If you read my last post, you know that the Northeast Monsoon is hitting the Gulf Coast of the Malay Peninsula all the way down into Indonesia. We kind of just learned that ourselves and after some thought have decided to change our itinerary. Originally, we were going to work our way down the Malay Peninsula and across the Indonesian Archipelago, before circling back north to see northern Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and on into Vietnam. But after checking weather charts and seeing that January and February are by far the rainiest months in KL, Singapore, and Jakarta, we’re going to transpose our northern SEA and southern SEA plans. So we’ll soon head north, back through Bangkok, en route to northern Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, before returning south in March-ish. We usually don’t aim for high-season/nice weather when we visit places. In fact, we usually do the opposite to avoid the crowds and high prices. But there’s some places that are very difficult or impossible to visit in the off-season. We can stand the Asian heat of summer, but you’d be crazy to attempt to visit many places in the Himalaya during the off-season. In fact, there’s many parts of the Himalaya that are simply inaccessible during winter and spring. Similarly, we wouldn’t mind the torrential rain in Malaysia and Indonesia, but the monsoon effectively halts any transportation on the Gulf. And so, what’s the point of visiting a place if you cannot go to the places you want to see? Although we’ve come this far south, its not THAT far and its not too late to turn back. We’ll have to backtrack a bit, which is frustrating because of the corresponding money and time wasted. However, we feel our new plan is a better decision and the aforementioned are small prices to pay.