Departure, at last!

After all the months of planning, all the fractured-English emails back and forth, all the shopping for little travel necessities, it's finally here. The day Sarah and I embark on the trip of a lifetime--3 weeks in Cambodia and Vietnam. It's always amazing when the day of an exotic international trip arrives--so other-worldly, so exciting, so nerve-wracking.

Sarah's been especially anxious about the travel part. She's not a big fan of being on airplanes, and she says she can't sleep on them at all. Not a great setup for a flight to Asia, but hey, no pain, no gain. Once we board our flight at midnight, we'll begin a 24-hour ordeal, flying from SFO to Taipei (13+ hours), then, after a 2-hour layover, from Taipei to Ho Chi Minh City (about 4 hours), and finally, after a another 2-hour layover, from Ho Chi Minh City (ne Saigon) to Siem Reap, Cambodia (one hour--on a turboprop!). It is in Siem Reap where, after a day of recovery, we will begin our adventure by spending 3 days touring the temples and ruins of the great Angkor complex, as well as the floating villages of Tonle Sap, before moving on to the Vietnam portion of the trip.

This blog is where you, our friends and family, will be able to come to get the latest on our travels. The foibles, the follies, the fantastic, the frustrating, the phenomenal. Assuming I get my act together properly, there will be photos and even video to be found here, as well. We both look forward to entertaining you with our tales.

I'll save the prattling on for once we're there, but one thing I'll share now is the sign of stupidity to come that already occurred--last night, I hung Sarah's carry-on shoulder bag, which has all of her important documents, cash, passport, makeup on a chair in our dining room, not realizing that the wall heater was on, and after a night of dangling in front of the heat, it was lucky I didn't burn all those valuables. But I did manage to destroy her lipsticks, heat her phone well beyond the manufacturers suggested maximum temperature, and warp her drivers licence and credit cards.

If we're lucky, this will be the closest we come to disaster over the next 3 weeks. But then, the threat (and promise) of the unknown is why one goes on a trip like this, no? Hopefully, this won't be the last such adventure to be chronicled here.

Until Siem Reap...