A little later today my buddy Jeff and I will finally be off for our three week trip to Southeast Asia. Those that know me well, know that three weeks in Asia puts me well outside my comfort zone. Consider that the most ambitious trip I’ve taken until now was a 10 day tour of Spain and France. That was in 1994. I knew when Jeff approached me with this opportunity, I couldn’t pass it up. Once in a lifetime trip, right?

I feel like I’ve been planning forever and am glad Dec 27th is finally here. We leave tonight from National and arrive in Bangkok at around noon on the 29th after a seven hour layover in Paris. We’ll try to get out and about in Paris for some brief site seeing before getting back on the plane for the second leg of the flight. Yes, that’s two days of travel to get you there when you factor in the time difference and the 20 hours of flight time. (Thailand is 12 hours ahead of the east coast.) We don’t have much planned beyond that aside from the cities we’ll see and where we will stay. Here’s the quick blow-by-blow…

• 12/29 – 12/31: Bangkok, Thailand
• 12/31 – 1/2: Koh Phangan, Thailand (for New Year’s party on the beach)
• 1/2 – 1 /4: Koh Samui, Thailand
• 1/4 – 1 /8: Chiang Mai, Thailand
• 1/8 – 1/12: Siem Reap, Cambodia
• 1/12 – 1/16: ?

Right now, the last four days are open. That gives us some flexibility to head back to Thailand for something we liked/missed or check out something new… Laos and Vietnam are the leading contenders.

I expect to have relatively good access to Internet on the trip (at least while in Thailand) so I will try to post updates from time to time.

I expect Jeff will be keeping his blog updated as well and in addition to making fun of me, will most likely have pictures to go along with each post. As I think I’ve mentioned before, he’s a freelance photographer on the side so I’m excited to see what we come back with. His blog is:  http://travel.jeffnyveen.com/.

I’ll be sure to come back with tons of pictures of my own and hopefully many good stories to share.