The comment feature seems to flake out intermittently. Sorry about that. There don't seem to be any terribly reliable blog comment services, judging from the experiences of friends who use other ones. If you know of a good comment service, leave me a comment about it. ;-)

We encountered a waitress last night who recently got back from a year-long tour of southeast Asia. She was a wealth of information, and got us excited about doing a tour (prior to finding a job) like we had been considering. Especially when she mentioned how little she spent in a year. So we're trying to work out whether we have the means to do this for a month or so, and when would be a good time to do it. I don't want to be stuck looking for work in December, which is a bad time for that everywhere in the world it seems.

It's funny -- up to this point, I've been the one who's been saying (like I usually do), let's just go, it'll all work out, while Marjorie (the planner) was saying no no, we need to have a job lined up. We seemed to switch roles after a point last night.

I think we're both dreading all the things that need to be done once we commit, which makes it easier to think about other fun things -- like, where we would go if we toured. The waitress last night was raving about Burma, and got us excited about it. Also high on my list are Angkor Wat (Cambodia), the Mulu caves (Borneo), and Laos. I know Phuket (Thailand) and Vietnam are on Marjorie's list. And I think we're both pretty keen on Redang (Malaysia). And I haven't even mentioned Indonesia. The question is, will a month be enough?