Eid and Borneo

As Ramadan draws to a close, everyone in this part of the world is getting excited about Eid al-Fitr and the time off it brings.  Eid is essentially the celebration that breaks the Ramadan fast and a time when Muslims are supposed to be particularly charitable to those in need.  It also means that we get the entirety of next week off work. 

To add to our good fortune, today happens to be Oman's 44th Renaissance Day Anniversary, which is the day that the Sultan took control over Oman from his father.  Today would ordinarily be a holiday, but instead the Ministry of Manpower in Oman elected to give us tomorrow off, which means everyone gets a nice 10-day holiday. 

I suspect Muscat will be pretty much a ghost town for the next 10 days, so I'm glad that I had already booked a vacation for next week before the announcement, since fares and prices have skyrocketed after the announcement came out on Monday of this week (seriously, I have no idea how Muslims plan vacations since their holidays are always determined at the last minute).  So I'm off to Borneo for 10 days to traipse through jungles, see orangutans and relax on a beach!  Here's my itinerary:

To put a little bit of a damper on the trip, I've been getting frequent warnings from the US State Department not to go to Borneo since there's been a slew of kidnappings of Westerners from the Sandakan region (see right side of the map above).  The State Department has also warned me not to go because of an epidemic of dengue fever there recently.  Oh, and I'm flying Malaysian Airlines, which hasn't had the best of luck lately. 

And since bad things happen in threes, that means I'll be totally fine, right?  Three bad things have already happened (or are happening, in the case of the first two), so I think that means I'll have a fabulous time and see lots of orangutans.  However, since I'm totally Type A, my mother has every single emergency contact number I could possibly think of (including my company's security guy, in case I need a rescue mission (how cool would that be?!?)) and a promise that she will come to Oman and retrieve my cat in the event of my unlikely demise on a beach in Borneo. 

So I'll be back in August with [hopefully] fabulous pictures of fuzzy orange primates to share and maybe a funny story or two about my kidnapping experience (Mom, I'm totally kidding - I won't be kidnapped)!