The power of cyberspace

Apologies that the blogs have been few and far between recently, with only 10 days to go till we hop on a plane to Bangkok its all been a bit manic. I feel like I have written a thousand letters recently, telling people about our mission and asking them to support us and, more importantly, Mind. And luckily the response has been great and more and more cheques arrive daily. We've still got a massive amount of fundraising to do before we hit our £50,000 target, but I think a lot of people will donate when we are actually on the road. I guess our mission has to be begun to be believed. I still don't believe its happening so why should anyone else.

The last few days have been astonishing testament to the power of cyberspace. A few weeks ago Jo got in touch with a guy called John who lives in Bangkok and runs www.khaosanroad.com. John then put our story on his site's homepage and within 24 hours we've 3 more potential sponsors contacting us and several travel magazines and websites. One of these is www.travelfish.org, a brilliant site all about travelling in South East Asia. Ting Tong is now going to be sporting a Travelfish sticker and our story is going to be gracing their pages. www.gapyear.com also contacted us and are going to be following our progress, as are Untamed Travel, a Thai based travelzine. Suddenly it feels like its all happening.

Mind week starts this Saturday and then its our launch on Wednesday. I'm vaguely terrified about the latter since between 6 and 7.30 Skype, our main sponsor, have arranged a press launch at The Cobden for us and apparently there are journos from The Mail, The Sun, The FT, Handbag.com and various other publications coming along. Yikes. I used to find it hard enough saying anything at The South Bank Show departmental meetings, let alone open my mouth in front of an assortment of journalists.

We were meant to be in The Eastern Daily Press on Monday but it seems our tale was usurped by that of a rave that kept half the sleepy county of Norfolk awake on saturday night. Those filthy ravers - how would they feel if we kept them awake all night with that pounding bass.....