In my last post, I was savouring the prospect of a relatively peaceful summer punctuated with a trip to Finland. Summer breezes on the deck, good reading material, and quiet times. Okay, so that is totally not going to happen now. On Tuesday evening, I found out that I am going to be headed to Vietnam in August for almost three weeks, and this last week has been absolutely crazy busy. Vietnam needs a visa to enter, so there was that. New glasses (my travel pair are substantially banged up and I needed new lenses at the very least), and inoculations a plenty. I am sticking to the mainstream stuff like tetanus, hep A/B, and typhoid, but I may also bring malaria meds with me, just in case. There is gear to get. For a variety of reasons, I need more memory cards for the Nikon. I had a smaller camera body with me in Morocco, so I was able to get by with less storage capacity, but that won’t work this time. I am contemplating a slingpack for my camera gear. Kata has some nice stuff in that regard.
Starting to think about the packing. Different climate, way more rain, much more humidity. My merino handles the heat and humidity just fine, although this time I will definitely bring a rain shell and certainly a cover for my pack. Those were not issues in Africa. Water purification will be an issue — I drank the water in Morocco after filtering it, just fine, but I will bump my efforts up a bit more this time around. It’s not that I think the Vietnamese water is less potable than Morocco (some of the water sources in Morocco were pretty bad), but I still have Finland to contend with once I am back and I really want to make sure I don’t come home feeling sick.
Anyway, expect more on that subject at a later date, for sure. What else? The summer is going by pretty fast, I think. Middle of June already. Riding is going well. I’ve managed to squeeze in two double centuries, and had planned on doing at least two more but now that I’m going to be travelling in August i am not sure if that is still feasible. It really doesn’t matter — if I’m on the bike, it’s win.
The fact that I had started reading The Quiet American before I knew about Vietnam is not lost on me. I am enjoying it, in any case. I should be able to get the first of the Foundation novels stuffed into my head before I leave, but will finish on the plane if that isn’t the case.
Given that this day was so freaking awesome, today’s track is Crushing Day, by Joe Satriani. There is a bit of commentary by Mr. Satriani at the beginning which is worth watching, but the song will amaze. So, enjoy.
