa for each country or is there some kind of all purpose visa? Also, I would really like to start making connections with people on this forum living in other countries to discuss travel and other cultures.


ok, Thanks!