2012 Round Up – My trips

Wow 2012 was quite a great year for my travels. I wasn’t expecting to travel as much as I did given that I was piled with projects at work, but somehow I managed to squeeze out the time and ended up visiting a surprising 7 countries this year, even if I did not get around to my original plans of visiting Scandinavia and Croatia.

The one thing I learned this year was that you can make time to travel. These trips totalled about 38 days in all and were accomplished with some creative extended weekends, public holidays and about 22 days worth of leave. Here’s a breakdown:

• Malapascua Diving Trip (Apr) – 6D5N
• Bangkok Shopping and R&R Trip(Jun) – 4D3N
• Osaka Holiday (Jul) – 6D5N
• Tioman Diving Trip (Aug) long wkend – 2D2N
• Manado Diving Trip (Nov) public holiday – 7D6N
• Unholies UAE Redux + Solo Munich Trip (Dec) – 13D12N

Malapascua, Philippines

The first trip happened in April, where I made the arduous journey to Malapascua with a new dive group for a great diving trip to see Thresher Sharks and other sea creatures. Check out the blogs and my dive logs>>

Bangkok, Thailand

After the culmination of one my major work projects, I took a short shopping trip and R&R with the colleagues to Bangkok in June, where we ate and shopped to our heart’s content. See the Bangkok Blowout posts for some of the cool places we visited>>

Kansai, Japan

Shortly after that in July, a longer sojourn to Osaka and the Kansai region where Y and I braved the summer heat for Okonomiyaki and Takoyaki. Other highlights: scaring Nara deer and eating chicken sashimi (yes that’s a real thing). Follow our journey with the Ohayo Osaka! posts>>

Tioman Wreck Diving

Then a longish post-National Day weekend up to the waters off Tioman for a spot of live-on-board on a boat with the smallest room in the world and some murky wreck diving. See the dive log here>>

Diving in Manado

And a proper week of diving in the muck of Manado and Lembeh over the Deepavali holiday week, where some coaching and inspiration really helped my underwater photo-taking skills. See the Manado dive logs and photos>>

United Arab Emirates

Finally culminating in the longest trip of the year in December – an awesome Unholies redux up in UAE where I discovered the unexpected side of Abu Dhabi, got mistaken as a hooker in Dubai and lived in a desert villa…  See those stories here>>

Munich, Germany

…and straight after I embarked on my solo trip for 2012 in Munich, Germany where I enjoyed a super festive pre-Christmas atmosphere and drank all the gluhwein and beer. See my Christmas market adventures and more >>

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In 2013…

So many places and too many things that I want to do! My bucket list of countries to visit continues to grow…

What I definitely have booked is a short Bali trip with my friends to celebrate our birthdays in March. Two of them turn 30 and for me it’s the final year in my twenties… 29 on 29th bay-beh! It’ll be the first time that I’ve travelled for my birthday =) Also on the cards are more diving trips – after our successful Manado trip, we’re planning for a Maldives trip in the later part of the year, and possibly an Anilao one too!

Two of my friends are getting married next year and are planning to hold their ceremonies overseas in Italy and Australia. I would dearly love to attend, but suspect the dates are a little awkward so it’s going to take some creativity and some luck to make it work… In other related news, I nearly ended up signing on for an overseas volunteer stint in 2013, but gave it a pass after some serious consideration.

I’ve given a lot of serious thought as to whether I should take some time off to do some serious travelling, make good on my passion and pursue my own dreams as travel bloggers are wont to do. While no plans are finalized yet, it’s going to happen soon, I can feel it in my bones (Edit: It took me till 2016 to get down to it but hey I did it!) But for now I’m still an Occasional Traveller, we’ll see what happens next…

Where have you been and where do you wanna go in 2013? Tell me your plans!

Check out the rest of my 2012 Round Ups – see my favourite blog posts from 2012 as well as what the year was like for The Occasional Traveller.