Heide and I are making our preparations to go to Vietnam in this August of 2006.  This will be my third visit and Heide's second.  This time we are flying into Hanoi first, then home from Saigon. Neither of us has been to Hanoi yet.  The initial ticket cost is a bit of a sticker shock to the blue collar world but once you get there you can live rather frugally for 15 dollars a day.  Airline tickets cost anywhere from $800 to $1,400 depending on your timing.  We always leave from Chicago O'Hare.  I have always used Expedia and had good luck.  If you do a cost benefit analysis, I have had friends that think nothing of dropping $500 on a camping weekend here in Wisconsin or a night at Ho Chunk Casino.  So if you use that construct, a $1,000 round trip plane ticket to an exotic country 20,000 miles away is a deal.  This, even in the midst of three dollar a gallon gas prices.  By the way, gas prices in Vietnam seem to mirror the United States.  You just buy it by the liter, but if you do the arithmetic, a gallon come out about the same. I should make a list of handy items to bring to Vietnam on a trip.  A small calculator might be one of those items. 
   Right now we are in the process of getting our visas from the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington D.C.  If you want to enter and exit the county many times the visas are more expensive.  It would be $80 verses $130.  We need the multi-entry visa because we are jutting over to Laos and Thailand and then back to Vietnam.  
   Laos will only issue a single entry visa, if you leave and come back you have to buy another visa (widows' and orphans' funds - cost of doing business in a communist country).  Ironically, Thailand requires only a passport.  Last time I crossed over the Mekong River from Savannakhet, Laos into Mukdahan, Thailand.  When I went back to Laos I had to buy another visa even though my first one was suppose to be good for 30 days.  At the time they were $30. Some things you just have to chalk up things to "the cost of doing business."  The cost of getting around in Laos makes up for the little visa indiscretion.  If you are thrifty you can get by for $10 dollars a day.  There is some absence of civil authority in Laos.  I think you are pretty much on your own if you have some kind of problems.  But, that is part of the challenge to journalistic travel is it not?  I think Savannakhet is the second largest city in Laos and it is has about 120,000 people.  This is just slightly bigger than my sleepy little Midwestern Wisconsin town.