Indochina: prologue

I needed to go on vacation, badly. I hadn't been on a real vacation in years (2.5 years, precisely), and I'd been agitating. I'd considered joining a friend of mine who was going to Switzerland for work, but I'd been there (lived there, actually), and the timing wouldn't work. But by late October, my report was out and, as Jay's contract would end at the end of 2014, he grew more responsive to my agitating. One morning, as I sat in a meeting--I don't normally bring my phone to meetings, but I knew the one in question would be brutal--we texted back and forth about possible destinations. We were all over the world: Puerto Rico, southern Africa, Macchu Pichu, Yellowstone, Argentina, Indochina... and so on. We started throwing out places in the morning, and by late afternoon, we narrowed it down.

Too hot in Namibia; rainy season in Macchu Pichu. I'd always wanted to go to Indochina. 

So we settled on that and proceeded cautiously and expeditiously. My manager blessed the trip (i.e., my monthlong absense, two-three weeks of which were during the holidays anyway so who cares). We booked flights--Emirates offered the best deal--so we added a stopover in Dubai. The guys wanted to go to Ferrari world, which, by the way, you can see from low-earth orbit. We booked lots more flights, and lots of hotels. We left some arrangements unmade--some things were better arranged in-country--and though we had a rough idea of what to do in each place, we mostly winged it in terms of activities. We made trade-offs: it was an ambitious trip, with four countries in two and a half weeks, and there was so much to see. You can always spend more time somewhere, and it's a matter of personality whether you want to take it slowly and really get into a place or hop around and see a little bit of everything. We were scolded over our choices: you need two weeks just for Vietnam! Skip Laos! You need five days for the Angkor complex!

We probably could have spent two weeks just in Vietnam, but I have no regrets about going to the other places, nor about choosing to visit Hue or Hoi An. We certainly did not need five days in Angkor. I mean, there are advantages to having more time--you can hit more temples first thing in the morning, before the rest of the masses descend on them, and that makes a huge difference--but you can definitely see as much as you (or at least we) want to see before getting templed out, in two days. As for Laos, we didn't want to leave; it was lovely.

It did take a lot out of us to change places, hotels every night or every other night. In fact, the only place where we stayed three nights was the crappiest hotel ever, so it didn't really help. But hopping around was the choice we'd made, and it we saw a lot as a result.

We all worried about things. Jay worried that flights would get canceled, or that our Vietnam visas would get confiscated, or that we'd have to bribe someone to get back in the country from Cambodia. He worried that the trains would sell out (well, I kind of did too) or that we wouldn't always be able to get around. He worried about all the cucumbers that might manifest themselves in his food. Rick didn't like small planes, or most boats, so he worried about those. He also worried about food poisoning and malaria. I worried about bad weather--scorching heat in some places, rain in others, and fog in Ha Long Bay. I worried we wouldn't find a good Ha Long Bay cruise, and maybe that we wouldn't find our way around the Mekong Delta. I worried I'd have to eat a lot of seafood. Later, I worried about getting hit by a motorcycle.

But not a lot went wrong, especially not at first. The flights all flew, and the hotels were all fine except one. I lost a tooth (crown) at Ha Long Bay, but a dentist in Hanoi put it back in that evening in ten minutes, for $10. I caught a cold between Luang Prabang and Siem Reap, but it didn't stop me from doing anything. Rick did lose his camera, which super-sucks, but he'd gotten all of his photos off of it beforehand. All in all, as weary as we were upon returning, we had a blast and saw some really cool stuff.