She's shaking the books. I am sitting on the bookshop floor staring up at Leonie. Lonely Planet and Rough Guide seem to be in a shaking competition. "Why are you shaking the books?" I venture. The answer is, of course, to see how heavy they are. Silly me. After months of planning and dreaming over the adventures these books contain, practicality has kicked in and it has now become an issue of weight.

Stanfords, the travel bookshop in London, is as far as we're going together. I am, as my doctor scarily put it "a teacher", that is, I'm going to teach English in Vietnam. Only just out of school myself, and with a week's TEFL, the hat doesn't fit just yet. But I've bought my stickers, little prizes and english books and I'm going to land "like mary poppins in a jungle" (thanks, Jack) and impart my language.

Except I'm not going to the jungle, but the urban jungle that is Hanoi. A place where you get woken up by government loudspeakers rather than monkeys, drink bia hoi rather than rainwater, and eat, well, snake and dog. I'll keep you posted on that.

Leonie is going to "do" south east asia - Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and then when she's absolutely shattered come and travel with me in Vietnam.

This all began about a year and a half ago, when buried under A level work, we signed up to the gap year phenomenon to dream of a different life. But now, instead of coursework, exams and homework, we have jabs, visas and travellers' cheques to organise. It's three weeks until I go and the enormity of moving 8000 miles away for six months is only just sinking in.

So I'm off to weigh my guidebooks...