Two Dinners and Four Goodbyes

“You need a ticket to come in,” says the briby man at Denpasar airport.

“I don’t have a ticket,” I say. “My son is flying. He has a ticket.”

I wave the unaccompanied minor form.

“You need a ticket,” he says. “Or a pass.”

I switch to Indonesian, which always seems to work wonders on petty officialdom, particularly when it appears to be angling for bakhsheesh.

Not because I’m any good at it, particularly. But because it makes me look like an expat, not a tourist.

“My son is flying on his own,” I say. “I’m not flying. I don’t have a ticket. He can’t go into the airport on his own. He’s ten years old.”

“OK,” he says, in English. Touché, dude. “I let you through. But maybe you give me something later, after check-in?”

I don’t think so, says my expression, adding a compensatory ‘nice try though’. And through we go…

Z is off to Brisbane, solo, for an impromptu week with Dad, an event which he has been super-excited about ever since he booked the tickets last weekend.

On, as Z put it, churlishly, “A red-eye. And Virgin Blue. They do have unlimited entertainment, which is good for kids, and in fact they look after kids quite well, but the screen quality isn’t up with Qantas, and Emirates is by far the best.”

Z has flown as an unaccompanied minor before.

He enjoys the sophistication of flying solo, the screen time unfettered by parental authority, and the chance to either splurge, horde, or forget about and then misplace his flying money.

“Now, Z,” I say, parentally. “It’s a night flight. Are you responsible enough to make sure you actually sleep, rather than staying up all night watching Family Guy and gaming?”

“I guess it’s going to be not much sleep for me, Mum,” he says chirpily. My expession is not encouraging. “What?! You want me to be honest, right?”

Well, yeah. I also wanted him to go to sleep.

“Do you know what to do in emergencies?” I begin. “What do you always need to know in a plane?”

“Brace position. My nearest exit,” he says…

Now, the combination of an excited child, a school day that ends at 2.30 and a flight ten hours after that from an airport only an hour and a bit from base by bike requires a degree of activity to fill in the gaps.

Our plan? We were going to go to the Discovery Mall.

Z was in dire need of the new underpants I forgot to buy last time we were there.

He was also keen for the go on the arcade that he didn’t get last time we were there because by the time we’d finished forgetting to buy the new underpants it was getting towards scary o’clock on the bypass.

So, after Z had packed his own bag, from his own list, we would head into Denpasar. Buy underpants. Look at toys. Play two-person shooters. Get through the airport, prontissimo, and to the surprisingly good Japanese restaurant in Departures.

It was a good plan. Until it started raining.

I thought British rain was bad. Then we came to Bali.

It rains. And rains. And rains some more. Alternating authentic Balinese tropical torrent with a persistent, piddling British grey-sky drizzle.

Now, Z’s waterproof (in fact, his school coat from London) went AWOL somewhere in Australia, and I haven’t got around to replacing it, leaving us with one waterproof between two.

I force him into my waterproof, chuck a cotton hoodie over my singlet on the basis that sodden insulation is better than no insulation, and we set off.

About 10k and two stops to adjust the mirrors in, I realise the thing that has been niggling me about the new bike. The reason that I cannot adjust the mirrors to get a decent view of the road is that it is sized for a Balinese lady.

The sodding bike’s too small. And the rain shows no intention of stopping. The road is flooded, several inches deep in places.

I can’t see the road surface.

Never a good thing on roads so, erm, excitingly textured as these.

Each time we drive through a puddle the wash rises up and envelopes the well of the bike, not to mention Z’s pack which is wedged there.

My toes and fingers are puckering from the wet.

On the bypass, the sky pumps up the volume and the rain begins to fall more in slabs than sheets. I pull off the road at the well-named Warung Brilliant.

It’s, basically, an Indonesian truck stop café for bikes. Everything is fried in the giant wok, apart from the kol, the side essence of cucumber, green beans and chilli sauce.

They don’t see a lot of tourists at the Warung Brilliant, so they love our rubbish Indonesian.

I grin merrily as we (well, I) are taught a phrase for “deep-fried snake beans” which oh-so-blatantly means something utterly obscene.

And the food is delicious.

Also, we feel adventurous. We’ve been stationary in Ubud for a couple of months, moving a little around this island, but we’re heading out east in a week and a bit, and this random stop is bringing back some sort of tribal memory.

“Are you looking forward to having adventures again?” I ask Z, as he mauls his fried tofu, I do horrible things to deep-fried chicken skins and we decided we’ll go a quarter fried duck to finish.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m totally adventurous. You just need to get it together and buy the bike.”

As we pop the green snake beans out of their coiling shells, our trip to the airport has suddenly turned into an entertaining mission.

Coming up for the Bali Mall & Galeria, the street becomes mysteriously dry. It never ceases to amaze me in these latitudes how very, very localized storms can be.

We veer unnervingly off the bypass, where I locate and then negotiate a terrifying right-angled maze of bikes, AKA the motorbike parking lot.

“Why are you taking your sandals off?” I ask, as we disembark our flooded chariot.

“They’re full of grit,” Z says.

I can’t really argue with that, so he enters the mall barefoot.

As we pass the Chanel counters in Matahari, plastic bag in hand, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. It is horrifying.

“Look, Mum!” Z says. “Look in the mirror! We look like a pair of HOBOS. Hey! I reckon I could make some serious money singing HOBO songs right now.”

“Don’t sing,” I hiss. “Whatever you do, don’t sing.”

“I reckon I could make money begging, looking like this,” he says. “What do you think?”

“Shhhh,” I say.

“Gosh,” he says. “I’m glad your coat covered me down below my crotch. Because otherwise PEOPLE WOULD THINK I P*SSED MYSELF.”

I do not have his sartorial advantage.

I am that irritating stage in the acquisition of any foreign language where I am better at Indonesian than yer average shop assistant or waiter is at English but not so much so that either side gains any benefit from the language switch. It’s a linguistic zero sum game.

Nul points all round.

“I want some shorts,” I say, in rubbish Indonesian.

“We have shorts,” they say, in English.

“No, I want some clothes that go inside the shorts for a boy,” I say, in rubbish Indonesian. “Inside shorts!”

In English and Indonesian, we are stuck. I mime.

I catch myself in the mirrors, again.

Not good.

At a shop called Kool, with a K, we find some undergarments of the appropriate size, of a colour and style that meets sir’s approval. With a wardrobe limited to the contents of a small backpack, it’s important that he likes the individual items.

Then we pass a shop selling massage chairs. Z is in like a shot.

“But why do I have to get off the chair?” asks my spawn.

“Is nice massage!” says the salesman, who has either confused Z with a decision maker, likes kids or figures I am frazzled enough to spend hundreds of dollars on a massage chair just to shut him up. “You try!”

I am uncomfortably numb.

I watch the head massage machines gyrate obscenely around Z’s skull like so many 50s starlet breasts or Speedo-clad genitalia, and all I can think is:

“We need to get to the airport, NOW!”

I’m not going to detail how long it took us to locate the bike. They all look the same in the dark.

I can, however, pinpoint the moment this farce ceased to be fun.

Because if there are five words you don’t want to hear when you get to an airport check-in desk to fly an unaccompanied minor to another continent those are:

“Does he have a visa?”

Z does not. His father hasn’t thought about the visa, cos he has dual nationality. I haven’t thought about the visa, cos it wasn’t me that booked the tickets.

And you don’t leave Bali headed for Australia on any passport other than an Australian one without a visa.

I try lying in English. It cuts no mustard.

“Can you print it out?” asks the dude.

I look at my son, so totally buzzed about seeing his dad, currently buffooning on the weighing scales to see if he weighs 30kg yet, and know there is no way we are turning round.

“No,” I say, unleashing my rubbish Indonesian. “He does not have a visa. But he does not need a visa because he is going to see his father. And his father is an Australian citizen. Australian citizen, ya?”

“So your son has an Australian passport, ya?” says the dude.

Well, no. No, he doesn’t, actually. Because we haven’t got around to doing the paperwork.

Otherwise we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.

Z has, in fact, absolutely no legal right to enter his dad’s country whatsoever. They should not let him on the plane.

In the absence of any more constructive strategy, I go the full expat.

“What you want me to do?” I ask, in rubbish but rapid, Indonesian. “You want me to call his father, ya – his Australian citizen father, ya – and get him on the handphone, right here, right now, to tell me he wants to see his son, his own son, and he can’t? You want me to call his cellphone now, ya?”

I fumble for my phone.

The dudes confer. In Balinese.

Z weighs in at 29.4 kilos. His father has spent north of $700 on his ticket.

As he clowns merrily, utterly unaware that this is anything other than a technical hitch, I begin to envision his utter rage and anguish if he is not allowed to board.

“No problem, mother,” says the guy at the checkin desk. “Everything is OK.”

We’re through! Out of the goodness of their hearts, without a single bribe, these guys have decided that Z and his dad will see each other in the morning.

I fire off a quick text to Z’s dad, advising him that he might want to get to the airport early since our son is effectively an illegal alien.

Z’s escort, a youngish guy named A, arrives. “You can’t go to the gate,” he says. “I need money for the departure tax. He has already eaten?”

“A little,” I say, thinking of the sashimi dinner that awaits the other side of the barrier whence I am not allowed to pass.

“He eats noodles, right?”

“Yeah,” I say, forlornly. “We were going to go to Fukutaro.”

I peel off some rupiah and give them to Z to put in his button down pocket. “Bye, darling,” I say.

“He needs money for his visa when he comes back to Bali,” A says.

This I have forgotten. I am almost out of cash. “I need to go to the ATM,” I say.

As I wander past the briby man at the airport entrance, even before I see the two Korean girls in front of it trying to get their card out, I know that the ATM will be broken.

“Well, mum,” says Z. “I guess this is goodbye.”

I give him a big hug.

Whereupon A, who is, like almost all Balinese, both soft-hearted and fond of children, decides I can tag along after all.

At immigration we are joined by a Balinese mum and her little girl who is headed to Adelaide, solo, for, I understand, surgery.

They go through.

“Well, mum,” says Z, bravely. “I guess this really is goodbye now.”

We have a hug and a big kiss. I wave him goodbye as he trots damply through into departures, pack on back, sandals and helmet in hand.

“Go on,” says the middle-aged guy at immigration. “You go, quick!”

I race through immigration and catch them up. A opts for a nap rather than joining us for dinner.

At Fukutaro, we sit on low cushions, enjoy decent sashimi plus the best gyoza since we were last in Bangkok, and feel quite the sophisticates.

A arrives when Z’s flight is on final call. I walk with them to the gate.

“Now, this really is goodbye,” he says. We hug.

He walks through without a backward glance.

I buy a New Yorker and a map and sit in the yellow fug of the smoking pit until his flight clears the board at half past midnight.

“What are you doing?” asks the chap, as I approach immigration from the wrong side, airside.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “My son had flight. I no have flight. I return to my home now.”

“What?” he asks.

I try again.

“This,” he says, laughing – did I mention how much I love the Balinese? “This is not allowed. This is really not allowed.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “No, really, I’m sorry.”

And, as I bike the hour or two back to Ubud, in the wee hours of April 1, I am confident Z will be absolutely fine.

I wake up to the beep-bip of a text alert. “This is an April Fool, right?”

I try to draft something but drift back to sleep.

The b*stard phone starts ringing. I pick it up.

“So this is an April Fool?” says S.

“Naaahhhh,” I say. “Tekscht?”

“Yeah,” he says. “The text is an April Fool, right?”

Because if there’s one surefire way to improve relations with your child’s father when co-parenting, it’s actively winding them up.

“Uuuurrrgggh,” I say. “It’s ssssshhhhhiiiiixxxx A M. And no internet.”

“Right,” he says. “No internet.”

“Sssshhhhiiiixxxx A M,” I say. (Which I still consider an answer in itself.)

“I’ve been talking to immigration here,” he says. “And there is no way he could have got on the plane without a visa. He has a visa, right?”

“No,” I say, hauling myself from the depths of heinous slumber. “No, he does not have a visa. That’s why I asked you to get to the airport early in case there was an issue.”

“I’ve been talking to immigration here,” he says, again. “And they say it is physically impossible for him to get on a plane without a visa. Can’t be done.”

“Uuurrrgggghh,” I say.

After inadvertently taking the scenic route back from the airport – all the roads look different in the dark – I have had a princely four hours’ sleep.

I think he may have hung up on me.

Later, Z safely installed in suburban Brisbane, I am relaying the airport saga to some friends from school.

“Did you have to bribe them?” they ask.

“Nope,” I say proudly. “Not a single bribe.”