Hong Kong is coming to a end, all too quickly, I might add, but trying to postpone my return to the US, Christy and I are hoping for one last round of travel. Today she got word that her pops is going to hook her up with some cash so she can visit the Philippines. Our housing is done on the 26th of May, so hopefully shortly there after we can be heading to the Philippines. Tourist visas for Americans are issues free for a 21 day stay, longer requires paying. Our budget is about $800 each.

The hope was with about $1000 each we could do 3 weeks in the Philippines, followed up with two weeks in Japan. But costs already are looking higher than what was hoped for with ticket prices and estimates on accomodations.

Another uncertainty is the bicycles. It’s fair to say that when I came to Hong Kong, a big part of the reason I brought my bicycle was hoping to do some bike touring. I think it’s fair to say the last trip we took, having our bicycles didn’t work out so great. In hindsight I’m not sure how I could have hoped to accomplish what we did. Some of the circumstances are different, but we also would have to make the kind of trip in which bike touring would make sense. In other words, you can’t hope to cover an entire country in 3 weeks. But biking can also work really well with a trip, but it can also work really well without one…

I hate to say it, but Japan is looking less likely by the moment. Mainly it just seems way too expensive. Just to get there will be US$500. Also there is the issue of how to get there. In an ideal world, we would just go from the Philippines to Japan. But since one way tickets aren’t always so cheap, It’s looking like it might be easier to return to HK first. The one benefit of this will be that perhaps we will leave the bikes home for Philippines, but take them with us for Japan.

Even if we are able to make the money stretch this long, it seems we’ll have to be returning to the US after traveling. I think Christy will be pretty happy to be heading back, and she needs to anyway for school. But for now I’m not thinking so much about that, I just want to make the most of my time in Asia.

Part of that is finally doing some filming. I’d really like to do my best to document the trip. I have quite figured out what that will mean. But more of a problem at this point is actually having a camera. There are a few options in front of me. Unfortunately, none of them look very ideal. What it does seem is that if I am able to acquire a camera, it will be rushed, and perhaps even not what I really want/need for video editing.