The last day started like the past few had: kids climbing into our bed, some fitful moments of trying to grasp a couple more minutes of sleep, and lastly the breakfast routine we’d fallen into. Unlike much of the travel that my wife and I had done before there wasn’t that same sense of melancholy that we’d get. Sitting in there instead was a palpable sense of urgency mixed in with a helping dash of anxiety on making sure everything went off without a hitch. Thinking back to when we first started out on this trip I could see the similarities there. Such is the life of parents on holiday.
We’d prepped the kids to go to club shortly after we’d finished breakfast so we could focus on packing the room up before we’d take them out for an afternoon of fun at a place called AeroXspace. They were more than happy to knowing it was going to be a short stay there and even got there in time to do the Indonesian dress ups which got me a few nice photos before I left them to head back to the room.
My wife was already in the middle of packing up the room when I got back. We hadn’t yet got confirmation on a late checkout so I asked her to give reception a call while I started in on my side of the packing. They offered us the room until 6PM for an extra fee but, given we’d already planned to go out for the afternoon we declined. They still gave us until 12PM though which was far more time than we needed. Well at least I thought it would be until we were ambushed by the full force of all the cousins coming to our room.
Which was honestly pretty great, mostly because the 1 year old demanded that I hold her making me the most popular person in the room with all the other kids. This also gave me a bit of a taste of what my in-laws had been dealing with the entire time we were here. It’s one thing to have to take care of a 1 year old, it’s another thing to make sure that the rest of them (in their very earnest attempts to help) don’t end up doing something they shouldn’t. After that whirlwind came and went we resumed packing up the room.
We got done about an hour before we needed to leave and so I spent that time doomscolling and doing last minute checks. My wife headed out to see if she could snag one of her sisters for the free 15 minute massages we had left over but they were all otherwise occupied. So she came back for a quick decompress before we headed up to reception to drop off our bags.
There was also a 2 for 1 cocktail bucket coupon that’d been burning a hole in our pocket the entire time we’d been here so we figured a boozy lunch was in order. We both weren’t feeling particularly hungry though so the lunch part went out the window and we instead just had the cocktails. My wife took hers next to the pool whilst I, not wanting to get thoroughly chlorinated before a long flight home, took it at the bar. 1PM quickly came around and we scooped up the kids and bundled them into a taxi to go to AeroXspace.
It’s a massive warehouse converted into a giant playground for both kids and adults. We’d initially thought we’d go to the famous Waterbom park but given the boy wasn’t having a bar of the little slides at the resort we figured our money was probably best spent elsewhere. Unfortunately he didn’t meet the height requirements for most of the things there and was instead confined to the toddler area. Any other day this would’ve been a massive issue but he seemed to love it, making friends with the other littles that were there. The staff also came by and gave us a bunch of stuff because we’d paid for a family pas that the boy couldn’t use which was an incredibly nice gesture from them.
Our daughter loves these kinds of places so she was fully into it from the get go. I couldn’t get her on some the taller things though but she still had plenty of fun on the slides, trampolines and obstacle courses that they had dotted around the place. We ended spending around 3 hours there before it was time to make a move back home and that’s when we quickly realized our mistake. The kids were beyond tired already.
The half hour trip back to the resort was filled with uncomfortable shifting, kicking and yelling between both of the kids who were trying to find a good position to rest in. They couldn’t of course, this was a tiny cab, so instead they were just angry. It came to a head when we got back to the resort and went to the departure lounge they had there whereupon our daughter completely melted down saying she was too cold, too tired and refused to say much more beyond wanting a blanket. Thankfully the staff were able to get us one and, with Bluey on my phone, she was able to calm down. The peace lasted just long enough for my wife to duck out and buy a bag she’d had her eye on, which on any other day would’ve been fine, but our already-very-well-spoiled boy’s eye got caught on a gold matchbox car. My wife did the right thing and said no but that just resulted in 20 minutes of screaming. Had it not been for us wanting to curtail this specific behavior we would’ve just spent the $3 for the silence we all needed but no, we had to choose the high road.
It was then we realized the time and made our way up to reception to grab our bags and head to the airport. To our surprise most of the in-laws were already there and so we spent the next 20 minutes saying our goodbyes whilst hurriedly trying to get the resort to organize transport for us. Thankfully that all happened without too much drama although it was clear that a few of the adults were nearing the end of their rope already. Our taxi arrived shortly after everyone else had departed and we quickly loaded up to get on the road.
The trip there took quite a bit longer than we’d expected so it was good that my wife had moved the airport transport forward a bit to accommodate. The kids repeated the same restless arguing that they had just a couple hours earlier, the exhaustion really setting in at this point. This didn’t bode well for the rest of the trip as the flight was a red eye and only 6 hours at that. Knowing that Qantas, in the infinite wisdom, likes to spend the first 1.5 hours of that on trying to feed you meant that we’d have maybe 4 hours of uninterrupted time to get some rest into ourselves. I had little hope that’d happen.
We dragged the kids through the airport, half the time with our daughter on my back. Now some parents among the reading crowd here might be thinking that’s par for the course right? Well it would be but our daughter is in the 95th percentile for weight and height for her age, so carrying her is no small feat. Throw luggage and carry on into the mix and…yeah short bursts was all I could manage. Still we made it through all our check-ins, immigration and duty-free shopping areas with relative speed leaving us just one task before we could sit down: locating the gate.
Our tickets said Gate 8 which was all the way down the other end of the airport. Thankfully the travelators were running in that direction so we started making our way down there. Our daughter said she “Smelled something nice” coming from one of the restaurants and I figured we’d go there but my wife wanted to get something closer to the gate, figuring there’d be a number of options on the way. By the time we hit Gate 6 I said I felt pretty confident knowing how much time it’d take for us to get there, so we should head back. She disagreed so we went all the way there to make sure. Upon getting there and checking the gate numbers on the board though we saw that we’d actually been assigned to Gate 5. To say we were annoyed was an understatement.
The kids had perked up at this point though so it wasn’t all bad. We got back to the restaurant relatively quickly and ordered some actually pretty decent airport food. The walk back to the gate went much quicker and we found ourselves a spot to sit down and wait for the call.
It was then that an Australian couple perked up, telling us that they and their parents had noticed us on the trip over being only a couple rows behind us. We struck up some good conversation with them until their boarding group got called, saying we’d catch them at the other end of their travels (they were fellow Canberrans). The kids boarded without too much drama, thanks in part to the treats I’d let them snag from the duty free store, and we settled ourselves into the row we’d been allocated.
The first couple hours were a relatively tame affair but the issues started when we started trying to get them to sleep. The boy was throwing full body tantrums at the smallest things and our daughter started having night terrors part way through the flight. For those who’ve had kids with this you know there’s almost nothing you can do when they happen. The kid isn’t really awake and interacting with them usually makes it worse. This cycle of things repeated for quite a while until both of them passed out for maybe 45 minutes before they brought the cabin lights back up. I had maybe an hour, 2 at a stretch, that I couldn’t directly account for so I was running on basically no sleep from here on out.
The rocky arrival in Australia did calm down somewhat once we’d gotten our bags and our kids got to ride the luggage around the airport. We transferred across to the domestic terminal with relative ease too, our son making sure every staff member at the airport said hello to his new Pikachu plushie he’d gotten from AeroXspace just hours earlier. We wandered down to our gate and sat down in a booth at a café just in front of it, grabbing some light breakfast and coffees to power us through the final flight.
The boy and I were sat together on the trip back and we both summarily passed out once the plane took off. That made the short flight go by instantly and were on the tarmac before we knew it. We’d arranged with Grandma to pick us up when we got there and the kids, who were in varying stages of exhaustion, lit up the second they saw her. They regaled here with all manner of stories whilst we waited for our luggage and then making the trip back home.
We spent that day in a hodgepodge of activity: the wife and I unpacking what we could, Grandma taking the kids off to McDonalds for one last treat and play, laundry getting put on before finally it was getting late and Grandma had to take off. The kids played outside for a bit and we then got dinner into them before we put them away for bed. The wife and I cooked some pizza before I passed out on the couch watching our show, signaling that it was probably time to get some rest.
The last day was definitely a trial for us all and confirmed for me my suspicions: the kids probably need a few more years (and a helping of local trips) before we attempt something like this again. On the whole it was a positive thing though, but there were more ups and downs than I would’ve liked. A lot of these came from the kids not being able to regulate themselves when they’re tired or even being able to communicate that properly. That’s not even their fault, they’re 6 and 4, so I think that future trips will be (by simple consequence of time) much easier by comparison. Plus, whilst having time to myself at a resort is definitely nice, those 2 taxi rides we took through Bali proper reminded me of what I really like doing in places like these: exploration and photography.
I left the DSLR at home for this trip and I don’t regret that. But that same feeling I had when the wife and I travelled before kids came rushing back as Bali whizzed past us in the taxi. I love the art of capturing moments in time when exploring another country. Even more I love capturing those things that tourists don’t usually go near: the supermarkets, the construction areas, the places where life is lived outside of the manicured versions shown to tourists. Some of my most loved photographs are taken from views others disregard like my vista taken from the balconies of Neuschwanstein, the empty warehouse in Fyshwick that was being renovated or the black and red EVs I spotted in Amsterdam. I saw much of that and more out of the window of taxi in Bali and I wanted to get closer to it.
How and when I can do that I’ll leave as an exercise for future me. For now I can rest happy in a mostly successful holiday and the fact that I have 2 days to myself before I return to work.
The arrow of time always points forward.
