Review 2013 and what's to come

First of all, apologies for not keeping up with my promise to write my updates more frequently. The past few months have been really busy and tiring.

2013 has generally been a very busy year away from the adventures that I have now become used to.

A quick review

Despite the lack of hard-core travels, a lot has happened in 2013. I visited my parents over Christmas and later went to stay at Laura's parents in Spain. There I started to work on some projects and through Ashley decided to go down the self-employed route. It's all still in its early beginning but eventually we promise ourselves that we will be able to make a living of it. Apart from that as lot of things did look very uncertain however. First Laura and I wanted to go to Canada, but then the Visa situation started to become a bit messy and this plan slowly went downhill. We also thought about applying to work as foreign aid workers but also this idea never really caught on.
So somehow we were stranded in Spain for a while thinking on what to do. Hence the work on becoming self-employed.

In the mean time we did a few short trips. After over a year I re-visited my good friend Ash in the South of England and got to know some of his friends, we did a trip to Laura's brother in Holland and I got to see my sister in Valencia.

Sadly though, not everything went that rosy somehow. I enjoyed my stay at the house of Laura's parents which are some of the most hospitable people I have ever met and we also got along really well (we still keep in touch). Between Laura and me however things hadn't been as good anymore though and eventually ended in us going separate ways.

Time to think

All this has thrown m around a bit. A lot of travellers fall into a sort of depression for some time when they return from their trips. Me having a bit of a pessimistic view on Europe didn't help either (particularly in Spain where signs of the recession are clearly visible). I had plenty of time to think over what to do.

Since quite a while I wanted to move to Australia but there the Visa situation is painstakingly difficult and lengthy. I even found someone that could potentially sponsor me, but with some recent findings regarding the Visa process I’ll have to wait and see what the coming months will hold. Going on another working holiday in Canada or New Zealand to live like a backpacker doesn’t seem right at this moment. I see it as a Plan C for now

Decisions Decisions Decisions

Eventually I did come to a conclusion: Already when I first landed in Chiang Mai, I thought that it would be nice to live there for some time. This thought hadn't changed during my 3 further visits or ever since, so eventually I decided that I want to do just that and booked a flight. With such a long distance to fly away from Europe, I decided to visit my family in Germany. As they started to work on house renovations there was plenty to help with. So much in fact I prolonged my stay by two months to add Christmas and New Year’s eve to my time there as well.

I have now arrived well and dandy Phuket and as I am writing this post I’m waiting for my connecting flight to Chiang Mai. My plan is to live there and work on the Business I got running with Ash, doing IT and programming work. Maybe there will be some new development in regards to Australia. My next steps will be to get myself setup, buy a Bike and start some Thai lessons. Time will tell how things will go - but I'm quite optimistic