What's the role of the と particle in this sentence?


ずっと前から東南アジアを旅する **と** 言っている。

I'm sorry if this is badly formatted, this is my first question. Thanks.




In this case, と is being used in its quotation form, meaning that whatever is
before the と for this example is a quotation. The clue here is the end of the
sentence. If we consider only what's after the と for a second:

~と言っている = "...is saying"

So, then we have to answer who is saying what (from context or stated) and
what is being said. Here, what's between our は or が particles and the と
particle is the section that is being quoted. Since we don't have a topic or
subject in this sentence, the implied context is that you're probably the one
who is saying this. Consider looking at this sentence like this:

「ずっと前から東南アジアを旅する」と言っている。  
I'm saying that "I travel to Southeast Asia since long ago".

