Let's have a look at the map and decide where to go next

Hi guys, I thought I'd do a simple and short post today - I was chatting with an old friend this weekend about my epic trip to South America and he asked me, "so, where are you off to next? Where is your next adventure?" I'm actually off to Ireland next weekend but it is hardly a holiday, no. We're talking my mother-in-law's ashes back to the family cemetery in Ireland and then we're clearing out her house there, there's a lot of junk to be thrown out (or donated to charity) before the house can be put in the market. I don't think anyone in the family fancies moving to the middle of nowhere in Ireland, that's why the house will be sold. I suppose that's a very practical decision, especially if we can get a decent price for it. It is a beautiful house that comes with a piece of forest that leads down to the lake, I first visited that house in 1998 and this will be my last trip there - I have no idea when I'd go to Ireland again after this as it's probably one of the dullest, more boring country I've ever been to. So yeah, I'm going to need a real holiday after this one - it will be four days of hard labour, clearing the house out. I may be flying through Dublin airport but I'm getting on a bus directly at Dublin airport so I am not going to see Dublin at all, but oh well, I've seen Dublin before and it is not that interesting if I may be honest. With that in mind, I would want a trip (or two - depending on how busy I am with work) later on in the year before Christmas.

Now I may have a business trip to Brussels to attend a conference in October, though that's not confirmed yet. It all depends on whether or not my boss wants me to attend the event but we shall see. I've actually done a holiday in Brussels in 2016 so I'm not that fussed whether I go or not. Thus that leaves me with the period in late October-early November which shall be ideal for a holiday - I'm actually thinking about Morocco because I've done so much of Europe in the last 12 months alone (France, Malta, Georgia, Italy, Poland, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Spain) that I want to do something different. South America still felt incredibly European in many ways, particularly since I was speaking Spanish all the time there. There are cheap flights to Greece but I was pretty close to Greece when I was in Montenegro and even though I have been to Morocco before, I could always go to a different city. What I like about Morocco and Tunisia is that you can stay in 5-star luxury for a very reasonable price, you can explore the exotic and colourful souks and bazaars in the day then retreat to a tranquil, peaceful, serene hotel or resort to relax in the evening. The two main languages spoken there are French and Arabic, so it would be fun to try to relearn my Arabic. I'm thinking of a city like Fes (sometimes spelled Fez) or maybe Essaouira - it won't be the kind of holiday where I try to see a lot of the country (I've already done that in Georgia and South America), it would probably be a far more chilled and laid back holiday. We'll see, you can get really good flights + hotel deals for places like that off-season and by that time of the year, the temperatures will be far more forgiving. I remember really struggling in Tunisia when it was 39 degrees - that was no fun.

But beyond that, I am going to accompany my sister, my brother-in-law and my nephew on a trip across Spain to Portugal during the first week of January. We're starting in Barcelona and finishing in Lisbon, crossing the full length of the Iberian peninsular. I've been to Spain more times than I can remember and I've also done Portugal before, so for me, that's really more an opportunity to spend time with my family. Beyond that trip, I am still keen to go to Kiev, the capital of Ukraine during winter. I've heard incredibly good things about Kiev and given that I speak Russian and a little Ukrainian, I am quite confident to navigate my way through the city after having navigated my way across Georgia earlier this year speaking mostly Russian! Kiev is the 7th biggest city in Europe and has so much to offer in terms of culture and history - furthermore, in the winter, there are also some small ski slopes well within the city center. These are probably not that big at all, but a very interesting way to spend a Monday afternoon when the temperature is -20. There are very reasonably priced flights between Kiev and London with a number of budget airlines; things are also incredibly cheap there given their weak currency. If you thought the pound was weak as a result of Brexit, well the Ukrainian Hryvnia is one of the world's weakest currencies. 1 Hryvnia is about £0.03 or S$0.05 - so I would be able to get a really nice AirBNB place in Kiev and live like a king when I am there, pretty much like when I was in Georgia when everything was so incredibly cheap. So I think I would be heading to Kiev for a week around early February 2020 and I'd encourage you to join me!

And then beyond that, I really don't know - I've not thought that far ahead to be honest and the whole purpose of writing this post is to help me create a list. There are a few other places I would like to visit but that would take some planning. For example, I am fascinated with central Asia and would love to visit Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in particular, but the question is then whether I focus on just one country or try to do a silk road type tour and travel through a few of those countries next spring. Furthermore, I still want to do a grand tour of Japan and South Korea - again, the question is whether I just do Tokyo and Seoul on one trip, or if I try to focus on one country at a time? Then again, I do have a genuine desire to return to South America particularly to Peru, but that won't be in 2020 given that I've just returned from nearly a month on that continent. I also want to do my grand tour of Canada - I have some friends there and I really want to visit Montreal given that they are even more fiercely defensive of their right to speak only French and would ostracize anyone who speaks any English in the province of Quebec. Gosh, they're more French than the French people in Paris and there's plenty of good skiing to be had in Quebec. I would probably go spend a few days in Toronto but when I say I want to visit Canada, it is mostly Quebec that I am fascinated with. The rest of Canada speaks English, duh. Then there are a few other countries that I would like to visit one day: Cuba, Azerbaijan, Iran, Israel, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Belarus, Jordan and Lebanon. Unfortunately Iran is probably off-limits for now until the political tensions ease somewhat.

Ironically enough, I am actually doing quite good business development in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, so I can probably justify a business trip to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Surabaya (yup, Surabaya of all places, I'm doing such good business there) sometime next year but given that the weather is the same pretty much all year round, I can go anytime. Contrast that to Kiev and Montreal, which are cities that I quite specifically want to visit only in the winter months when there is a lot of snow on the ground. Oh I roll my eyes when my mother tells me on Skype that it has rained and so she is having a cooler day - yeah according to my weather app it is still 26 degrees in Singapore, I will be going to Kiev and Montreal in the winter in search of -26 degrees winter weather. Given my hatred for extremely hot weather, I am limited in what I can do during my summer holidays - like I certainly wouldn't dream about going to somewhere like Azerbaijan, Israel or Jordan during the summer as it would be unbearably hot; the only alternative is to go to the southern hemisphere which I have done this year. Given that I have done Australia and New Zealand as well, I guess that only leaves me with Southern Africa to go in the the July-August period - so that's probably another possibility I can contemplate as well for future summers. Alternatively, I could also go to somewhere like Greenland or Svalbard in summer where it would still be pretty darn cold even in the middle of summer, but those destinations are shockingly expensive and it would be cheaper to go to somewhere like New Zealand that is as far from London as one could get! 

When I mentioned that I am thinking of traveling again to one of my clients this morning, she said, "didn't you have only just come back from South America - you wanna go on holiday again?" Well, let's put it this way - when I was a kid, I had all the time in the world but couldn't travel much as we were poor. I was so envious of my classmates who could travel and they would tell me incredible stories of all the things they experienced abroad. Then when I started working, I worked crazy long hours and so even though I had the money, I didn't have the time to take long holidays. Mind you I was so focused on my career then that I didn't think about having nice, long holidays. So now, I have the perfect balance: I am self-employed so I far more control over how many hours I work, how many holidays I want to take and I have enough money to spend on my holidays. I see so many of my peers work crazy long hours in order to support their families and I'm like, well I don't have anyone to support, so what should I do with all this money I am making then? There's no point in just hoarding money in the bank, I need to spend that money on things/experiences that will make me happy. I already live in a fairly large house full of stuff, so I really don't need to spend money to buy more things just to collect dust - hence I am choosing to spend my money on holidays where I can have great experiences. After all, the only thing I bought in South America was a packet of Yerba Mate (a kind of South American green tea), I didn't buy a single souvenir yet I had spent thousands of dollars to have some really incredible experiences there which will last me a whole lifetime.

There's always a desire for me to go to a country I've never been to before, but that's becoming increasingly difficult given that I've done practically every country in Europe already. It's far easier to list the European countries that I have yet to visit: Andorra, Serbia, North Macedonia, Moldova, Cyprus, San Marino, Kosovo, Ukraine and Belarus - then there's Armenia and Azerbaijan though it is debatable whether or not they're even in Europe (even if they do take part in the Eurovision Song Contest). I suppose those are the countries that I am most likely to visit in 2020 - especially since I can easily do Serbia, Kosovo and North Macedonia in one trip. The one continent that I have barely scratched the surface of is Africa, but yet I have little desire to go there and admittedly I am put off by the fact that most of these countries are extremely hot and I tend to avoid hot countries as a rule. Nonetheless there are a few cities in Africa which are situated high up the mountains, so that means they are always quite cool: the highest of them all are Addis Ababa of Ethiopia which sits at 2,355 m above sea level - that's more than high enough to ensure that the temperature rarely exceeds 25 degrees in the day and the night time lows are usually around 10 degrees. Nairobi is at 1,795 m, Windhoek is at 1,721 m, Maseru is at 1,673 m and Kigali is at 1,567 m. All of these are rather big capital cities which are high enough to be reasonably cool all year round. So if I do visit Africa, it would be to one of these capital cities in the mountains and I can avoid sweating. After all, I'm from Singapore - please, I've had enough hot weather in my childhood to last me a lifetime. 

 I have even contemplated flying Ethiopian Airlines to Singapore: so I would go from London to Addis Ababa, spend a few days there before flying onto Singapore. Yeah that would be totally awesome. A taste of Africa without the hot weather and the home of good coffee, that would be so awesome. Well, I just have to make sure I avoid the rainy season from June to September - it is cool but damn it will be very wet then. So what do you think? Any suggestions as to where I ought to visit and which time of the year I should go there? Please leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.