Before I launch into Saigon, I want to update everyone on our itinerary, as we just booked the rest of our flights last night, since we are (sadly) nearing the end of our Asian campaign. On Sunday we will be catching a bus over the border of Cambodia and going directly to Siem Reap, the town bordering the famous Angkor Wat temples. We will spend almost a week there touring the temples before catching a flight down to Singapore for two nights. After that we’re hopping a flight to Sydney, Australia, for 3 days, before our final flight to Auckland, New Zealand, on Saturday December 5th. We would love to see more of Australia, but right now our dollar to theirs is extremely weak, and it’s an expensive country to begin with, so we’re hoping that at some point during our year in NZ we’ll be able to take a couple weeks and fly back over to explore some of “Oz.”

On that note, too, to our friends and family who are planning a visit to us in NZ next year, you now have a deadline – as do we. Our visas are good for exactly one year, which meansthat as of December 4th, 2010 (at the very latest), we will need to leave NZ and begin making our trek home – with a few stops along the way, of course. So keep that in mind if you are planning a visit! When I searched earlier (www.kayak.com is a goodie), the best fares from the states to NZ seemed to be in the May-June range, which is our late fall-early winter season. Our rough itinerary for our trek home is something like northeastern Oz-Bali-Malaysia-Thailand, so if you were planning a visit over the holiday season in 2010, we’ll most likely be somewhere in those areas, and we can coordinate something! At any rate, we have a whole year in NZ to get through, but I know quite a few of you were serious about visiting, so I wanted to give you our plans as soon as possible so you can begin making your own!

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