Ready to go!

Bags are packed and by the door. House is clean (mostly). I'm ready to go.
The taxi shows up at 7:45 a.m. to take me to the airport — the beginning of our five week Asian adventure.

Tomorrow I fly to LA to meet up with Meg where we'll spend the afternoon with friends. Then it's back to LAX, find Brad and Jenn (our old pals from Columbus) and onto a non-stop flight to Bangkok. We arrive Sunday morning and our Philly friends, Phil and Maya, will catch up with us that afternoon. Because traveling half way around the world isn't quite enough time on a plane, we'll hop a flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia, later that afternoon.

Things will start to slow down then. We'll spend a few days in the Siem Reap/Angkor Wat area touring the temple complexes in the area. From there we'll head to the capital, Phnom Penh. There we'll visit the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, more wats and see the Silver Pagoda.

After Phnom Penh, the itinerary becomes a little more vague. The plan is to head up the Mekong toward Kratie, home of the Irrawadi Dolphins, then up into Laos with the eventual goal of Vientiane, or maybe Louangphrabang. There might be a trip to Sihanoukville on the Cambodian coast before the Mekong trip, but we'll see.

After Laos it will probably be time to find a beach with good diving and tasty beverages near at hand.

We'll be back in the States just in time for the Labor Day.

Folks have been asking for updates along the way so, in what may be an exercise in naive futility, I'll be attempting to keep a record of the trip here. I can't promise updates everyday, but I'll post as frequently as possible and include pictures when possible.

Enjoy.