Checking Up on My Travel Resolutions

This week’s Indie Travel Challenge prompt is a simple one: take a look back at your week one travel resolutions.

So let’s take a look, shall we? Here were my resolutions:

• Travel to Malaysia and Singapore for two weeks in February with only a day pack and my purse (and whatever I can fit in my Scottevest jacket). - Success! Completed February 2012. I bought a camera case along the way so came home with one extra, but small, bag.
• Eat at least 75% of the foods on the exhaustive Malaysian and Singaporean foods list that two Malaysian girls and a Singaporean girl wrote for us. – It depends a little on how you count it, but we were at least almost there. And we sure tried.
• Give the ‘king of fruits’ another chance at the Durian Buffet in KL. – Couldn’t bring ourselves to do a durian buffet, and our KL friend told us not to if we weren’t sure we’d like it, anyway. We had some durian egg creams… I couldn’t take it. So durian and I are still not friends.
• Take inappropriate pictures with the statues at Love Land on Jeju Island. – completed 21 January 2012
• See a performance of Nanta (also known as Cookin).  - completed 7 January 2012
• Eat at a temple food restaurant, preferably the one I found in Insadong. – Hasn’t happened yet. There’s still time though.
• Visit all of Korea’s UNESCO World Heritage listed sites. – Looking good! Eight down, two to go (Haeinsa Temple and the folk villages at Hahoe and Yangdong).
• Learn 10 more students’ names.  - completed 27 March 2012 – I now know 준표 (Junpyo), two 지원s (Jiwon), 예원 (Yewon), 체원 (Chewon), 세연 (Seyeon), 은체 (Eunche), 진희 (Jinhee), 예진 (Yejin), and 민희 (Minhee)
• Send the rest of my postcards, and my Christmas package to my family (late but… oh well). – finally completed May 2012 – sent off the last postcard to my grandparents
• Buy a new camera. – completed 6 January 2012
• Plan and begin a round-the-world journey. – Planning is going great! We have our tickets booked for Mongolia.
• Go to at least one other Southeast Asian country, besides Singapore and Malaysia. – Should arrive in Vietnam in late October.
• Eat at least one new, strange food – I’m thinking I want to do a shot of snake blood… - I suspect that live octopus counts. Ate it in April 2012.
• Book a ticket on the Trans-Siberian railroad (assuming the timing works out right for this year to be the right time to book).  - Not happening as we’ve decided not to take the Trans-Siberian!
• Write a post for all the Indie 2012 prompts (even if it’s late – I’m not bringing a computer on my February trip, for instance). – So far, so good!
• Post at least 3 blog posts per week all year. – Still going strong!

Overall I’m very happy with my progress! I can check off 9 of 16 resolutions, so I’ve completed just over half of them – appropriate since half the year is now gone! Only one will definitely fail, the Trans-Siberian railroad one. The other six will almost certainly be done.

I’m happy to see that if I set my mind to something, I can do it. I did it with my 100 book challenge last year and I’m doing it this year with these resolutions. Of course, I sort of made them purposefully easy for me as they coincide with things I’m already planning. In case you were wondering, this year’s book count stands at 25. Perhaps I’ll read 50 books, which will be half as many as last year… but a much more reasonable number!

How are your New Year’s resolutions going?