Every now and then the Minkey decides it’s time to do something noble and good for the rest of humanity. This time it was committing to a Habitat for Humanity trip to Mymensingh, Bangladesh. If you’re not familiar with Bangladesh – just think back on several of the natural disasters you heard about over the last 20 years – it seems that a good portion of those occur in Bangladesh (think cyclones and typhoons and floods, etc). You can check it out on a map – it sits next to India and right below countries like Bhutan and Nepal. It is not a wealthy country, and is mostly Muslim. Which is a nice segue into why our trip was cancelled. That’s right – cancelled. On the morning that we were going to leave – I received the bad news from Jack, our trip leader. Apparently there was a ‘rapidly deteriorating’ situation across the entire country due to the trial of a muslim political party leader. The verdict did not go his way and he was sentenced to hang. That was the spark that set off all sorts of violent acts and strikes. There was a Habitat team from Japan already in Mymensingh, and they were unable to leave their hotel rooms. Needless to say the Habitat management determined it would not be a good idea for us to continue with our trip. Sigh. The western media did not have any mention of the situation over there – the US is not too concerned about problems in third-world countries where we have no strategic or economic interests.

So – here I am prepared to fly halfway around the world, to a country that has mosquitos the size of birds (so we heard) and thousands of people living below the poverty line.  I know that it will be dirty with no infrastructure and the food could be sketchy …   so I had steeled myself for all of this – and now I’m not going.

This also throws a wrench into the apres Habitat trip to Nikoi Island in Indonesia at the end of the Bangladesh  trip.  Now it’s 9:30am and I’m sitting at work with my jaw on the ground trying to think about what to do next.   Do I cancel the flight?  The trip to Nikoi Island?  How much money did I just lose? There was a glimmer of hope that Habitat would set us up with a trip to Thailand instead – but it would be several hours before any of that was confirmed.  Luckily, Singapore Airlines gave us a 4 hour window to cancel without losing our ticket …   so I was in limbo for several hours not knowing if we would be flying out tonight or not…   Which lead to much hemming and hawing about what should or should not be accomplished that day.  Also multiple conversations with my traveling companions and Singapore Airlines about plans and changes to plans.

At about 3:45pm I get the word that we should GO as Habitat is setting us up with a trip right outside of Bangkok.  Essentially this is the polar opposite of Mymensingh…. Bangkok is definitely civilization ….   For instance, I don’t need to take the anti-malarial drugs (which I started Thursday morning)… and it’s a less conservative place, as Muslims are not predominant.  Mind shift  —  this is going to be ‘Habitat Light’ as compared to ‘Habitat Hard’.    Secretly – there was much rejoicing.  Shhhh don’t tell Jack!

Of course now I shifted into panic mode and had to book out of the workplace and get back home to finalize the packing.  I notified my other companions and got on the horn with Singapore Airlines – and what seemed to be a fairly clueless guy who spent the next hour working on changing the last leg of our tickets from Dhaka, to Bangkok.  At one point he said he would need to call me back in 30 minutes – I was freaking out, thinking we’ll never hear from him again.  But he did call me back – an airline miracle.  An even bigger airline miracle, we are getting a refund of $70 !  Imagine that !

It was all too much for me to make many changes to the already packed items – which were chosen based on their ability to cope with the back of beyond ….   I also had not quite wrapped my brain around the fact that I was going to be spending two weeks in Thailand …    But I was ecstatic that there was still going to be a trip – because this was something that had been planned for a year in advance —   and to think that we would not be able to do anything, would have been a huge bummer.  So  —   the Minkey is feeling like she is darn lucky to not be in Bangladesh right now …. and instead enjoying a Singha on the balcony of our hotel in Bangkok.  More to come later!