We didn’t have the best day today, so this might be a boring post. We woke up at 6:30, showered, and headed down for breakfast before trying to get a car to the airport at 7:45. It took, yep, 45 minutes to get there.

It’s always a crapshoot to know how early to arrive at an airport. We usually aim for 2 hours, and usually this is plenty. But after the awful Vietnam airport experience, we decided to leave 2.5. Of course everything was quick and we arrived at the gate with about 2 hours to kill. Millie played on a playground and went on little solo missions inside the airport to test her independence.

The flight was quick and easy. When we landed, everything unraveled a bit. Nick has what we think is some sort of infection and woke up feeling bad and in pain. He was mostly fine but operating at about 70%. We all walked slowly and arrived at immigration last, and were greeted with a long line in the “holding area”. This eventually moved and our reward for getting through the holding area was getting to the actual line.

Millie began losing it from the moment we saw the first line ahead of us. It’s always these lines that trigger the hardest moments of the trip for us. Here’s how it goes down…

She starts whining about something unfixable. We calmly tell her all we can do it wait and suggest some things to help keep her busy (listen to music, read, draw, play a game, etc). She starts being worse and worse – yelling “no” to all our suggestions, physically pushing and pulling us to move, telling the people in front of us to go faster etc. We start to get frustrated by her behavior but have no recourse. We can’t take her elsewhere, we can’t do a timeout, we can’t change the situation. We have tried threats of taking away privileges and it doesn’t work. We feel the eyes of the people around us and all three of us slowly start to lose patience. Eventually Nick or I (usually Nick lol) snaps at her, which makes her wail even harder. So we just find ourselves in a line with a crying kid who refuses to be comforted. Today we just let her cry for about 45 minutes straight.

People around us stare or make faces at her to try to make her feel better, which just makes it worse. I tried to explain to her today that they aren’t starting at her to be mean, but that when they hear crying they might be worried or feel bad for her, just like we would if we heard a kid scream crying. Instead of internalizing this she just started yelling “I’m fine, stop staring at me!!!” … while crying. Jesus take the wheel.

We were in line for 2 hours total. Towards the end another little girl (angel sent from above) handed her a candy and her mood flipped immediately in a sort of psychopathic way. But whatever works. She even was so happy that she asked me to take this photo of her, red faced from the tears.

We got out and got a bagel. I think part of the issue is we were all hangry. We all calmed down and took a taxi to our Airbnb. I looked over at the twins to see this.

Nick was feeling worse now so he rested while I took Millie to the rooftop pool. I wore my new string bikini while surrounded by muslim women in full coverage suits.

Millie swam and then spent a while on the little playground that’s on the roof. She attempted but did not succeed in making a friend. It was good for her to get some energy out.

Nick headed out to a pharmacy to get some meds. It was attached to a clinic so they suggested he have a consultation with a doctor. He had a full exam and got prescriptions for antibiotics and painkillers, and then was back within the hour. Appointment and medication was $50 out of pocket. I am once again angered by how convoluted and expensive American healthcare is.

I then ran out to the local grocery store to stock up and get some things for dinner. I couldn’t face researching what’s good and sitting down in a restaurant. I enjoyed my solo excursion and getting to see how a Malaysian grocery store runs. One thing that has been different in every country is how produce is weighed! Today I had to wait in a line before going to the checkout, and everything had to be in its own bag.

Hopefully Nick will feel better tomorrow and we can start exploring Penang.