“Please evacuate the room”

This morning we slept in, packed the kids up and headed for lunch with Brandon at his hotel, the Meritus Madarin. He kept boasting how delicious their chicken rice (we were corrected: not chicken AND rice, but just chicken rice) is there, so we took him up on lunch at their restaurant called the Chatterbox. It sits atop a very high hotel--a restaurant in the round with glass windows showing all of Singapore and the harbour and the port (the second or third largest port in the world) and a preserve that sit in the middle of Singapore where there are no buildings. It's a rainforest and Brandon said that on a clear day you can see how the rain clouds hover over the rainforest and drop most of Singapore's precipitation there. The restaurant used to rotate--it made a full rotation every hour. He said they stopped it because little kids would walk around the restaurant while it was rotating and loose their parents and freak out. But he said that they are revamping the whole hotel --a $300million US Dollar makeover. They started with the retail space on the first floor. They closed their entrance fronting Orchard Road and moved it to the side, so that they could put in retail and restaurants on the first and second floors facing Orchard Road (the shopping road). Retail space is very important here. It's a cash cow for them. And then they are revamping the restaurants and the Chatterbox will be moved lower in the hotel and they are throwing around the concept of making the upper place a rotating bar. Which would be totally amazing, really. The views are unparalleled and rotating would bring in lots of people. And a super swank bar would be even cooler. Brandon is head of development for the hotel chain, so I gave him my imput as a tourist. Anyway, the food here was to die for. He was right, I think the chicken rice at Chatterbox was even better than Tian Tian. Brandon says the secret is that they have exclusive contracts with a few chicken farms and have them slaughter the chickens on a specific day. I guess there is just a small window in their growing cycle where if they are slaughtered they are the most tender. So, the get these "perfect" chickens, steam them, and then put them in ice to stop the cooking process. The result is divine. Really. And David had some strange herbal drink they have here made of stripped herbed jello that they put in water and add sweet syrup. I couldn't stomach it. it's like drinking a wierd jello through a straw. Not my cup of tea. I had fresh squeezed lime juice and syrup instead. Yummy. And cleansing, too!

So we had a lovely lunch chatting with Brandon about his family and Singapore. He shared with us that he has two sisters and a brother, but then added "he was a twin". We asked if the twin died, but he said "No, my mom gave the other boy to her sister to raise, because she only had one child and couldn't have anymore." Dave and I think this is odd. I can't imagine giving up my own child so my sister (if I had one) could raise it as her own. The two mothers never told the boys they were twins, in fact, Brandon informed us they never even met each other until they were adults. The men met one day and just said "Yeah, we thought something like this. We've always felt a part of us was missing". Which I hear a lot of twins who are separated at birth say. There's a book called The Life of the Unborn Child, and it deals with how what happens before your birth uncontiously affects you for the rest of your life. Like, when a mother doesn't want her child, the child's spirit receives that rejection and somehow throughout that child's life there is this unconscious consequence of the mother's rejection upon the child. And I think this life of the unborn child is seen interestingly in twins. When you share a womb with someone I think it bonds you to them in a remarkable way, and like in Brandon's brothers' case, when there is separation between the babies after birth, they wonder through life feeling like a part of them is missing. And at a fundamental level they are right. I think all of this is a Spirit thing, not so much biological. So, anyway, I'm ranting. Brandon still refers to his other brother as his cousin, but always adds that his brother has a twin. I find this funny.

So we get back to the hotel at 2 and put the baby down for a nap and hurry to finish packing. They extended our check out to 3pm, so we were rushing. At 3:05 we get a phone call with the receptionist asking us to "please evacuate the room". We laughed. I don't ever think we've been asked to "evacuate" a room without there being some threat to our lives, like a fire or a tornado. Anyway, we got a good laugh in the midst of packing stress, and said goodbye to what I had come to call my home away from home (I really loved this apartment!), and grabbed a cab to the airport. I don't know if it was post prandial narcalepsy, or what, but as soon as we hit the seats in the car we all 4 crashed. Had a nice snoozer to the airport.

We were a little worried about how many bags we had and the weight limits. In Indonesia, you are only allowed one checked bag at 44 lbs allowance (which is like 20kilos) per ticketed person. Total, we could only have 70 lbs. And we were at 81 lbs, because we were carrying an extra bag full of gifts for Jenni and Scott. But Dave joke with the attendant and blamed our excess weight on Don's stuff he had thrown in our bags upon leaving (because his bags were going to be too heavy), and the attendant was really kind and totally cool and let us slip by with extra weight. Whew!

So we zip through security and passport control and Dave hands me $34 Singaporian dollars to spend (it's what we had left to spend) in the airport shops. So, thoughtful wife that I am, I go and buy him something. On the way back to the gate I'm adding up in my mind how clean this airport is. Really clean. No, really, really clean. I could eat off the floors here. I'm not exaggerating. There were like 10 airport employees vacuuming, sweeping and mopping the floors, two bathroom attendants cleaning after every person washed their hands and left water on the sink counter or extra toilet paper on the floor. It was unbelievably clean. I was very impressed. And I'm wondering if it's the police state thing that makes people so clean here, or if it's just pride in their work and country (the whole success thing, again). I don't know for sure, but I like it.

So, jump on a Garuda Indonesia flight in a repainted airplane I think is from the 50s, and one bad meal and 2 1/2 hours later, we are in airport hell. Really.

Bali, Indonesia. Don't let all those postcard and ads of expensive hotels fool you. This is definably third world at its best (which is really worst). And the airport is your welcome to lots of hassles. Everyone basically runs for the visa line, where we paid $100 US dollars for 8 day visas for 4 people. Then you run to the passport control line, which is TERRIBLY long. They move very slowly here stamping and approving passports. Last time we came through passport control Dave’s passport had 5 months left to expiration, so they took us to a room and made us wait for an official to come in and point out this fact to us. Told us we couldn’t enter the country without 6 months left on the passport. So after paying the guy like $150 US dollars, he stamped the passport and let us through. Bribery—ahh, the way of life in third world countries. Bali could write the definitive book on bribery. They are really good at it here. This time, the wait to get through passport control was painfully long, with our whining kids in tow, very tired. I think they move slow because they are just looking for something they can “fine” you for (read: need money to get you out of this). Once we finally got through (all our money in tact this time) we were met by Don and his new friend, a police official, who had snuck him in to the airport through a back door, after paying like $15 US dollars to a “security” (I use this word very loosly here) lady. He wizzed us through customs and the like and after paying him a little sum for helping us, we piled into Don’s other friend named Brandon’s, an Indonesian, car and headed for the hotel.

Brandon's story is interesting. He is living witness to the sacrifices people make here when they choose to become a Christian. He became a Christian two years ago, and his family--a wealthy Hindu family--disinherited him and kicked him out of the family, told him they never wanted to see him again. But cheerfully he accepts his new life without his family, following Jesus. He's a wonderful person full of kindness and love and we had a great time catching up with him since we hadn't seem him in almost 2 years.

Driving down the Kuta streets I begin to remember this place—dirty, noisy, unruly, and thoroughly third world. Yip, you can put lipstick on a pig but it’s still a pig. That’s Bali. Or, at least Kuta. And compared with Singapore, it FEELS third world. I brace myself for the realization that from here we hit India, an even more Third World country, and memories of my 19 year old self trapesing through Hyderabad for three months, with this love/hate relationship with what is India, come flooding back to me.

We stay at a hotel in Kuta that is made for families. It's great. It has a kid's pool, a kid's club, a playground, and it's on the beach with great restaurants. I booked a room on the beach, with a balinese day bed on the porch. It's really fun and a real respite from the hussle and bustle craziness that is Kuta. So we'll see what tomorrow brings. It's late and I'm pooped.