DIPLO ENTERTAINING: Our very first guests in Jakarta

We’ve finally sent off our very first guests to the airport. Now it’s time to relax before another week of travel. Visitors are lovely to have but it can be exhausting too. Case in point: I am now sick after almost 2 weeks of non-stop going out from airplane rides, road trips to mall-hopping. And all that walking! (Will post pics of our trip to Yogyakarta, Ancol and Bandung in the next couple of weeks, still finishing posts on Phuket) 

Aside from the physical effort, for people like me who always aim to please (and be a proper diplowife), it can also be emotionally/mentally draining. Planning menus, itineraries, reservations, packing for trips, ensuring everyone brings the correct items and being prepared with whatever they might not have….and the list goes on and on…(Tiring even just listening to me isn’t it?)

Some things I learned from having our first guests.

1. No need to worry about food. I was so worried about not having enough food in the ref, only to find that we barely ate-in anyway. So many good places to eat in Jakarta! It was a good thing though that I had planned dishes to prepare already, that we’ve tried, tested and that I’ve trained the maid to do as well for those times that we suddenly decided to eat at home.
2. We need to help the diplo-dog adjust to visitors. He was so used to having many different people in the house in Manila, but since we haven’t had any stay in guests for over a year he was so jumpy. Barking at every sound the guests made. We would wake up really early in the morning to his barking at the noises outside the room. We realize when our guests left, he was bothered because the guest room/study has always been HIS room. (He loves to take his daytime naps under the pull-out.) And he was basically kicked out of it when the guests arrived. I guess you can’t blame him for being annoyed. I wonder what we can do about it?
3. 2 weeks is too long. I think 1.5 weeks would have been perfect, because at 2 weeks both we and our guests were getting tired and nerves were getting frayed.
4. For trips out-of-town, this is my must-bring list:
   • Snacks + 3-4 bowls so you’re not passing a snack bag in the car
   • Water in insulated bottles to keep it cool
   • Lots of tissue + hand sanitizer
   • Sunblock for face and body
   • Jackets/wraps for everybody – car rides can be very cold
   • Pillows
   • A good roadtrip playlist *this I forgot
   • Sunglasses
   • Camera
   • First aid kit + medicines (fever, pain, headache, hyper acidity, allergies, etc.) + sickness bag from airplanes for motion sickness
   • Did I forget anything else?

But all in all it was a success. Our guests are the most well-travelled people I know and have very high standards especially when it comes to food.  The fact that they said “Jakarta is a food heaven,” that we had “a perfect record” (all the places we took them were a hit!) and that they had wonderful time made my heart expand with joy. Worth all the effort!