I bought my ticket to China on October 29, 2019. Conversations about this trip started in February, March, April, May, June, until July when my travel companion and friend of more than two-thirds of my life, finally moved to China where she said she would wait for me. “I promise I will go.” It seemed like one of those empty promises (which also sounds a bit like a movie cliché), but I said it with the full weight of my truth: Asia 2020, in my mind, was a fact. For her it was a “seeing is believing” situation, so a screenshot of my ticket where I had almost 28 hours of travel printed on was the spark for her to start putting together an itinerary. Meanwhile, I saved up and left everything for last minute.

I got the Thailand visa a week before I left. It was the last document I needed: for China, Ecuadorians do not need a visa, for Myanmar we get it online and the same with Cambodia, which can be paid through an “app” or at the airport when you arrive (you have to keep some things in mind with online visas, there are scam sites. Other than that, they are generally easy to get).

Our plans were never completely fixed. We bought two plane tickets that would take us out of China and another that would take us to Thailand, from there, nothing else was certain. This may be a bit more expensive but it gave us the freedom to stay more days in the places we liked the most. So, with masks (in every transportation we used), we traveled from the cold of Beijing to the heat of Siem Reap. Little by little we were changing clothes to a lighter one. This was a little annoying due to the space that the garments were occupying in our backpacks. Something to take into account if you want to take a trip to several places, but all manageable.