We are off... again!... and again!!

Ok, so a longer post is coming upon arriving in Hong Kong (talking a bit more about the trip to Dallas) but right now we have some packing to do and some sleep to get before traveling to the other side of the world. We decided that we should at least have an assortment of pictures from the last few days.

(A final photo before we left Grand Rapids.)

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(The crowd dancing at the Mendhi party. The colors during the whole event were so vibrant.)

(The henna on Megan's hands after the Mendhi party. I think she has pretty hands..(maybe I'll get brownie points for that...))

(Nate and Milli, you can see the relief on their faces that this is finally done. )

(Josh's feet at the above mentioned wedding. This is what happens when you dress for a wedding from the random assortment of items you have in a packpack.)

Who knew...

people need this kind of stuff... but apparently some do! Here are some of the high quality items that we could have ordered (we passed on them all unfortunately) from the Sky Mall catalogue on our flight to Texas yesterday.

Caption:Forest Faces Make You Smile (Note to self, demonic, scary forest faces don't make me smile.)

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I should note why several of these pictures are a little fuzzy. They are taken from the Sky Mall catalogue on our flight to Texas, and while I was willing to take pictures of them on the plane I was not willing to use a flash. It's one thing to discreetly say to those around you, "I know this is really dorky," but it is another thing to broadcast my dorkdom to the entire plane.

Caption: The "Keep Your Distance" Bug Vacuum

Caption: New! Mega remote has giant buttons (Someone buy me this remote when I turn 95. And just to point something out look at the remote in contrast to the hand that holds it.)

Caption: This person is able to sleep comfortably in any seat! Can you say the same? Probably not, unless you have SkyRest. (Ok, so I actually think this may work but when I first saw it I thought, "Hey look, they've invented airbags for planes!")

Caption: The Remote Controlled Robotic Hammerhead Shark ('nuff said. I still want one though.)

Packing

Here it all is... Yikes!

New York City

Sometimes I miss New York as if it were a person. It's as if the city has its own character and disposition and certain things (scenes/actions/encounters/events) remind me of this. It feels very unlike how I miss "home" home (Michigan). It is neither nostalgic nor wistful nor vague but a distinct sadness that I forget until I am reminded of it.

Who knew they made these things?

This weekend we were at my brother's wedding (congrats again) and drove up in one of my dad's cars and noticed something odd.
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It is an odd little pull tab on the inside latch of the trunk. Now, presumably this is to help a person stuck in a car (be it a four year old boy or the kidnapped rival mobster) escape and then scamper to their freedom. I understand the point of it, people do die in trunks after all but regardless the diagram strikes me as rather silly. If I were the one getting out of a trunk I would be doing less bounding and more running-for-my-life-before-Vito-notices-I'm-gone-ing.

P.S. I was standing for Adam in the wedding and was given the solemn responsibility of holding the rings. Adam (if you haven't met him) is quite big and I found it funny that I his ring fit over my thumb (with room to spare) while Lindsey's barely fit on my pinkie.

P.P.S. A real picture of the wedding (at Megan's request). And to justify the crooked nature of the photo the photographer said, "Now remember I had to lean out of the aisle to take this... that's why its crooked..."

Our Flight(s) to Hong Kong

Ok this is really just our flight itinerary to Hong Kong from Grand Rapids... but it is still mildly noteworthy. We ended up being able to pay for the whole thing with frequent flyer miles, but in order to make that happen we'll take an interesting route. We are leaving from Grand Rapids (after my brother's wedding) then going to Dallas (for another wedding) and then to Hong Kong... but of course it's never quite that simple.

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So the route...

To:
Grand Rapids --> Minneapolis
Minneapolis --> Houston
(Rent a car in Houston and drive to Dallas)
Houston --> Los Angeles
Los Angeles --> Seoul
Seoul --> Hong Kong

Return:
Hong Kong --> Tokyo
Tokyo --> Minneapolis
Minneapolis --> Grand Rapids

So for those of you keeping track, that makes eight flights (which happen to be on three different airlines) to get to and from Hong Kong, but when it saves the cost of an expensive ticket it's worth it... I say this now but we'll see how I feel after it all!

P.S. The reason we are flying into Houston to attend a wedding in Dallas is because there are only a few places that Northwest will allow you to take a multi-day layover and still have it be part of a single ticket and somehow Houston counts while Dallas does not.

P.P.S. Working these flights out wasn't the easiest thing; it involved three seperate calls to Northwest, each about half an hour long, and each involving talking with the agent, Meg, and my Dad at the same time.

Asia...

Well in case you didn't know, we are heading to Asia in about a month. We are going to be gone for about 5 months (I know only five!) and in that time will see a decent amount of stuff over there. I've already talked about why we are doing it but we never really discussed what we are doing...

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To put it bluntly we are traveling. We are taking time, loading up backpacks and working our way through a part of the world we know little about. We will be traveling overland as much as possible (yeah for trains, buses, and tuk-tuks!) and working our way west from Hong Kong (give or take... its not quite as simple as that) to our final destination in Bangalore India.

In general we will spend most of this time in transit as well because despite the five month length of this trip we are covering alot of ground and in order to see what we'd like to we have to keep moving. The advantage of this is that we will get to see alot of places and experience alot of new things, the downside is that we won't be spending much time in each place (a week to two for most). There are different mindsets when it comes to travel, most people either spend their entire time in transit or find a far flung exotic location and stay put for a period of time... needless to say this trip is the former. I also find it rather odd that we will be gone for so long and yet our excursion is really a series of week/two week trips. We've talked about cutting out some of our destinations in order to spend more time in the places we do have but we always decide that we'd rather see what we can, even if that means that we feel a little rushed at times.

Anyway, here is a basic layout of where we are going, first the list of locations/countries (in chronological order):

Hong Kong
Thailand part I
Cambodia
Vietnam
Laos
Thailand part II
Malaysia
Singapore
Indonesia
Thailand part III
Burma (Myanmar)
Bangladesh
India part I
Nepal
India Part II
Sri Lanka (Maldives)

The basic idea of this trip will be starting (and ending) in Hong Kong. From there we will fly into Bangkok and work our way overland and counter-clockwise through the southeast Asia. So after a brief stay in Bangkok we'll take off for Cambodia and then carry onto into Vietnam. We'll work our way north in Vietnam and then head west into (and through) Laos. This brings us back into Thailand, where we will work our way south to Malaysia. We'll spend some time in Malaysia and take some shorter trips into Singapore and possibly Indonesia. Then we have to head back to Bangkok because we'll have to fly to our next location.

From Bangkok we'll head to Burma(or Myanmar... the name depends upon the regime and I don't really like present one). Burma is a pain in rear country in several regards... most of which involve their oppressive government. But we have to fly into Burma as they don't allow border crossings via land. So we will have to fly into and out of Burma on our way to Bangladesh. (Side note, almost everyone we know keeps asking why we are going there. Our pastor (who is Indian) asked "Why are you going to Bangladesh?" When we were at the travel clinic our nurse muttered under her breath "Bangladesh... no one goes to Bangladesh, why would they go to Bangladesh...)

From Bangladesh we will work our way north and into India. We'll only be there a bit before we head off to Nepal. We'll head out of Nepal going west and back into India. Once there we'll hit parts of northern India and then basically hug the western coast as we work our way south. We'll end up in Bangalore, where we have some good friends. This last place we'll go is to the Maldives to scuba dive and sit on a beach for a while. Then back home for two weeks before heading off to England for a year... wow.

P.S. All makes me think "Man I'm going to look forward to having a house someday...."

P.P.S. A map of this will be made sometime... just not now