As I mentioned at the start of this blog, we started our journey with only a flight to Bangkok and four nights accommodation booked. Other than that, we had a rough idea of the direction we needed head in order to stay ahead of the rainy season, the aim to see one of my best friends in Hong Kong in mid September (Hi Al), and a return to the UK in mid to late November. We had not even decided which countries to visit, and we still haven’t as I write this.

Why so little planning you ask?

We felt that giving ourselves the chance to make spur of the moment decisions would be more fun and given that it was low season in most places, it was unlikely that prices would suddenly rise nearer to the booking time, or availability disappear. The technology we all have available on our phones makes the process of finding and booking things so simple that we could not see any drawbacks.

As at this point, just over 3 months in, pretty much all accomodation, flights, transport and trips have been booked with 24 or 48 hours notice, the only exception being our flight out of Indonesia as we had heard stories of customs checking to ensure visitors had onward travel booked.

The shortest time frame so far is the accommodation in Bali as we booked it just as we got on the plane in Flores, so about 2.5 hours in advance of turning up.

Prices have ranged from £15 to £55 for accommodation per night, sometimes with breakfast, but always with good air conditioning unlike what the majority of people in the UK experienced this summer. We have not used any hostels, just a range of hotels, small resorts and apartments through sites like Booking.com, Trip.com and occasionally Airbnb. Land transport has been through 12Go for buses, Grab for taxis, direct with railways for trains and Trip.com for flights.

Our favourites have been small “family run” type places, as we have found the people working in them to be the most friendly and engaging.

There have been a couple of towns that survive through being a port or drop off point and tend to see visitors staying for just one night. Accommodation in these places might be described as “functional” but other than that we have been delighted with most of the places we have stayed.

The flexibility of late booking has allowed us to extend our stay in places we have enjoyed and cut short any we haven’t. As far as trips go, nothing that we have wanted to do has been fully booked apart from the “luxury” Lombok to Flores cruise which we then heard relied on a different understanding of luxury anyway.

When we meet new people and start chatting, invariably our approach of no plan and last minute booking comes up during conversations about where we are headed next. I have been surprised to find that it is the thing that raises most consternation, with pretty much everyone we have met saying they like to know where they are going, where they are staying and what they are doing, and would struggle without a fixed plan.

To me it feels like further proof of how we often become increasing experts in our own world without noticing that our world has actually reduced in size and spontaneity.

Obviously we know that the fact we don’t have children has made the decision to travel so much easier for us, and maybe we have just been extremely lucky with the weather this year, but travelling in low season has been a dream and we will definitely choose this season in future.