A weekend at home

So this weekend looks to be a relatively calm one, which is welcome after the past few weekends. It's Friday night, and we are home at 8:30 pm, with no plans to leave until at least 11:00 am tomorrow.

We have a relatively pedestrian weekend planned, with tennis, dinner with friends, massage, and naps. This is the last weekend we will have at home together before our world is turned completely upside down sometime in November.

Next Thursday, I'll go to Bangkok with Katherine to get her moved in to our temporary Bangkok home before returning to Vientiane on Saturday night. We'll spend the weekend with our friends Walter and Alex (Burma) and Mary Beth (Surabaya) and Doug (Canberra, but he's Australian, so really, home). Alex is already moved into the Emporium Suites, as her due date is around November 5, and Walter will be moving to Bangkok next weekend, much like I will be moving to BKK about Nov. 15. Mary Beth and Doug are just coming up for a visit, so we'll have a chance to hang out before we all leave the region next Spring and re-connect in DC before splitting up again (Walter and Alex to Muscat, Oman and MB and Doug to Casablanca, and of course, Kiev for us).

Unfortunately, I have to leave the weekend fun a day early, as I need to be back in Vientiane to fly at 6:30 am Sunday to Pakse in southern Laos for a UXO field visit to operators funded by the USG. I'll be visiting two major areas along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Savannakhet and Khammouane Province.

But for now, we're just going to enjoy the weekend. Katherine has three days of work left, and (I think) she is pushing herself too much to try to get everything done before she leaves so there is a seamless transition between the current CLO superstar and those that come after her.

The below map shows where I will be going. I'll fly to Pakse on Sunday (10/22), then drive to Phin and Xepon Districts in Savannakhet, then drive to Thakhek, then up to Mahaxay and Boualapha Districts in Khammouane, then back to Vientiane on 10/25. Lots of driving, but it's for work, and it should be very interesting.



by the way, I copied this map from travelfish.org in case anyone accuses me of bad internet deeds.