“Golden Retreivers!!!!” Emily exclaimed as if she woke up to fresh snow on the ground or a surprise birthday party. Without a moment’s thought or hesitation, she was down on the ground petting all three of them.
Being golden retrievers, they all began kissing her and presented their bellies for rubbing. The great thing about goldens are that they loved you before they ever met you.
This first incident happened almost two months ago. The man who has the workshop behind our compound works for the owner at night, keeping an eye on the property. Sort of a friendly neighborhood security guard – who happens to have golden retrievers. We’ve been told he breeds the goldens as well as a couple of huskies as a side business.
Every now and then if he leaves the gate open or happens to be coming through the compound, anywhere between one and three golden retrievers come to our door, or if we’re on the porch – which we often are – they run up and begin playing and kissing.
Martin and Dayu who live next door have one of the last litter of golden puppies. Now eight month-old Mona spends much of her day behind their house in fairly narrow enclosed space. When we’re on the back patio, Mona likes to stick her head above the fence and yip or cry for us to come over and pet her.
Sometimes as Martin gets Mona ready for her daily outing, she gives him the slip and comes bounding over to our house looking for love. Being the professional golden retriever she is, Mona lays down and immediately presents her belly.
The occasional golden retriever love fest is part of our lives now. As is having his and hers closets, an entire house-worth of space, beautiful gardens, our breakfast view of people harvesting the rice fields and an altogether comfy lifestyle.
In eight weeks, we’ve rooted more than we have anywhere. We have greater resources than we’ve had anywhere.
Now that we’re working on our flights, trains, hotels and all the assorted details that get figured out when we move from place to place, the excitement of new places is building – at the same time that a mild trepidation is setting in.
How big is that room? We’re going back to living out of our backpacks? Who’s going to do our laundry? How much is the fee for Internet? So, we need a flight that lands by what time to make our connection?
“Is all our travel going to be difficult from here on?!” Emily said as we were figuring out train and flight times.
The truth is, there’s nothing especially complex about it. In fact, the infrastructure in this part of the world is far superior to Region 2. Trains in Malaysia – easy. Budget carriers make it cheap to fly around Asia and especially Southeast Asia.
It’s just that all the little things that were the backdrop to our life on the road have come back in a mildly terrifying way. We’ve had it too easy for too long.
Today, we took care of all kinds of odds and ends. Each place we go is our “last visit” here and our “last chance” to buy that other thing over there. It turns out we had a lot of “lasts” to do.
Tomorrow, the shock and indulgent mourning will all have to come to an end. My/our good friend Ryan Conlan arrives. We have two days to do some fun things in Bali before taking off for adventure in Malaysia – a place new to all of us.
Conlan’s arrival will surely shake us out of our Bye Bye Bali funk. As we get out into the world and move around again, we’ll undoubtedly re-embrace our love for exploring and travel. It’s why we’re on this trip. It’s the best part. Until Bali clouds your eyes…
Still, there’s nothing like a golden retriever to tug at your heart strings. After belly presentation, it’s what they do best. As we came home from town and saw Beno – Mona’s brother – and two of his sisters running around outside, our hearts hurt a little.
In fact, as soon as we saw them, we dropped our conversation instantly as Emily said – “Look, golden retrievers! Ohhhhh…..” Then Beno ran up to our car to say hi. If they were only smart enough, golden retrievers could rule the world with their command of human love and adoration.
However, being that they aren’t and can’t, we’ll be ready to say goodbye Friday morning. We’ll have our last load of perfectly ironed, glorious smelling laundry packed – much of it consisting of Emily’s practically new wardrobe she purchased here. We’ll say goodbye to our housekeeper, our comforts and head out into Malaysia – where we’ll again be just some annoying, meaningless white tourists.
The time has come.
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