That giddy feeling

Yesterday marks the first day I opened up my Rough Guide Southeast Asia guide and started reading in earnest.  Earlier in the week I received an email from a travel agent who is assisting me in my cause of acquiring flexible, inexpensive and poorly defined tickets for my ambiguous itinerary.  My Kiwi friend Ping, whom I in Barcelona in 2008, uses Leah for all his bookings and suggested that she'd be able to sort through the quagmire of my wants and nebulous travel dreams.

I want to go for a long time--should I get a one-way ticket or refundable round-trip? I want to have flexibility to jet around SE Asia for a number of months and then be able to get to New Zealand when the time comes--what's the best hub to use for inexpensive & spontaneous travel? This corner of the world is unfamiliar and foreign to me, I don't even know where to want to go--what do you recommend? I have friends scattered in SE Asia--can you put together an itinerary that includes them? I'd like to get to NZ but I don't know when so I don't want to be bound to a departure date--can you make a flexible booking? I may decide to visit Nashville before I leave--which departure city is better: Nashville or Portland?

Yes. I am a travel agent's worst nightmare... Or, as a friend pointed out, I'm their dream client because I'm open to it all and will follow the advice given.  

Needless to say, I have not heard back from Leah so I suspect that in her mind, I fall into the former category of "nightmare."

This all got me thinking that yes, it's time I start actually learning about this place that will, by default, be my new vagabond home.  And with that, I cracked my guidebook and let the giddiness bubble up :)

Welcome to my blog!*

With multiple grand, sweeping, hyperbolic life changes characterizing 2012 and my imminent travel, I decided that tonight of all nights is the night I commence blogging my journey.

In actuality my journey really started long ago and involves my creation tale, to-date life story, previous travel encounters and some incredulous coincidences along the way; not to mention heavy doses of blind luck and infinite blessings which I dream to honor.  Those are all tales for another time and in time they will reveal themselves here.

The salient facts of the day are pretty simple:

1) I adore travel and am ever passionate and grateful to be a part of this global community.

2) My life thus far has been wonderfully blessed and leaves me with few regrets however it has become increasingly necessary that I seek my purpose elsewhere. Dramatic change is needed.

3) The stars have aligned! I'm off to Italy for the trip of a lifetime with my father this September. Two short months later I'm off to Malaysia and the welcoming friendship of distant friends.  From Malaysia I'll venture onward, who knows to which destination...

Lucky me. I hope you enjoy being a part of the journey. Thanks for reading.

~LaLe´ Princey

*I swear I read somewhere that when starting a new blog one is required to make that statement verbatim. It's buried in the google blogger fine print, for serious.