Read Tramp Royale for Free Online Page A

with the cash; couldn't they please stamp a visa on each of them under the circumstances?
    "So sorry. No."
    I explained with tears in my voice that there was no longer time to have some visas granted in New York and then send the passports to San Francisco. But their spokesman was adamant; rules were rules and had to be enforced.
    As we were to learn later the new government in Indonesia is quite unable to enforce rules about murder and pillage, much less rules about public health and sanitation. But when it came to red tape, they had learned fast; they were as Western as a school board. ("Come to Beautiful Bali, Last Home of Romance.")
    All during the long campaign for reservations and the subsequent battle of the visas Ticky had been overhauling our wardrobes and we had both been stuck at odd intervals with hypodermic needles-cholera, typhus, typhoid and paratyphoid, tetanus, smallpox, yellow fever. This is one requirement for foreign travel with which I do not quarrel, since it is obviously of benefit not only to the countries visited but to the traveler. For technical reasons of biochemistry the yellow fever shot is very hard to obtain unless you live close to one of the half dozen U.S. Public Health offices which dispenses it. We did not, not by nine hundred miles, but we were able to obtain it as a courtesy from a nearby army post. The U.S. Public Health Service will supply on request a booklet telling what inoculations are required for travel in any part of the world; appended is a list of places dispensing cholera shots, free. They are not available commercially. Any traveler who needs one had better find out how he can get it most easily and plan for it ahead of time; the problem is not one of red tape nor of bureaucratic stupidity but one of inconvenient fact having to do with the present stage of medical art. There is no one to blame.
    Ticky did not accept the requirements of inoculation easily. She stated that the navy medical corps had stuck enough needles in her to last her the rest of her life. I agreed and pointed out the alternatives: either she could let me go roam among the señoritas without mama to watch over me, or she could leave the country without inoculations-no one would stop her-and then find herself placed in quarantine for two or three weeks at the first port we reached . . . a process which would be repeated a dozen times around the globe, including San Francisco on return.
    She stated positively and explosively that she would not go at all. But in due course she was baring her arms and her thigh and various other parts of her skin in Dr. Mullet's office and wincing as she was jabbed. I don't think the threat of señoritas convinced her. Ticky is as hard to convince as a cat, but, like a cat, she will submit to the inevitable. Just barely.
    The first typhoid shot gave me a mild headache; I had no other reactions. Poor Ticky was distressingly ill from each and all of them-even her vaccination "took." I stipulate (though she does not) that it may have been psychosomatic, but the illnesses were real. She lost the better part of two weeks, just when we were busiest.
    Because of the book I had to finish writing, almost all the endless running around necessary to get us started had fallen on Ticky. She was especially busy planning and shopping for our wardrobes. I first became aware of this early in the summer when she said thoughtfully, "I suppose we had better get some more luggage at once."
    "What for? You take your big suitcase and your hatbox; I'll take my Valapak and the other suitcase. That'll be plenty. I can even let you have some room in my bags."
    She shook her head. "We'll use the big suitcase for our skates and I'll pack my skating dresses around them. I was thinking of a wardrobe trunk for each of us."
    "Skates-" I said, then took a deep breath and screamed, "Skates! Ice skates? Who are you? Barbara Ann Scott?"
    "Don't be silly, dear. This trip is supposed to be fun, isn't it? Won't it be