Happy New Year

We stayed with Chris until the 30th and then headed towards Laos. It took a couple days of buses, tuk tuks, and border crossing hassles, but we made it into Vientiane on New Years Eve. It was exciting to get back on the road, but we were both sad to say goodbye to Chris. The last three weeks were amazing and it was harder than either of us expected to move on. The idea of this trip developed initially from planning to visit Chris, so, in a lot of ways, our stay at his village was the focus of this whole adventure. Fortunately, we will be seeing Chris again in Bangkok in February.

Until then we have a little over a month to explore Laos and Northern Thailand before catching a flight in Bangkok to meet Chellis in Hong Kong for the Chinese New Year! Considering that we can eat for $2 a plate (and those are the fancy meals) and stay in guesthouses for $5/night (again the fancy places) I don't think we'll have any problem hanging out for the next month. Laos is a popular travel destination, too, and has a lot of outdoor activities and plenty of sight seeing. As with every other place we've been, we will probably end up feeling short on time.

The New Years Celebration was actually pretty tame last night. We had some really good Indian food and then hung out at a Tex-Mex restaurant for some 640ml, $1 Lao Beers. There were a few fireworks, but nothing special. This was the first New Years that neither of us has had work during or the day after in several years, though, so we considered that pretty special in itself.

At this point, we're planning on spending a few days in Vientiane (the capital of Laos and located along the Mekong River) and then heading North and eventually East back towards Thailand. It turned out to be a mixed blessing that we couldn't meet Lamont in Bangkok since there ended up being three terrorist bombings during the New Year celebration (http://www.bangkokpost.net/News/01Jan2007_news01.php). Hopefully we will have another opportunity to meet up with him along the way.

Not much else to write for now. We both hope everyone is having happy holidays!