Indochina Expedition 2010: Eve of Departure
24 Jan 2010 Leave a Comment
in Traveling Tags: cambodia, Indochina, journey, laos, vietnam
My first semester in China as an English teacher was over. I would leave at dawn for Vietnam on Monday, January 25, 2010. Now it was time to go and see if I had what it takes to travel for real. This would be the first time traveling alone in the developing world without a gun or a posse. I not only didn’t speak the languages, but lacked any mathematical ability whatsoever. I knew that I was poor by American standards, but in Laos, I was a millionaire. Trouble lurked ahead when I would try to calculate the cost of a soda or a room. If I was a dollar off, the entire economy would go of whack and incite the Lord of Misrule to make a cameo appearance. Furthermore, I knew this little nature walk through the jungles of darkness and up the river of doubt would prove to be my greatest challenge up to date.
I had three goals:
1. Find a beach in south Vietnam before Chinese New Year (Tet) makes travel impossible.
2. Spend my first days of the Year of the Tiger in the ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia.
3. Make it back to China via her back door in the jungles of southwestern Yunnan province: That is, bus and boat through Cambodia, Thailand, Laos via roads and waterways of the Mekong River Basin.
