I guess we all get around eventually to making our own little contribution to the digital-narcissism corpus. Dan and I shall be no exception!
So here we are, looking towards Friday, July 4, not just as the birthday of these great United States but, as I count them, the mere nine days from now when Dan and I leave for Vietnam and Cambodia (plus, in my case, Laos). It feels all the more a reality because I've just hung up the phone with the travel medical specialist we both used to clarify when to take our anti-malaria medication. (In case you were wondering, as luck has it, we'll be in-and-out of so called "malarial-areas", so will need to take our Malarone daily beginning just before we land in Saigon.) As some of you may know, there no Dengue Fever vaccine, so that's likely what the mother-of-all mosquitos of the type Dan seems to attract will probably carry. I'm tellin' ya' -- they love this guy!
And then there are the colorful, full-page visas affixed to our passports that, like India's, are so much more interesting than the black-ink smudges necessary to enter less exotic places like France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Barbados, and the US, as I look over my passport. Oh, and Iceland. But then there's not a lot of color there anyway.
The eco-tour company handling the trekking portion of my trip (and my typically obsessive independent web research) suggests that I do, in fact, need to bring my space-hogging hiking boots for mountainous Northern Vietnam. All well and good except that I was hoping to take just one carry-on bag that's truly not much larger than...well, a space-hogging pair of hiking boots and tightly rolled silk dream-sack. (The latter being SOP, I may conclude, for two overnight train trips and my decidedly spartan bamboo hut--the better to keep the snakes from coiling about my feet! ) :O On the other hand, chances are they've never seen feet quite as large as mine, so I could have a slight competitive advantage there. One can hope.
Anyway, this first post just to let you know that we're in the homestretch on the long wait for departure. You know, the one that's always months then weeks and then -- suddenly, crisis-inducingly close. And to let you know, too, that we'll always be just a blog post or reply comment away from you all. Please join us now and then; drop in as we wend our way through Saigon -- Ho Chi Minh City, if you're strictly PC ("Happy Birthday Hien!") -- Angkor (temples!), Hanoi (water-puppets!), and Halong Bay (sea-kayaking through karst caves and Cat Ba Island--langurs!). Click here to see our itinerary and some representative photos for the Halong Bay portion of our trip. Then, for me, Sapa in the mountainous north of Vietnam, just near the Chinese border (hill-tribe villages!). Lastly, to Luang Prabang, the ancient capital of Laos. Click here for some info and images about that city.
NB: Inasmuch as it's the...er..."rainy" season there, we may rename the blog "Janny and Dan's Blog-'n'-Slog"! (Can you say "bad hair day"?) #:-( <-- This is Janny with Lorax Hair.
I know I speak for us both when I say how excited we are about our upcoming adventure, and that we hope you'll stop by now and again to share it with us.
(Posted by Janice)
Saigon Traffic
