An inconvenient beginning

The evening before our early-morning departure for Asia, I collected my first souvenir: the parking stub for the medical clinic where I got my finger stitched up after slicing it open on a jagged piece of glass frozen to the bottom of the chest freezer, which I had been frantically trying to clean out before we left. I refuse to look at it as an inauspicious beginning, but it was certainly inconvenient: two hours in the clinic’s waiting room when I could least afford the time, surrounded by sick people while Mark was on his own to finish the equivalent of two days of cleaning in about three hours. I left Canada with my right hand spectacularly ill-suited to rummaging around in my backpack trying to find things by feel. Now that I’m finally here, I just look really odd in the swimming pool, with my right hand sticking up out of the water like a dorsal fin with digits as I swim along trying to keep the finger dry.

But all of that aside, the main thing is that we’re finally here, and everything else went beautifully. All three of our flights departed on time, the connection times in Chicago and Tokyo were more than adequate, and our checked bags actually arrived. Someone cut the lock on Mark’s pack—but nothing was missing, so I guess they didn’t find what they were looking for. The kids were spectacular little travellers, amusing themselves easily on the flights, trying all the unusual foods on board and refraining from getting on each other’s nerves too much. They were both delighted with the absence of seatbelts in the taxi that delivered us to our hotel in Legian, where we arrived around midnight after an otherwise uneventful half-hour drive. Ciaran was amazed by the profusion of motorcycles buzzing all around us on the road, and wondered if I knew by what proportion they outnumbered the cars. Chloe was interested to see that the driver was sitting on the wrong side of the car and driving on the wrong side of the road, and has already decided that Bali is far more beautiful than Canada.

We’re spending a leisurely few days here at The Three Brothers Bungalows in Legian, enjoying the pool, reacquainting ourselves with the food (I was excited to find my favourite kecap manis on every table) and recovering from the jet lag. Ciaran’s favourite meal so far has been mei goring, or chicken fried noodles. The jet lag has been interesting—I guess that’s what happens when you fly to the other side of the world in 27 easy hours. We all keep waking up at 2 a.m., wide awake and ready for breakfast. Yesterday both kids fell asleep at the dinner table (as you may be able to see in the photos we took, if I can get them to upload). They fell into bed the moment we got back to our hotel, slept for about 12 hours, and woke up in fine form. Today’s mission is to keep them up until at least 8 p.m. so we can all enjoy an uninterrupted night’s sleep for the first time in half a week. We have two more nights here in Legian before we’re off to Ubud.