Well here it is a couple of days before we go and there is so much I wanted to get done, including a couple of blog entries, but it looks like this will be the final one before we leave.  It always seems like there is so much to do in the final days – getting ready, getting in last minute visits with the people we will miss while we are gone, projects cleaned up at home and at the office, etc. but the next thing you know you are out of time.

We spent last weekend doing what everyone should do before they go on vacation – the pre-vacation!!  Thanks to my brother and his wife, who found an opportunity we could not refuse, the 4 of us drove up to Whistler, BC to spend the weekend sans-kids for a couple days of relaxation.  We spent the weekend just doing some leisurely sightseeing, going up the gondolas to take in the views, walking around the village, and just generally taking in the serenity.  If you have never been there, it is well worth the trip – I had not been since the mid 80s, and I was amazed to see how much it had grown, but was still able to retain it’s European village style charm, and for those that like to ski, it boasts the largest ski area in North America.  Some photos are available in the gallery.

The kids were busy getting the final days of school taken care of, and the weather here has been kind enough to give them a few days to enjoy the pool and a few chances to see their friends before we go.  We won’t be here to get their report cards, but they all ensure us their grades are ‘fantastic’ 🙂

My parents came to town for the weekend so they can get their top-up of grandchild time before they leave for their summer on the boat, and we head off for our adventure.  It was nice for them to be here for Father’s Day and we all popped out to George’s Place in Kirkland for a family breakfast – kudos to Derek (one of our neighbors) and his staff for a great meal, and a nice start to the day.  We finished up the day by watching a big rain storm blow through and sadly spoil my plans to do some yard work with my Dad, we were of course very disappointed 😉

I think that is all I have left for now, a couple of days left to get work in order before I am offline for a few days, and then away we go.  My next post will be from Thailand – we hope you all have a fun and enjoyable summer, we will be thinking of you all while we are gone, and look forward to seeing you all when we get home.

Hard to believe how fast the time is flying by.  It seems like just yesterday since I wrote my last post, but we are rapidly running out of days.

The kids are gleefully counting down the number of days of school left (10) and the reality of our big adventure is really starting to set in for everyone.  We had a birthday party over the weekend for Rachael, and her friends have helped her out with some spending money for while she is gone – along with a decent array of gift cards, ‘product’, and candy.  I think she and her friends had a great time, and it was nice for so many of them to be able to get together before the end of the school year.  Jackie’s birthday on the other hand will not be until after we are in Thailand, so we will have to be more creative for that one, but whatever it is, for us it will certainly be original.

As we scratched this weekend off, we looked at the calendar for the remaining days and realized we still have a fair amount of things we want to get done, but a decreasing amount of time to do them.  I still have a business trip to squeeze in, and we want to try and spend some time with our friends here as the summer ‘officially’ starts.

We learned this week that we will be meeting up with more people that we know from here while on our vacation.  One of Rachael’s friends from the gym will be traveling with her family in SE Asia and is going to work in a few days in their schedule to meet up with us in Koh Samui.  It is amazing how small the world really is sometimes when people from a community like Woodinville can meet up on a beach on the opposite side of the world.  We will be molding our travel path slightly to make everything work, by swapping the order we were planning to go to Krabi and Koh Samui in, but fortunately they are close enough together that everything will still work out fine, and the girls will have some familiar faces around for a few days.

We also need to finish up with our travel vaccinations, and this week will be getting our 2nd round of the Hepatitis A/B shots.  Getting those done will be the last set of shots before we leave, and after that we should be all set for a few years should we decide to do something like this again in the future.  We are also trying to get in all of our various visits and checkups with the dentist, orthodontist, etc so that we don’t find any surprises while we are gone, but also so that we are not scrambling to catch up once we get back.

We are now down to a little less than 4 weeks until we leave, and it seems like the time is going quickly.  There is less than 15 school days left so the kids are counting that down also, and we are all trying to get loose ends tied up before we go.

We have confirmed Russill’s flight plans also, and he will be connecting with us in Tokyo at the start of the trip and joining us for about 3 weeks.

Now that we have some specific targets (we need to have Russill back to Bangkok for his flight home on July 15) we have started to rough out an agenda:

• A) Bangkok
• B) Phuket
• C) Krabi
• D) Koh Samui
• E) Bang Saphan
• F) Hua Hin
• G) Chiang Mai

We are still planning to ‘free flow’ our day to day agenda and likely will not commit to much more than 2-3 days of advance booking at a time but are roughly planning to be in Krabi or Koh Samui around about the time that Russill needs  to depart back to Canada.

All of our documents came back from the Thai Embassy, and we all have our 60 day tourist visas now, and we have started taking our immunization pills, so travel wise we are in good shape.

We still need to get our luggage plan figured out, and likely borrow a few backpacks or good travel bags, as our old luggage is looking a little tired, and would not really be the preferred bags for wandering around anyway.  I’m sure that like so many other things we will pick up stuff along the way, so don’t want to take too more from here than we have to.

Sadly it looks like the dollar is losing a bit to the Thai Bhat, so my 300 Bhat massage looks like it has gone up by about $0.30 or so.  On the flip side, the global tourism industry continues to weaken – I saw flights to Australia for about $300 each way this week – so perhaps my ability to haggle the 300BHT price tag down to 200BHT is getting better 🙂

All in all we are looking forward to a great adventure, and the excitement is starting to ramp up as the departure date gets closer.

It turns out that getting ready for a big trip only seems to bring attention to the list of things you either never though about, or have been putting off to deal with another day…

For us that seems to be some things that we really should have gotten around to a while ago, but never did – like putting together all of our ‘documents’ like getting our safe-deposit box cleaned up, wills in order, and other ‘official’ type stuff that one should try and keep up to date.  Additionally, there is the specific travel related stuff like immunizations, travel visas, checking your health coverage, etc. And then for me getting all of my computer and server updates done 🙁

We have gotten a fair bit done on getting our documents cleaned up.  We just completed a re-finance (which always seems like way more paperwork than it needs to be) and were able to lock in a 5.0% 30yr rate with $0 in fees – no fees buried in the balance, no closing costs, no appraisal fees, nada, and they did it all over the phone and by mail, so other than having to go through a 3/4″ thick document package, relatively painless.  We also have spent a little time getting old accounts closed, our retirement accounts cleaned up, and some of our old Canadian papers sorted out, but the more we work at it, the more we realize it needs to be done – so not exactly travel related, but one of those things you think about as you are getting your travel documents all squared away.

On the travel front, we need to get all of our travel paperwork done – we needed to get our passports up to date (Laurie and the Kids’ were close to expiring and needed to be renewed) so that we could send them away to get our travel visas for Thailand.  The visa process for going to Thailand can be a little confusing – as a tourist you can spend a total of 90 days in Thailand over the course of a year, but not on a single visa – you can get a 30 day tourist visa at the border or airport when you arrive, but after 30 days you must leave and re-enter the country if you want to stay longer.  There is also a 60 day visa, but you must apply for that through the Thai Embassy before you travel – after the 60 days you must leave, and then you can re-enter on a 30 day visa if you wanted.  As we will be there more than 30, but less then 60 days we decided it was easier to get the 60 day visa than it would be to exit and re-enter the country, so we had to get all our stuff together, complete the visa application and get it all sent off to the Thai Embassy in Washington – hopefully our approved documents will arrive sometime this week and we can cross that off our list.

Next on our list was immunizations – almost any travel to the tropics requires us northerners to be prepared to be exposed to things that just don’t exist here: Hepatitis, Yellow fever, Malaria, etc.  Fortunately, a visit to the CDC website let’s us know that only some of those things are active where we are going, but we do need to get immunized for Hep A/B, and typhoid, so it is off to the doctor to get some shots.  Fortunately Hep A/B is part of what they immunize kids for now, so they only need to get the typhoid vaccine.  We are choosing to get the pill form of the typhoid vaccine – it is good for 5 years (vs 2 years for the injection form), and the doctor has also prescribed us some other travel meds like Cipro (for ‘travellers tummy’) just in case we encounter some foods we don’t agree with. For anyone who is planning a trip to another country it is good to look all this up in advance, because some of these medications need to be taken well in advance of travel – again the CDC website is very helpful here.

Finally, I have spent a bunch of evenings getting my ‘technology’ all updated, new tools installed, etc. This blog, our family photo gallery, my phone system, email, etc. are all hosted on a private server, and that needed a bunch of upgrades and some new packages installed so that I could work and communicate while we are away.  It all needed to be done anyway, but the travel plans gave me the needed ‘kick in the pants’ to actually get it done.  We suffer from Shoemaker’s Children syndrome around here when it comes to computers – I am around them so much for work that it is a little draining to try and keep all the home PCs and everything up to date, so they often go for long periods of time without getting any attention at all.

I guess all in all it is good to be getting this stuff done now rather than trying to stuff it all in to the last few days before we go – I’m sure we will have plenty to keep us busy then 🙂

Our plan for this big adventure has so far been to try and keep our travel plans as flexible as possible, the intent being that if something changes or sparks our interest we can just ‘go with the flow’ and take advantage of the flexibility.

As I mentioned in my last post, a recent seat sale for in-country air travel made us make a few decisions and some slight changes to our overall travel plan.

Initially, we had planeed to start our journey in the northern part of the country and make our way down the Gulf of Thailand and then over to the Andaman Sea, and then flying from the south back up to Bangkok for the trip home.  As we started to look at the places we could fly to and the flights that were available we made some choices and changed things around a little.

We are now going to start in the south on the Andaman Sea side and then do the whole thing basically in reverse of what we had originally planned.  We booked some tickets from Bangkok to Phuket for the 28th of June, so that gives us a couple of days in Bangkok when we get there to adjust to the local timezone, and to see a few sights, and then off to the beach….

During our couple of days in Bangkok we hope to see the Grand Palace, and take a boat tour of the river system (khlong) that runs through the city.  For 100s of years the khlongs were the primary method of traveling and moving transporting goods and significant distance in Thailand, and are still quite active today for tourism, floating markets, and general movement of goods and people.

With a population of over 10 million and roughly twice the size of Los Angeles, Bangkok is estimated to be the 22nd largest city in the world, so 2 days hardly seems like enough time to do it any justice, so we have also planned for few days at the end of our trip to spend some extra time there.  Fortunately for me I was able to negotiate the shopping portion of our Bangkok visit to the last part so that we will not have to carry any treasures we find in the market around with us for 7 weeks 🙂

We did also make an adjustment to our return flight so that we could get some better connections so we are now returning on Aug 11th instead of the 10th as originally planned – this will make us late for dinner on the 10th Vicki, so please don’t wait for us, we will just show up instead on Tuesday 😛