Home Again, Home Again...

Our last days in Bali were good ones. After leaving central Java, we landed at a guesthouse late in the evening in a tourist enclave called Legion, near the Denpasar airport. The recent and tragic events in Japan forced us to cancel our final week of travel in Tokyo. Hence, we settled for a Japanese meal on our first night back in Bali. Once seated on the floor at a long and low wooden table we went a little wild. As we looked at the menu we smiled at each other, ordered some beer and decided to splurge. The fresh oysters were delicious and the beer tasted mighty fine! Considering all that we ate, one might think we had previously been stranded on a desert island or had been castaways at sea for some time without access to food or water. Admittedly, Jogjakarta was not the gourmet capital of the world. A couple of nights toward the end of our stay, I decided that given the choice of eating cold oily fried food and overly sweetened dishes that lacked character, going a little hungry was just fine by me. I know, hard to imagine, but true.

On the last day in Legion, check out time was 12noon. Once again, we packed and stored our luggage. The first leg of our flight out was a seven hour red-eye to Seoul, scheduled to depart at 1:30AM. With time to kill, we easily infiltrated a nearby beachfront hotel with two swimming pools that we had sussed out the previous day. We made ourselves comfortable and spent a long afternoon swimming and sunbathing.

Next, we received our final spa treatment. Two cute, young Balinese girls who could have used a little more training and some deodorant gave us our treatments. It was a cool place to hang out for 3 hours. We were lightly rubbed, scrubbed and had our faces lathered with about ten different kinds of cream. Then we shared a scented flower bath, rinsed off and changed clothes. All fresh and clean, we headed off for another Japanese meal which was even better than the previous night's splurge. We saw the coolest Jazz band in Indonesia whose members flawlessly played difficult compositions by John Coltrane, Miles Davis and George Benson. They were smoking hot! At about 11PM we retrieved our bags and headed off to the airport.

Now it's decompression time. It was a long haul back to this side of the world--twenty plus hours on two different Korean Air flights. When we finally landed, we were met at O'Hare by our lovely niece Courtney. She graciously offered to give us airport transport to Amtrak's Union station in downtown Chicago. We stopped by Greektown for a tasty lunch, made a quick stop at Whole Foods, were dropped at the station and soon after boarded the southbound train.

About 3 hours later and a long nap on the train, our cab pulled into our drive. As I looked at the house, I felt happy. I thought...that's my house...that's my yard...those are my flowers. The blooming blue bells waited for my return, the sun was shining and the air was warm. Spring is a wonderful time to come home.

I believe Dorothy's character from the "Wizard of Oz" said it best,
"There is no place like home."