Dear Diary,

It's been soooo long since I've written!!! I promise I'll never go so long without writing in you....

How exciting it's been in the Sarah and Arli world! Getting ready to move (where are we moving?), packing for the trip (at least we know where we're traveling), and dealing with those little curve balls life throws your way every now and then. Just to make sure you're still paying attention.

What have we been up to. We got our Vietnam visa-upon-arrival approval letters.

Good thing we are on the same letter as Mr. Jae Hyun Im. I was hoping we'd be traveling with him.

We visited the Smithsonian's Sackler/Freer galleries to get our fill of Asian art. Turns out it fills us up pretty quickly.
 

That's Sarah with her favorite bull sculpture. Here's Arli:

We also got a few lessons in how annoying it can be to get a Thai tourist visa ahead of time. God help you if you try to plan ahead. They will get very angry with you and demand that you wait until you get there to get a measly 15-day visa. They will also deny that their website indicates that you can apply for more than a single entry, or that it says you can, in fact, get a 6-month visa. Word from the wise- don't spend $36 sending your passport to the Royal Thai Embassy just so they can get a look at your pretty face.

Anyway. We have been stocking up on the minutiae needed for three months in the wilderness, er, Asia. A toiletry kit. Quick-dry towels. A sink plug (that one took me 30 minutes to find in Home Depot). 98% DEET. A rolling suitcase.

What's that, you say? A rolling suitcase? I thought you were backpacking around Asia! Why on earth would you need a ROLLY BAG??

Well, because of this:

 

Yes, that's a broken neck. Sarah broke her C7 on February 2, six weeks prior to departure. According to the neurosurgeon, it will take at least two months to heal, the entire time spend in a very (un)comfortable hard neck brace. No exercise, no driving, no carrying a backpack, no nothing involving using her head or neck. It should make for an entertaining few weeks in Vietnam, at least. It probably means no drunken river tubing in Laos.  :(   But whatever- what choice do we have but to deal with it and make the best of it? Sarah's getting a sweet new brace this week called a Miami J. If that doesn't spell sexy world traveler, we don't know what does.

Among other things, it has snowed about 40 inches here in DC in the last week- which breaks the last single-season snowfall record apparently set in 1899. How charmingly historic! We've been cooped up inside for a week straight, looking forward to getting the hell out of here even more- despite the looming broken neck. Last night, M&M came over, and after watching Good Morning Vietnam [funniest joke: "What is a protective dike? Is that a large woman standing near the river going 'Don't go near there!'"], we booked a few nights at a hostel in Chiang Mai. It's called A Little Bird Guesthouse:

How cute is that. We'll be there during the Thai New Year, Songkran. It involves a lot of water guns and water balloons and water buckets and water. NICE.

Alrighty- that's it for now.