Trip prep

So a little background...Marrie and I had our sights set on a 13-week travel nursing position (dialysis) for me, not anywhere/everywhere but rather limited to Maui. Yeah, spending a few winter months in the tropics sounded not half bad. In preparation for this, we put in for, and got leave approved from our respective jobs. We (mostly Marrie) were putting the pieces in place to make this idea happen and realized that there may not be a job offer or job opening to go to, despite our (ie her) best efforts. And believe me, the fact that this was the case was in no way the result of any lack of industry on her part. Alas, in realizing that there was only so much we could do to make this plan A happen, we (ie she) came up with a plan B...that we would take advantage of both having a big chunk of time off together, and of Eleanor being young enough (21mos) to travel at a fraction of the cost...not mention the ease of picking up & going during this pre-school-year phase.

So we set a deadline to field job offers which arrived with no offer and then booked our flight, Colo Spgs»LAX»Seoul»Chiang Mai on Feb 4  returning April 4 KL, Malaysia»Seoul»LAX»Denver. Ironically enough, I received a call from the travel nursing agency just yesterday, 2 full weeks after we booked, announcing that there is finally a vacancy/posting at Maui Memorial Hospital! He thought I would be let-down at missing out...I clued him in that once Marrie expressed an interest in a trip abroad, that became my 'plan A'.

Marrie took a 6 week trip to India years ago, and I've been to Thailand on a couple of occasions for about that long...but this will be the longest we've traveled together. Regards travelling to such a distant/foreign place with a toddler...it's challenging to safeguard her well-being here at home (especially with this tippy 'Munch'). Pretty daunting to pull it off when nothing you're surrounded by is familiar. It will surely be a team effort to employ a heightened sense of awareness to fulfill our duty to our little one.

To all who know us, this will come as little surprise...but our respective approaches (Marrie and mine) to this upcoming trip are in stark contrast. Fortunately not at odds, just drastically different. Marrie has logged much time researching, lining things out, pre-arranging this&that...pretty much immersed in the process. I've been working alot so not a whole heap of time to dedicate to research/planning. And generally speaking I employ a wait/see/decide on-the-spot approach. But I have invested a fair bit of mental energy plotting about what technology we will want to emply to enhance the experience. Our kindle fire tablet is going to come along as well as a SIM-card friendly Iphone that was loaned to us by a friend as we had a bit of a phone debacle discovering that neither of our phones has a slot for the SIM card. So much for all the travel-apps I loaded on my droid in advance. And so much for having ideas of posting to instagram...afraid I'm not tech-savvy enough to pull that off. Combination of being without our instagram-capable phones and kindle/amazon app store not offering instagram. I have been able to 'side-load' some of my most-used apps from the google 'play-store' onto the kindle such as google maps. Unfortunately, no gps on the kindle to interface with the maps app. And the loaner Iphone we'll be using is an early-generation sort, pre-instagram...but with gps/mapping/navigational capabilities.

And regards this blog, we'll see to what extent it takes. We expect to have steady wifi whilst in Chiang Mai which is where we will be for at least the first couple of weeks. Then an overnight train to Bangkok before pushing on to parts south, mostly of the island/beach variety. The train is a great way to go with a little one (at least in my imagination) allowing her to move about while we're moving about. Further south I think our rough itinerary deviates from the rail route so we'll either have to consider long bus rides (not ideal) or short (and hopefully cheap) domestic flights. I'll likely advocate for the latter as with it being easier on her and giving us more time at the destination/less time enroute. Time will tell.

But anyway, I reckon this will mostly be a platform to share pics/video (?) and not-so much to work through my commentary. And of course, it wouldn't be proper to be where we'll be physically...but abandoning our present as a result of trying to stay current with blog entries. I mean, maybe if we were touring Europe...but to be in The Far East, surrounded by Buddhist Wat's and all that the Buddha did/did not teach. So forgive us in advance it these entries are few/far-between. Hopefully it will be because we are practicing presence (and not because the wifi is sub-standard).