Caltex Hostel: The most fun years of our lives Hostel boat trip in 1970.
We had a blast! – Debbie Dudley-Bodal (73)
adventures. The cockpit was open, and we watched the landing and takeoff. We had a lot of very bumpy weather flying back and forth but that did not seem to make any of us nervous. A few times we took the Caltex ferry down the Seak River from Rumbai to Singapore. After that first year, Caltex decided to sponsor a hostel in Singapore for the children of their employees in Sumatra. Thus the Caltex Hostel was born in 1970. Jim Hitchcock, an employee of Caltex/Amoseas in the Singapore office, was the company administrator for the hostel. We became one big family, eating together, taking trips together, doing school work together, getting in trouble together and flying home together for all the holiday breaks. I think we all had more of a connection among ourselves and the hostel than with SAS. The first Caltex Hostel was opened at Taman Rahasia off Killiney Road. We had a cook, maids, a gardener, a driver and a night watchman. I remember the breakfasts made to order every day. We ate very healthy food and very well since we had a cook to make sure that we did. On special occasions we had dinner at the Emerald Steak House or the Troika Restaurant at the company’s expense and always ordered Baked Alaska! I look back at those years and realize how fortunate I really was and what a unique
When I was 13 my family arrived in Singapore. I lived there for the next four years to attend high school; the first year my brother, Mark (70), and the last year my sister, Gail (76), were there too. Having grown up internationally since the age of one, moving to Singapore was not an unusual move, except that I was put in a boarding house situation and separated from my family for the first time. My parents were stationed in the Rumbai Caltex camp on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, about 30 minutes by plane from Singapore. Caltex had four oil camps outside of Pekenbaru – Rumbai, Minus, Duri and Dumi. All four camps had schools that ended in the eighth grade and after that, kids had to go to Singapore to attend high school. We arrived in the big city basically with no experience or expectations of what our lives would be like. We created unique experiences and broke all the rules. We had a BLAST! In 1969, I was placed with a private family. On my first trip home to Rumbai for Thanksgiving, I met the rest of the kids from the various camps who were in the same situation as I was, and we all felt connected. Thus began our bonding relationships and great memories. Our trips to Rumbai on the Caltex plane were always 34
P30-45
6
5/14/09, 6:19 PM