Six days, 18 hours, ...

I'll be honest. The main motivation for this post is for me to get off my chest the realization that by this time next week, I will be in the air, on my second flight, headed to Tokyo. All week I have been saying things like "I leave in just under two weeks," or "I leave a week from Friday." Well, it's Friday. I'm down to a week.

I'll spare you the (not so) thrilling details of my departure preparations, and instead I'll fill out this post with some trivia about Vietnam and Vietnamese culture, culled mostly from a travel guide* I received.

• "Over two-thirds of the population is under the age of 35"
• At its widest, the country is about 400 miles across. At it's narrowest, it is about 30 miles across. The coastline is about 1900 miles long.
• Over the centuries, deposits carried by the Mekong River have collected on a shallow undersea shelf, forming the Mekong Delta, which grows by dozens of square meters every year.
• "During the last three days of every month, dog-meat restaurants often heave with customers as Vietnamese believe that their specialty will help disperse bad luck accumulated earlier in the month. It is also believed that this protein-rich meat aids sexual potency."
• Ben Tre, pronounced more like Bun Treya, is on the aforementioned Mekong Delta. "The South has two seasons, wet and dry." The rainy months are from May to November, and the dry season is from December to April. Throughout the year, highs range from mid-80s to mid-90s, and the lows stay pretty steady in the mid-70s. Plus humidity, of course.

*Insight Guides: Vietnam, 2009