Back in the USA

This is going to be quick. I just wanted to let you know that we made it back safe and sound to the USA on Thursday! It was amazing to come home after 2 years and to feel immediately like we were home again. Ben stayed in NYC to spend some time with friends and I went straight to my sister’s house to meet my niece. I also got to meet my dogs. What fun that was seeing them again. They were the same as ever, hyper, hairy, and excited to see me. So we are home and Malaysia is already a memory but since many have asked about the conclusion to our drama, I will quickly fill you in on how things wrapped up in the kampung.

We spent our last night in the kampung at our adopted family’s house. They insisted they wanted us to stay there and offered to host a delicious feast for some of our closest friends. However, there was something fishy about Abang Mi’s behavior the whole evening. He was not over the whole head of kampung scandal and was not making anybody’s evening too relaxed. The infamous article with the picture of us and our friends from KL was floating around the party and lots of little side conversations were going on about the whole ordeal. We hung in there though and just hoped that we would arrive at the airport in time for our flight the next day.

Actually, our worries over how we were actually getting to the airport had displaced any concern about Abang Mi and the head of the kampung. Knowing that we had apologized and that there was nothing more we could do, our minds were strictly on home. Unfortunately, Abang Mi would not commit to how exactly we were going to get to the airport. His car was not big enough to take us and our baggage to KLIA and apparently his sister’s big SUV was not exactly what he had in mind either, so he kept searching and searching. It was driving us batty, when we went to bed the night before we left we still did not know if we had a ride and the next morning when I asked again I was told, we will probably leave around 2PM but it was still not confirmed. By this point, Ben was at the end of his rope and even Saadiah was getting frustrated with Mi.

We went back to our house, packed up the last of our things, and decided to wait to see if a car would indeed show up at 2. At 2:45 a truck and SUV showed up with about 10 people, including Mi, Saadiah, and their 2 boys. Our bags were packed into the truck and we all piled into the cars and bid our friends in the kampung goodbye, we were on the road by 3:15. So we were going to make it to the airport after all we thought with big relieved grins! Hooray!

Uh, uh, uhh! Not so fast, first we have to stop at Abang Mi’s neice’s hostel for some pictures with her and her friends, then we need to stop at the gas station, we can’t follow the highway because there are tolls so we must take the back road, and wait, we are almost there but we need to make one more stop at Abang Mi’s sister’s house because she wants to go back to the kampung this weekend, what she is not home from work yet, we’ll just have to wait and when she arrives we can go in and have drinks… By 7:30, 4+ hours into a 2 hour drive, Ben is ready to kill somebody and I am starting to wonder if we will make it to the airport after all but somehow, with all hope lost, we do manage to arrive. Once again, we breathe a sigh of relief and smiles return to our faces as we relax with friends at the airport and wait for our time to check in.

So we left Kuala Mai in good standing but I would say just in time. There is no doubt that it was time to go home and I think I can safely say that Ben and I could not be more happy that we made it.