Notes from the Delta: January 2013

Bali: Just Weird Enough

Gamlan Musicians

At the Culture Center

Life in the Slow Lane: The Subcontinent

Fall 2012 into Winter 2013

Yes I know…you thought we must have fallen off the Earth. Well, we haven’t, but we have been busy here in the Delta.

School is mostly what we do between vacations.

During the first six weeks of the school year, Gail produced a children’s play (the US Ambassador loved it), Millie set school records in swimming, and I looked after the new teachers and kids at AISD. Also, Millie went to Chennai (India) for the South Asia International School Association (SAISA) swim meet and Gail went to a theater workshop in Bangalore (also in India).

The Romance of Travel (Part One)

Usually in Asia, you tell and show the taxi driver where you are going, you get there. Assuming Krabi, Thailand, was like everywhere else, I didn’t call ahead.

In Krabi, there were no taxis. When I went back into the airport, my phone could not connect to the hotel. So we paid 150 Thai baht ($5.00) to ride on a bus for about half an hour until we arrived at a seaside restaurant with a ticket booth in the parking lot. That’s where you buy the ($3) “boat” ticket.

It was mid-afternoon, sunny and warm. Exactly what you would expect on a tropical beach.

The “boat” was a long tail boat anchored about 200 yards away. While those high tides of Hurricane Sandy were hitting NY, this place was having way low tide. The beach, a mile across, exposed a ribbon of sand at high tide, but that was a small portion compared to the expanse of mud and broken coral between us and the boat.

We considered our options, bought our tickets, changed clothes and began the trek across the mud and rock. Every step created a slurping sound, and Millie carried her suitcase on her head, Bangladeshi-style. By the time she got to the boat, she was in waist-deep water. Eventually, there were a dozen people and their luggage, mostly tourists but a local family, too. We were dropped off in knee-deep water, about 20 yards from a nice beach with several hotels. Ours was the last one on the beach, a great view from the pool and bar, a decent breakfast and terrific gardens and paths.

So we had a great time, getting sunburns around the pool, and walking to the little row of shops and back several times a day, and admiring the sunsets. The three of us did a day of snorkeling and boating around Phi Phi Island. Millie and I kayaked for a couple hours around the cup cake shaped islands that appear to jump up out of the water. And Gail noticed other guys my age checking in with their Asian daughters, too.

Then we came back to Dhaka…Gail directed her second play, Fools, a Neil Simon comedy (the Ambassador loved this one so much he spoke to each cast member), Millie led the Lady Tigers to a 2^nd place finish in the SAISA girls basketball tournament, held at AISD, and Gail and I cheered. And we prepared for the next vacation: with Abby in Bali.

The Romance of Travel (Part Two)

Bali is the first major island east of Java in the Indonesian Archipelago, about 8 degrees south of the equator and a million miles from anything remotely like Missouri. Several hundred years ago Indians migrated here, so Bali is Hindu in religion and architecture, Polynesian in climate and vegetation, and, with its proximity to Australia, hard-partying in temperament.

The Indian migration gave the island a shot of art, dance, music, architecture that has made the place unique in the Muslim world around it. And it is curious: carved stone statues protecting bridges, and little offerings of flowers, fruit and a stick of incense, placed in prayer on the ground in front of even the tiniest shrine.

We managed to have a good time. We started in an ageing but colorful, beachfront resort at Sanor, saw the temple at Ulu Watu perched on a cliff above the sea, hit a couple malls and got sunburned at the pool. The local beer, Bintang, was cold, taxis cheap and the restaurants reliable: what more could you ask for?

Sunshine, maybe. We ended, in the rain, in a new, swank resort on the strip in Kuta. Kuta resembles some of Daytona Beach: Aussie kids come here for tattoos.

In between, we enjoyed Ubud, the “cultural capital”, (sort of like Branson MO, without the confederate flag bikinis for sale on the sidewalks), with loads of artisans, shops, temples, lily ponds, rice terraces and a Starbucks.

And we spent a few lazy days in Amed, where the girls got in eight SCUBA dives, two around and through shipwrecks. We never saw a really nice beach, but we got tanned, read books and had more than a few Bintangs. And we watched the New Year's Eve fireworks among the coconuts trees and the sea.

The most memorable event of the whole may have been the rat-sized gecko that inhabited our villa’s rafters in Ubud, pooping daily into a couple square feet of the floor near Gail’s suitcase.

And of course we brought back tons of stuff. Gail added five masks to the foyer “mask room” and I added a blowgun to the armament corner; Millie and Abby got shoes and shirts and a dress or two. And Abby was able to spend a few days in Dhaka before heading back to the USA.

Our friend, Sabrina, arrived from India the day before Abby left. Sabrina, a Woodstock dorm parent, had dressed Abby and five of her friends plus Gail) in their silk saris for Commencement. (No easy task—she started at 7:00 AM and finished just in time for the photo session at 9:00.) So we got to show her sunny Dhaka and a little of AISD before she headed off to Nepal for the non-tropical part of her trip.

Abby and her college friends are renting a house in Kirksville MO. Millie played a four-mallet xylophone piece for the elementary school assembly, and Gail is the executive producer of the IB students’ productions. She and I will chaperone twenty kids on an International Schools Theater Association trip to Mumbai in early February. In late February Gail takes 20 or so kids on a “Discovery Week” trip up the Mekong in Cambodia. Millie goes to Chang Mai Thailand to see villages and wash elephants. And I am still living the dream here in Dhaka…360 little kids treat me like I’m a rock star.

Next family vacation, in early April, looks like Sri Lanka or Nepal.