While Padma was waiting at Samarinda airport for her flight to Yogyakarta (she's been gone for more than a week and I have almost forgotten what she looks like, but I think she's the third one seated from the right) I made a quick dash into the Bay while the sun was still shining.
From there it is two hours by bus to Mendut, which is four kilometres from Borobudur
At the GOLDEN LAKE Chinese Restaurant, I ordered my usual chicken in garlic and chicken in oyster sauce at $15 each. The young girl wrote it all down and then began to fumble. "What's the matter?" I asked her. "I can't find my calculator," she replied. Being retired, I was in no hurry; in fact, it gave me enough time to wonder what would happen to her. Would she keep working in this take-away until some young bloke got her pregnant and she would then raise a child who, like her, couldn't add 15 + 15 without the help of a calculator? Chinese food for thought!
Inside Woolies, I noticed that everyone was looking at me, and then I realised that I was the only one without a tattoo! Anyway, a loaf of HELGA wholemeal bread, a bottle of milk, and some mandarines and bananas later, and I'm back at "Riverbend". The red-and-white yacht is still anchored in the river, and I'm again in the only room in the house which is small enough to be able to be heated by an electric heater.
