Sue in Jakarta

Yesterday will go down as one of the craziest school days I've had here. It is common for parents to ask if they can come in with a birthday cake on their child's birthday. They usually contact me a few days ahead and we find a time that works. We sing happy birthday in three languages and all have a piece of cake. Yesterday was William's birthday. He is from one of the families labeled VVIP which usually indicates they are related to the owner of the school and are afforded special privileges. The mother's personal assistant came to the classroom door partway through the morning with a gigantic cake box in her arms. When I looked surprised, she said that she was here for the birthday party. I told her that the class was busy and that I hadn't been expecting her. By this time, William was aware of the cake and super excited. I told the PA to wait while we cleaned up and we could have the cake then. A few minutes later when I opened the door for her, an entourage followed; there were several siblings and cousins from various other classes and their nannies, a couple of aunts and uncles,William's private Chinese tutor, and best of all, their professional photographer! I asked the PA to light the candles so we could get started and she said, "Oh no, the mommy isn't here yet!" "Where is the mommy?" I asked. "Stuck in traffic," was the answer (of course). We played a couple of games, with the photographer snapping photos the whole time, while I was privately seething at the whole interruption to our day. I was just about to send everyone away when mom and dad arrived with a couple of extra relations. On with the party! We sang, had more photos, and passed out cake. That's when the personal assistant mentioned that the lunch was late. "What lunch?" I asked. A few minutes later boxes of pizza, burgers and fries arrived. By this time, I realized the morning was shot and decided to go with the flow. But, I guess they picked up on some of my frustration because this morning there was an apology in my inbox... not from the mom and day but from their personal assistant!

We left for Bangkok on the first day of my October break and arrived mid afternoon. The traffic was heavy, similar to Jakarta and the taxi driver joked that Jakarta is famous for the worst traffic jam ever at 47 kilometers long and that Bangkok came second. "That's not good enough," he said, "Bangkok must be first!" Actually, Bangkok is much better than Jakarta as they have about the same population but two rapid transit systems and a third being built, whereas Jakarta has nothing.
We arrived at our hotel which was right on the river. There was constant traffic going up and down the river, tugs with freighters, longtail boats with passengers commuting from one area to another and bigger tour boats. The river was high because of all the flooding in the North and there was lots of debris in the water.
We got settled in the hotel then went for a walk on a path along the river. We decided to take a longtail boat ride to see some of the city without all the traffic. It was very hot and along the way a very smiley women floated up in her boat trying to sell us trinkets. We didn't bite on those but couldn't resist the cold beer that she pulled out of a cooler! We later found out that we had paid about twice as much as we should have - no wonder she was so smiley!

The next day we left early by bus for Ayutia, the ancient capital of Thailand. We stopped first at the summer palace of the King. It was a large acreage, beautifully landscaped and with buildings reflecting the King's interest in Asian and European architecture.

After the summer palace we went to several temples, before boarding a large boat for the two hour cruise back to Bangkok with a delicious buffet lunch as part of the package. After the hot morning tour, it was nice to relax in the air conditioning of the boat and watch the sights along the river.

We left Bangkok early the next morning and flew to Phuket, where a driver met us and took us North for 2 1/2 hours to where the longtail boat picked us up for the 1/2 hour ride to our ecostay on Koh Ra. It is an isolated, mountainous island in the Andamen Sea. We were given two very basic cabins on the beach with only a bed and a mosquito net in the front room and a cement floored bathroom with a toilet that had to be flushed by scooping water out of a barrel. We were the only guests, so had the beach to ourselves. It was very quiet but we amused ourselves with beachcombing, sea kayaking, walks through the jungle, bird watching and reading. We had hoped for good snorkeling but apparently we were about a week too early and the water was still murky from the rainy season. I did manage to get stung by a large, pink jellyfish! Because of the poor snorkeling, we decided to leave two days early. Lory helped us book accommodation in Phuket for our last two nights and a snorkeling tour to Phi Phi Island.