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February 10 Krabby in KrabiJust spent 27 hours travelling asia's finest planes and buses. Have made it from Denpasar, Bali to Krabi, Thailand after one flight to KL, an overnight bus from KL to Haad Yai, and an overly uncomfortable mini bus with pleather seats from Haad Yai to Krabi. Staying at a nice clean hostel, 200baht a night...
Just put some more pictures of Bali on here. The weather turned out to be nonstop sunshine for our last week in Kuta...we became regular lounge lizards at the hostel pool, reading and lazing around in the day and watching movies in the evenings... February 01 Rain  It rains here in January. i'm bored of reading books. i'm bored of people asking me if i want a taxi.but one good thing is that i got a pedicure, and it was lovely. little whitey bits on the ends of my naily nails. we went to some hot springs and watched the bali people bathing in the holy water. we took lots of pictures and then we read in the paper that it's highly frowned upon to take photos of people bathing. good. but they were good pictures, so we don't really feel bad, also they didnt seem to mind that we were snapping photos at them. there are also lots of dogs here, oliver and company was holding an all dogs go to heaven meeting last night and they decided to all run down the street dog-parade-style. we think they have rabies so we usually dont walk near them and we definately don't touch them. we are sick of banana jaffles for breakfast every day, and sick of the rain because all we have to do is read books. we came back to kuta so now we have a new place to stay and hopefully there won't be any jaffles for breakfast and we also have a pool and its near the beach so thats great if it rains.   January 25 I spent 90p on a tuna steakI'm now the proud owner of a pair of Bali's finest fake space specs. They are overly large pink shiny shades, with 2 backwards C's on the sides. i think this means Chanel   January 17 So long down underI pruchased my last Boost Juice today. I didnt need it and to be completely honest with myself we only bought it to complete the loyalty stamp card so that we could get another free one at the airport later today. Silly logic there. There is now 8tonnes of protein sloshing around in my stomache and the last thing i want is another one.
I will be departing the land of OZ this evening. Three days of staying at Wake Up! hostel in Sydney has driven me away from the bastard milk-stealing, makeup-wearing, booze-hounding suitcase-carrying bus tour-purchasing kitchen theiving ignorant "i've travelled all up and down the east coast of australia and i'm really roughing it because look i've spent all my money on beer so i have to eat toast for dinner" likes of the so-called 'backpackers' that frequent the snazzy jazzy swipe-card-multilevel- just-like-a-college-dorm-minus-the-downside of-having-to-go-to-class life hostel life that i've witnessed from afar since saturday.
I've got me travellers cheques, me jabs, and a freshy mag for the plane. All's left now is to down one last free Boost Juice....... December 28 Parsnips, anyone? Christmas was a success. I must say, Christmas eve brought on a minute anxiety attack. I was ready to train, plane and automobile it John Candy-style home. But after a few beers and a meatlovers meatfest of a barbeque and family walk to midnight mass where Bob fell asleep whilst the rest of us mumbled our own confused versions of various prayers that we didnt know the words to, i came to a funny realization that this strange hodgepodge of smelly travellers have excelled in their profession of acting the place of my replacement family. Christmas Day was a whirlwind of eating food and opening presents from my wonderful family back home. The frenchies turned up and before we knew it we were all sitting down to a magnificent feast of turkey and ham, roast and mashed pots, parsnips, cranberry sauce, sweet potato pie, stuffing, gravy and peas. The rest after that was a blur...a little too much johnny walker and silly group games involving ropes and brooms and open and closed books and open and closed legs.
Boxing Day was spent traditional snack-style. A day-long snackfest. Snackalicious.
And yesterday we decided on a family outing to the beach. We packed the esky, beach towels, mad itas and ipods into the mickey mobile and hit the pacific highway south to surfers paradise....walked onto the beach and of course bloody sod's law took over...within (literally) 2minutes of arranging our beach towels and getting our books out, a sky-size bastard cloud appeared from absolutely nowhere and shattered anyone's dreams of sun tans, frisbee games, wave-jumping, sand castle building, etc...
December 08 Creamy plastic sofasSo Brisbane is getting mighty hot. We have some lovely real sticky plastic couches in the house, that are conducive to behind-the-knee sweat and that nice sickly feeling you get when you fall asleep in the middle of the day and wake up drenched wet and your whole body is stuck to a cream colored plastic couch.
We've got some new irish in the house, they're alright...got us a tree and all for Christmas...so in addition to the filth in the bathroom and the build up of garbage in the kitchen and fridge, they've also contributed a fantastically tacky amount of plastic tree, tinsel, and gold baubles in an attempt to irritate and annoy the original house dwellers. I'm not sure i like the irish.
Been working for a company called Castle Christmas Hampers. Waking up at 530 every morning to pack a 3 ton thrifty lorry full of 150 heavy bastard boxes and then thrashing 150k's up or down the coast to visit 20-25 sick disease-infested cribs where the fatty inbred 'families' are happy enough to accept their 15 back-breaking boxes of junk food but not enough to provide any aide transporting the boxes from my truck to their back room, where most of them insist they are left. Let me tell you, since i've done this job i've seen more fatties than ever, in my life. I've been thinking of putting forth a proposal to each whale i encounter, asking "hello, would you like to enter into the fattest person i've ever seen ever contest? all i have to do is take your picture"
haha that's not funny
anyways. so that's the job front. it's good hard work and i've actually thouroughly throuroughly enjoyed it, lost some weight and have stopped drinking for about 3 weeks.
have just booked flight to singapore for jan 17. gonna get the hell outta here and back to where our money's gonna last us. excellent.
Ok then. Its chicken tonight, and tomorrow we have the day off- going to spend the day in toowoomba with a few people from work in the sunshine, having a day-long barbeque and some beers.
latas October 12 Left my soul there down by the seaStill enjoying life in Brisbane. Still staying at Tinbilly Travellers Hostel and doing housekeeping with Jack and his crew.
 Stripping beds, changing sheets, invading peoples smelly rooms every morning. (There is nothing worse than that sleeping people smell.) Working afternoons and evenings in a lovely cafe on Southbank called Steam, running around like a chicken with its head cut off getting my excercise. It's mighty hot, apparantly been reaching up to 41degrees. Took a mini-road trip to Byron Bay on Sunday for my Birthday, which ended up being a lot of hassle and organization. Major input, minor outcome. We did, however, have a large discussion about the geography of the world. After consulting the world map on the wall of the hostel, Ita found out that Canada was not actually below north america, Rich decided he'd like to visit all of the 'Stan's' and I confirmed that South Africa is not actually the whole bottom half of Africa. And we call ourselves 'travellers.'On that note, i'd like to add that i've booked my ticket to singapore for March 10th. Can't wait. September 21 I'd like to meet a spaceman well brisbane has become my little home. Last weekend me and ita did some face painting and got paid in strawberries. I've made a firestick friend and i'm getting lots better. There is a boy in our hostel room that drinks jack daniels all day and vomits in our toilet and sleeps. Me and ita drink lots of tea we're happy. Also, i think maybe i want to start a magazine...September 11 When i look up i just trip over thingsAfter Airlie beach me and the boys spent a day on Magnetic island, a pretty uneventful place where we hired a Rav4 hairdressers car and nipped round the tiny little place all day...not much to see/do except lots of kangaroos and cans of Woodstock bourbon and coke. Had a visit from a nosy possum bastard one night who claimed to be 'just browsing' when we enquired as to why he was snooping round our room at 3am. Dan got out of bed and his best bouncer voice, kicked him out, although i think he was very frightened that he was going to lose his toes.
After Magnetic island we headed for mission beach, which we promptly decided to leave behind after stopping for a broccoli fibre snack with various dips in the back of Ren and Stimpy. We made it to Cairns that night and checked into "Captain Cooks" "luxury" hostel, checked out the very next day and went to Gilligans trendy backpackers where we stayed the remainder of our stay. Did a lot of eating and drinking in Cairns and enjoying the sunshine. Went diving on the one and only GBR and spotted a large red octopus which was super duper cool. We think we saw a shark too but we're not sure.
And then like that, we all parted ways (well, everyone left me all alone in Cairns)....my boys went to NZ
  (i miss you boys) and Joseph has taken himself off to that place we hippies like to call Thailand. So I'd like to announce that I made an executive decision to come back to Brisbane....
 ....i ran away from the hippies and the abbos in Cairns to come back and work my booty off here. And here I am---starting my new job on Tuesday and spending my days with a beaty called Ita, my new bestest Irish friend who I worked with in Melbourne and ran into here in Brisbane. We think fate wants us to be together. We are going to buy a guitar and be true hippies.
 Hippy power and all that. As for this weekend, we have been working for the Kids Cancer Research Trust, knocking on doors begging for money. We are working on a 22% commission, but we decided that it's worth it just to ride the bus in the mornings with our coworkers. They have all been doing it for more than 10 years, and they are all completely bonkers.  My address for the moment is Tinbilly Travellers, 462 George St, Brisbane 4000....if anyone wants to send me this or that.    August 29 Good on yerFirst and foremost, I'd like to personally thank the shitty computers at REEFOS shitty youth hostel for their exceedingly excellent performance. I'm glad that i've spent the equivalent in time and money of a large evening meal on rewriting this essay 6 or 9 times this evening. I've thouroughly enjoyed it.
SO. After our weedy antics in Nimbin we hightailed it to our next destination: Byron Bay. What a lovely beachside town, where all the barefooted boarders walk the streets sporting quicksilver trucker hats over curly golden sunkissed locks. The shops all sold board gear and every second car was a vw hippie van. We spent 4 sunny days in Byron Bay, learning to surf and camping in the Ren and Stimpymobile. We spent a groovy evening in a great nightclub by the name of "Cheeky Monkeys," a superb backpacker haven full of youths sipping alcoholic beverages and jumping and jiving to their fave tunes... Our next stop was Surfers Paradise, where we had a minor group fallout that all ended in tears:Boys club vs girls club...and we were outnumbered... however we got over ourselves and me and Jill spent the next day amongst some of Queensland's finest at the wild and wonderful DREAM WORLD, an action-packed 12 hours of waiting in long lines observing the behavior of classy families for minute-long rides of thrill and excitement...the general theme park deal....it was rather shit, but jill enjoyed it. After a group drinking binge of a night in Surfers Paradise we hightailed Ren and Stimpy back to Brisbane where we sadly returned her in all her glory. After checking the credit card status and scrawling a measly list of a couple pros and cons, I made the hasty decision to become an honorary member of the boys club for the last leg of the road trip up to Cairns. Jillian was to remain in Brisbane. So we said our goodbyes and went to pick up our next wickedy wick van. Conspicuousmobile #2: SOUTH PARK. Classy. Next stop: Noosa. Noosa was a very posh seaside town where south park fit right in. We spent a super day on the beach burying each other and walked the streets counting the expensive houses and cars and counting the 50c peices/receipts and shitty bits of paper in our wallets. We then hit the road for Hervey Bay, departure point for our 4x4 Fraser Island adventure... We met up with the 5 other members of our expedition over dinner and comprised a shopping list for the 3day/2night extravaganzaa that consisted of all the essentials for an off-roading sandy mudfest: eggs, wine, and items such as cream, brie, and sweet chilli sauce (how these landed themselves on the list i dont know). The next morning we spent an unGODly $50 each on produce and alcohol and packed up the truck to ferry ourselves over to the sandy isle. It turned out to be a fantastic 3 days, the group was lead by an outspoken posh indian by the name of SHIROZ who taught me how to cut vegetables, how to drive, and how to clean out a cooler full of broken eggs. She took to calling me sweetie pie, and honey, which I thought was rather sweet of her seeing as she was much older and wiser, having that one year under her belt at the age of 22. It actually ended up turning out to be a good laugh, we camped on some amazing beaches that you could sit on and not see the end to either side of you. We had some fantastic bbqs (our food supplies were actually spot-on) and drank plenty of beer. We spotted whales, dolphins and dingos and all got a chance to drive the trucks down the beach. After returning back to the mainland and emptying our pockets, bags, ears, and scalps of sand, we then began to try to remove the sand from things that didnt even go to the island with us (how does sand do that??) We had one night to recuperate and recover before our next adventure, our 3 day sailing trip to the Whitsundays. We had a little bit of a joke around about the trip before we went, all agreeing how it was going to be a glorified boozefest with 27 boozy irish backpackers meatheads, consisting of "sailing" through shit rainy weather while listening to irish drinking songs and then not being able to go to sleep at night in fear of having to listen to the backpacker lovemaking antics in the cabins below. The "New Horizon" turned out to be a 40 year old motorboat with sails for show and a crew that consisted of Pervy Pete, some French wanker and another meathead cook. We were dropped off to go diving in the stinger-infested waters and picked up on shore 3 hours later, with purple lips and symptoms of pneumonia. However we did see a rather large Giant Wrasse fish by the name of Elvis in the duration of the shit dive from hell.
Needless to say, the best part of the 3day cruise from hell was stepping off the boat and waving goodbye to our fellow meathead crewmembers. And that's that......here I am, back in Airlie Beach. One thing i've learned: budget is not always better. August 15 Weedy NimbinSo from the Blue Mountains, we drove to a lovely little town called Bellingen which was just as cold and boring. Stayed there for a night and then made our way to Nimbin, a crazy little weedy town full of dredlocked hippy loonies still trying to legalize marijuana. It was a sight, to say the least. We were offered copious amounts of "cookies," "chocolates," and weed, weed, weed by the mentally challenged peace monkeys clothed in technicolored garb littering the streets and pubs of Nimbin town. After a night of indulging in herbal reefers and boxed wine with the friendly and highly professional dredlocked manager of the campsite we retreated to our cold camper/tent set-up and got the hell out of there the next morning. It was enough living proof of the effects of drugs to keep me pot-free for a while. We've now made it to (sunny?) Byron Bay. Me and Jill are taking surfing lessons this afternoon (yay!) Our Road Trip gang has now become a big happy family and feel quite comfortable bickering and bitching every single effing day about petty stupid things (money, food, sleeping arrangements, etc...) I say we start voting people off the island. August 10 Sydney and the Bloody Cold Blue MountainsSo we stayed in Sydney 3 days.....day one we wandered around Darling Harbour and decided we wanted to live in Sydney forever and ever, start a family, buy a dog, pickup truck, etc etc bla bla bla and just love life in Sydney. Had our first family meal (how cute, we all cooked together and the end product was a delicious nutricious stir fry) Day 2 we went to see the Opera house, the bridge etc etc- many kodak moments were shared. Headed back to the dorm for some modest comestibles, and started drinking, got beligerent, went to Kings Cross and visited many porn shops, sex shows and peep shows and then bought a chocolate brownie. What a magnificent memory of Sydney. Day three involved picking up another road trip groupie to add to the already overloaded wicked camper van (making the road trip extravaganzaa a famous 5 total) and then me and Jill went and chilled out on Bondi Beach....sat near a man with his naked brown balls on display to the world. Last night we sat and listened to a strange bearded American additive to our dorm ramble on about his "fuckin amazing" adventures through australia. He had a t-shirt that said "in case of emergency get me a kelbasa sandwich".....he was strange and we agreed that beards are simply unaccepltable.
Today we hit the road in our ren and stimpy painted camper van and arrived at the blue mountains around 3 or 4 pm. It was bloody freezing to say the least so we took a few snaps for our moms, bought some red wine and climbed back in the van to find a hostel to stay for the night. We plan to get up at 6am tomorrow to catch the sunrise over the blue mountains....we'll see how grumpy Rich is... Either way, I just can't wait to get somewhere a little warmer...it's just too cold for my liking round these parts.
Ecopositive is the word of the week. Let's start being friendly to our neighborly backpackers. August 04 Road tripSo i'm finally out of here...on Saturday. Trying to get all my clothes back in my backpack at the moment and get some last minute photos of melbourne before i go. Driving up to Sydney with Jillian and the boys in 2 merc camper vans, where we will stay for a few days before picking up our wickedy wick (www.wickedcampers.com.au ) camper for the 4 of us to share on our trip up to Brisbane. It should be a very cosy expedition, seeing as the bed sleeps 2 and both me and Jill have accumulated a surplus amount of shoes, makeup, hair products, etc whilst staying here (ive become female again, i think it's time to get back on the road and get back to basics...) our destination: cairns. Our wallets: very slim. My hair: it has been cut, by myself, rather short. my new housemates: they are germans. PEHHHFECT. time to move out asap.
ANYWAYS. we will visit byron bay, surfers paradise, nimbin and all the crazy wild backpacker joints to meet all the crazy wet and wild cool travellers from germany and ireland. we will participate in all the fun wet t shirt contests and drink jugs of beer and bond with the germans and the irish and even the canadians.
SO i've added some more photos, of my antics in melbourne and my final days in bangkok...have a goosey gander.
i'm pleased to say that i've seen my first kangaroo and koala (both in one day, it was an aussie overload i must say. our tour guide even had a 100% homegrown genuine mullet...) however, my brother so kindly informed me that the animal in the picture may be a wallabe. if anyone has any information on wallabes or kangaroos and how one would distinguish one from the other, etc, please email me. i would be genuinely profoundly interested to hear your thoughts, comments, concerns, bla bla bla bla bla bla kangaroos bla bla bla throw a shrimp on the barby bla bla etc etc bla blaBLABLABLA etc etc etc July 20 Melbourne shmelbourneSo i've been in Melbourne over a month...it's ok but bloody cold. I'm trying to decide what the next move on my travel agenda might be...as soon as I've saved up the cash i'm outta here asap. Warm weather here I come. |
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