My flight leaves in just over 11 hours. There are still a few things left to do, but I guess I’ll leave them for the morning.

I’m considering getting up at 6am and doing one last bike ride along the bay trail. It seems like a good idea, since I’m going to be sitting on airplanes for nearly 24 hours.

Yesterday I stopped by my bank and asked if they could sell me some Vietnamese currency. They only had $18 worth, so I bought it all. I now have 255,000₫ in my wallet. The Vietnamese currency is called “dong” (actually: đồng, which probably looks like a mess if you don’t have the right font packs installed on your computer). Aparently, this is just about half the average Vietnamese monthly salary.

Today I broke out my suitcase (which is really combination back-pack and wheelie bag) and took it into the “loading zone” in the living room. My cat immediately decided that it was the most comfortable looking thing in the apartment.

It wasn’t until I saw him in there that I realized how big he is, or how small the bag is. I guess it’s a little of both.

Over the course of the day I did laundry and packed. Eventually the bag was completely full of clothing and toiletries. Then I realized I hadn’t packed any extra shoes. I hate packing shoes. I wear a size 14EEEEE (yes, that’s five E), so a pair of my shoes takes up about 20% of that bag’s capacity.

On a side note: I was digging around in my closet and came up with a pair of shoes I had no idea I owned. I really like them, and plan on wearing them for the flight tomorrow (they’re slip-ons).  So in all, I have three pairs of massive shoes I want to take. I opted for a second, small bag that I can check. It will only contain shoes. There’s something extremely un-masculine about all of this.

Around 8:30, with packing 90% complete, I met up with Ginger and Sarah at the local pizza-and-pub, Lanesplitters.

It was a nice little going-away meet-up, and I’m hoping the beer will help me sleep.