On Holiday

In October 1984, Harry was asked to go to Indonesia to teach the young pilots. He had intensive medical examinations, and they discovered his white blood cells were dying eleven times faster than they should. He didn’t realize that he had liver disease. We went to Indonesia on January 3rd, 1985. It was quite an experience. We flew to Kowloon, mainland China. It took twelve hours. We met a man on the plane who would be Harry’s boss in Indonesia. He was staying one night in Kowloon, but we had to go to Hong Kong to get a work permit, so we would stay there for five days. He insisted that we go to his hotel. What a mistake! We could not use the bathroom, as it was so filthy. The door didn’t look secure, so Harry pulled a cupboard in front, as we were in a rough part of town. I looked out the window into an alleyway and there were rows and rows of washing hanging out. I couldn’t make my mind up if I was in a Charlie Chan movie. The next morning, we got all our bags and I sat in the entrance of the hotel. Harry took two cases down to an American hotel, the Sheraton, and booked in, then came back and got me. First thing, we had a shower. It was like a night and day difference. Of course, it cost twice as much, but we didn’t care. We had a great breakfast, and then went to some fabulous shops. We went to the best rated Imperial hotels to tea. The waiters wore white gloves. The china was English bone china, and they poured tea through a tea strainer. The second day, we took a ferry across the YangTze River to Hong Kong. It was so exciting. People all over the place with bikes. It was Saturday, so the office for the permit didn’t open until Monday. We went up some rummy old stairs to find a delightful tea room. Upstairs, watching through the window to see the motorized junks on the YangTze River was like being back in time, in another world. It was so busy. It was magical.

We got the ferry back to the main island, and rode a double-decker bus back to the hotel. Inside the hotel were dozens of shops. We tried to get some Chinese food, but all the people were sitting at tables gambling. We had a really fun time. There were lots of Australians staying in the hotel on holiday. On the Monday we went back to Hong Kong to get Harry’s permit. The room was dirty with big holes in the walls and floor. We both had British passports, so we didn’t need a visa, only for Harry to work.

We flew on Tuesday to Jakarta. We walked off the plane the old-fashioned way, down the stairs to the tarmac. The heat hit us like a wall. We went through the checkpoint and were interested to see one man’s luggage emptied out: everything! He looked like a crook. Everything was so new to us. Jakarta was quite a beautiful city. We took a taxi to our hotel, which was lovely with tapestries, plants and bamboo. We had a very nice meal but were both aware of the need to be careful what we ate. Next day we got a train to Bandung. We decided it would be more colorful and interesting to go by train. It was. We supposedly had an air-conditioned compartment, and it was first class. Well, in that first-class compartment there was a man with two small piglets squealing, another with a small goat. Then they served the food, which of course we didn’t eat. One man sitting opposite us had his legs up with his toes curled around the edge of the seat. He threw the bones over his shoulder when he was through eating. He looked quite wild. It took four hours to get to our destination and we went around a huge mountain. You quite expected to see a monkey swinging from tree to tree. The rice paddies were beautiful; always women with coolie hats on, working, and men riding on buffalo. There were small rivers and people living in cardboard boxes.

We arrived in Bangdun. We had a taxi to the hotel, the Pan Agar. It was quite exotic. The doormen had turbans on and baggy silk pants. Inside the big lobby, men were playing strange music on strange instruments. They gave us a suite with a bedroom and living room. House boys came in every day and changed the sheets. It was a Muslim country, so they said prayers five times a day. They would wash and kneel on a mat. At 6:30 a.m., they would call over a loudspeaker for prayer. One night we heard a “click, click” getting nearer the bed, so Harry got out and put a light on in the hallway, and it stopped. It was a huge, navy blue beetle, with eyes on stalks. We also heard a “chek, chek” – a little lizard that lived up on the curtain rail, and ate all the mosquitoes. Apart from that, it was quite nice. I met a lot of other women. All the men went to work all day. We had cars at our disposal but we were not allowed to drive, so we did lots of interesting things. The first walk out with Harry I thought the place looked like it had been blown up, but it was their way of building roads. We were stared at, especially the white women. I stayed six weeks, Harry three months. I had to fly to Kowloon alone and stay one night. I thought I was quite brave, and flew the next day home to Seattle. When we got back, Julia said that she and Chuck were getting married, so they had a nice, quiet wedding in June.

From 1986 until 1988, Harry did lots of traveling, to Germany for over nine weeks, Singapore, Spain ten weeks, and also England. We had holidays in Maui twice, and the big island of Hawaii once.