Lost in Laos

I like to hope I have some faithful readers out there who have been missing me desperately. If not, I'll just pretend.

I did make it down to Southern Laos earlier this month, Paxse and Savannakhet. I visited two provincial clinics and got to know the staff.

I apologize for the absenteeism this month. I'd love to say I've been swept up in exciting new adventures but truth be told I've just been working and trying to stay cool. The good news is that I received my ID card today. It's a little red book, how very fitting, that is an intermediate step in my receiving a work visa and being able to leave the country. Our visa guy, who is employed specifically for the purpose of getting visas for the expats, says I should have my work visa by the end of June for sure. So, with that in mind I'm planning my holidays.

I'm taking my birthday week off in June to travel up to Northern Laos. There is an environmental project called the Gibbon experience, www.gibbonexperience.org, where you trek into a nature preserve, sleep in tree houses, zip around on zip lines, and hopefully see some gibbons. I'm pretty excited about it. Then I'll take a boat back down the Mekong to Luang Prabang for a couple days.

I've found a couple amazing looking yoga retreats. One outside of Angkor Wat in Cambodia and the other on a little island off Phuket in Thailand. They both look great and pretty affordable so I'm planning to take a week in July to check out one or the other.

I promise to be more diligent in the near future and make some good use of my camera.