Never on a Friday

The bus is packed. Bodies are pressed against bodies, windows fogged from the humidity of the rain outside coupled with the warmth of the people inside. Despite the fact that most people look showered and ready to work downtown, the bus smells like an old, wet dog. You spot the odor-culprit muttering to himself and rocking back and forth. Sighing, you heave your computer bag onto your shoulder and collect the various other bags containing your lunch, conference materials, and the cookies you're bringing in for a co-worker's birthday. You manage to grab onto a pole as the bus lurches to a start, and two of your bags swing dangerously close to the women sitting in front of you. She looks up, annoyed by the near-death encounter with your baked goods. You smile an apology, she takes in the fact of your bags, your exhaustion, and your swollen belly, and she returns comfortably to the book she was reading for the remainder of the ride.

"You're clearly and obviously pregnant now!," chirps the cheerful words from the baby website you read once a week to find out how big the baby is (the size of a Harry Potter book!). "People will smile at you on the street, give your belly unwanted pats, and stand up to give you their seat on the bus."

Except that there's a limit to even the nicest commuter's willingness to give up their seat, and I have found that it is correlated to two things: weather and day of the week. If it's raining on a Friday and you are so huge that you look like you're going to go into labor any second, be prepared to hold onto a pole while balancing 14 packages for an entire train ride, all while trying desperately not to wet your pants.

Sunny Mondays are the best. Filled with the good will of a weekend, event BU Frat boys will offer you their seat on the bus. Wednesdays and Thursdays are tricky. Women are more likely to give up their mid-week seat, more likely to stand up during the evening rather than morning commute, and are most likely to offer their seat if they are somewhere between the ages of 25 and 45. Younger women remain engrossed in their cell phones, and even when they look up, they will probably scowl the gross-ness of your condition, and then promptly return to their text message. Pregnant women are the most likely to give up their seat for other, more pregnant women, something that gives us a chance to smile at each other in a "don't other people suck?" kind of way. Most of the time, men aren't interested in giving up their seat. Chivalry is probably dead and apparently labor isn't hard enough. I'm pretty sure they're not remaining seated because they think that no good feminist would want them to stand, but I could be wrong. This is Boston, after all.

As a daily commuter, I vow to teach our children how to give up their seat for the elderly, the disabled, the exhausted-looking, the woman with a stroller, and the pregnant. I vow to teach my someday son to be chivalrous, to look up from his ipod (or whatever device) when people get on the train. I have every intention of becoming the woman who asks for a seat during my 10th month of pregnancy when it's snowing outside. But the next time it's raining on a Friday, I will probably drive.

Sometimes I Wish I'd Just Dialed In

I've been traveling for business every week since mid-April. Last week I was in Colorado Springs for a one-day meeting. Let me just say that traveling to Colorado for a one-day meeting is NOT worth it. First, it takes a whole day of travel from Boston on either end, since there is no such thing as a red-eye out of Denver or Colorado Springs. Second, there is no such thing as a direct flight from Boston to Colorado Springs and back. Third, and finally, a spate of "tornadic activity", while cool from the ground, makes attempting to fly through or around it a complete pain in the ass.

So the facts are these: My flight from Boston to Denver was delayed a mere 20 minutes, but once airborne those 20 minutes stretched to two-and-a-half hours as we were re-routed up over Canada (twice!) to avoid heavy thunderstorms over the Midwest. I was sitting in the middle seat in the back of the coach cabin, which means there's only 2 inches between your nose and the back of the seat in front of you (less when the asshole in front of you leans his seat all the back), with a tremendously obese woman to my right and a young woman with her 18-month-old son to my left.

Upon finally reaching Denver, I'd missed my connecting flight to Colorado Springs. And then had to deal with United's inept customer service reps as they tried to rebook me. Unfortunately, most of this alleged rebooking involved me running back and forth from gate to gate, being told by the gate agents that the flight was closed or delayed and that I would need to talk to customer service. Their excuse was along the lines of "the weather forced us to cancel a bunch of flights and, of course, the best option for us was to fly all of these passengers to Colorado Springs and make it someone else's problem."

So here I am with a standby ticket for the last flight (already oversold) to Colorado Springs and I have to be at the meeting at 8:30 the next morning. And I do the only rational thing left: I call United, cancel my leg to Colorado Springs, rent a car and drive. In the end, I arrived at my hotel 5 minutes after my rebooked standby flight was supposed to have taken off from Denver.

The moral of the story is twofold: 1) Never fly United, and 2) Denver is close enough to anything in Colorado to make connecting flights not worth the hassle.

Gotta Fly

I love taking pictures at airports. It probably stems, like so many things, from my love for Star Wars. Ever since I first watched Obi-Wan and Luke weave that beat-up speeder through the Mos Eisley spaceport, airports have always been a source of magic and adventure for me. Unfortunately, too often I forget to take my camera out of my bag, but every once in a while I do. So here are a couple of my favorites from my recent business trip to Washington D.C.

These photos also reminded me of a stack of pictures I took while waiting for the shuttle bus at Logan a couple of years ago. This one of the woman waiting for her ride is still one of my faves.

Ground Control to Major Tata**

Written from the Cochin Airport, Kerala, India
Posted from Delhi, India

We're sitting in yet another airport terminal right now, waiting to board our flight to Delhi (via Cochin and Mumbai). We got here right on time, no hassle with the 30 km taxi ride to the airport (though it took an hour and involved much honking). We checked our bags, took the battery out of our alarm clock as instructed by the ubiquitous mean security lady (wha? I don't get it either) and set out to find some tea. And then the power went out. Yes, in an airport. Yes, in a place where, just beyond that security door over there, they fly planes. All is well, however, because there is a generator. Or at least, I'm assuming there's a generator, because we were still able to get our hot tea, complete with warmed milk. Woe to the traveler who can't get their tea before boarding a plane that may or may not be able to take off because of a power failure at ground control! That is just SO India!

** For those of you not familiar with TATA, they're the ubiquitous and enormous private sector group in India. You see their logo everywhere -- on cars, buses, trucks, telecom, utilities, construction equipment, etc. You get the feeling that they are big brother and they are watching you because they seriously own everything. Their newest acquisition? Jaguar and Land Rover. Right.

Because You Asked

Posted from Alleppey, Kerala, India

Q: What about the strangest person you've met?
A: I think it's important that both Lizzi and I take a stab at this one, because I think we'd have different answers. Luckily, I met my strangest person yesterday on the bus from Kumily to Alleppey. He was a middle-aged Indian man, who sat in the seat directly behind us and immediately started up a conversation. As soon as he opened his mouth, the rank smell of liquor washed over both of us. I knew this wasn't going anywhere good.

The conversation started pleasantly enough, the same as any other conversation we have had in India: "What country are you from? How long have you been here? What do you think of [insert name of town/city/state/country]? Where are you going next? What is your job?" Next, there was a brief quiz about whether we were Christian or not, which is NOT a conversation we expected to have in India. Then came a whole dissertation on the virtues of Kerala people. Somewhere in the middle of his rambling Lizzi had decided that I was going to take one for the team, and politely readjusted her seat to look straight ahead. But as he wrapped up, he posed a final question to us: "You know what the worst problem in Kerala today is?"

I could think of any number of responses, but clearly, it was a rhetorical question. I waited a beat, and he filled in his answer, "sexual anarchy." Yep, that's right, folks, the problem facing Kerala today is sexual anarchy. From here, the conversation could only go one direction -- downhill...and fast. Thankfully, we weren't disappointed. "Kerala has gone to the deviants," he exclaimed. "They are morally wrong," he continued, politely adding, "not like you." Of course not. And so it went until we arrived in a small town outside of Alleppey, where he got off the bus, and we breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Leaving Munnar on the Vomit Comet

Posted from Kumily, Kerala, India

Apparently going up to Munnar is a breeze compared to coming down. Despite my earlier description of the bus ride to Munnar, I have to say that the ride from Munnar to Kumily is downright scary at some points. This time our driver seemed to have graduated directly from those arcade games with the fake motorcycles that you steer by leaning side to side to a bus full of people careening through 180-degree switchbacks on tracks of road that might make a mountain goat squeamish. I thought for sure that we were going to die, tumbling over the side of the road and straight down. The fall would smell vaguely of tea and eucalyptus and, oh yeah, people dying. But we made it. Thank god, we made it.

Even though we arrived in Kumily completely intact, the conditions of the roads also made the ride feel like being on a roller coaster stuck inside a popcorn machine. We were bounced, jolted, and thrown around, as we sped along. For the family sitting directly behind us, it was too much. When we stopped in town to let a few passengers off, mom, dad, and baby stuck their heads out of the window and barfed into the street.

From now on, this is the bus ride by which I will judge all other bus rides. How does that saying go: "Any wreck you can walk away from..."

Getting to Munnar

Posted from Kumily, Kerala, India

We took the bus from Cochin to Munnar a few days ago. The trip was long, dusty, and loud. But the lack of windows, which made it dusty and loud, also meant that it was pleasantly cool for the nearly five hour ride into the mountains of Kerala, near the Tamil Nadu border. Typically, our travel days are our worst days. They are the days when we are hot, tired, cranky, and impatient, especially with each other. They are also the days when we learn a little bit about how a place works. For instance, India moves at its own pace. There's no hurrying it, and no slowing it down. It has an inertia and momentum all its own, and two kids from America aren't going to change it. We'd initially discovered this inertia when we took the night train from Goa to Cochin, but taking the bus from Cochin to Munnar is a much better example.

The day before leaving we asked around to find out exactly when and how often buses leave Cochin for Munnar. Luckily, they leave pretty often. According to everyone we asked, including travel agents and guesthouse owners, the buses leave every hour between 6AM and 1PM. Comfortable that we could get an early (for us) start, we left our guesthouse just before 8AM, arriving at the bus station shortly before 9AM. However, when we reached the desk to find out which bus was headed to Munnar, the station master politely informed us that the previous bus (first one of the day) left at 8:30AM, and the next one wouldn't leave until 11AM, and if we missed that one, we could take the 1:30PM bus, but after that we would have to wait until Monday. Huh? We asked no less than five people, and they all agreed that there would be plenty of buses. Maybe the three-bus schedule yesterday was the result of a reduced schedule on weekends. Oh well, we weren't in any rush, so we just enjoyed the ride.

After leaving the long, wide stretches of roads outside of Cochin, we started to climb. The higher we went, the roads became much narrower, as the switchbacks snaked up the mountains. I think our bus driver thought he'd entered the Pike's Peak Rally after taking driving lessons from an arcade game, because he whipped our bus through the hairpin turns at surprising speeds, somehow narrowly missing the large tourist buses hurtling toward us from the opposite direction. The ride was nerve-wracking, but we managed to get to Munnar in one piece.

Oh, The Drama

Written and posted from Kerala, India

By far the most stressful point in our travels occurs in the few minutes after we first arrive in a new city. We step out of the train station/bus station/airport, with our packs strapped to our backs and our assorted other bags over our shoulders or in our hands, and stand, bewildered and hot (Cochin) or cold (Vietnam), wondering what we do now that we're where we intend to be. We usually stand in that spot, turning ourselves first towards the exit, then towards each other, before one of us pipes up with A Plan. A Plan is always a good idea to have BEFORE you set out on a journey, we have noticed this, and yet, time and time again, city after city, we arrive without one. And until one of us happens upon the ever-elusive Plan, we are lost, strangers in a strange land. And as you might guess, when you are traveling as a duo and you arrive in a new place, hot (or cold), tired, hungry, and bewildered, you are inclined to like each other just a little less, to find the other's Plan just a little less brilliant than you were hoping for.

Which brings me to yesterday. We arrived in Cochin after a 14.5 hour night train from Goa. The train ride itself was unremarkable except for the fact that it was long and that after 14.5 hours anything with human beings in it eventually starts to smell more like human beings and less like something that is clean. We were especially dirty when we arrived because we spent the better part of the day on a bus "tour" of old Goa. That's "tour" and not simply tour because it was less of a tour and more of guided tutorial, in Hindi mind you, of all that Goa has to offer, should you have the time and inclination to look around. Which is what we thought we were doing, but whatever. The air conditioning on the bus was less air conditioning and more "this bus has no windows so when we drive there's a nice breeze." It wasn't a bad "tour" so much as it was a waste of time, but mainly it was annoying because the open-air bus ride made us seriously dirty, covered in a fine film of red dust. And if you've never spent 14.5 hours on a night train when you're dirty, then boy, you have no idea how dirty you'll feel 14.5 hours later. But bus "tours" aside, we arrived in Cochin 14.5 hours after we set out.

Cochin is a much bigger city than our last home in Colva Beach, Goa. For starters, it's a city as opposed to a beach town. We'd made a reservation at a guesthouse while we were still in Goa, but because Lonely Planet India leaves a lot to be desired in the way of little things like, oh, information, we had no idea how to get to said guesthouse. Taxi? Tuk-tuk? Ferry? See, our guesthouse is on the island of Fort Cochin and the map in the book conveniently fails to connect island to mainland. So we stood in the Cochin train station, packs strapped to our backs, hungry, hot, and bewildered. We decided to take a tuk-tuk and just deal with however much it cost us.

Of course, the other thing that accompanies than unique mood of hunger/heat/bewilderment is a classic case of mistrust. And here, too, I fault the Lonely Planet. At every turn, the book warns backpackers against people who are trying to hustle you. And of course, there are people at every turn who ARE trying to hustle you, so the warning isn't entirely unfounded. Except that if you're not an idiot, and you're not stoned, and you have a general sense of when things are shady, you can TELL when someone is trying to hustle you. The guy putting our bags on top of the tuk-tuk WE hired? Not trying to hustle us. But did that stop us from shouting "no, we're married!" at him when he took our bags off of his tuk-tuk and wanted to put them on another, different tuk-tuk? We thought he was trying to hustle us into taking two separate tuk-tuks. He thought we were total weirdos who, totally unprompted, wanted strangers to know that we are married. Instead, he just wanted us to ride in his brother's tuk-tuk rather than his. Ten minutes later, feeling like an idiot, we were speeding through the streets of Cochin, and our driver was pointing things out to us. Things like the river, and the current, and other islands surrounding the city. There were children waving at us from the backseats of their own tuk-tuks, there were beautiful women in sarees, and there were those ever-present fruit stands. Feeling once again like traveling is, in fact, a fun thing to do, I silently resolved that when we get to the next city, the next new place, we'll find A Plan before we go, knowing that despite my best intentions, we will not, and that in a few days time, we'll be staring at each other again, waiting for the other to come up with something brilliant. At least I can comfort myself that after 8 weeks of travel, I know that brilliance really is just around the next corner.

India Is Really Big

Posted from Negombo, Sri Lanka

Of our entire trip, we have done the least amount of planning for India. We know when we're going to be there, and we have a general outline of what we want to do (thank you Nitin, Uma, and Vishal). But we have no clue about what it takes to actually find accommodations or get from Point A to Point B. That bit of nail-biting started last night. We've emailed some guesthouses, and I'm certain that we will have to call them all to follow up later today. But the biggest question mark is how to get from one place to the next. Believe it or not, it's not as simple as I'd first hoped it to be. With that in mind, I've added a section to the sidebar called "India". Its purpose is to keep track of some helpful quick links or other bits of information. In particular, I've added the list of popular station codes for India's vast railway system. I couldn't believe how difficult this was to find. So here it is for your enjoyment and for our sanity.

India Railway: Popular Stations

Another Day, Another Country

Written from Phnom Penh, Cambodia

We made it! We left Vietnam this morning, bright and early, and got on a bus to Cambodia. Yes, a BUS to Cambodia. It occurred to me as we booked the trip that it didn't seem like the smartest way to enter a country, but then I reminded myself that just a few weeks ago, I entered Laos by longtail boat and didn't even bat an eye. Things went smoothly today, all things considered. There was one point where our bus driver took our passports and our money, and I completely and totally lost my shit, but he didn't understand me because he didn't speak a word of English, so he simply handed me back my passport, stamped with an exit stamp from Vietnam and an entry stamp for Cambodia, and smiled. So I, um, calmed the F down, much to Matt's delight. And here we are in Pnomh Penh.
We're not planning to see a whole lot in Cambodia, just two touristic sites ("touristic" is a word we heard from our friends from the UK. I love it. It sounds much more loathsome and undesirable than "touristy," I think.). Here in the capital, we'll mainly stick to the sites that memorialize the grim devastation left by the Khmer Rouge. And then we will probably get drunk somewhere. Rather, if it's anything like I expect it to be, we'll order a drink and then stare at each other as the ice melts and the flavors blend, wondering how, HOW on earth it's possible that people can be that disgusting, and worse, how we can sit comfortably a world away and let it happen. We will not answer our questions. Luckily for Matt, Scotch is awfully cheap here. But then on Friday we're heading to Siem Reap to explore Angkor Wat. We'll be able to explore the ancient temples for about 3 full days, pausing only to celebrate Matt's 30th birthday (!) and swim in the pool at our hotel since it's supposed to be REALLY frickin' hot here. And then we'll find some mode of transportation to take ourselves back to Bangkok for a few days before heading onward to Sri Lanka. Given our track record, we will most likely travel by chariot. Wish us luck.

A Couple of Sore Bums

Posted on our first night in Luang Prabang, Lao PDR

The idea seemed simple enough: take a bus to the river and catch a boat from Thailand to Laos. But it's sooo much more than that. Getting from Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang underscored for us that getting from point A to point B is actually part of the adventure. First, we took a six-hour minibus ride from Chiang Mai to Chiang Khong, a sleepy town separated from Laos by the mighty Mekong River. The overnight accommodations in Chiang Khong left much to be desired. In fact, they were far worse than what we experienced in Bangkok, but at least it had a hot shower. From Chiang Khong, we crossed the river by long-tail boat and processed through immigration. As unceremoniously as that, we entered Laos. Then we waited. And waited. And waited until our ferry boat finally pulled out of the dock. The long-distance ferry, which would carry us to Luang Prabang, was crowded, noisy, and slow. Slow. This word has a new definition for me, as does the phrase "a slow boat to China" because we took a slow boat down the Mekong River. So slow. After seven hours, we reached the midway point, Pak Beng, where we stopped for the night.

Pak Beng is an interesting town, because it only has electricity from 6PM to 10PM each night. That's appropriate, because the ferry pulls in around 6:30PM, and the locals have to get up early. So there's no nightlife. In fact, the bar we stopped at shooed us out the door at 10:30. However, the lack of street lights, TVs, and lamps meant that the night sky and its stars shone brilliantly. I haven't seen stars like that in years.

The next morning, this morning in fact, we woke up and hopped back on the boat for another bum-numbing 7 hours. We arrived in Luang Prabang around 5:30PM, got settled in a guesthouse, and here we are. Our butts are sore, but we're ready to explore Laos for the next few days before we head off to Vietnam. Luckily, there are no long boat rides anywhere in our near future.

Traveling slowly offers an opportunity that hopping on an airplane for an hour just can't; you get to meet other travelers. On our first day in the minibus, we ended up meeting not one, but four people, two couples who were making their way through Southeast Asia. Both couples are about our age; one couple (Lizzy and Tom) are from England, and the other (Anna and Caleb) from New Zealand. We hit it off right away and stuck together through the crappy accommodations at Chiang Khong and the butt-numbing boat ride to Pak Beng. In Pak Beng, we banded together to bargain a better rate at a guesthouse and closed down the bar that night. This morning we found seats together on the boat and kept the conversation going. We couldn't have dreamed of meeting better people along the way. Good luck to you, Anna and Caleb, Lizzy and Tom in the rest of your travels and in finding your ways home!

Night Train to Chiang Mai

Getting from Bangkok to Chiang Mai is a fairly easy task. In fact, there are as many options as you can imagine to convey you from point A to point B: planes, trains, and automobiles. For us, the largest limiting factor we have is time; we want to maximize our waking hours in every place we are going to be. However, the number one thing we did NOT account for in our itinerary was the time it would take to get from one place to the next. Given that we were used to catching a non-stop flight to Boston from Pittsburgh whenever we wanted, factoring in older and, especially, slower modes of transit was not even a consideration.

When presented with the myriad options for traveling to northern Thailand, we naturally chose the one that allowed us to enjoy a full day of sightseeing in Bangkok AND a full day in Chiang Mai: the night train. The night train is something of a backpacker standard. Everyone we talked to at the hostel in Bangkok had either ridden the night train to Bangkok or was headed to Chiang Mai on the next one. The train leaves Bangkok at 7:30PM and arrives in Chiang Mai at 9:45AM the next morning. We booked our tickets in the 2nd-class sleeper car, so that we could hit the ground running in Chiang Mai.

The sleeper car is divided into upper and lower bunks. The lower bunks are formed by two seats facing each other, and these tend to be more desirable. The upper bunks flip down from the roof of the car like the overhead baggage compartments on an airplane. Unfortunately, Lizzi and I weren't able to book a matching upper and lower bunk, but we managed adjacent uppers. What's most surprising is how comfortable the bunks are. After spending four days sleeping on plywood covered in styrofoam at the hostel, these train beds seemed the height of luxury.

In our car, there were several couples traveling together, a few pairs of friends, some singles, and an entire family of eight! Mom, dad, four kids, grandma, and grandpa! When it was time for bed (a time strictly enforced by the night train's staff), the car was a complete circus. People were climbing up the tiny ladders to the upper bunks. Kids were dashing about in pajamas, brushing their teeth and washing their faces. Hilarity and insanity. It felt like a weird mobile slumber party of complete strangers. In fact, Lizzi and I joked that the whole scene reminded us of the Knight Bus from Harry Potter, and we were waiting for Stan Shunpike (pre-Death Eater days) to come by to collect our fares.

The night train was a blast. And it ended up being some of the best sleep that we'd had since landing in Bangkok. I hope we get the opportunity for more night train experiences throughout the rest of our trip.

31 Hours Later...

...we've arrived safe and sound. Everything went off without a hitch. The flights were on time, and even after three different planes and three different countries, our bags somehow miraculously showed when we did.

Just before we left, the burning question had been: Which direction are you going to fly to get to Thailand? Prevailing wisdom (read: Google Maps) seemed to indicate that we would fly west from New York to Hong Kong. However, I can now say with authority that we flew neither West nor East, but North. Due North. We flew directly over Greenland, over the North Pole, over Russia and all of China to finally touch down in Hong Kong. So there you have it: we flew North.

In case, there are those who need to read these words before believing it: We arrived safe and sound. There I said it. Now, time to get some sleep.

Go Out for Adventure...

We've said our good-byes. The cats have been outsourced. Our worldly possessions, aside from those on our backs, are safely tucked away in a secret Midwestern location. This is how our journey begins.

We spent most of today packing our bags, finishing last minute errands to REI, and generally preparing ourselves for this adventure. Of course, because we are who we are, our well-made plans did not pan out as we expected. First, our clothes fit perfectly in our backpacks, but the mountain of sundry trip-related items quickly overwhelmed our meager budget of volume. Then, there was a minor major crisis when Lizzi couldn't find her vaccination record. And, we nearly locked ourselves out of my father-in-law's house. Finally, we met the rudest cabby in New York, who refused to take us to our hotel, and instead dropped us off at the airport, where we would have ended up had we continued on rail in the first place. Probably not the auspicious start we were looking for, but even Shackleton encountered a few bumps along his way on the Nimrod.

So here we are, sitting in a hotel near JFK, anxiously trying to sleep despite the excitement. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.

Good News, Bad News

Lizzi talked to Daniel at AirTreks today. Daniel is our travel consultant, the guy who's helping us get from one place to the next. Unfortunately, he had some bad news. Flying from Nepal to Europe at the end of March is just unforgivably expensive, so sorry, Portugal, but you're off the list. Instead, and this is the good news, we may be adding a few days in Hong Kong or maybe just a stop-over in Hong Kong before we fly somewhere in the South Pacific for a bit of relaxation on the way home.

Things to Think About

There was a fabulous post today over at lost girls world, all about budgeting for a trip like this. Their $17K+ price-tag seems steep on the one hand, but totally reasonable on the other. When you think about the fact that Matt and I pay WAY more than that in rent each year, it feels a little bit better. And my god, they stayed in Peru for $8/night! Plus, their trip was for an entire year, rather than four months, and they travelled to many more places than Matt and I intend to.

Their post gave me some really good ideas and things to think about. In no particular order:

Plane Tickets: The lost girls did end up getting a RTW ticket, but in their post they said that tacking South America onto a RTW ticket can really drive up the cost. So maybe Matt and I should consider coming home after the wedding in Argentina, and flying to Thailand from there? Or maybe we should head home and then go for our brief stint in Europe, finishing the trip with Thailand instead of nearly starting with it? Of course, I will be checking the ever-helpful airtreks to see what I can come up with over there.

Vaccines: When I was talking to my trekker-sister-in-law this past weekend, she suggested that I check out the CDCs website for a list of vaccines we'd need for the countries we'll be visiting. She then suggested that I go to the County or to a Clinic to get the vaccines for WAY cheaper than they'd be if I just called my doctor. Great idea! And the LGs seem to agree. They also suggested that we check our insurance policy to see what the plan might actually cover. Since we're currently getting our insurance through Matt's school, then there's a chance that some of those vaccines might be cheaper for us.

Visas: Right, visas. Totally forgot about those. It looks like Matt and I will need visas for India, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. But I bet we'll need one for Sri Lanka, too. The LGs suggest getting the visas while we're on the road. I wonder, though, if we have a general sense of when we're going to be somewhere, if we should try to get them ahead of time?

Right now, the biggest trip-related thing on our minds has to do with future employment. Matt is currently in the process of interviewing for jobs next year. I'm convinced he's going to get an offer somewhere, sometime soon. And he's kind of worried that once he gets said offer and comes back to them with, "awesome, I'd love to work here, can I start in May?" the offer is going to magically disappear. I'm not so sure. I think that any employer that Matt would want to work for is going to really dig the fact that we're planning to take this trip. I think that if we/he can manage to present it in such a way that we're talking about a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (which it is) as well as a chance to see parts of the world that most people don't even think about visiting (also true), employers could see it as a positive thing.

This is one of those times when I wish that this blog was public already, so that I could get your feedback on this. How DO you convince a future employer that your "vacation" is more "experience" than vacation? How do you tell your boss-to-be that you're committed to your job, but that you need to stop the train and get off for a little bit? Should we be willing to limit our trip, based on a job?

Like I said, things to think about.