Alex's Asian Adventure

Long time no post. Busy. Exams.

The good news: I'm done university!
The bad news: well.... there's no bad news.

I leave Monday. I'm starting to get progressively more nervous, since after all I am going to a third-world country (China) entirely on my own, for six weeks. I hope I'm reasonably well prepared with the exception of not speaking any Mandarin. That doesn't change the fact that I'm going to a foreign land to travel on my own for a while.

I'm ramping up on last-minute trip preparations. Today's adventures included:

• Acquiring the ABS plates for my crampons (to avoid slippage on snow!)
• Acquiring two more pairs of trekking socks
• Acquiring $4000 USD worth of travellers cheques. This might be too much. Maybe not. I don't know. I'm going for a while...

I checked into the status of my financing, and realized that this trip appears to be costing me more than I anticipated. This is largely due to the fact that I've spent a substantial amount of money on flights and gear and things. Oh well. I never really budgeted in the first place, I'm solvent, and I have a job to come back to. So everything's fine.

I'm also trying to arrange flights into Lhasa for April 29th, and my travel agent for that part, Lobsang, says he needs a copy of my passport to get me the permit - that's great, but too bad I'm in Canada. And it doesn't help that he responds with a 1-2 day delay. Sigh. I suppose I shouldn't expect people on the other side of the world to bend over backwards to work according to my schedule, although it'd be nice. All I want is confirmation that yes, I have a flight and a guesthouse booked in Lhasa.

Oh yes, and since I'm currently a little bit bored in the aftermath of being done my undergrad (I should pack. Hmm) I decided to try on my new boot-crampon-gaiter combination and take a picture with my newly-acquired digital camera. Results are presented here as evidence of my looneyness.