I’m leaving soon for a three-week trip to Asia: Shanghai, Guangzhou, Jakarta, Ubud, and Manila; it’ll be a whistle-stop tour, but I couldn’t be more excited. I’m traveling with one person (my boyfriend) until Manila, where we’ll meet friends and attend a wedding.
We’ve got a rough itinerary (flights, trains, and hotels) but are interested in any and all input as to what we should do in these cities. We’re most interested in doing what 20-somethings in these cities do — whatever those things are. Food and history are second- and third-order priorities, respectively. We’re looking at this trip as a (tremendous) opportunity to explore.
We’re planning from this Google document, which you can edit. We’ll also take suggestions via comment, Twitter, or email. The Google document will stay open and edited after our trip ends, so you’ll be able to return to it when you plan a trip to this part of the world.
Our current itinerary looks like:
- London: ~10 hours
- Shanghai: 3 days
- Guangzhou: ~12 hours
- Jakarta: 2 days
- Ubud: 2 days
- Manila: 2 days
In exchange for your suggestions now, I’ll post reflections and short reviews of the places we visit and the things we do in the Google Doc. The Lonely Planet and Wikitravels of the world are helpful, but there’s no reason trip-planning should be so impersonal.
Here’s a list of books were also recommended as travel reading to me. I hope it helps you, too.
Very much inspired by Zach Klein, Dennis Crowley, Soraya Darabi, and others who have crowdsourced trip-planning before me.