Almost departure day

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Happy New Year everyone! The crunch is on - only 2 weeks until we fly out of Vancouver to Saigon. We got our Visa's from the Vietnamese embassy in Ottawa in record time - less than 1 week from the day our papers and passports left here until they were returned stamped and ready to go. You need a Visa to get into Vietnam and they are issued for various lengths of time and for single or multi enteries - incase you plan on popping over into Laos or Cambodia then coming back in. We paid for 1 month visas but got them issued for 42 days on a single entry. I spent a small fortune at Walmart last week. Bought multi-vities for us all, rehydration packages for the kids incase they get diahrea, acidopholous to help battle the tummy bugs that I am sure that we will all get at some point and filled a prescription for Cipro which is a broad spectrum antibiotic in case James or I get some bug that is intolerable to live with. We all have our Hepatitis A shots and the boys are getting their second dose of Hepatitis B vaccines this week. We have decided to skip on the antimalarials. They are not 100% effective and are quite hard on the liver. They can also have some weird side effects. Since we have to use bug sprays anyway to avoid other mosquito borne illnesses we should be fine. I understand that even the cheap guesthouses that we plan on staying in a fair bit, supply mosquito nets over the beds which will help keep those little buggers off of us at night.

I have been up late making packing lists and reading the two guide books I bought. - one Lonely Planet and one Moon guide. I am getting a bit of a plan as to how we will try to tackle the bottom half of the country. We have gathered some good info off the internet from travellers who have been there or who are there now which is a new way to prepare to travel for me. It is amazing how the internet has changed the way people can find out about other parts of the world. For example I know that right now it is 32' (but feels like 42') in Saigon and that it is partly cloudy with 56% humidity. And that info is right on my tool bar. Cool huh. I think so.

So that is it. For now. I would imagine my next post to be from Vietnam.

Cheers
Shelly

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