written prior to the trip

Making a plan for such a long bike trip is exciting and difficult. There are so many things to think about such as border crossings, topography, road conditions, rainy seasons, kilometers, ferry ports and schedules etc. that make it a mammoth task. However for the most part things have come together and we have come to a concensus. Our strategy was to divide the countries up among our members and each of us will focus on one country to concentrate on. Each of us wrote a report outlining some of the important features of each country. Below you can see a map of where we are planning to go and below that is a text description of our present plan. If you click on the country name below the map you can see the report which describes the country in more detail

This is all tentative and subject to change. The pink line drawn on the map is just an idea, by no means a set in stone route.

We will actually start at the bottom below the equator in Indonesia. Jon has the assignment for Indonesia. We will likely land in Bali and stay there for a while before heading to Java. After biking here we are thinking of taking a plane to Sumatra. We will bike north in Sumatra from Panang to Medan where, around the beginning of September, we will catch a ferry across the straight to Malaysia. We won't stay long here and as a result no one is investigating here. After a few days we will cross into Thailand, Deb's country. We plan to go all the way from south to north. Next we are planning to enter Laos (Dan - PDF file 665 kb) around the third week of September. We will likely fly from Vientienne to Hanoi, Vietnam (Sarah - PDF file 441 kb), at the start of October and stay there for a month. On November 10 we are scheduled to arrive in Phnom Pehn and begin a month long volunteering stint. We will leave Phnom Pehn around December 10 and make our way through the Angkor Wats on our way back to Bangkok, Thailand. We are planning to depart Thailand on December 20 to spend Christmas with our families.