Time For A Travel "Plan" Rethink…

We’ve crossed five Indonesian islands to get to Kupang, and had to abandon our mission to Papua.

Clearly, it’s time for a travel “plan” rethink.

One of the odder elements of being a one-child, one-parent family is that we tend to negotiate quite a bit.

There’s only two of us in the party, after all, and if one of us isn’t keen on doing something, there’s really not much point in doing it.

“Look,” I say. “If we’re not going to do Papua, one thing we were going to miss out on while we’re in Indonesia was Java – Borobudur, and Gunung Bromo.”

“Yeah,” Z says. “I suppose we should go to Java. What’s Borobudur again?”

“It’s the big Hindu temple, ninth century, supposed to be one of the Wonders of the World,” I say. “Remember at Ilham’s house? You saw a picture of his family there and thought it was Angkor Wat.”

“Oh, that,” he says, rather lukewarmly. “Yes, I suppose we should.”

“So, I guess, we head back to Bali, then go to Java before you go to Australia to see your dad, and see the stuff we would have missed out on otherwise. Then catch a bit of time in Ubud?”

We spent several happy months in our little house in Ubud earlier this year, and a week there in November last year.

So Bali, along with London and Brisbane, is one of three places that feel like home to Z.

He knows his way around. Has a circle of friends and acquaintances. A list of things he likes to do and places he likes to go…

“OK,” he says. “We ARE going to go to Waterbom, right?”

Yes, of course we are going to Waterbom, the waterpark without which no child’s experience of Bali is complete, where the average expat kid will attend more birthday parties than any sane parent can reasonably contemplate attending.

“Yes,” I say. “Waterbom is top of our list. Trust me.”

“Also…” I begin.

I’m at the stage now with Asia where I’m starting to realise we’ll be leaving here in December, and there are many things we want to do, and not enough time to do them properly.

“Now, you know you wanted a skyline?”

“Yeah,” he says.

“How about we look at heading to China, and starting our trip there with a month in city? Get an apartment? Get some language classes?”

I realise, as I say this, quite how much freedom we have in our lives at the moment.

I’m location independent, which means I can earn our living by working wirelessly – where there is internet, in theory at least, there be money.

We’re unschooling, which means he learns as we go, or can slot into local schools.

It’s a good way to live. Even if, the way we do it, it does occasionally involve vile miasmas of utter hell, such as pushing our poor old motorbike up broken roads, sitting in a squalid internet café grappling to receive an essential work email, eating packet noodles with egg and greens for the third night running…

Still when trips don’t, ermm, go to plan, as this leg certainly hasn’t, we do have plenty of other opportunities to do stuff right.

Yep, I realise. Life is pretty damn good, in general.

“Cool!” Z says.

“What, learning a language is cool?!”

Now, Z operates on a “need-to-know, need-to-use” approach to language acquisition.

This resulted initially in an utterly esoteric Indonesian vocabulary, consisting of such pressing phrases as:

When forced to converse and write in Bahasa Indonesia in his school in Bali, he did pretty well.

In general, though, he will sit silently, with only the occasional snide interjection – “Did you just ask him where his swami was from? I don’t think gay marriage is common in Indonesia!” – to indicate his comprehension.

He quite enjoys puzzling out Romance languages, which is fortunate as our nebulous plan for next year involves basing ourselves in southern Spain to explore Europe and North Africa, with sir in school there for some of the year.

Still, in general, he’d rather be speaking English.

“No,” he says. “Not the language. But China, definitely.”

“OK,” I say. “What city? Shanghai or Beijing?”

“Will they have finished building the world’s tallest building by the time we get there?”

“Tallest building?” I say.

“Yeah! There’s a building in Shanghai that’s going to be the tallest building in the world!”

“I don’t know,” I say.

God knows why he expects me to know this stuff. He knows, by now, that without the internet I am missing a big chunk of my brain.

“It would be great if it was!” he says.

“OK,” I say. “It’s sounding like Shanghai. You meet me in Singapore after Oz, we pop up to Penang, meet H in Laos if he ever picks up his phone, then head for China.”

Which sounds like a plan, of sorts.

After endless trips around Kupang’s one-way system, and more visits to the Pelni office than I would have imagined possible, I establish that we will ship our bike to Bali as freight.

As flights to Bali are cheaper, not to mention quicker and more pleasant, than the three-day boat ride, we will follow it on a plane.

We’ll catch up with friends, I’ll do some work and get a new driver’s license, reclaim our bike, then we’ll embark for East Java for a magical motorbike mystery tour of an island where, I understand, the traffic may be hideous but the roads are pretty good.

Sorted, I figure…