“For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health,” and so on. With these words over fifty years ago, Barbara and I were joined in matrimony. I prefer to look at this connection more as a rubber band than as a chain. A chain is an inflexible connection, but a rubber band expands and contracts. Sometimes it’s in a relaxed state with little or no tension. But occasionally it gets stressed to its maximum. Over the long span of our marriage never has the tension reached the point of breaking, but it sure came close that April on the northern coast of Borneo.
This story begins several years ago when Barb said, “I would love to go around the world on one of those packages the airlines offer.” Seeing as we were still suffering jet lag from our last trip, I did not take the threat too seriously. However, Barb never jokes about trips. The subject apparently came up quite often, although I was somehow unaware of it until one night she made the pronouncement, “Well, I guess it’s settled then.” I was watching some mindless sitcom on TV, so my defenses were not up to snuff.
“What’s settled?” I asked.
“The around the world trip of course – we’ve discussing it for weeks.” We had? I tried hard to remember those earth-shattering, budget-breaking discussions, but for the life of me I couldn’t.
“I think a stop in Europe like Germany, then on to Asia, say India, next to Australia, and then home would be a great itinerary.”
I knew I had been had. At this stage we were no longer negotiating, we were planning, and I might as well just go along. The countries began to materialize—Germany, India, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. Wait a minute! How did Singapore and New Zealand get in there?
“Well, the route takes us to them, so it’s natural just to stop off for a few days.” This normal logic for Barb began to look like overkill to me. I protested but knew it was to no avail.
“We’ll be really tired after the long trip, and the flight from Auckland, New Zealand to the United States stops in the Cook Islands. I got us a cottage on the lagoon for five days to rest up before we get home,” I was informed. Frankly, I had never heard of the Cook Islands, but when Barb described the beach, the waving palm trees, and the relaxing few days, I quickly surrendered.
A week or so later I noticed a great deal of email to Barb from Tunisia. Now I knew she was making reservations for the trip online, but where did Tunisia fit in? I thought I’d best get involved, and quick.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” she said. “The United Airlines Star Alliance package allows us 29,000 miles, and our itinerary has us way short of that. So I added Tunisia and Brunei.”
I was dumbstruck. Not only had we added Tunisia, but now I was going to Brunei. Frankly, I could not have found Brunei on a map in ten years of trying. (By the way, Brunei is on the north coast of Borneo.)
I knew it was time to put my foot down. I already was visualizing a mortgage on our home for this trip. The previously-discussed rubber band had now just about reached its limit. We agreed our itinerary was now fixed, our budget was fixed, and my tolerance was at its maximum. This was it – absolutely – no additions, changes, or corrections. We both took a blood oath, and the details began to fall into place.
“Humph,” she said a month or so later. “Humph,” she repeated. And I knew it would go on until I responded. So I said, “Humph what?”
“I bet you have no idea where Limbang is do you?”
“No, and I really don’t give a darn.”
“If you were on a TV quiz show and they asked you, you’d lose all your money.”
“There are no questions that hard on any quiz show, so I’m safe.”
“OK then, I know something you don’t.”
This wasn’t going to work. I needed to nip it in the bud before it got out of hand. “Our itinerary is fixed, and we’re not going to any place near whatever you said. So forget it.”
“OK, but actually we’ll only be about forty kilometers away.”
“Good, that’s a safe distance,” I replied.
“After our conversation the other day,” she began a few days later. “I’ll bet you looked up Limbang, didn’t you?”
“Not on your life, baby, and you’d better drop it or I’ll renege on Tunisia.”
With that sensitive exchange our planning ended and we began to prepare for the actual trip. At least that’s what I thought.
So off we went on our great adventure. Frankfurt in Germany, Tunis in Tunisia, New Delhi in India, Singapore, and on to Brunei. On the flight to Brunei we mapped out our strategy as we always do, laying out our visit and checking where we needed guided tours and where we planned to go on our own. As always our days were full, and we read the prep notes that we had brought along. Now Barb, being a bit more structured than I am, and always more knowledgeable and better prepared, planned the sequence. She did that again for this visit. I noticed though that she had given us a free afternoon on the second day. Shopping, I mistakenly thought.
We checked into the hotel and started for our room when Barb stopped and said, “I’ll see you up in the room. I just want to check on some little matter.”
She came up to the room a little while later with a very guilty look.
“What?” I said.
“Guess what wonderful news. I found a driver who can take us over to Malaysia tomorrow afternoon. He’ll let us look around and get us back here by early evening with no sweat.”
“What do you want to do that for? Hey, wait a minute. What is the city’s name in Malaysia?”
“Well, the closest one is Limbang.”
I could scarcely hear her words.
“No way,” I said. This had now become a matter of principle.
“Well, I might go alone then.”
“Good, so long.”
The relationship was becoming very, very strained. In Brunei we visited the royal palace, the royal mosque, the royal museum, and all the other royal settings in Bandar Seri Begawan. But there was a cloud between us. The rubber band was about as taut as it ever gets.
“I leave at 1:00 P.M. today,” she informed me.
“Have a great trip,” I replied.
“It’s in an air conditioned car with an English-speaking driver.”
“Good, then you’ll have someone to talk to,” I replied.
But at five minutes to one, the rubber band began to pull us back together. I was worried about her going alone, and she was worried about this complicated adventure. The trip was generally uneventful. We had no problems with visas. We sailed through immigration both in and out of Malaysia. The price of the driver and car was reasonable, and the ride was a delight through banana and coconut groves. We saw huge water buffaloes swimming with white herons on their backs. The city of Limbang was quite prosperous; twenty school children in white shirts and gray slacks came up to us and wanted to practice English. It was wonderful. Once again the tension in the rubber band had pulled us back together.
Harry Hubinger is a retired engineer who operated his own company for twenty years. He first began traveling outside the United States on business, but these visits escalated upon his retirement. He has now traveled to 115 countries and continues to add several new ones each year. In 1998 he began writing his humorous and insightful articles for a supplement to a local newspaper. These stories, based on experiences most travelers could identify with, soon earned him a wide local following. In 2005 he published his first book, Stamps in My Passport—a collection of travel vignettes. Harry has lived in Danville for almost forty years and has volunteered with the Danville Police Department for the past seven. His wife, Barbara, is the detail chronicler of their trips. Her journals provide the background for Harry’s broader view. You can get his book at: www.travelbookspub.com.
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