Deep into my planning phase, airfare and hotels booked and pre-paid to get better rates, and then...
I thought I would reach out (through WhatsApp) to a friend I met during my 1st trip to the Philippines in 2023. He lives in Singapore now, but like me, he spent several years in Silicon Valley doing FinTech work. I sent him my itinerary and invited him to meet in Jakarta if interested. He said he'd look at the dates and let me know.... a day later he told me to recheck my dates and... well, I fucked up.
The entire time I would be in Indonesia was the month-long holiday of Ramadan! Rookie mistake on my part. I had checked for major holidays on my American-based calendar, but not on a Muslim-based calendar. From my working associations with Muslim's during my career, I knew it is a month-long period of day-time-fasting and prayers. But I had to do more research on what Ramadan is all about inside a Muslim country. I won't go into any religious expositions here; that's for another site. I'll just say it's a really bad time to visit for the intended purposes of my trip!
I had to change all my travel plans. Called my airline booking service first. After a 2-hour call, I was able to change 3 out of 4 flights to a later date, with minimal change fees around $250. The 4th flight had to be cancelled, and I got a refund less a 25% cancellation fee. Then I had to book new flights for the return to the US from Bali, at a higher cost of $426, of course. The net-net of airfare changes was about $800 in additional expense.
Next, I had to rework my hotel bookings, which ended up being time-consuming, but not very expensive.
As much as I describe myself as an experienced traveler, well, I'll never really know what I don't know, until I do... LOL
So travel dates are now mid-March through early May. Fortunately, I have a new SB (21-yr-old ballerina) ready for BCD next week, my 2 Porn Star SB's essentially on-call, my Viet Spinner coming this Thursday, and 3 others on my B-List rotation to keep me happy until I fly the friendly skies... which means:
Life is good
The Cat