We Wanted Experiences...

Friday Night, Dec 12th

A massive storm rolled in, bringing a brutal downpour. The thunder and lightning were unlike anything I’d ever experienced. Before midnight, Simeon and I were actually admiring the heavy rain—we were both fascinated by it. It was the rainy season in full force. We watched the elements for a while and then headed to bed, though the constant crashing made it hard to fall asleep.

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Suddenly, I was jolted awake by someone tugging on my leg and Johnny’s voice. I was half-asleep and just stared at him blankly as he spoke. At first, I couldn’t process what he was saying. My brain just wouldn’t compute. It took about three repetitions for the information to finally sink in, and then I looked around to see the truth for myself.

Water, Water Everywhere

Water was everywhere. The entire house was flooded! Still groggy, I tried to mobilize, and we scrambled to move everything off the floor to higher ground. There isn’t much storage space in the house, so we just piled things wherever we could—mostly on chairs and tables.

We stared out the glass doors in despair. The rain wouldn’t let up. The entire yard was submerged; you couldn’t even tell where the pool ended and the muddy water began. Even though the house is built on a slight elevation—about two steps above yard level—the water was right at the doorstep and seeping inside. The villa has three doors, so water was coming in from three different directions. To make matters worse, we could smell the septic tank. Sewage was backing up into all three bathrooms and spilling out into the rooms.

There’s a small stream near our complex. During the heavy rains, runoff from the mountains turned it into a torrent that overflowed its banks. The force of the water was so strong it even undermined the asphalt road, leaving a massive hole the next day.

Fortunately, we have high beds, so the sleeping children were never in any danger. They didn’t even realize anything was happening and slept soundly through it all.

A river was rushing down the access road toward the ocean. Leo was out at a party at the time, so Johnny just texted him to stay put and not try to come home yet if possible.

Johnny was in constant contact with the host, who offered us a vacant apartment in the adjacent multi-story building. He sent the passcode, but when Johnny went to try it, it didn’t work. So we just waited helplessly to see what would happen next.

The rain finally began to subside. Since we’re on a hill, there’s a natural slope, and the water started to drain away almost immediately. We opened the doors to let it flow out. The storage closet with the brooms, mops, and buckets—which had been open since the start of our stay—was suddenly locked right when we needed it most. Only the cleaning lady, who lives in another town, had the key. Johnny found a small twig broom and tried to sweep the foul-smelling liquid out with that. I couldn’t really help since we had no other cleaning supplies available. I went back to bed, but my sleep was fitful. I kept checking on the kids to make sure they didn’t fall out of bed into the mess, and I wanted to be there when they woke up so they wouldn’t step right onto the filthy, damp floor.

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*) The rains were truly intense. Other tourist areas experienced flooding that tragically claimed the lives of four tourists at the time.

The cleaning crew arrived before lunch and had everything back in order within a few hours. By evening, you could hardly tell anything had happened.

However, the flood knocked the pool out of commission. We had to wait three long days for it to be fixed. I even had to overcome my first-day trauma and take the kids to the beach while they cleaned the pool and repaired the pump. Being able to swim in the yard is the highlight of our stay—without it, we’d be completely miserable here with the kids.

How One Load of Laundry Caused a Marital Crisis

Some of our things were caught in the sewage water, so we needed to wash them. We had the option of giving them to the cleaning lady, taking them to a laundry service, or handling it ourselves at a self-service laundromat.

I found a universal laundry gel that’s supposedly the best on the local market and ordered it through the Grab app. It was only available in Denpasar, so the first courier refused to deliver it because of the rain. The second one, Mohammed, took the order but spent the entire trip sending me sob stories about how hard it was raining, how everything was flooded, how terrible the road was, and how long it was going to take him… and apparently, the only thing that would help him complete the delivery was an extra 100,000 Indonesian rupiah in cash.

Our host recommended Swastee Eco Laundry, where we could do our own washing. Johnny and I each packed up some clothes, called a taxi, and took Simeon with us. We left the other kids with cartoons, hoping they wouldn’t get too “creative” or have any accidents while we were gone.

There was only one washer and one dryer available, so the whole process took a while. Johnny threw his darks in, I added mine, and we started a one-hour cycle—which is considered “long” there, as they usually wash everything in 30 minutes. Given the circumstances, I didn’t think half an hour was nearly enough.

While we waited, we wandered along the broken or non-existent sidewalks, looking for a place to sit. Since we’re not exactly “hipsters,” we were searching for a decent warung where we could grab some breakfast and hide from the scorching sun.

Johnny ordered a coffee with milk and no sugar from an elderly woman. Since she didn’t speak much English, a young local gentleman stepped in to help and taught Johnny an absolutely crucial word: susu (milk). Thrilled that they’d understood each other, Johnny received his morning pick-me-up. But after the first sip, he realized there had been a glitch in the matrix. He wasn’t expecting such a sugar bomb. The woman hadn’t added actual sugar, but instead of regular milk, she’d used condensed milk. He tried to power through, but it was just too sweet. He asked for another coffee, this time without susu. She handed it over, Johnny took a sip, and—unbelievably—it was sweet again. It turned out the coffee was a 2-in-1 mix, so the sugar was already built into the powder. Johnny gave up. He didn’t need his life to be that sweet.

We got back to the laundromat just as the first load finished. As I was transferring the clothes to the dryer, I noticed a rag among the laundry. It didn’t belong there. Johnny had snuck it in. My blood pressure started rising like a pressure cooker about to blow. He had actually thrown a disgusting rag, soaked in sewage and fecal bacteria from the flood, in with my underwear. That thing belonged in an incinerator, not next to my panties. When I asked him why on earth he’d do something so incredibly moronic, he just shrugged and said it had been lying on the bathroom floor all wet and dirty. I wanted to cry. It was so frustrating. This man solves complex algorithms at work, but in a situation like this, he thinks like a… well, I won’t say it. He plummeted in my eyes. How can a sane person do that? The only thing that saved him was the fact that we were in public. I was ready to file for divorce, take the kids back to Slovakia, and let him enjoy the rest of the vacation alone with his fecal rag!