Monday 27 July
47 Days until departure.
I love putting on my shiny black dress shoes. It's a jazzy feeling. It means tonight there's a night on the town. Fast women and expensive cocktails, classy bars with hard to pronounce names, No one will be home before sunrise and some of us won't make it home at all. Dinner will be bought from whatever kerb-side food stall we can find and we will most likely regret everything the next day.
I only have one other pair of shoes that tops this feeling. My mountain Boots.
THEY, feel adventurous. They feel sound. They have a feeling like there is something grand on the horizon. That I'm about to embark on a journey with no known outcome. As you well know by now - I crave that feeling. The world is out there waiting, and these boots will get me into the thick of it.
Along with these boots, my bulging backpack of clothes, camera gear, water bottles, and passports has been sitting at the ready beside my bed, ready to take on Nepal. I packed for this trip months ago. That’s how excited I've been. I have recently had to come to the realization that I may have to remove the clothes from the backpack to make room for more camera gear. Who needs clothes anyway! It's 34 degrees over there!
Its been a few weeks since James left, but recently he popped up on my Gmail chat window so I was able to get some of the inside info.
me:Where are you?
James:Singapore airport!
It looks like every other airport on earth - they're so crap
me: so they let you in? Given you're passport and all..
James: going through customs in Macau
they look at my passport:
"is this wet?"
I'm like "yeah, 18 months ago"
Then she starts pulling off the sides!
"This is breaking"
I say "it's the passports last trip"
She laughs - I get through
Then @ China, they made a fuss. Had to go see some supervisor. Let me in eventually.
seven more to go....
It appears that James' boyish charm has got him through the first set of checkpoints. I'm hoping he can keep that charm going for the next few months or else I will have a very lonely journey. It did not however, help him save his pants from some low life thief. So while James has been running around in the Chinese monsoon with no pants on, I've been planning on getting needle after needle stuck into my arm, but as always, things didn't go so much to plan.
I must say, the doctor was blasé about the whole thing. I turned up with a mile long list of various disease I required immunity for, only for the Doctor to laugh and say " no no no, you only need these two. Don't listen to those guide books! And look, if you come back next week I'll even give you one of them for free."
Now, I'm always a fan of free stuff. Free food, free rides, free love, but free immunization? Hmm. I'm a little skeptical. But hey - this ain't the girl scouts - this is Super Extreme Adventure Team. I'll take his advice and hope for the best. How bad can Rabies be, anyway!
So everything has fallen off track as per usual, which, as far as S.E.A.T is concerned means we're right on track . James may still running around with no pants on, Chris may still be in a predicament about which South African city to visit next based purely on whether or not he's feeling like a redhead, brunette or blonde, and I may be enjoying Rabies, but this is still feeling like a great start to Season 4.
