WhatsApp, Doc?

It’s 1.50am. I wake with a jolt and a pang of anxiety. Again. Why do I fret so much? Trust that it will flow. It is so easy to trust the flow- when you are IN the flow and things are already cruising. I am checking our email again, for the promised PCR results and our free from quarantine letter. They were to arrive before 8pm last night. They didn’t.

I really am not surprised.

The worries. A big case of the worries. Our flight is 11.20am and I am quite sure we won’t make it, even if the documents come through at 8am. So, I ask myself ‘what would make me a little less anxious right now?” to which I reply “if I know we won’t miss our flight”.

So, I jump on live chat with Garuda Airlines and change our ticket to 3 hours later. Easy. They inform me that after this change, we have just one more change left or we lose our ticket. Sigh.

What else am I worried about? Not that our results will be positive, because I know we are healthy.  I also know that positive test results come even in healthy people. And negative results come in unhealthy people. But, this, we cannot control. I reach for all the wisdom and knowing that I have gathered over the years, like a squirrel with her acorns. But unlike the squirrel, who knows exactly where she put her acorns, and never forgets one precious nut, I, fumble through days in a tizzy before remembering to sink back into that knowing (thanks to “Untamed” by Glennon Doyle!)

These amazing humans, for whom I am eternally grateful, are the following:

Byron Katie – encourages us to just love what IS. If you want things to be another way, you are just hurting yourself, so just love things the way they are right now. All it takes is to change your perspective. Her book is called “Loving What Is” and I highly recommend it on Audible (audio-book) as well as printed.  

Wayne Dyer- His messages are super helpful, and plentiful. He is someone who truly believes you create your own destiny and his words from the same titled book “You’ll see it when you Believe it” bloom into my flustered mind and provide calm for a while. Enough calm to at least stop fretting and engage my truant focus on a page-turning, distracting and entertaining book.

I’ll name-drop Dr Joe Dispenza and Esther (Abraham) Hicks here too, for sharing their wisdom and reinforcing the same theme. You can create your reality. It’s a powerful concept.

The book worked until 7.05am, when I could no longer wait, so I sent a WhatsApp to the Indonesian Government’s Quarantine Doctor who so kindly gave me his contact- for the purposes of sending him scanned copies of our passports. I am quite sure he wasn’t giving me his contact in order to be messaged at this hour by an imbalanced and frazzled female, who is impatient to know if the test results are out and the Freedom Letter ready. But alas, the kind soul wrote me right back and said the results are out and 30 minutes later, he excitedly informed me everything was ready. God bless Dr Rian and his patient, kind ways. He even apologized that his English wasn’t so good and then wished us a safe flight to Padang and a happy vacation. Humanity. I pledge to look for humanity in every interaction, even the scary ones, the frustrating ones, the beautiful ones and the easy ones.

Oh but the RELIEF. I can’t describe the relief. My shoulders dropped a couple inches away from my ears. Not ALL the way back down but close. We were getting out of Jakarta today. Yay!!

Side-note and why I am so extra grateful to have had the good doctor’s Whatsapp. When we went to reception to check-out of the hotel, a man was standing there asking about his own test results and clearance letter. He recognized being in the banquet hall together, in the same batch of snot-donors as us. It was now 11am and he still had not been notified that his results were out. He too, had a flight booked, but he wasn’t going to make it that day.

The process through Jakarta airport was smooth, although I was still a tiny bit concerned that we had only had one PCR test and that someone might stop us after all. Like a bad recurring nightmare, the creepy calls of the concierge to beckon us to our 2^nd test on Floor Five were too fresh in my mind. The final 1 inch of shoulder-to-ear crunch was due to this.

I need not have got my knickers in a twist. Our sweet and kind Tiara was there to help us again, to guide us here, there and everywhere, completing the necessary forms and checking in for our flight. She led us to where we needed to be, while at the same time I madly filled out the E-HAC online forms to satisfy the Indonesian Health Authorities requirements – kind of like an arriving customs form but specific to your own health symptoms. “Do you have any signs of cold or flu”, etc. One thing I will say, is download the darn registrations as soon as you fill them out. I had to do it all over again in Padang because I didn’t download them along with their corresponding QR code. There was no Wi-Fi in Padang airport, so a porter elatedly did it for me in exchange for a tip.

On our way to the gate, we stopped to check out the Priority Pass lounge. Finally, we were getting a chance to take advantage of the perks of the Chase Platinum credit card we signed up for in anticipation of our year of world travels. Sure, the card cost $450 a year, but it came with $300 worth of travel credit, free travel insurance, car rental insurance, lounge access (a sweet, luxury perk at a fraction of the cost) and a phenomenal initial points bonus that we use to pay for hotel rooms. It more than paid for itself already.

The buffet style, Indonesian lunch would have cost a pretty penny if we paid for it at one of the vendors by the gate. The lounges provide quality, complimentary food and drinks. In here, it was quiet, calm, clean, had great service and they even served an anti-inflammatory Turmeric Tonic.

So, there we have it. We left Jakarta, made it to Padang. The Kandui team were at the airport ready to load our boards and luggage, and drop us to the hotel.

Tomorrow, we just jump on the Mentawai Fast Ferry, to our final destination.  

My shoulders dropped the final inch, right about the same time I took a sip of my blue margarita.

A classic rainy season sunset, with all the hues imaginable.

The pointed roof style so poignantly Indonesion.  

The chanting in the different neighboring mosques. Contrasting tunes and tones yet together create the same message.

Honoring something greater than ourselves.