Day 281: Goodbye to Indonesia and to the Developing World — A Beast of a Travel Day Gets Underway
We had until 12:30 today at our hotel before embarking on a painful travel day.
After breakfast, Teddy went back to shower, pack up his stuff and get ready for…mass.
That’s right, a Catholic mass here at the Sea World Club. The hotel is run by a Swiss German priest in his 80s and his non-profit. He lives on the property and has for decades. All profits go to the community.
Teddy went to check out the service, as our family’s representative Catholic. I don’t want to speak for him, but my understanding is that he does things like this not out of faith or belief in God, but as a way to honor his family’s Catholic traditions. He said it was all in Indonesian, a small gathering, a blind local woman sang a hymn, and that it was memorable and cool. Glad he went.
While he was at the service, I did school with Willa and James by the water. Willa spent most of the time doing logic puzzles and James was made to do some writing. He’s a nervous perfectionist, so I had to promise him 5 minutes back on his screen time punishment (he was up to 17 minutes) if he wrote a page about his favorite superheroes, spelling mistakes and all. The result was tentative but adorable. Excerpt: “Hulk is the strongest. Hulk is the biggest. His skin is green. He is good.” It did not look like that.
I also got this little love letter:
Packing has gotten so easy. We are at our smallest/lightest of the year because we finally know what we need and what we don’t. Spoiler alert: We don’t need much.
Everything has its very precise place. It’s become like straightening a room in your house — you just go on auto-pilot for 30 minutes putting things in the right drawer, etc.
Marino and Yopi came by at 12:30 to pick us up and just a few minutes later we were saying our farewells at the airport. Honestly, this one was sad. We really loved Marino.
We have kept pages and pages of private notes about this trip — and among them are what makes a good or terrible tour guide. Marino hit all the good notes. More of a fixer and a friend than anything. Treated us like casual equals, not like royals or porcelain babies. A far cry from the obsequious bullshit we experienced from guides in places like Egypt, China and Vietnam.
We’ll miss you, ‘Rino!!
Boarding Nam Air’s jet took a while. How about this for an airport waiting area?
So random, and maybe not that interesting: Marino told us that yesterday he’d gone to visit his sister’s restaurant in remote northern Flores Island. A 60-something-yo French guy named Marc had pulled up on a motorbike to eat and chat. They struck up a conversation. Marino told us he introduced sweet driver Yopi — who knows very little English but still somehow laughs at every joke — as “Jean-Pierre from New Caledonia.” For some reason this made me laugh out loud.
He also mentioned that Marc was also flying to Denpasar, Bali today and we might see him on the plane. I took a pic of this guy and sent it to Marino. Yep, it was Marc. I told Marino I’d tell him “Jean-Pierre says bonjour.”
Finally we boarded the threadbare 80s jet. Our last such aircraft of the year, I think/hope.
While we were slowly making our way up the aisle of the plane, James was suddenly eager to sit with me instead of Teddy.
Teddy asked: “James, do you only want to sit with mommy because she has cookies in her bag?”
He nodded vigorously and for some reason this earnest admission struck me as so hilarious that I did a very unfortunate spit-take laugh — all over a row of nuns. Nuns!! The good news is that we boarded from the rear, so I only blasted the backs of their heads/habits. I don’t think any of them actually saw/felt the giant spray. I wanted to die.
Speaking of dying, we did not die on the flight to Bali, though the flight was mildly turbulent. I was counting the actual minutes until we landed. I am so glad those Indonesian airlines are behind us, no offense to Indonesia.
We landed around 5:30 and didn’t take off for Australia until 1 am. Our travel agent had smartly arranged for us to use a nearby hotel for a few hours to shower, rest, eat before going back to the airport.
On our ride there we spotted Marc out the window, off to new adventures! Bon voyage!
This might have been the hardest part of this epic 24-hour journey to Australia: Being in a beautiful hotel room with enormous comfy bed and room service, just dying to crawl under the sheets and fall asleep — hard — at my new bedtime of 8:30 pm. Instead I had to stay awake until we got picked up again at 10:30 pm.
The Bali airport was surprisingly packed — lots of overnight departures for China, Japan and, of course, Australia. Once again our travel agent came through with a fast-pass service that had us skip a line of about 400 people at immigration. I’m not always willing to shell out for those things, but in this case, at this time of night, we were so happy to have it.
By this time it was midnight and that’s when Teddy’s going to pick up the tale from here….will leave you with this hilarious sign from a stall in the women’s restroom.
