On this day next month Padma is off to Indonesia - again! Although, I must admit, it's been a few years since her last trip to Bali on JETSTAR, and I simply haven't had the heart yet to tell her of JETSTAR's latest economy-class upgrade.
Anyway, after her arrival late at night in Denpasar, she'll be whisked away by the airport shuttle bus to the luxury of the nearby HARRIS Hotel at Tuban. And all this for Rp 573,750 which is just a touch over AUS$50.
Next day she'll be off to the "Land below the Wind" Borneo - or, as the Indonesians call it, Kalimantan - to Samarinda where she was born; then to her older brother in Jakarta; then she's booked into some sort of Buddhist meditation class at Borobudur, the largest Buddhist temple in the world which, with Pagan in Burma and Angkor Wat in Cambodia, ranks as one of the great archeological sites of Southeast Asia.
Sometime before or after or in between, she'll also visit her sister and the old family home in Surabaya, while I am left sitting close to the fireplace in Nelligen, just watching the charges pile up on the VISA-card. She gets her trip; I get my peace and quiet. It's a fair trade-off!
