We had originally planned to take a boat out to an island for a day of snorkeling today, but late last night Nick checked the weather and saw a forecast of clouds and potential rain. We decided to skip it but didn’t come up with a Plan B.

With nowhere to be, we had a very lazy morning. The only thing on the agenda was to figure out where we’re going next. Every couple of months or so we find ourselves in a planning predicament, where we can’t quite solve the puzzle of our itinerary.

We had originally planned to go to Indonesia from here. If you look at a map, this makes perfect sense. But then when we look at flight routes, weather, and lodging options… it starts to get much more complicated. Where in Indonesia do we start? Are we willing to do a two-connection overnight flight? If we have a connection in Brunei, should we just stop there for a few days? Are the forecasted daily storms in Bali all day long, or a quick downpour in the afternoon? Once we’re in Indonesia, how do we get around to different parts? Are there affordable and decent lodging options in the places we want to go? Is it worth breaking the budget for a remote diving lodge on stilts? Every question sends us down a rabbit hole, and every time we change our minds on an upstream decision, we have to start all over again.

We talked through so many possible options: skipping it all together and going straight to Australia, going back to Thailand because we loved it so much and the weather is perfect right now, heading up to the Philippines, taking a river cruise in Kalimantan, and so on.

We spent 3 hours in bed, pulling up a million different flight and hotel options on our phones and laptop. Millie sat next to us watching Princess Mononoke. It wasn’t a glamorous day, but it was necessary.

The final decision? We’re heading to the Philippines. Indonesia is just too rainy and too vast for us right now. We might still go, or it might get dogeared for a future trip.

We finally finished all our planning by about 1. We showered and got ready to leave the apartment. As soon as we were ready to go, Millie started playing independently with her people. We never like to interrupt her when she gets like this, so we just let her continue. Before we knew it, it was 3.

Then she requested I read to her, another thing I say will always yes to if we aren’t rushing off to anywhere else. We are halfway through her third read of the story about the bubonic plague. It is so sad and dark, and I have no idea why she likes it. She calls it “my favorite book”.

It’s from a whole series called “Girls Survive” about girls who lived through various horrors. I tried to find her another one since she loves this one so much. All are equally dark: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, Tulsa Race Massacres, 9-11, the holocaust, and so on. I settled on one about the dust bowl because it sounded like the least complicated, but she said was boring and made me return to reliving the Black Death.

We finally left at 4:30. We went to the waterfront to explore some night markets. There were lots of bars lining the waterfront, but all had a distinct fishy smell so we didn’t stop.

We walked through the food markets which were equally fragrant with both fish and durian.

We continued through about 3 different markets until we got to Api-api market. We decided on this one since it’s only on Friday and Saturday nights, so it felt special.

We did the thing where we stop and buy whatever looks good, and then don’t feel any pressure to finish it. We had chicken satay, sticky rice wrapped in banana leaf, cups of watermelon and papaya, tofu pudding with burnt sugar on it, something called roti john marvelous (great drag name), Korean spicy chicken, dumplings, mango sticky rice, and a purple yam donut.

The best bite all night was the yam donut. It was very dense and tasted like biting into a sweet potato. Yet it was a donut.

Millie got her Friday ice cream.

And then we rolled ourselves home to bed. Another boring, but necessary, day.