Happy New Year! (and 9-month update)
Interrupting your regularly scheduled India posts to wish everyone Happy New Year from Laos. We rang in the new year with new friends from Germany and some Beer Lao, which we can confirm is Asia’s tastiest and cheapest brew.
The new year also marks 9 months on the road for us. All of a sudden, we feel like our trip is coming to an end. Our plan is to return home around April, 12 months after we left, but we just can’t bear buying a return ticket home yet. 3 months sounds so much shorter than 4 months, and more likely than not we will be spending the bulk of that time in Southeast Asia. Our original plan was to be here for 11 weeks. We’ve already been here for 5 weeks, and still have lots to see. At this point in our trip, we lack the motivation to move around a ton (especially because moving around in SE Asia often requires long windy bus rides or slow boats down the river). We’re currently in Luang Prabang, Laos. We plan to head south into southern Laos and Cambodia, then make our way north through Vietnam. We’ll fly from Hanoi back to Bangkok, and then will head south, stat, to the Thai beaches. From there, we’ll just have to see how much time and money we have left. Because we are over budget due to spending an extra month in Europe and the expensiveness of Japan, we realized a while back that Australia is just not in the cards for us on this trip. I’m not ready to admit that we probably will be cutting New Zealand too. I’m still holding out hope that money will drop down from the sky.
At this point in our trip, we used to the constant packing and repacking, wearing the same clothes OVER and OVER again, and the perpetual motion. We’re still enjoying ourselves, but I must admit we were checking Craiglist for apartments the other day. It is strange – I am so ready to come home in some ways, but there is still so much more to see…plus there’s that whole pesky working thing that we’ll be needing to do at some point. I’m very grateful we had the opportunity to travel for a year straight, but I’ve decided that it is not my preferred way to travel. I think the ideal travel situation would be a couple of months at home, a couple of months on the road. If only someone would pay me to do this…any takers?
Hope you are enjoying your first day of the year. We’re off to see what I hear is a gorgeous waterfall, so I think it is going to be a good day. And also, hopefully, a good year. I’m not making any resolutions other than to enjoy and appreciate the rest of our trip, and to find a job I don’t hate this year. What are your resolutions? If you’ve been wanting to travel, make it happen in some way, shape or form this year.
And with that, wishing you…
Happy New Year to you guys!!! Enjoy & make the most out of your time left…you still have a few more months, so don’t worry…plus you have a lot to come home to! Here’s wishing you the best!
That’s what I say ~ what Julie said. 🙂 You know we miss you terribly but we all have enjoyed spending this year with you just as much as you have enjoyed experiencing it, and I think many of us will miss the blogs & pictures. So maybe you’ll have to continue from Pittsburgh, PA when you get home. May 2011 give you as much fun & excitement as 2010 has ~ wishing you and Sean a ‘fabulous’ year. 😉 Love, Mom
I’m a little late here wishing you a Happy New Year. You know the computer is not my thing. Only 3 more months left, enjoy it all. You know you have a room here so you don’t have to rush into an apartment right away. First get a job! Love, Mom
I don’t want you guys to stop traveling either! Happy New Year’s and as always lovely descriptions and pictures.