(while eating lunch)
Dad: (with mock concern) RJ, you’re wearing the birthday hat, but it’s not your birthday yet!
RJ: (silently keeps eating)
Dad: You can’t wear that today. You’ve got half a day to go!
RJ looks Dad in the eye, reaches his hands up to the hat and tips it to the left, precariously balancing it on one side of his head… Then grins.
RJ: (grinning) If it’s half a day to my birthday, then I can half wear it. So there!
(RJ and Dad have just returned from an after-school teeball game…)
RJ: (excited) I know what I’m wearing to the school disco tonight! It has to be something tropical. I have my blue Hawaiian shirt and my flower shorts. They’ll be perfect! I’ll probably wear my beret too… What are you going to wear?
Dad: Me? Just normal clothes — nothing special.
RJ: (thoughtfully) Hmmm… You probably have something tropical you could wear.
Dad: Yeah, but it’s a kids’ disco. I don’t need to dress up.
RJ: But don’t you have a blue Hawaiian shirt? You should definitely wear that; it looks good.
Dad: Umm… Okay, I guess.
(Dad grabs his blue Hawaiian shirt and puts it on).
RJ: And probably some shorts, too. It’s too hot out there for pants.
Dad: True…
(While Dad changes into a pair of shorts, RJ disappears into another room.)
RJ: (runs back in, breathless) Hey Dad! I found your hat! You should definitely wear this one!
Dad: (puts hat on) Okay! Okay! Can we go now?
RJ: Yeah! Let’s go!
Somehow RJ and Dad ended up dressing very similarly...
(Later that night, RJ was infuriated when he heard Dad say, “RJ said we had to dress the same”. He insists that it wasn’t true and that he just made some suggestions so that Dad would look good.)
With a huge overseas vacation looming, the first half of December was filled with the last days of the school year, some early Christmas celebrations… and a lot of silly hats.
December means the Advent calendar gets brought out. We like to pretend the kids appreciate the tradition and fun puzzles and clues that we leave in there for them...
Each year, we invite a few friends up to the farm at Gingin to celebrate the winter solstice. After spending the day pruning the fruit trees and tending to the orchard, we fire up the pizza oven and serve a nearly endless stream of delicious homemade pizzas. We follow up by lighting a huge bonfire to brighten things up through the long night. It’s heaps of fun (despite things often going awry because of rainy weather).
Citrus is in season at the moment, and the trees are totally loaded with fruit. LR gets to work picking some mandarins. Delicious!
In May, Mom enjoyed a bit of a sleep in while RJ planned to conquer the world, with style. Poppa and Grammy took us to a great place to hide from Dad, and Joey soccer started up again, this time with RJ on board. Up at Gingin, we built version 1 of a flying fox (zip-line), which suffered from some serious design flaws, but was pretty fun regardless.
LR watches as Mom reads the Mother's Day card that she made.
This cool guy decided to come with us to the big freeze shop (where everything in the shop is in a big freezer), and chill out for a while.
We’re back from our awesome holiday and the good news is: no monkey bites or life-threatening illnesses!
While we’re getting those pictures sorted out, here’s everything else we got up to during April: our neighbours visited with their new baby, we played real video games for the first time, we took some friends ice skating, we dyed some eggs for Easter and we also noticed that a movie character has been taking fashion tips from… Dad?
Our neighbour's mummy bobtail lizard had babies and they were super cute!
Bali is absolutely packed to the brim with three things: motorbikes, temples and souvenir shops, often mixed in a kind of a petro-spiritual-capitalist melange. The markets and hawkers serve as a tense, bustling, confrontational entree, sitting in stark contrast to the quiet zen-like peace of the temples…
One of the temples we explored was Tanah Lot. Like most of the temples, it was calm and quiet… except for outside the cave containing the Holy Snake (a revered, venomous guardian of the Temple at Tanah Lot). That place was nuts.
We also visited Ubud, a market district renowned for its artists and crafts… and markets and temples.
Finally, we had a great time on the (heavily chlorinated) water slides and rides at the Waterbom water park.
PA and RL stand at one of the entrances to Tanah Lot!
Our trip was filled with new experiences with a lot of things that we’d never get the chance to do back in Perth. We stopped by a lodge where they take retired elephants and spoil them by feeding them melons all day (in exchange for carrying tourists on short walks through jungle and rice paddies). They had a couple of young orangutans who we were allowed to play with, as well as an albino python that RJ thought would make a terrific pet. Finally, we had a fantastic meal at a great, but confusing restaurant motorcycle shop skate shop place called, “Deus Ex Machina”.
Hungry elephants LOVE to eat melons. If you're not careful, they'll even stop along the track to stomp on a jackfruit and eat that too!
We have a holiday coming up, in which we’ll be travelling overseas to spend some time on a tropical island. As part of our preparation, and to generate some excitement in the kids, Mom was reading through some of the possible destinations, an elephant park, a sea turtle rescue habitat, the Enchanted Monkey Forest…
Whoah! Everyone’s eyes lit up. A monkey forest? And not just any boring monkey forest… an ENCHANTED Monkey Forest! That sounded awesome!
Visions of tree houses and hundreds of friendly monkeys chattering away filled our heads. They’d do tricks for us, we’d clap and laugh; they’d dance for treats. A hat salesman would offer a dazzling array of coloured caps for just fifty cents each beneath a tree full of becapped monkeys. The kids might find a very friendly one and carry it to us, begging to bring it home as a pet. Perhaps a man with a yellow hat would wave, ‘Hello’. It just sounded magical…
A few webby clicks later later, reality had set in. The truth, as it turns out, is not as wonderful, full of glitter and simian camaraderie as our imaginations would have us believe.
The monkey forest is infested with Balinese long tailed macaques. Generally, they keep to themselves and the temple area. Although from time to time, much like hordes of school kids descending on the mall after school, bands of them will get together and raid nearby villages.
Now despite the fact that there are signs up, saying “Do not feed the monkeys”, there is usually someone nearby selling bananas (I presume he’s equipped with an electric monkey prod, monkey mace or a full suit of medieval armour). Feeding the monkeys, however, is not recommended. Nor is carrying food, shiny objects, or anything of any sort potentially appealing to a monkey, because the large macaques have no compunction against climbing people and beating them over the head, snarling ferociously, and brutally tearing whatever objects they might have on them away. Finally, monkeys can be infected by rabies and Hepatitis C, so any bites, scratches or broken skin are a serious infection risk. Monkey business is surprisingly serious stuff.
A useful guide to surviving the monkey forest provides these confidence inspiring tips:
This information was hammered home when we talked to a friend of ours who was actually bitten by a monkey while visiting. According to her, it was about as much fun as it sounds, i.e. about as much fun as a barrel full of rabid macaques.
So, with enthusiasm blunted and hopes singed, it looks like we’ll be giving the monkey forest a miss this time around. My dreams of driving across the countryside in a big rig with a new found monkey pal will have to be set aside. Fortunately, there are plenty of other exciting destinations on the island.
And not to fear, we wont be bored — this year there’s a new bit of tropical excitement infesting the Balinesian isle. Toxic caterpillars! Apparently plagues of horrible wriggly little caterpillars have been sweeping across the island, leaving the locals with itchy, red rashes when they come into contact with uncovered skin.
Tropical paradise, here we come!
