Introduction: One month till GO!

Today marks the one month milestone. A combination of emotions overwhelm us, excitement at the thought of the adventure that lays before us, nervousness about the possibilities of everything ending up seriously FUBAR (an emotion that is spurned on by every single horror story we have heard over the previous months) and stress, layers and layers of thick and meaty stress. But above all of these emotions is also a great feeling of finality and closure. I guess I kinda feel like a prison inmate who has only one month left to go until they are released back into the wild. For the three years we have worked as the caretakers for DT's there has always been a slight sense of entrapment about our position. But we can see the end in sight now and with just over three weeks left in the DT's Cell Block I think our holidays, no matter how epic they may be, are well deserved.

Which I guess brings us to the plan (or at least Plan A). One month from today we fly to Bangkok in Thailand, exactly two months later we fly to London where we have organised a two year working visa. That's pretty much all that is set in stone at this point. Upon landing at Bangkok we have booked ourselves 5 nights in a very nice looking hotel called Lampu Tree House and we will use the days in Bangkok (I'd like to call it Bangers from now on, but I won't) to do some shopping and integrate with the asian cultures and odours.

From Bangkok we intend to travel east into Cambodia to visit Angkor Wat and Phom Phen, then Head south east to Vietnam and Ho Chi Mihn. From Old Saigon we will hop on and off the train up the east coast to the north via Da Nang, Hue and Hoi An until we eventually reach Hanoi and Halong Bay. (BTW Please exuse any and all spelling mistakes)

At about this point we'll have to do a bit of backtracking south through Vietnam to find a border crossing into Laos that won't cause death or impoverishment, to eventually reach Vientienne. Heading north through a paddock with some old arse jars in it we will reach Luang Prabang and from there we hope to hop on a slow boat up the Mekong to reach an isolated border crossing at the Northern tip of Thailand.

Returning to Thailand we'll have to go south to get north into the mountains and visit the hill tribes around Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, then we will make our way back to BANGERS (sorry) to organise ourselves for the European leg. Or at least that is the plan.

So here we are one month before we leave sitting in a baking tray ladling ourselves with sweetly rich amounts of stress. We have managed to clear out most of our house, pretty much everything we own has now been packed into boxes and shipped to friends and family or turfed out into black garbage bags. But by god do we have a lot of shit. We are on track to get everything organised before we need to move out of our apartment, but the stress involved has been a little uncomfortable, and it is quite common to sit here for a few minutes making lists in our minds of all the things we still need to do until blood starts pouring from our ears.

But the lists are getting smaller...