Argh, Packing

The snake pictures are online, buuut the video's not. We move out of our room in 48 hours and our days have mostly been spent doing practice packings and making give-away piles, during which we each open our suitcases and hop gingerly around each other in the teeny tiny amount of floorspace, and attempt to fit lots of stuff into our (suddenly too) small backpacks. I will definitely be needing to pay for an extra piece of baggage. Le sigh.

Quick news of note, each of which deserves a blog of its own, which just might happen: tonight the bus tried to race a dump truck full of gravel, which was surprisingly speedy. The other week we went to see the water puppet show and the best part was the full-on yowling cat fight taking place on the think plastic ceiling above us, climaxing when one of the toms, a scrappy-looking black and white cat, actually fell through the ceiling and into an empty chair in the audience. Wow. Also, my tutoring job ends this week, and along with it, any last source of income, which I think makes me a real backpacker, and no longer "cooler than a backpacker because um, I *live* here." Ah, well.

We leave on Friday morning (Thursday night for those in the states) for a two-day tour through the Mekong, which will land us in the little coastal town from which we catch our flight to Phu Quoc Island. Sunrises and freshly caught shrimp with limes squeezed on top. Hammocks. Novels. Long sandy walks. And motorbikes. Merry Christmas!