A Journal from Myanmar

4 May 2008

6:43 am

Yangon, Myanmar

It's now 16 hours that we should be considered to be missing, at least with those who were expecting us to arive in Singapore yesterday at 3:00pm.

It's almost 24 hours now since we risked our lives trying to get to the airport to get home. When I look back and think about the intensity of the danger that we have put ourselves into -- driving in the streets at the peak of the storm, with trees and electric posts falling down, debris of roofs and wood flying around, the heavy rain and strong winds -- I am amazed at how we survived it unharmed, and I am even more amazed at how determined we were to make it in time for our flight, even if at the back of our minds we knew that it would take a miracle for an airplane to stay in one piece in that weather.

I was indeed expecting some danger in this trip due to the political situation of the country. We were told that there will be no international mobile roaming phone service and the internet would be limited. In short, we would be detached from the rest of the world. However, I was not expecting that we would indeed be unreachable. Telephone lines and internet cables are down. We have no way right now to even inform our loved ones that we are still alive...