Where am I going?

So here is my rough itinerary for my upcoming trip. Prepare for a wall of text.

TLDR:
Brisbane -> Beijing, China (5 days) -> Mongolia (3 1/2 weeks) -> South Korea (1 week-ish) -> Japan (1 month) -> Russia (1 month) -> Estonia (3-4 days) -> Latvia (3-4 days) -> Denmark / Norway / Sweden / Iceland (4-6 weeks)

I hate travel research so if you’ve been to any of these places and know of some really cool shit let me know!

The dates for the first half of the trip are quite fixed due to visa requirements but the time after Russia is only loosely thought through.

Overall I expect to be gone for about 5 1/2 months. First flight is 19 July although one could argue my Adelaide -> Brisbane flight is the first one of the trip.

Brisbane -> Beijing, China - 5 days in Beijing. I’m not super keen on visiting China but I had a few days to fill at the start of the trip and I did want to get the train from Beijing to Ulanbaatar. So 5 days here seems like enough to get over some jet lag, check out the Great Wall, forbidden city and other major tourist rubbish while I wait for …

Beijing -> Ulanbaatar, Mongolia - 3.5 weeks in Mongolia. Arriving via an overnight train which should be interesting. I’ve got a lot of train travel planned this trip so here’s hoping I don’t hate it. I’m jumping on a tour in Mongolia and we’re going bush. I’m going to be camping apparently … I’m not entirely comfortable with that idea but I did want an adventure so I’ve only got myself to blame. I imagine I’ll be looking forward to civilisation after this 3 weeks.

Ulanbaatar -> Seoul, South Korea - 1 week in South Korea. I had about a week to kill between Mongolia and Japan so I looked at what was between those 2 places and South Korea was it. Should be interesting … wonder if there’s going to be a Starcraft tournament I can go see? Thinking of splitting my time between Seoul and Busan while here.

Busan -> Fukuoka, Japan - 1 MONTH IN JAPAN WOO! I’m getting a hydrofoil from Korea to Japan … should be cool! Japan is one of my major focus points of the trip. Everyone raves about it and it’s always looked like a fascinating place to visit. A few of the things I want to do … visit an onsen, stay the night in a buddhist temple, WATCH THE SUMO TOURNAMENT, check out an awesome sushi restaurant, do a kaiseki meal, visit a canned food cafe, ride the shinkansen, eat sushi off a naked woman (joke … maybe. Saw this in an 80s action movie once and have been fascinated with the idea since. I do have some issues with this but I’d totally do it in a heartbeat) … and the list goes on. In general I’m planning to hit Hiroshima, Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Sapporo plus wherever else I end up.

Sakaiminato -> Vladivostok, Russia - 1 month in Russia. There’s a 2 night ferry trip that goes from Japan to Russia with an 8 hour stopover in Donghae South Korea the middle day. In Russia I’m doing the Trans-siberian express from Vladivostok to St Petersburg with stops in Irkutsk, Yekaterinburg and Moscow. Russia will be fascinating I’m sure but I don’t really know what to expect. The train takes 9 days end to end so about 1/3 of my time in Russia will be on the train. Here’s hoping I don’t hate train travel!

And this is where it starts to get a bit fuzzy.

St Petersburg -> Tallinn, Estonia - 2-3 days in Tallinn. This leg was originally going to be Slovenia because I’ve heard such good things about it but it’s so far out of the way I’ve been talked into doing Estonia then Latvia. No expectations here at all … just a couple of days in another city.

Tallinn -> Riga, Latvia - 2-3 days in Riga. As above.

Riga -> Copenhagen, Denmark - Overall I’m thinking about 6 weeks in Scandinavia since this was the second major focus on the trip after Japan. I’m hopefully meeting up with Julian Field for a few days in Denmark (and I may duck down to Germany with them for a couple of days as well).

Denmark -> Norway - YESSSSS! I’ve always had this unexplained desire to go to Norway. I don’t know why specifically but it’s somewhere I’ve always wanted to visit … so I am! It’s going to be fairly late in the year so I’m not going to be able to get to Svaalbard unfortunately and I don’t know how far north will be practical. I’m hoping I can at least get to Tromso for a couple of days. And I’d love to check out a metal festival of some variety while I’m here. There is also some awesome beer in this part of the world although it’s horrifically expensive (and that’s compared to what I’m normally willing to spend on beer).

Norway -> Sweden - My main driver for Sweden was Chef’s Table on Netflix. I want to go eat dinner here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fäviken . That’s about as far as my thinking has gone for Sweden so I need to do some investigation before I get there.

Sweden -> Iceland - Iceland seems to be really trendy right now … everyone seems to be going there. Again I don’t have a lot in my mind other than Iceland just looks really spectacular. At the start of the planning stages of my trip I had to decide whether I wanted to see Northern Lights or Endless Days … that would drive whether I started or finished in this part of the world. The Northern Lights is obviously what I chose since this is at the end. I’ll probably try to find a bubble hotel to stay in for a night so I get the full experience. I am thinking I will end up here for Christmas but it will depend on accommodation and exactly how fucking cold it’s going to be. I’m expecting to discover a whole new world of cold that I’ve yet to truly understand.

Iceland -> Seattle, United States … maybe - depending on how I’m feeling, accommodation in Iceland etc… I have thought about maybe ending up in the good old USA to do Christmas with Luke and Mel in Seattle. It’s not that far from Iceland so this may be a better Christmas option.

Somewhere -> Brisbane, Australia - eventually I’m going to have to come home … although here’s hoping for a redundancy at work this year so I can keep going for another 12 months! When I do come back I’ll start in Brisbane to see the fam and collect all my stuff before flying to …

Melbourne! - mid-January - Theoretically I’m moving to Melbourne when I get back … assuming I haven’t been made redundant in a restructure that I’m sure is coming at some point in the next 12 months. If I have been made redundant then who knows? Have heard nice things about Chile and Bolivia.