Well, with one week remaining, I've already had to say goodbye to several friends at work. Although I am REALLY excited about our upcoming adventures, I am going to miss a lot of people I've worked with. We will celebrate my last work day, the 31st of July, with a department potluck - YUM (any excuse to eat, right?).

Our plans and preparations are coming together pretty well. We purchased a bunch of our gear at REI (it is a terrific, nearly one-stop shopping experience for the traveler) when we were in Portland last weekend. I also sent our passports to the Vietnamese embassy in Washington, DC last week, so our visas should arrive in a couple of weeks.

August 3rd, we leave for NC for the beginning of our USA roadtrip. Our fuzzy orange boy, Tatie, will be spending the next several months with his grandparents (we haven't broken the news to him yet; hopefully he will catch on somewhere on the interstate system) at the coast. I will miss him, but I know he'll be in loving hands.

More preparartions

Re and I went to Portland last weekend to shop for more travel stuff. The REI staff is starting to know our names by now. Originally, we were going to get backpacks for the trip but since we will largely be using our packs to travel from one place to another (as opposed to living with them on our backs) we decided instead to go with travel packs. We got Eagle Creek "Thrive" packs, 75l for RE and 90l for me. They seem pretty slick and fit comfortably, the nice feature is that the straps can be zipped behind a panel when we aren't wearing them. We will see how they do on the road, hopefully we like them as well six months from now. We have also sent off for our Vietnamese visas and are awiting their return. We also wen't to Powell's and bought a couple new guidebooks and a map to Thailand, so we have been busy reading and planning for later in the trip.

Only one more week of work and then the US portion of our trip begins, we'll see you all soon.

Three more weeks of work to go...

Only three more weeks of work until my last day at the DA's office here. It was hard to give my notice (again) and realize that I'll be leaving some really great people behind. I work with a good bunch of people and I will really miss seeing many of them everyday. Re and I have lived kind of a nomadic life for the past 10 years or so and the hardest thing about it is leaving friends behind. Hopefully many of them can keep in touch with us through this blog for the next several months as we go a roving.

We are still trying to figure out what to do about the malaria prophylaxis situation. There are several possible drugs, all with pros and cons and large price differences. Right now it looks like we may swap off between two different drugs depending on where we are. Between vaccinations and medications, this trip has required more planning than we anticipated!

We are slowly accumulating the rest of our trip supplies, we are still shopping for backpacks and the camera that we want to take on our trip is back-ordered everywhere. We have a couple months yet before we take off, so I am confident we will get the rest of the stuff soon.

Our working itinerary so far...

So, our working itinerary so far is...

October

• Arrive in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
• Then, north to Hoi An
• Continue to Hue
• Then to Hanoi
• With a trip to Halong Bay
• Maybe to Cat Ba island

November

• Into Laos
• Visit Luang Prabang
• Then a boat trip up the Mekong River to Huay Xai

Mid-November

• Into Thailand
• Visit Chiang Rai
• Then Chiang Mai
• South to Bangkok
• With a trip to Vientiane, Laos
• And a trip to Siem Riep, Cambodia, and a few days at Angkor Wat
• Then south to some islands off of peninsular Thailand

End of January

• Into Malaysia
• Visit Kota Bharu
• Swing through the Cameron Highlands
• Then to George Town and the island of Penang

Mid-February

• Ferry ride to Medan, Indonesia and the island of Sumatra
• Over to Danau Toba
• Maybe to Bukit Lawang
• Then to the island of Java and a stop in Jakarta
• Over to Yogyakarta
• Then to the islands of Bali and Lombok

End of March

• Fly out of Denpasar