It's now official, I've bought the plane tickets for Vietnam. So I'm leaving Montreal on January 15th to Hanoi and the returning date is February 9th back from Bangkok to Montreal. I'm really happy this is done. Now I still have other preparations to do... actually last message I said 4 months to go but it's more like 3 months now. First thing off is my visas to enter Vietnam and Cambodia. As for Thailand I'm not too sure if I need a visa. I'll check into that next week or the week after since it's a holiday monday. I'm also thinking of getting vaccines for hepatitis A and B.

I'll book the hotel for the first 2-3 days in Hanoi. I checked out a few places and the Old Quarter seems the place to be and the hotel I'm checking out is Little Hanoi Hotel. I'm also thinking I might have a hard time to find accomodation during the Tet holidays as it's quite a holiday for the Vietnamese. I'm not too sure which dates but I think it's end of January and it last 2 weeks or so. There's always couchsurfing.com and lonelyplanet.com forums to help me out with these questions.

I also have a co-workers friend who's attending a wedding at end of December. Unfortunately, we'll miss each other there because she's leaving before I arrive but she's willing to help me out if I have any questions. She's never been to Vietnam but since she's attending a wedding I'm sure she has some local info that I might not have. Although, I'm still up for the idea of couch surfing shile in HCMC and maybe even Hoi An and Hue. I'll see to that this week as well.

I'm already travelling in my head even if I haven't left Montreal. Yahoo!!!! Although, I should appreciate what I have at the moment since it's beautiful Automn right now with the leaves changing colours it's beautiful. On Monday and Tuesday I plan to head out to the Adirondacks for some hiking. The beautiful colours are calling me and it can also serve as practice for my trek on Mount Fansipan in Vietnam.