There is one thing that has bugged me throughout the last few weeks, how do I possibly write about my 19 nights, 18 days in the United States? To write in a usual fashion would mean 18, possibly 19 very long and very tedious posts that would take days to read. It would also take weeks to compile. I’ll do a day by day but more concise than usual and with summaries after each city post. Maybe I should start with how it came about before I dive into the first section.

Let me take you back 5 years, 2 months to Thailand where I compiled my list of 10 destinations I wanted to visit in the world. Iceland, Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam then the most obscure, Iran, Uzbekistan. The list still lies at home hidden away somewhere. There was one glaring omission, the US. Back then as a 22 year old newly let loose in South East Asia it was too mainstream for me. Anyone could do the US I thought.

Move along to 2017 and my colleague from southern England started talking basketball, NBA to be precise. He got into watching the NBA which was great with games starting early morning and working in the afternoon. Time passed and one night last January I stumbled in from a bar, a friends house or something, I put on some NBA highlights and I thought let’s go to the US next year. The ball was rolling.

Summer rolled around and I was looking at Skyscanner. “Where do I go for Chinese New Year in 2020?” I thought. Myanmar? “NT$14,000 return? Seriously?” I clicked on anywhere. “Hang on, San Francisco is only 15,000 return!” I kept searching then went on multi city and within minutes the trip was born.

This was 24th June 2019 and on my computer screen on 24th June it read Taipei to New York and LA to Taipei, NT$24,900. Direct. Two huge flights. It would give me 19 nights in the US with enough time to craft a schedule full of NBA games and tourist sights. I booked it.

I had gone from being absolutely opposed to going to the US to now going there. I had to wait a further six weeks for the NBA schedule to be announced and from 11th August I could start to put together an itinerary.

At first my ideas were wild, many cities, many games but I quickly realised that that was stupid, something the me of my early 20s would have done. I did a bit of research on US cities and NBA schedule when realised looked promising. I soon had my 5 cities.

I would start in New York, travel to Boston, to Philadelphia, Washington DC and finally Los Angeles for the final leg. A lot of the internal travel would be booked months later but within in a month I had several NBA tickets. Brooklyn Nets v Milwaukee Bucks. Boston Celtics v Memphis Grizzlies. Philadelphia 76ers v Los Angeles Lakers. This would grow to five games.

Over those few months between August and early January I found I could add ice hockey into the schedule. This started with just a game but would end up with 4 games.

Planning would be haphazard with 95% focusing on New York which I had ironically never wanted to visit. I guess as I’ve got older, matured, the Big Apple become more a lure. Very little planning would be done on LA. In the end, overwhelmed, I ended up going into the trip with a play it by ear strategy. Some days I had fairly solid ideas, but later days would be more open. This is exactly what happened on trip.

Enough of the backstory, it’s time to bring you the low down on the US. I will be breaking this into city by city posts.

Let’s time to have a look at part one – New York!

Tom