Lucky Us!

We're finally back in Palembang. Actually, we got back on Friday night but since then, I've just been getting things organized in the house and settling back into our routine.

Our trip back was definitely more eventful than usual. My mother traveled back with us and her shoes gave us the first laugh of the day.

We can often find very reasonably priced shoes here in Palembang and she had a plan to come over here, and buy herself a new pair of sneakers. So, she puts on her old, really old, pair for the journey, thinking that she'll just dump it here in Palembang. Well, it started falling apart at the first bathroom break of the bus journey down to Kuala Lumpur. I have no idea why a woman would carry sticky tape in her handbag but my mother happened to be doing just that. Lucky her!



Ipoh has a small airport but there aren't many flights out of it these days. People who need to get to the airports in Kuala Lumpur usually catch the taxi or one of the many airport express buses. We chose the bus. It takes 3.5hrs and is extremely comfortable. The downside is that these buses are notorious for breaking down along the highway. In fact, the bus that Richard was on broke down 30 mins into the journey and he barely made it to K.L. on time for his flight. We chose a bus that left us more time just in case. As we pulled into the airport, I thought to myself "Phew! At least we got a good bus!". About 10 meters short of reaching its parking bay at our K.L. airport, the bus broke down. The engine simply went dead and wouldn't start again. Lucky us!

And then when we arrived in Palembang, my mother got pulled aside. I guess it wasn't her day. I handed all three passports to the immigration officer, he processed Aaron's and mine and then kept hers aside because she didn't have a return ticket with her. All he said was "Stand aside". She had entered many times previously with just the one way ticket because we never know how long she's going to stay. Anyway, this didn't get resolved until Richard, waiting outside, was called into a room together with the head immigration guy there. Richard must be getting good at negotiating the Indonesian way because my mother now has her 30 day visa ;)

Everything is good now. Nothing out of the ordinary has happened in our very routine household. And, its back to blogging as usual for me.