So, the answer to the 2010 question “Where are you two going this year?”: Laos.

Despite all of our trips to Southeast Asia, Laos is the country we’ve always missed. We’d thought of it as the sleepy neighbor of Vietnam and Thailand, but we’ve met a lot of travelers this year who’ve said that it’s a must see. Beautiful vistas, interesting temples and sites, fabulous food, and cheap – which meet all of our travel requirements.

Once again, our plans are extremely flexible. We have round trip tickets to Bangkok, and we’ll be arranging our entry into Laos from there. We’ll spend two and a half weeks in Laos, and then we’ll return to Bangkok for just over a week. We’ll be back in the US in time for Thanksgiving.

It turns out I will be working for the last week in Thailand. My company has a contract with the Royal Thai Navy and I’ll be on-site to provide training and installation. I’ll also get a chance to visit some other business related sites, so there will be some novel elements to this trip.

We will continue our tradition of blog posts with pictures and Harriet’s travel commentaries. She swears she’s going to finish the incomplete entries from previous travels, but I’ll be thankful if we just make more timely updates. I’ll be traveling with more electronics than usual (due to work) so we’ll see how that impacts our overall communications. I’ll be making Twitter/Facebook updates, so you can find periodic summaries here and follow us in real time at Twitter as @alanirwin. And we love email!

And now back to packing.