Day Nineteen - 09/12/25
Second morning waking up at Le Forest and I’m starting to get used to the place now. We found Rosie sitting on Madison’s toiletry bag that hangs under the stairs, with Maddie’s toothbrush wedged between her legs and the brushes pressed on her butt cheeks. Her note said, “This is a weird butt brush.” The kids absolutely lost it.
Kia woke up a bit stiff today, she reckons she “yoga’d too hard” yesterday and tweaked her neck. She’s been doing the full body turn instead of a neck turn all day. Hopefully she sleeps it off tonight, otherwise I’ll ship her off for a massage.
I was up early because one of the other dads was heading out for a run and asked if I wanted to come. It was actually nice to go for a run with someone for a change. We knocked out a little 4.5 km loop, but as I was walking out of our accommodation I saw a shattered window pane on one of the nearby units. It definitely wasn’t like that yesterday. On the run I mentioned it to Deric and he said one of the kids had skipped a rock across the pool and it pinged straight into the window. Someone’s definitely copping a bill for that one.
After the run I met Kia and the kids back at the room and they were ready for breakfast. Same buffet as yesterday. They’d run out of yoghurt, so Kia went to ask the kitchen guy for more. He was outside having a cigarette and basically barked “soon!” at her, which startled her a bit, but he did bring out fresh yoghurt right away. Then she went to grab coffee and that was empty too and she refused to ask again, but within a minute someone refilled it anyway. I got a few good coffees in and absolutely demolished the crepes again. They’re too good.
Back at the room I squeezed in a small amount of work before our day trip. There were so many of us that we had to split into two groups. Kia jumped in the van with group two and the kids and I jumped on the scooter and burned across town. We had to weave through the busy CBD and then hit the highway, which was pretty windy and gusty. A few big gusts made things interesting but we made it safely.
The bee farm was really cool. We’d been told to pre-order lunch, but we thought that was just going to be snacks and that lunch would be at the beach. Turns out the pre-order was lunch. Our food came out first somehow and it was delicious, well-priced too. They had honey kombucha, which was a hit, so we ended up getting seconds.
Then we did honey tasting with cinnamon honey, chilli honey, pepper honey, kumquat honey, garlic honey, heaps of different flavours. After that they did a presentation about bees, what they do, how the hives work, and why they’re so important. I asked about crystallisation and the guy explained that honey crystallises when it comes from new tree leaves instead of flowers, because new growth leaves have pollen too. Made total sense.
We walked through their garden afterwards where there were about 15 different types of mint, heaps of herbs, fruit trees, and strange plants. They had chocolate mint, which was unreal, and some “lolly plant” that tasted exactly like the fluoride they use at the dentist.
After that Kia jumped back on the bus and the kids and I rode the scooter back up the highway to Ong Lang Beach where we’ve basically lived for the past week. We had a swim with everyone and the kids ended up chatting with a bunch of local kids who came over. Really nice moment.
Kia managed to get on one of the early buses home. The kids and I got back on the scooter and headed back through a bit of chaos as there was a traffic jam in the narrow side street leading to our accommodation. One of the nearby streets is closed so all the cars are funnelling through this tiny lane. Kia was stuck in the van behind a bunch of cars, but we snuck through on the scooter and beat her home.
Dropped our stuff then jumped straight back on the scooter and headed out for dinner. Found a nice little spot on the main street that did chicken and noodles. Maddie insisted she didn’t want it, then ate half the plate because it was so good.
Back at the accommodation, everyone had a good wind down, with the kids having their first tablet time in a few days. The hub has been great for keeping them entertained and finding other kids to play with. We haven’t done much schoolwork lately as it’s been a pretty busy stretch. But we might try to ease back into that tomorrow since it looks like a more relaxed day.