Friday, September 14, 2012

The Adventure of a Lifetime...!

Before I get into my travel plans through Southeast Asia let me introduce myself...My name is Brett Landon Poncia. Born and raised in Redding, California (Far Northern California) by my parents Leo and Julie Poncia. I have an older sister Alisha and a younger brother Leo Jr. I graduated from a private university in the Bay Area called Dominican University of California with a B.A. in Business. I played basketball for 4 years and met many life long friends there. After my parents, I give credit to the university for developing myself as a well rounded person. I also have great passion and interest for sports and fitness. Now let me tell you about what is going on in my interesting/entertaining life...

A few months ago I was on the phone with my Mom talking about how I felt like I was "floating" and had not found what I was looking for yet as far as jobs or careers...it was scary and discouraging. Granted I am only 23 years young but I felt some sort of pressure to find some crazy awesome $70K job with the degree I had just earned. No, not by my parents but by society! She threw out the idea of traveling somewhere. I pondered it for a moment and ideas started flowing in my mind. I said YES! I wanted to go somewhere so badly I could taste it. Let me note, I have never traveled overseas. The first thought I had was Europe!! No, no, no everyone goes there...I'll wait until I'm old and rich to go there. We continued talking and I mentioned something about Thailand. She said do it! That's how it started. We talked for a bit longer that night. I was so excited I started crying on the phone with her because of the excitement running through my body. This was an opportunity of a lifetime. I began researching for hours a day at home and work about Thailand and other countries in Southeast Asia. I learned as much as I could about the region from the weather, cultures, people, and what kind of things there is to do there. I looked at Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. I quickly became fascinated with these countries.

A few days later I talked about it with my roommate and close friend Alec. We subsequently have decided to go on the adventure of a lifetime together. We knew we wanted to go but for how long?? We both had jobs to quit and neither of us had strings attached in our current location. The length of the trip was...well we didn't know. We searched for the cheapest one way ticket from San Francisco to Bangkok and found one leaving early early morning on Monday September 17th. I'm going to begin packing my backpack today bringing only the essentials: 2 shorts, 1 pants, 3 shirts, 2 pairs of shoes, flip flops, swim trunks, 6 underwear, 4 pairs of socks, some cosmetics, a book, headphones, and of course my iPhone...can't forget that.

A full itinerary does not exist. We wanted it this way. We do know at some point we will venture through Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. On our journey we will be staying in hostels and the occasional hotel. From what I've read there will be other backpackers we'll meet and hangout with along the way. There are so many things I want to experience. I want to deep sea dive, zip line through the jungles of Laos, eat all kinds of street food, learn a bit of the languages, meet and get to know people of the land, hangout on the beach, ride an elephant, go down the Mekong River, take a motorcycle through Northern Vietnam, possibly meet up with family in Chang Mai (my aunt and her family are from Chang Mai), and hopefully go on the Gibbon Experience in Laos (look it up). I have a bunch of feelings/emotions about the trip. I'm excited and nervous at the same time. I'm going to miss my family most of all. They mean everything to me. This will be time to grow as a person and find out what the rest of the world is like outside the U.S. I just checked the weather in Bangkok...a humid 89 degrees with showers. Now that this post is longer than expected, I think it's time for me to start packing. I plan on blogging throughout my journey as long as I can get wi-fi somewhere. I hope you enjoy my blog! Until next time...Love

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