I'm attaching a map of greater "Southeast Asia" and a zoomed-in map of the portion of SE Asia that I'll be traveling to: Thailand, Laos (which is the green-colored country strangely not labeled on the map), Cambodia, and Vietnam. It is my mission over the next month to learn as much as I can about these 4 countries. The only things that I know about SE Asian history and culture, in fact, are some particles of likely-inaccurate information from a World History course I took freshman year of high school (1999) and text about Theravada Buddhism from a college course (2008).
Luckily, I have several friends who have traveled to SE Asia who have been e-mailing me advice for the trip. A rapid-speed internet search also culled these recent news articles on the region: "Thailand preparing military action against Cambodia"; "Dams and Development Threaten the Mekong"; "How to Eat Fried Tarantulas in Cambodia"; "2 tons of snakes, tortoises seized in Cambodia"; "Vietnam's 'illegal' Buddhists seek French asylum"; "Agent Orange Continues to Poison New Generations in Vietnam". Let me just stop and let you reflect on the reality of 4,000 POUNDS of reptiles.
I will be in Asia for 7 weeks (Jan 19 to March 9). For 6 of those weeks, I'm traveling with my boyfriend and 1-2 of his friends from Minneapolis. It's going to be an adjustment - I've never traveled for that long with someone else. This is also the first trip I have made abroad without a purpose, which I am somewhat worried about. It also seems strange to me that I have less than 2 months to travel to four distinct countries. That is less than 2 weeks in each country. I guess the scale of the countries is small - Cambodia is about the size of Washington State.
This will also be the first time since the summer of 2007 when I will have left the country!! I am completely ready to take a break from US-living. I leave one month from today!
