The Journey

Travel with kids is different but not nearly as difficult as we had feared.

Thursday morning, departure day, came like Christmas morning. We all woke up with such uncontrollable excitement. We got picked up at 7:45 and the kids marveled at their first experience in a stretch limo. On the ride to the airport, we had the conversation about saying “are we there yet”, and I told them that whoever said it last would get a prize. It didn’t totally work, but believe it or not they asked less frequently during 26 hours than on a 6 hour drive to Columbus!

Korean Airlines turned out to be great. After killing 2 hours with a tour of O’Hare and going through security twice, a flight attendant pulled us away to a special early boarding area. Apparently it takes longer to board when traveling with small children. We got to go through the first class door by ourselves with no line, and then were happily surprised to find ourselves in the back row of the first coach section. It was convenient to lay back and not feel guilty. Plus, this was one of their new 747’s where every seat had its own video screen. That was great for this first 17 hour flight to fill some time. Charlie made friends with a Filipino grandma who was enamored with him, and kept patting his head. I felt like they fed us constantly, compounded by the fact that I ended up eating half of the kids’ meals.

We successfully made the plane transfer in Seoul, without a ton of time to spare. The airport is huge and clean and reminded me of Hong Kong with all of the shops and moving walkways. There was a little play area right next to the gate which came just at the right time. Then came seven more hours of flying and eating, and we landed in Bali just after midnight. I was struck by the contrast between the Seoul airport and the much more rustic airport in Denpasar. There is carved stonework everywhere, and the tropical humidity ages things in a particular way.

The line to get our visas seemed to take forever. Luckily there was a group of Korean youth from a church group who kept playing with our kids to occupy their time. After getting our suitcases, we were greeted by Ketut holding a sign saying “TINA JIM”. I guess he is our ride! By the time we got to Ubud and made long dark walk down to the house, it was nearly 2am. We weren’t sure what to expect exactly, as we had booked this house on line. A Balinese house is mostly outdoor space, and we had the feeling that this was a little bit more “rustic” than we expected. The two bedrooms are the only indoor rooms, and they do both have air conditioning. We were kind of expecting them to be sealed up, as we were freaked out by all of the mosquito madness we had heard about. A French lady on the second plane was a bit of downer – telling us how much Ubud had changed, and worrying about Dengue fever, and definitely don’t go to a party where there is marijuana or you can go to jail… Anyway, we finally laid down to sleep, trying to get some rest before checking everything out in the soon-to-come daylight.

The kids were so excited, despite being was overly exhausted, that they couldn’t get to sleep. I traded places with Eliot so he and Tina could get to sleep and I shushed Charlie and Sophie down to sleep. Peace came to our house about 2:30 in the morning. The first rooster crowed at 5.