If anyone ever wants to head over this way, I recommend Cathay pacific any day. The extra hundred bucks we spent (instead of the cheaper china air) was so worth it. Great seats, personal tv’s with killer choices, and the staff seriously treated us like we were at a hotel. The food didn’t make us puke – so that’s something as well.

Budget items for the day:
The tix cost 620 bucks a piece, which we paid for many months ago.
Two sodas at the airport 6 bucks. Too much, but it’s an sipper afterall…

First lost in translation:
David asked a desk attendant for a paperclip – he recieved a styrofoam cup. He tried again, recieved a toothpick, and decided to cut his losses and make it work.

In about an hour we leave for Bangkok where god knows things will get interesting. Tonight if we aren’t dying from exauation well post another update about that next leg of the journey.

Thanks to Matthew for the incredible fairwell dinner, and thanks to the newlyweds Jen and Jimmy for driving us to the airport – it was a fitting so long. We love and miss you guys already!!

Welcome to outofthebubble.  In case you don’t know us (I have high hopes), we are Kevin and David and we are about to embark on a 6+ month tour of Southeast Asia with nothing but what we can carry on our backs.  We are leaving our friends,  home,  jobs,  families, and neighbors Matthew, Jimmy, and Jen (god help us). This blog will help you all stay connected with us, and hopefully it will keep our mothers from panicking day and night while we’re gone.

We fly out of SFO at 1:20 am on October 14th to Hong Kong – what promises to be a lovely 14 hour flight. A 3 hour layover in Hong Kong and we’re off to Bangkok.  If all goes as planned we are going to hang out in Bangkok for a few days at the Golden Palace Hotel – they have a pool AND a diving board!  At 15 bucks a night it’s really splurging, but we want somewhere to sleep off the jet lag before we hop in a tent.

We have put nearly 6 months of planning in to this get-up-and-go idea.  Because we are physically moving out of our apartment and camping in the Lao high country there has been a lot of prep to do.  We’ve spent countless hours researching gear, backpacks, water filtration, and proper footwear.  Even longer studying medical issues, vaccinations, and the best insurance we could get that included (who knew?) good medical evacuation.  We have sold nearly every item we owned that could be sold.  We’ve read in to the weather patterns so we know what plateaus to run away to when it gets too damn hot.  We have made sure to watch all those nifty Globetrekker videos so we don’t look like Western Fools while visiting a tribal village in Northern Laos.  And, of course, no Lonely Planet book has gone untouched.  I think we’re ready.

We’ll be blogging about how you can reach us and all those lovely details in the days to come.  There will even be an exciting post about how we planned everything out financially and what kinds of things we had to buy – all inspired by Phil M.  Once we take off this will be the place to see where we are, what we have been up to, and all the amazing photos David is going to be taking with our kick-ass new camera.  Yes!

It would be really helpful if you could share with us what you want to see and hear in this blog.  Afterall, you will be the ones reading it, right?  And, of course, if you have been to Southeast Asia, especially Cambodia and Laos, PLEASE let us know!

Till next time…

- The photo above is from a trip we took down to Big Sur camping last winter, when our devious little plan was hatched….beautiful beaches….