Well, the waiting's almost over! In less than 12 hours we'll be on our way to the airport to embark on our Asian adventure.

It's amazing, it's almost like Mother Nature decided to acclimatize us to our soon to be reality with a humidex in Ottawa today of 29 degrees. Ok, it'll be a little warmer where we're going, but it was a nice appetizer.

Last year I read a book called, "The Life Nomadic" where the author sold all his worldly possessions to travel around the world with only what he could carry on his back.

Interesting concept!

When we went to Cuba in February, we experimented with the nomadic lifestyle and managed to make it through the week with only what we could fit into 30 litre carry-on backpacks. The purpose, of course, was to avoid the long customs lineups by skipping the baggage carrousel. It worked perfectly! We were off the plane and through customs in 15 minutes.

This time we'll be away for 6 months so we had to upgrade to the largest carry- on allowable, the 40 litre backpacks shown in the picture. I supplemented my capacity with the brown Timbuk2 manbag for my laptop, camera, chargers and snacks.

We're taking a bit of a circuitous route to get to Vietnam: Ottawa to Newark, Newark to Tokyo and Tokyo to Ho Chi Minh City. That's what happens when you fly on points!

Anyway, we'll be back on Terra Firma about 24 hours after takeoff, so it's not all that bad.

Stay tuned for updates.