I started travelling in Asia-Pacific – not including the USA – only about ten years ago. One of the reasons for not going there before is the long travel time they take from Finland, and also many Asian countries have been opened to real travelling only during the 1990’s.
Some of my Asia-Pacific travels have led to round-the-world trips, as Australian East coast, Fiji and New Zealand are practically at the opposite side of the globe compared to Finlad. Because of this it is pretty much the same whether you take your route as a return or go around the World. One those round-the-world trips I’ve applied a couple of principles:
- Going around towards East feels more comfortable, especially if you reserve at least a few days in various stopovers to recover from jetlag.
- Three weeks is about the minimum time if you want to get acquainted in some countries or places on your trip. Technically you could go around the World in a few days – but you would not see anything than airports.
- Self designed and reserved trip might be good, but there are some travel agencies who sell fixed price packages where you can reserve normal route flights from one of the World’s main airline alliances like OneWorld or Star Alliance. In Helsinki I’ve used Aktiv-Resor whose packages have a different price tag depending on how many continents you stop at. My current thinking is that such a package e.g. in economy flights at 2.500 euros is less expensive and much easier for you than selecting and booking the flights individually.
Below some small photos from my trips to different countries in Asia-Pacific. If there is an explanation there is a Finnish page including my experiences and some hints in those countries, mostly in Finnish as the translations take time.
