Out of all the sunsets we have witnessed, this one, On Phi Phi was the best. We watched for three hours, drinking cocktails and eating dinner, as a lightening storm and a sunset vied for our attention. It was incredible.
Thursday 28 May 2009
AMISTAD
The night ferry of DOOM. See that laughter? Thats HYSTERICAL laughter. You know like when a person has been driven mad through fear, and there are no more tears left to cry? This is what happens. Notice the numbers above the beds. Notice the space between the numbers. Not a lot huh? See those people in the background reading? They're not reading. They're DEAD.
SWEATY BETTY
Ah Angkor Wat. More like Angkor DRIP. That water around my chest has not been added. This is no illusion. This is me literally sweating to death.
Wednesday 27 May 2009
Sailing the Whore!
Check this out, CHECK THIS OUT. No blogs for a couple of weeks due to HORRIFIC internet action over here in Oz, and now, there’s two at once. And no they are not like buses. Well, hopefully I shall be writing even more than this, and I still have another week in this GLORIOUS house to blurt out more rubbish about what we have been up to whilst away. But for now, enjoy the tale of our Whitsunday experience…
Our next stop after Magnetic Island was the one that we had been longing for. It was a trip to paradise, a trip to the Australia you hear about and see on postcards. To the Whitsundays. ON a PIRATE SHIP. Oh yeah. Our port of entry to the Whitsundays is an amazing little town called Airlie Beach. Right on the ocean, Airlie is basically one long strip which runs parallel to the coast packed with great shops, good, cheap food, bars and amazing beaches and a fantastic esplanade and man-made lagoon IDEAL for soaking up the sun and ogling the beautiful people. I of course, hid in the shadows, strips of sunlight shimmering over my pale figure and beady eyes. But I did swim a lot, which was fun. Apart from one time when I was happily splashing around like a deflated lilo when suddenly a MILLION screaming Australian children had surrounded me. I was in the kiddie’s pool, and it was their swimming trip. I made a swift, silent escape, submerging under the water like a retreating hippo and climbed out before I was accused of some crime to humanity.
Our boat we were booked on for the Whitsundays was called New Horizon, a pirate ship with a masthead that was carved into the shape of a beautiful woman...with her tits out. This lovely feature of the boat helped it earn its name among the other competing boats as...The Whore. But I can honestly say, riding the Whore was a wonderful experience. (Sorry) We set sail from the harbour and spent our first afternoon cruising out to the islands. The boat, at first glance seemed TINY. It was one of the cheaper options amongst the trips you can buy at any travel agency, so we were worried they would have scrimped on any goodness that is dished out by the other trips available. One boat, for example, has a HOT TUB on deck. Sounds pretty fricking awesome right? WRONG. Our pals went on it and apparently the hot tub was so full of sex wee and other feculent objects, the thought of going into this fermenting soup was horrifying. So maybe, we did just fine with our Whore. On our boat we had three members of the crew to look after us. A nice chaps as captain, a large, loud Northern woman with a big nose, and a small young Ozzy fellow. All were very lovely, although by the end of the trip I could have happily fed large nosed, northern woman to the sharks. As for the other passengers, there were 32 of us over all. There were Mexicans, Germans, Swedes, Dutch, Danish, French, Canadians and Brits. The only Brits however, were myself and Jo, and two others. One was called James. The other was called Scary Lonely Woman. James was 19, and it showed. James pretty much encapsulates most of the British people we have met so far travelling down the coast in Oz. James was in OZ for two reasons only. Sex and drink. Now these are some pretty good reasons to visit another wonderful country, but it kind of narrows your experiences after a while if this is your main drive. This seemed to be the main topic of conversation with James. Apart from when James was drunk. When James was drunk he was looking for sex. And when you are on the boat in the middle of the ocean, it narrows down your targets of copulation dramatically. That is, unless, you have a Scary Lonely Woman on board, and as James's luck would have it, we did. James was also ginger. Very ginger. When we first stepped on board and were getting to know each other, Jo pointed out to me how ginger James was. I noticed Jo staring at James with her hand over her mouth as though she were repressing the urge to vomit. A common look when any eye falls upon a Ginger (I kid I kid!), I asked Jo if she was all right, and she said 'No. No I’m not all right. See that Ginger guy? I can see his ginger pubes and their making me fucking sick' I turned and looked in James direction, sure enough he was standing their with his top off, letting everyone see his gelatinous form, and his shorts were waaaaay too low. 'This guy' I said, 'is a horror'. Sadly, my prediction wasn’t wrong. After spending our first night, moored by Hook Island, out came the Goon. Ahhh Goon. I shall miss it when I leave this fare land. Goon is the drink for backpackers and the homeless. Its basically cheap wine in a bag. And when the bag is depleted of cheap vinegary wine, it can be blown up and used as a pillow. Very clever ay? So, as we all sat around drinking, getting to know each other and enjoying the fact we could see hundreds of large fish swimming around our little boat, James was hitting the goon hard. By 9 he was already feeding the fish - puking off the side of the boat. We were all pretty merry by this point but it was certainly not a party night, just a chilled merry night. James didn’t like this. He wanted everyone to DANCE. There was no music playing, but this didn’t matter to James. He ran around the boat, trying to instil drinking games in everyone (like the douche bags at Mission Beach), and attempting to kiss every female on the boat without success. That was until he came to Scary Lonely Woman. Scary Lonely Woman, or SLW as we shall call her, was 38 years old and from Norwich. She had followed her Canadian friend away on the trip. However, to look upon SLW, you would not have thought them friends. Her quiet Canadian friend would sit happily, chatting politely to other guests, then normally head to bed at a reasonable hour. SLW however would sit beside her, mouth turned down like she was about to burst into tears and sadness in her small, tired eyes that could not be measured. She would sit in silence, never speaking to her friend, and glug back glass after glass of goon with such ferociousness it looked like she was dying of thirst. This is all we saw of her the first night. That was until we ventured outside to look at the stars. The deck was quiet and empty with most people asleep downstairs, but then, undulating in the darkness were two figures. James, and Scary Lonely Woman. It was like watching a Dementor removing the soul from a child. The wind grew cold, and the stars went out, and two of us were left on the deck with terror in our eyes, amidst the presence of pure WRONGNESS occuring before us. Before we could see anymore, Jo and myself rushed below deck and jumped into our beds, shuddering. We had seen things no man should ever see. By smashing my head repeatedly against the hull of the ship I finally managed to pass out into a dreamless sleep. The next day we awoke trying to forget about the nightmare we had been living before we slept, and we came up onto the deck ready for a day of paradise. James was already on deck. Actually, he had been on deck all night. Asleep with an inflated goon bag as a pillow.
We set sail for Whitehaven Bay. Whitehaven beach is the image of paradise. You know those pictures of generic beautiful beaches that they plaster all over travel agencies to make you feel bad when you are in grotty England? Chances are, they are taken on Whitehaven Bay. An unspoilt, uninhabited group of islands, with crystal white sand, and sky-blue water. We headed over to the bay, climbed off the Whore and headed through the jungle to get to the mythic Whitehaven Beach. After a slightly sweaty, hungover trek through the bush, the tree's ahead begun to part, and there, emerging from between the leaves, we glimpsed blinding white sand. Our feet sank into white dust, and we were there, the beach was before us. It honestly is the picture of Paradise, check out myself and Jo's photos on FB and Flickr, it is AWESOME. The sand on Whitehaven Beach is really quite special. With a composition of 98% Silica, it's the stuff they make computer chips out of. The sand on Whitehaven has only ever been mined once, and that was to make the shiny lens of the Hubble Space Telescope. Sciencey goodness ay? When you take your first steps onto Whitehaven beach, you can tell there is something a bit special about the sand, because it squeaks when you walk. It sounds like you're walking on polystyrene. Very weird sensation. Once we had gotten over the paralysing beauty of the beach, we all decided to explore the shiny, clear waters of Whitehaven. You see, this is where the price you pay for paradise, becomes overwhelmingly clear. The waters around Whitehaven are INFESTED with jellyfish and gigantic, monstrous Sting Rays. So once we were in the water, all smiles of wonder had disappeared, and instead we all looked like a bunch of badly, sighted, old people shuffling through the waters staring at our feet with looks of terror on our faces. You see, poor Ozzy Hero Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray. He was basically pissing the thing off, so it stung him big. One big way to piss off a stingray is to stamp on it. So shuffling was necessary as these big guys have a snooze under the sand. So there we were, all cautiously walking in a line, shuffling our feet amidst the odd girly squeal from one person or another. Then all of a sudden, we hear the scream...'SHARK! OHMYGOD SHARK!!!' We all look up, the blood draining from our scorched faces, and staring at the horizon, a whole new level of fear enters our hearts. Then, we see them. A pod of dolphins leaping out of the sparkly water just in front of us. Amazing. These guys were having a great time. Instantly, all fear and apprehension was gone and the whole group took off, splashing and running through the waters, stamping their little hearts off to get to these dolphins, but alas, they were having too much fun for us. After a while, I got a bit bored of all the shuffling that had resumed, so I went off on my own swim through the waters. After encountering several jellyfish that looked like nothing more than a Tesco’s bag floating in the water I stopped in my tracks and took in the view. This place was pure beauty. Incredible. As I was happily absorbing as much of this place as my eyes could allow, I looked at my feet, and there, poking out the sand was a long black stick. I give it a little inspectory (word?) nudge, and weirdly, the stick begins to quiver. Then it moves backwards, and upwards out of the white sand. Then, the stick is no longer a stick, and the stick is a tail, connected to the biggest, largest, grumpiest Sting Ray I have EVER seen. In a cloud of sand around my waist this guy rises upwards, like a gigantic, black cloud underwater. Before I actually lost control of bowels, luckily the big guy huffed at me then zipped off in an opposite direction. Paradise was a wonderful thing, but I was ready to enjoy it from the beach. On my way back to shore, just to make it clear this paradise belonged to someone else, I encountered two more bigger and angrier Sting Rays. I got the message.
Back on the boat that night, it was time to party. After getting over the semi-formal night before which mainly consisted of polite introductions and the normal 'Where you been? Where you going? Yeah wasn’t it great' kind of chat (Oh and some horrific copulation), everyone was fully up for a party. And we did. It was wonderful. Dancing beneath the stars, our boat was rocking. I should really mention the stars. Out in the middle of the ocean, under the unharmed, toxic-free air of the sky above the Great Barrier Reef, there is as much to look at above your head as there is beneath the waters. It is incredible. Inverted astronomical formations swing above you, and in between every single star is four more, and in between them, 20 more and so on and so on. After your eyes adjust to the glittering, you feel as though you are looking through a tunnel lined with fairylights. And swinging round, over our heads and zooming off into the horizon you can see quite clearly, the Milky Way. NO, not a giant chocolate bar launched into the air but our galaxy. Well a side, view of it anyway, and the concentrated number of suns and planets and moons that lay inside it. With the party on the boat, and the party above us, it was an awesome night.
One person who was having a particularly good night was young James. Over-emotional with the thought of all these people finally getting involved in his favourite past time, James went for it. Did it matter that the girls on the boat found him repulsive? No, he just grabbed their heads and kissed their faces. At one point over the night, he grabbed a bag of goon and shouted, to no-one in particular (as he was actually standing on his own at the bow of the ship) "SLAPTHEFUCKINGGOOOOOOON" where he latched onto the tap of the goon bag like it was some over-swollen teat, and he began to suck at the sour wine inside, whilst spinning in a circle. Everyone stopped dancing, everyone stopped talking, and we stood in silence, together, staring at this young man frantically spinning on the spot, goon trickling from his puckered mouth and a madness in his red eyes. After a minute or so, his mouth let go of the bag, and as it fell to the ground he angrily slapped it with a girly swipe and staggered backwards, belching. As we stared wondering what would occur next, he lurched over the side of the boat and evacuated the contents of his stomach for the fish again. The music and partying resumed instantly. Two other passengers on the boat were two crazy French guys; I call them that because I can no longer remember their names. But they were crazy. And French. Through most of the night they offered excellent entertainment, making everyone laugh with their jokes and general foreign enthusiasm that makes people smile. James did not like this. He was Mr Party Animal. It was HIS job to entertain everyone with drinking lots and vomiting and kissing. Whilst watching the two French guys dance around on deck impressing everyone, I turned to look at James. With his red eyes locked don the French guys, he stood swaying on the spot, fist clenched round a plastic cup of good. Suddenly his eyes darted to the girls sitting at his feet laughing at these guys in front of them. Panic came over his face, and then the calm confidence as his plan formed. As I watched James, he dropped his cup on the floor, and slumped to the decking, eyes closing as he descended. Once on the floor he begun to undulate and wobble as though he were having a seizure, his gelatinous body shuddering and pencil rolling into the girls sitting near him. They stopped laughing, turned to look, shrugged and carried on laughing at the French guys. James stopped his over-enthusiastic seizure after a couple of minutes, and lay quietly still for a moment, then opened one eye and pencil rolled away to the bow of the ship. Little did he know I thoroughly enjoyed his performance way more than the French guys, so his mission wasn’t a total fail. As the night went on, James's many failed attempts for attention got less exciting the more drunk he got and before the night was even half way, he was asleep on a cooler box. But by this point, another favourite character had arisen her head. Scary Lonely Woman was back. Spending most of the day in hiding, SLW sloped around the boat with her head hanging low, large sunglasses over her puffy eyes and her mouth turned down in that perpetual grimace. Shame was on her face for the actions of the night before, and it was assumed that tonight, after the horrendous amounts of alcohol she had consumed the previous evening and her well-documented actions with the boy, this night would be a low-key one for SLW. We were wrong. Over the course of the evening, we would spot her in the corners, in the shadows, furiously drinking back glass after glass of goon, her eyes fixed, and determined on the party in front of her, as though the elixir in her hands was powering her. After she had filled up on what must have been nearly two boxes, she tottered over. This is where the 'Scary' part of her name comes in. Over the course of the trip, there were many smokers and social smokers on the boat. Jo and myself fell into these categories and we had run out of ciggies by our first night on the Whore, as had many others. Scary Lonely Woman was aware of this, and had a plan to redeem herself. She began to drift slowly round the boat, in and out of people partying, not saying a word. And then she would stop in front of one of us, swaying on the spot, eyes blinking out of sync and she would slurring utter in a posh, squeaky, British accent "I'm sssorry, but, did hyou assk me for a sssiggarette?" And when one of us would gratefully say no, but how we would love one, she would smile, eyes closed, reach into her large bosoms and pull two out. This went on for the whole night, with SLW moving from person to person, and producing booby-insulated ciggies. She came round to us and performed the exact same ritual three times over the night. It was very sweet of her, but also a bit sad. I wanted to wrap her in a blanket, put her in the little dinghy and push her out in the dark waters. In the early hours of the morning, the goon ran out. It was a sad time. But then, out of the darkness we heard a voice. "Did you guyssss want sssome drinks?" and there, shuffling from the gloom was SLW, with two boxes of goon under her arms. Bless her. So at this point, she had plied us with ciggies and wine all night, I wanted to know more about SLW. After chatting to her for five minutes, that dementor magic begun to happen again and as she spoke, the stars flickered and dimmed and my soul begun to cry. I got as far as her being an accountant and how she hated her job and how many cats she had, and then my ears closed up as my brain tried to protect itself from self-destruct. Then suddenly she began to talk about her polite Canadian friend. As I looked at her face, that sullen, mopey mouth, turned into a snarl, a grimace, and with her eyes pointed at the floor, wide with fury she said, "You know, I come on THIS holiday for fun, and SHE just talks about how much she missed her husband. WE don’t all have husbandssss you know, and THATSSSS all she wantss to talk about. Well, if sssshe thinks thatsss what I want, ssshes wrong and BORING SHESSS SO BORING AND...SHEESS AND OLD IWANTFRIENDS." As she ranted the stars went out completely and we all backed away slowly, nodding and simultaneously eyeing our glasses of goon and sniffing at it for any trace of sedatives. The party quickly dispersed after the rant, and SLW was left on the deck. With her head lowered, we left her staring at the glass of goon in her hands. Or at the unconscious James lying at her feet. Thankfully, we will never know which it was.
The next day our Whitsundays trip came to an end. At the crack of dawn we embarked on a VERY hung over, but wonderful snorkelling session off of one of the islands. A million fish were swimming around our hung over bodies, and I cant say whether it was the refreshing water, or the drunken goon still in my system, but whatever it was, it was a magical experience. That was, until I looked up, and was face to face with the biggest, meatiest, angriest looking jellyfish in the world. This thing was solid. Not ethereal like the other jellyfish we had encountered. This guy, was the fricking mothership. About the size of an exercise ball, he bobbed towards me, his large bowl head poking out of the water. After nearly inhaling my snorkel and mask through terror, I quickly made a swift exit and got back on the boat. My snorkelling was finished with for now. Getting back on the boat, I discovered James had also encountered the jellyfish. Unlike me, he had shoved his hand into the angry looking mass because he thought 'it looked like it would feel nice.' Silly James. Also back on the boat was SLW, but she retreated back into herself and sat in the corner, hiding behind large glasses and a big towel. Once everyone was back on board, we sailed back to Airlie and said our farewells, agreeing, but not quite promising, to stay in touch and see each other down the coast. SLW was never seen again. And neither was James.
Over the course of this post I realise I have made several disparaging remarks about some of the people, I have come across, but you see, there are some human beings who cross your path, who are so mental, and unknowingly horrendous in a wonderful way that they stick in your mind for ever and ever. Also, before I get any angry comments, there is NOTHING wrong with a lady seeking a toy-boy for some sexy time, but when you are in a beautiful place where beauty is the main attraction, an event such as the one we witnessed is an assault to the senses. Its like discovering a skid-mark on a nice clean flannel just as you are about to wash your face with it. Ahem.
Anyway, more soon!x
Our next stop after Magnetic Island was the one that we had been longing for. It was a trip to paradise, a trip to the Australia you hear about and see on postcards. To the Whitsundays. ON a PIRATE SHIP. Oh yeah. Our port of entry to the Whitsundays is an amazing little town called Airlie Beach. Right on the ocean, Airlie is basically one long strip which runs parallel to the coast packed with great shops, good, cheap food, bars and amazing beaches and a fantastic esplanade and man-made lagoon IDEAL for soaking up the sun and ogling the beautiful people. I of course, hid in the shadows, strips of sunlight shimmering over my pale figure and beady eyes. But I did swim a lot, which was fun. Apart from one time when I was happily splashing around like a deflated lilo when suddenly a MILLION screaming Australian children had surrounded me. I was in the kiddie’s pool, and it was their swimming trip. I made a swift, silent escape, submerging under the water like a retreating hippo and climbed out before I was accused of some crime to humanity.
Our boat we were booked on for the Whitsundays was called New Horizon, a pirate ship with a masthead that was carved into the shape of a beautiful woman...with her tits out. This lovely feature of the boat helped it earn its name among the other competing boats as...The Whore. But I can honestly say, riding the Whore was a wonderful experience. (Sorry) We set sail from the harbour and spent our first afternoon cruising out to the islands. The boat, at first glance seemed TINY. It was one of the cheaper options amongst the trips you can buy at any travel agency, so we were worried they would have scrimped on any goodness that is dished out by the other trips available. One boat, for example, has a HOT TUB on deck. Sounds pretty fricking awesome right? WRONG. Our pals went on it and apparently the hot tub was so full of sex wee and other feculent objects, the thought of going into this fermenting soup was horrifying. So maybe, we did just fine with our Whore. On our boat we had three members of the crew to look after us. A nice chaps as captain, a large, loud Northern woman with a big nose, and a small young Ozzy fellow. All were very lovely, although by the end of the trip I could have happily fed large nosed, northern woman to the sharks. As for the other passengers, there were 32 of us over all. There were Mexicans, Germans, Swedes, Dutch, Danish, French, Canadians and Brits. The only Brits however, were myself and Jo, and two others. One was called James. The other was called Scary Lonely Woman. James was 19, and it showed. James pretty much encapsulates most of the British people we have met so far travelling down the coast in Oz. James was in OZ for two reasons only. Sex and drink. Now these are some pretty good reasons to visit another wonderful country, but it kind of narrows your experiences after a while if this is your main drive. This seemed to be the main topic of conversation with James. Apart from when James was drunk. When James was drunk he was looking for sex. And when you are on the boat in the middle of the ocean, it narrows down your targets of copulation dramatically. That is, unless, you have a Scary Lonely Woman on board, and as James's luck would have it, we did. James was also ginger. Very ginger. When we first stepped on board and were getting to know each other, Jo pointed out to me how ginger James was. I noticed Jo staring at James with her hand over her mouth as though she were repressing the urge to vomit. A common look when any eye falls upon a Ginger (I kid I kid!), I asked Jo if she was all right, and she said 'No. No I’m not all right. See that Ginger guy? I can see his ginger pubes and their making me fucking sick' I turned and looked in James direction, sure enough he was standing their with his top off, letting everyone see his gelatinous form, and his shorts were waaaaay too low. 'This guy' I said, 'is a horror'. Sadly, my prediction wasn’t wrong. After spending our first night, moored by Hook Island, out came the Goon. Ahhh Goon. I shall miss it when I leave this fare land. Goon is the drink for backpackers and the homeless. Its basically cheap wine in a bag. And when the bag is depleted of cheap vinegary wine, it can be blown up and used as a pillow. Very clever ay? So, as we all sat around drinking, getting to know each other and enjoying the fact we could see hundreds of large fish swimming around our little boat, James was hitting the goon hard. By 9 he was already feeding the fish - puking off the side of the boat. We were all pretty merry by this point but it was certainly not a party night, just a chilled merry night. James didn’t like this. He wanted everyone to DANCE. There was no music playing, but this didn’t matter to James. He ran around the boat, trying to instil drinking games in everyone (like the douche bags at Mission Beach), and attempting to kiss every female on the boat without success. That was until he came to Scary Lonely Woman. Scary Lonely Woman, or SLW as we shall call her, was 38 years old and from Norwich. She had followed her Canadian friend away on the trip. However, to look upon SLW, you would not have thought them friends. Her quiet Canadian friend would sit happily, chatting politely to other guests, then normally head to bed at a reasonable hour. SLW however would sit beside her, mouth turned down like she was about to burst into tears and sadness in her small, tired eyes that could not be measured. She would sit in silence, never speaking to her friend, and glug back glass after glass of goon with such ferociousness it looked like she was dying of thirst. This is all we saw of her the first night. That was until we ventured outside to look at the stars. The deck was quiet and empty with most people asleep downstairs, but then, undulating in the darkness were two figures. James, and Scary Lonely Woman. It was like watching a Dementor removing the soul from a child. The wind grew cold, and the stars went out, and two of us were left on the deck with terror in our eyes, amidst the presence of pure WRONGNESS occuring before us. Before we could see anymore, Jo and myself rushed below deck and jumped into our beds, shuddering. We had seen things no man should ever see. By smashing my head repeatedly against the hull of the ship I finally managed to pass out into a dreamless sleep. The next day we awoke trying to forget about the nightmare we had been living before we slept, and we came up onto the deck ready for a day of paradise. James was already on deck. Actually, he had been on deck all night. Asleep with an inflated goon bag as a pillow.
We set sail for Whitehaven Bay. Whitehaven beach is the image of paradise. You know those pictures of generic beautiful beaches that they plaster all over travel agencies to make you feel bad when you are in grotty England? Chances are, they are taken on Whitehaven Bay. An unspoilt, uninhabited group of islands, with crystal white sand, and sky-blue water. We headed over to the bay, climbed off the Whore and headed through the jungle to get to the mythic Whitehaven Beach. After a slightly sweaty, hungover trek through the bush, the tree's ahead begun to part, and there, emerging from between the leaves, we glimpsed blinding white sand. Our feet sank into white dust, and we were there, the beach was before us. It honestly is the picture of Paradise, check out myself and Jo's photos on FB and Flickr, it is AWESOME. The sand on Whitehaven Beach is really quite special. With a composition of 98% Silica, it's the stuff they make computer chips out of. The sand on Whitehaven has only ever been mined once, and that was to make the shiny lens of the Hubble Space Telescope. Sciencey goodness ay? When you take your first steps onto Whitehaven beach, you can tell there is something a bit special about the sand, because it squeaks when you walk. It sounds like you're walking on polystyrene. Very weird sensation. Once we had gotten over the paralysing beauty of the beach, we all decided to explore the shiny, clear waters of Whitehaven. You see, this is where the price you pay for paradise, becomes overwhelmingly clear. The waters around Whitehaven are INFESTED with jellyfish and gigantic, monstrous Sting Rays. So once we were in the water, all smiles of wonder had disappeared, and instead we all looked like a bunch of badly, sighted, old people shuffling through the waters staring at our feet with looks of terror on our faces. You see, poor Ozzy Hero Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray. He was basically pissing the thing off, so it stung him big. One big way to piss off a stingray is to stamp on it. So shuffling was necessary as these big guys have a snooze under the sand. So there we were, all cautiously walking in a line, shuffling our feet amidst the odd girly squeal from one person or another. Then all of a sudden, we hear the scream...'SHARK! OHMYGOD SHARK!!!' We all look up, the blood draining from our scorched faces, and staring at the horizon, a whole new level of fear enters our hearts. Then, we see them. A pod of dolphins leaping out of the sparkly water just in front of us. Amazing. These guys were having a great time. Instantly, all fear and apprehension was gone and the whole group took off, splashing and running through the waters, stamping their little hearts off to get to these dolphins, but alas, they were having too much fun for us. After a while, I got a bit bored of all the shuffling that had resumed, so I went off on my own swim through the waters. After encountering several jellyfish that looked like nothing more than a Tesco’s bag floating in the water I stopped in my tracks and took in the view. This place was pure beauty. Incredible. As I was happily absorbing as much of this place as my eyes could allow, I looked at my feet, and there, poking out the sand was a long black stick. I give it a little inspectory (word?) nudge, and weirdly, the stick begins to quiver. Then it moves backwards, and upwards out of the white sand. Then, the stick is no longer a stick, and the stick is a tail, connected to the biggest, largest, grumpiest Sting Ray I have EVER seen. In a cloud of sand around my waist this guy rises upwards, like a gigantic, black cloud underwater. Before I actually lost control of bowels, luckily the big guy huffed at me then zipped off in an opposite direction. Paradise was a wonderful thing, but I was ready to enjoy it from the beach. On my way back to shore, just to make it clear this paradise belonged to someone else, I encountered two more bigger and angrier Sting Rays. I got the message.
Back on the boat that night, it was time to party. After getting over the semi-formal night before which mainly consisted of polite introductions and the normal 'Where you been? Where you going? Yeah wasn’t it great' kind of chat (Oh and some horrific copulation), everyone was fully up for a party. And we did. It was wonderful. Dancing beneath the stars, our boat was rocking. I should really mention the stars. Out in the middle of the ocean, under the unharmed, toxic-free air of the sky above the Great Barrier Reef, there is as much to look at above your head as there is beneath the waters. It is incredible. Inverted astronomical formations swing above you, and in between every single star is four more, and in between them, 20 more and so on and so on. After your eyes adjust to the glittering, you feel as though you are looking through a tunnel lined with fairylights. And swinging round, over our heads and zooming off into the horizon you can see quite clearly, the Milky Way. NO, not a giant chocolate bar launched into the air but our galaxy. Well a side, view of it anyway, and the concentrated number of suns and planets and moons that lay inside it. With the party on the boat, and the party above us, it was an awesome night.
One person who was having a particularly good night was young James. Over-emotional with the thought of all these people finally getting involved in his favourite past time, James went for it. Did it matter that the girls on the boat found him repulsive? No, he just grabbed their heads and kissed their faces. At one point over the night, he grabbed a bag of goon and shouted, to no-one in particular (as he was actually standing on his own at the bow of the ship) "SLAPTHEFUCKINGGOOOOOOON" where he latched onto the tap of the goon bag like it was some over-swollen teat, and he began to suck at the sour wine inside, whilst spinning in a circle. Everyone stopped dancing, everyone stopped talking, and we stood in silence, together, staring at this young man frantically spinning on the spot, goon trickling from his puckered mouth and a madness in his red eyes. After a minute or so, his mouth let go of the bag, and as it fell to the ground he angrily slapped it with a girly swipe and staggered backwards, belching. As we stared wondering what would occur next, he lurched over the side of the boat and evacuated the contents of his stomach for the fish again. The music and partying resumed instantly. Two other passengers on the boat were two crazy French guys; I call them that because I can no longer remember their names. But they were crazy. And French. Through most of the night they offered excellent entertainment, making everyone laugh with their jokes and general foreign enthusiasm that makes people smile. James did not like this. He was Mr Party Animal. It was HIS job to entertain everyone with drinking lots and vomiting and kissing. Whilst watching the two French guys dance around on deck impressing everyone, I turned to look at James. With his red eyes locked don the French guys, he stood swaying on the spot, fist clenched round a plastic cup of good. Suddenly his eyes darted to the girls sitting at his feet laughing at these guys in front of them. Panic came over his face, and then the calm confidence as his plan formed. As I watched James, he dropped his cup on the floor, and slumped to the decking, eyes closing as he descended. Once on the floor he begun to undulate and wobble as though he were having a seizure, his gelatinous body shuddering and pencil rolling into the girls sitting near him. They stopped laughing, turned to look, shrugged and carried on laughing at the French guys. James stopped his over-enthusiastic seizure after a couple of minutes, and lay quietly still for a moment, then opened one eye and pencil rolled away to the bow of the ship. Little did he know I thoroughly enjoyed his performance way more than the French guys, so his mission wasn’t a total fail. As the night went on, James's many failed attempts for attention got less exciting the more drunk he got and before the night was even half way, he was asleep on a cooler box. But by this point, another favourite character had arisen her head. Scary Lonely Woman was back. Spending most of the day in hiding, SLW sloped around the boat with her head hanging low, large sunglasses over her puffy eyes and her mouth turned down in that perpetual grimace. Shame was on her face for the actions of the night before, and it was assumed that tonight, after the horrendous amounts of alcohol she had consumed the previous evening and her well-documented actions with the boy, this night would be a low-key one for SLW. We were wrong. Over the course of the evening, we would spot her in the corners, in the shadows, furiously drinking back glass after glass of goon, her eyes fixed, and determined on the party in front of her, as though the elixir in her hands was powering her. After she had filled up on what must have been nearly two boxes, she tottered over. This is where the 'Scary' part of her name comes in. Over the course of the trip, there were many smokers and social smokers on the boat. Jo and myself fell into these categories and we had run out of ciggies by our first night on the Whore, as had many others. Scary Lonely Woman was aware of this, and had a plan to redeem herself. She began to drift slowly round the boat, in and out of people partying, not saying a word. And then she would stop in front of one of us, swaying on the spot, eyes blinking out of sync and she would slurring utter in a posh, squeaky, British accent "I'm sssorry, but, did hyou assk me for a sssiggarette?" And when one of us would gratefully say no, but how we would love one, she would smile, eyes closed, reach into her large bosoms and pull two out. This went on for the whole night, with SLW moving from person to person, and producing booby-insulated ciggies. She came round to us and performed the exact same ritual three times over the night. It was very sweet of her, but also a bit sad. I wanted to wrap her in a blanket, put her in the little dinghy and push her out in the dark waters. In the early hours of the morning, the goon ran out. It was a sad time. But then, out of the darkness we heard a voice. "Did you guyssss want sssome drinks?" and there, shuffling from the gloom was SLW, with two boxes of goon under her arms. Bless her. So at this point, she had plied us with ciggies and wine all night, I wanted to know more about SLW. After chatting to her for five minutes, that dementor magic begun to happen again and as she spoke, the stars flickered and dimmed and my soul begun to cry. I got as far as her being an accountant and how she hated her job and how many cats she had, and then my ears closed up as my brain tried to protect itself from self-destruct. Then suddenly she began to talk about her polite Canadian friend. As I looked at her face, that sullen, mopey mouth, turned into a snarl, a grimace, and with her eyes pointed at the floor, wide with fury she said, "You know, I come on THIS holiday for fun, and SHE just talks about how much she missed her husband. WE don’t all have husbandssss you know, and THATSSSS all she wantss to talk about. Well, if sssshe thinks thatsss what I want, ssshes wrong and BORING SHESSS SO BORING AND...SHEESS AND OLD IWANTFRIENDS." As she ranted the stars went out completely and we all backed away slowly, nodding and simultaneously eyeing our glasses of goon and sniffing at it for any trace of sedatives. The party quickly dispersed after the rant, and SLW was left on the deck. With her head lowered, we left her staring at the glass of goon in her hands. Or at the unconscious James lying at her feet. Thankfully, we will never know which it was.
The next day our Whitsundays trip came to an end. At the crack of dawn we embarked on a VERY hung over, but wonderful snorkelling session off of one of the islands. A million fish were swimming around our hung over bodies, and I cant say whether it was the refreshing water, or the drunken goon still in my system, but whatever it was, it was a magical experience. That was, until I looked up, and was face to face with the biggest, meatiest, angriest looking jellyfish in the world. This thing was solid. Not ethereal like the other jellyfish we had encountered. This guy, was the fricking mothership. About the size of an exercise ball, he bobbed towards me, his large bowl head poking out of the water. After nearly inhaling my snorkel and mask through terror, I quickly made a swift exit and got back on the boat. My snorkelling was finished with for now. Getting back on the boat, I discovered James had also encountered the jellyfish. Unlike me, he had shoved his hand into the angry looking mass because he thought 'it looked like it would feel nice.' Silly James. Also back on the boat was SLW, but she retreated back into herself and sat in the corner, hiding behind large glasses and a big towel. Once everyone was back on board, we sailed back to Airlie and said our farewells, agreeing, but not quite promising, to stay in touch and see each other down the coast. SLW was never seen again. And neither was James.
Over the course of this post I realise I have made several disparaging remarks about some of the people, I have come across, but you see, there are some human beings who cross your path, who are so mental, and unknowingly horrendous in a wonderful way that they stick in your mind for ever and ever. Also, before I get any angry comments, there is NOTHING wrong with a lady seeking a toy-boy for some sexy time, but when you are in a beautiful place where beauty is the main attraction, an event such as the one we witnessed is an assault to the senses. Its like discovering a skid-mark on a nice clean flannel just as you are about to wash your face with it. Ahem.
Anyway, more soon!x
Friday 22 May 2009
HALLO POSSUMS!
Bit of a rare start to a post today. I write to you today...with happiness in my heart. Not the smelly, tired happiness that I have had over my time away, (because I truly have been happy most of the time) But, no, this happiness is CLEAN happiness. My eyes are bright with life, and my skin has the non-sweaty smoothness of someone who showers regularly. That’s right. I am in a house. I am living a static existence once more - no illness, no ailments, no terror, no fumblings in the dark and no sweating. Just peace. OK so yes I still look like Bryan Blessed after a night sleeping rough but LIFE has returned to me. I feel it my veins as I awake. I see it in my eyes when I look in the mirror. For no longer am I on the road. I am living in Sydney, for 2 weeks and am at utter peace. A wonderful, beautiful friend has put Jo and myself up for the entire time we are in this wonderful city, and it’s very, very awesome. True, I still have to wear the clothes of a holocaust survivor, (I kid, I kid, my clothes are MUCH worse) have hair like Willy Wonka but it's OK. Who cares? I have a couch, and films, and a bed and INTERNET. Oh yeah. Oh yeah oh yeah ohyeah. So, as I sit here with a cuppa and some biccies for dunking, I write...
ONWARDS with our Australian adventure! There's lots of wonderful tales to come. There really is. After our time in the just bloody lovely city (is it a city? I don’t think so. I'm going to call it a TOWN), the wonderful town of Cairns, we begun our journey southbound along the coast. At first, the idea of travelling by coach for the foreseeable future was not an appealing one. During our time in Asia we experienced many varieties of coach/bus related transport. Some were good, with nice drivers, lots of room and lots of air con. Others were bad. Rusty shit boxes driving way too close the edge, with drivers who seem to not understand the fundamental requirements of driving, and passengers of the non-human variety. (Dogs really do get car sick, FANCY THAT!) Many a time I sat on a 6-hour journey with some strangers stinking backpack pressed against my FACE. Also, one journey that I seem to have blocked from my memory occurred entirely with NO AIR CON. Oh god. The horror. Thank god for Diazepam. BUT, when we first boarded our Premier coach service, (Might I add, the cheapest of ALL the budget coach tours down the coast) we squealed like children with pig flu when we saw it. It was LOVELY. Always half empty, so we could stretch out on our long journeys, and with convenient flat screen tellies placed along the aisle, we even managed to catch some cracking films on our journeys down the coast. (Back to the Future and E.T! GREAT SCOTT!)Pretty soon after our first journey from Cairns, I actually found myself looking FORWARD to these trips. These were times when I could blatantly ignore every other person, watch the passing scenery in silence, and read my book or watch a film. I was a 100% anti-social passenger. And I fricking LOVED it.
As we approached our first stop along the coast in the early hours of the morning, I wriggled and jiggled in my seat with glee. What wonders would we find at Mission Beach? What glorious sights would we see? As it turns out, NOTHING. We saw nothing. Talk about boring. I actually can’t even call this place a town. It was a hostel. And a beach. Mission beach funnily enough. And lots and lots of fields of dead grass. Sure the weather was hot and there was a swimming pool, but other than that, Mission Beach was dullsville. Plus, I had a cold. This might have added to the suckiness I felt. One wonderful thing did come out of this place though. During our travels, as is inevitable, you meet people. Some are lovely, some are not, some are weird and some are hot (Wow I sound like Dr Seuss). Two lovely people we met in Malaysia, Lottie and Nick were in Australia the same time we were, but up until this point, we had not bumped into each other. Also, during our time on the Great Barrier Reef, we met a lovely chap named Charlie. What a nice guy we both said aloud after meeting him. The wonderful thing happened just after we arrived at our hostel, Scotties Backpackers at Mission Beach. Charlie was eating his breakfast, and looked up at us two coming through the door. 'Oh look, Chris and jo!' he exclaimed with glee in his bright little eyes. 'Hey, we know Chris and jo too!' exclaimed Nick and Lottie sitting opposite him. And voila, we had a group of friends at last. No longer would jo and myself have to pretend to talk to each other as though we have anything interesting to say anymore. We were pretty close to resorting to grunts and gurns for communicating with each other, (I kid, we got on fabulously) But after spending three weeks with just the both of us for company, it was lovely to once again have some other faces to talk with and plan the rest of our journey down the coast with. And even more wonderfully, the three Irish gals turned up later in the day too, pushing our friendship group to 'Posse' levels. We were now a posse. OH YEAH. Later that night, we all ventured out to the local bar. I say local, it’s about a 30-minute drive away. And I say Bar, I actually mean a room with some beers in. but it was not for the drink that we went there, oh no, it was for the free curry WITH a beer. Without wanting to turn this offer down, we went along with the rest of the hostel so we could stuff our faces and all catch up over a pint. Annoyingly, most of the other people in the hostel went along as it was a 'Bad Taste Party' and planned on getting utterly smashed whilst wearing some dead peoples clothes. Me with my sniffles, I wasn’t really in the mood, and we all decided we would rather just sit and have a laugh sharing our stories from over the last couple of weeks. This did not go down well with the other partygoers. Frequently throughout the night, douche bag after douche bag would come up to our table, and interrupt our laughing by screaming in our faces 'LIMBO CONTEST INSIDE FUCKERS, WHATS WRONG WITH YOU ALL? EH? WHATS WRONG? COME ON! GET UPANDFUCKINGDAAAAAAANCE' to which we all looked at him with blank eyes and carried on with our conversations. I know I might sound like a boring moron, but you know what its like, you haven’t seen some friends for a long time, you are really in the mood for pub like entertainment - sitting around, catching up, getting drunk and having a laugh. These people that we had followed out could not understand this concept. When we would try to explain this to them after the fourth attempt to get us to enter a wet t-shirt competition with a bucket of piss-ridden rain water, their faces would stop smiling after our fourth word, and begin to morph into a look of utter confusion and disgust. 'You mean...you don't want to enter the dance off because you're all, like, chatting and shit?' yes we would tell them. Yes, that’s right. We are not really in the right frame of mind to have a dance off to 'I Saw The Sign' by Ace of Base, amidst a bunch of imbeciles dressed like blind clowns and throttaging with each other whilst standing in a puddle of spit. Maybe another night, we would say. By the end of the night, when we had exhausted our chat and beer funds, we overheard the collective douche bags cunningly coming up with ways to get us on the dance floor. One plan, we overheard during their ridiculous shouty whispers, was to pour a bucket of water over our heads. Little did they know this would have had the opposite effect of what they desired. No we wouldn’t all get up and start dancing, covered in water, we would have gotten up and smashed chairs over their sweaty faces. So shortly after this discovery, we made a swift effort. Sadly though, this experience wasn’t the last. If we EVER considered spending a night NOT drinking in a public place down the east coast, most other backpackers and their staff would look at us as though we had small pox. 'What’s wrong with them?' we would hear them utter. So unless we were out drinking, we were made to feel as though we had brain damage. Luckily for us though, we were a POSSE, so we didn’t care! YEAH! (I promise that’s the last time I’ll use the word posse)
Next on our trip was a strange and wonderful island. As we boarded the ferry at a town called Townsville (Clever huh?), we sailed over foamy, blue waters towards a green, mountainous island. For a moment I stood in silence with the salt air rushing at my face and I begun to long for my favourite island. That’s right, the island from LOST. GOD I MISS THAT SHOW. Anyway, Magnetic Island was the name of our destination, still spookily LOST like with this idea of it exuding impressive magnetic fields, but our Lonely planet guide quickly dashed these wild fantasies of mine. Magnetic Island is so called as when Mr Captain Cooke discovered the place, he found it made his compass act strangely. Which it doesn’t (I tried mine, thanks Karen ^_^) Silly Captain Cooke. Regardless of the spooky name, Magnetic Island was very cool. Again, not a great lot to do, but this place was really nice. Really cute. Tall, green mountains surrounded little pockets of shops and restaurants, whilst long shiny beaches extended along the coast. Plus it was HOT. I found myself SWEATING. I was not PLEASED. However, the place and the people were so just damn cute, it made the place wonderful. Our hostel though, not so much. Staying at Arcadia Hotel, the rooms smelt of hot Stilton and the swimming pool was a cemetary for bugs, but we were there with our pals, so it wasn’t too bad, plus this hostel had an extra feature that only occurred at night. POSSUMS. Have you ever seen a possum? I always imagined them to be something like a hedgehog with no spikes that defecated over everything it touched, as they are a common pest in OZ. However, a possum is nothing of the sort. If they are a common pest, they can pester me anytime. OH YEAH. About the size of a cat, with short, shnuggly grey fur, long nose pink snouts, big whiskers and little human like hands (Admittedly slightly spooky), they are just so fricking cute. And sitting outside at night on Magnetic Island, you suddenly realised you were in POSSUM VILLE. These guys were EVERYWHERE. The sun would begin to set, the sky would turn orange, and then slowly, with a quiet snuffling, they would appear. Climbing down from tree's, poking their little faces round corners, and climbing out of bins. Yes, its true that when they mate they sound like babies getting murdered and they also snort like pigs, but come on...WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE?
One particular night, we decided to try our luck with an evening out drinking, true it was only possible by visiting another hostel where the Irish Gals were staying, but we went none the less. Upon our return at 2 in the morning (After waiting, might I add for an 2 HOURS for a taxi as the response we received upon calling for one was that they 'Had to get the driver out of bed') we came back to discover that in the dead of night, POSSUMS RULE. These guys were everywhere. I half expected to look over at the swimming pool and see them jumping off the board or swimming with a Daiquiri in their little hands. Due to drunken, over affection, I actually found myself sitting down and chatting with two in particular and feeding them pieces of my peanut butter and jam on toast, They loved me. I named them Edna and Harold. Magnetic Island was a revelation for me in that it was the first time since being in OZ, other than the wonders of the Barrier Reef and the giant killer turkeys and spiders of Cape Trib, that I noticed that living anywhere in OZ, you were susceptible to the incredible wildlife this country has. Other than possums we were surrounded by weird, long legged, fat squawky birds, incredible flocks of multi coloured parrots, squawking, screeching cockatoo's and the odd giant cockroach and killer crocodile. But one of the best animal displays I encountered during my stay on Magnetic Island was KANE TOAD RACING. Oh yeah. Kane toads are some big fat frogs that Ozzies introduced to get rid of rabbits. But that was a big boo boo, as now these fat suckers are everywhere. They look more or less like a normal toad, but a bit grumpier. We discovered on our second night at our hostel, that they were having a Kane Toad Race. Could be fun we thought. When we turned up, I actually think the ENTIRE POPULATION of Magnetic Island had come to watch this strange old sweaty man race, Kane toads. Strange sweaty old man went by the unfortunate name of Crazy Bob and his cooky Kane Toads. Standing in the car park of our hostel surrounded by a huge crowd, Crazy Bob, sweating, spitting and jabbering like a man with rabies, he would place five toads, each with a lovely little ribbon round their bellies, into a compartmentalised container. After taking bets from the heckling locals, he would collect the money, then with a feverish excitement and quite often, a strange little jig, he would lift the container then scream like a man possessed at the motionless green blobs on the floor directing them to leave the chalk circle in which they had been placed. The first time we witnessed this ritual; we all turned and stared open mouthed at each other. Here we were, surrounded by more or less the entire population of the island we were staying on, all screaming, screaming and pointing, at five toads sitting cross-eyed and motionless in a car park. If toads have brains, they were either frozen with terror to the spot, or gloating at the only moment in their lives for which people actually cared for their outcome. I felt sorry for the little blighters, I really did. I never thought I would ever see such a fuss over a frog. However, by the fourth round I found myself screaming and shouting with the rest of them, and at one point, at the height of my passion, I had the sudden urge to run out, pushing through the crowd, into the circle and stamp each toad into oblivion. Mob mentality is not good for my feeble mind. At the moment this raging thought crossed my mind, I decided to retire to my chair, and talk with some far nicer creatures - with my possums.
Next stop is our Whitsundays Trip, but i have now progressed from Tea to Red Wine and the keys on this wonderful computer are becoming blurred so i shall depart, and return, oh so soon with more tales. I'm gonna go lay on a couch. Yep, all to myself. OHYEAH.
ONWARDS with our Australian adventure! There's lots of wonderful tales to come. There really is. After our time in the just bloody lovely city (is it a city? I don’t think so. I'm going to call it a TOWN), the wonderful town of Cairns, we begun our journey southbound along the coast. At first, the idea of travelling by coach for the foreseeable future was not an appealing one. During our time in Asia we experienced many varieties of coach/bus related transport. Some were good, with nice drivers, lots of room and lots of air con. Others were bad. Rusty shit boxes driving way too close the edge, with drivers who seem to not understand the fundamental requirements of driving, and passengers of the non-human variety. (Dogs really do get car sick, FANCY THAT!) Many a time I sat on a 6-hour journey with some strangers stinking backpack pressed against my FACE. Also, one journey that I seem to have blocked from my memory occurred entirely with NO AIR CON. Oh god. The horror. Thank god for Diazepam. BUT, when we first boarded our Premier coach service, (Might I add, the cheapest of ALL the budget coach tours down the coast) we squealed like children with pig flu when we saw it. It was LOVELY. Always half empty, so we could stretch out on our long journeys, and with convenient flat screen tellies placed along the aisle, we even managed to catch some cracking films on our journeys down the coast. (Back to the Future and E.T! GREAT SCOTT!)Pretty soon after our first journey from Cairns, I actually found myself looking FORWARD to these trips. These were times when I could blatantly ignore every other person, watch the passing scenery in silence, and read my book or watch a film. I was a 100% anti-social passenger. And I fricking LOVED it.
As we approached our first stop along the coast in the early hours of the morning, I wriggled and jiggled in my seat with glee. What wonders would we find at Mission Beach? What glorious sights would we see? As it turns out, NOTHING. We saw nothing. Talk about boring. I actually can’t even call this place a town. It was a hostel. And a beach. Mission beach funnily enough. And lots and lots of fields of dead grass. Sure the weather was hot and there was a swimming pool, but other than that, Mission Beach was dullsville. Plus, I had a cold. This might have added to the suckiness I felt. One wonderful thing did come out of this place though. During our travels, as is inevitable, you meet people. Some are lovely, some are not, some are weird and some are hot (Wow I sound like Dr Seuss). Two lovely people we met in Malaysia, Lottie and Nick were in Australia the same time we were, but up until this point, we had not bumped into each other. Also, during our time on the Great Barrier Reef, we met a lovely chap named Charlie. What a nice guy we both said aloud after meeting him. The wonderful thing happened just after we arrived at our hostel, Scotties Backpackers at Mission Beach. Charlie was eating his breakfast, and looked up at us two coming through the door. 'Oh look, Chris and jo!' he exclaimed with glee in his bright little eyes. 'Hey, we know Chris and jo too!' exclaimed Nick and Lottie sitting opposite him. And voila, we had a group of friends at last. No longer would jo and myself have to pretend to talk to each other as though we have anything interesting to say anymore. We were pretty close to resorting to grunts and gurns for communicating with each other, (I kid, we got on fabulously) But after spending three weeks with just the both of us for company, it was lovely to once again have some other faces to talk with and plan the rest of our journey down the coast with. And even more wonderfully, the three Irish gals turned up later in the day too, pushing our friendship group to 'Posse' levels. We were now a posse. OH YEAH. Later that night, we all ventured out to the local bar. I say local, it’s about a 30-minute drive away. And I say Bar, I actually mean a room with some beers in. but it was not for the drink that we went there, oh no, it was for the free curry WITH a beer. Without wanting to turn this offer down, we went along with the rest of the hostel so we could stuff our faces and all catch up over a pint. Annoyingly, most of the other people in the hostel went along as it was a 'Bad Taste Party' and planned on getting utterly smashed whilst wearing some dead peoples clothes. Me with my sniffles, I wasn’t really in the mood, and we all decided we would rather just sit and have a laugh sharing our stories from over the last couple of weeks. This did not go down well with the other partygoers. Frequently throughout the night, douche bag after douche bag would come up to our table, and interrupt our laughing by screaming in our faces 'LIMBO CONTEST INSIDE FUCKERS, WHATS WRONG WITH YOU ALL? EH? WHATS WRONG? COME ON! GET UPANDFUCKINGDAAAAAAANCE' to which we all looked at him with blank eyes and carried on with our conversations. I know I might sound like a boring moron, but you know what its like, you haven’t seen some friends for a long time, you are really in the mood for pub like entertainment - sitting around, catching up, getting drunk and having a laugh. These people that we had followed out could not understand this concept. When we would try to explain this to them after the fourth attempt to get us to enter a wet t-shirt competition with a bucket of piss-ridden rain water, their faces would stop smiling after our fourth word, and begin to morph into a look of utter confusion and disgust. 'You mean...you don't want to enter the dance off because you're all, like, chatting and shit?' yes we would tell them. Yes, that’s right. We are not really in the right frame of mind to have a dance off to 'I Saw The Sign' by Ace of Base, amidst a bunch of imbeciles dressed like blind clowns and throttaging with each other whilst standing in a puddle of spit. Maybe another night, we would say. By the end of the night, when we had exhausted our chat and beer funds, we overheard the collective douche bags cunningly coming up with ways to get us on the dance floor. One plan, we overheard during their ridiculous shouty whispers, was to pour a bucket of water over our heads. Little did they know this would have had the opposite effect of what they desired. No we wouldn’t all get up and start dancing, covered in water, we would have gotten up and smashed chairs over their sweaty faces. So shortly after this discovery, we made a swift effort. Sadly though, this experience wasn’t the last. If we EVER considered spending a night NOT drinking in a public place down the east coast, most other backpackers and their staff would look at us as though we had small pox. 'What’s wrong with them?' we would hear them utter. So unless we were out drinking, we were made to feel as though we had brain damage. Luckily for us though, we were a POSSE, so we didn’t care! YEAH! (I promise that’s the last time I’ll use the word posse)
Next on our trip was a strange and wonderful island. As we boarded the ferry at a town called Townsville (Clever huh?), we sailed over foamy, blue waters towards a green, mountainous island. For a moment I stood in silence with the salt air rushing at my face and I begun to long for my favourite island. That’s right, the island from LOST. GOD I MISS THAT SHOW. Anyway, Magnetic Island was the name of our destination, still spookily LOST like with this idea of it exuding impressive magnetic fields, but our Lonely planet guide quickly dashed these wild fantasies of mine. Magnetic Island is so called as when Mr Captain Cooke discovered the place, he found it made his compass act strangely. Which it doesn’t (I tried mine, thanks Karen ^_^) Silly Captain Cooke. Regardless of the spooky name, Magnetic Island was very cool. Again, not a great lot to do, but this place was really nice. Really cute. Tall, green mountains surrounded little pockets of shops and restaurants, whilst long shiny beaches extended along the coast. Plus it was HOT. I found myself SWEATING. I was not PLEASED. However, the place and the people were so just damn cute, it made the place wonderful. Our hostel though, not so much. Staying at Arcadia Hotel, the rooms smelt of hot Stilton and the swimming pool was a cemetary for bugs, but we were there with our pals, so it wasn’t too bad, plus this hostel had an extra feature that only occurred at night. POSSUMS. Have you ever seen a possum? I always imagined them to be something like a hedgehog with no spikes that defecated over everything it touched, as they are a common pest in OZ. However, a possum is nothing of the sort. If they are a common pest, they can pester me anytime. OH YEAH. About the size of a cat, with short, shnuggly grey fur, long nose pink snouts, big whiskers and little human like hands (Admittedly slightly spooky), they are just so fricking cute. And sitting outside at night on Magnetic Island, you suddenly realised you were in POSSUM VILLE. These guys were EVERYWHERE. The sun would begin to set, the sky would turn orange, and then slowly, with a quiet snuffling, they would appear. Climbing down from tree's, poking their little faces round corners, and climbing out of bins. Yes, its true that when they mate they sound like babies getting murdered and they also snort like pigs, but come on...WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE?
One particular night, we decided to try our luck with an evening out drinking, true it was only possible by visiting another hostel where the Irish Gals were staying, but we went none the less. Upon our return at 2 in the morning (After waiting, might I add for an 2 HOURS for a taxi as the response we received upon calling for one was that they 'Had to get the driver out of bed') we came back to discover that in the dead of night, POSSUMS RULE. These guys were everywhere. I half expected to look over at the swimming pool and see them jumping off the board or swimming with a Daiquiri in their little hands. Due to drunken, over affection, I actually found myself sitting down and chatting with two in particular and feeding them pieces of my peanut butter and jam on toast, They loved me. I named them Edna and Harold. Magnetic Island was a revelation for me in that it was the first time since being in OZ, other than the wonders of the Barrier Reef and the giant killer turkeys and spiders of Cape Trib, that I noticed that living anywhere in OZ, you were susceptible to the incredible wildlife this country has. Other than possums we were surrounded by weird, long legged, fat squawky birds, incredible flocks of multi coloured parrots, squawking, screeching cockatoo's and the odd giant cockroach and killer crocodile. But one of the best animal displays I encountered during my stay on Magnetic Island was KANE TOAD RACING. Oh yeah. Kane toads are some big fat frogs that Ozzies introduced to get rid of rabbits. But that was a big boo boo, as now these fat suckers are everywhere. They look more or less like a normal toad, but a bit grumpier. We discovered on our second night at our hostel, that they were having a Kane Toad Race. Could be fun we thought. When we turned up, I actually think the ENTIRE POPULATION of Magnetic Island had come to watch this strange old sweaty man race, Kane toads. Strange sweaty old man went by the unfortunate name of Crazy Bob and his cooky Kane Toads. Standing in the car park of our hostel surrounded by a huge crowd, Crazy Bob, sweating, spitting and jabbering like a man with rabies, he would place five toads, each with a lovely little ribbon round their bellies, into a compartmentalised container. After taking bets from the heckling locals, he would collect the money, then with a feverish excitement and quite often, a strange little jig, he would lift the container then scream like a man possessed at the motionless green blobs on the floor directing them to leave the chalk circle in which they had been placed. The first time we witnessed this ritual; we all turned and stared open mouthed at each other. Here we were, surrounded by more or less the entire population of the island we were staying on, all screaming, screaming and pointing, at five toads sitting cross-eyed and motionless in a car park. If toads have brains, they were either frozen with terror to the spot, or gloating at the only moment in their lives for which people actually cared for their outcome. I felt sorry for the little blighters, I really did. I never thought I would ever see such a fuss over a frog. However, by the fourth round I found myself screaming and shouting with the rest of them, and at one point, at the height of my passion, I had the sudden urge to run out, pushing through the crowd, into the circle and stamp each toad into oblivion. Mob mentality is not good for my feeble mind. At the moment this raging thought crossed my mind, I decided to retire to my chair, and talk with some far nicer creatures - with my possums.
Next stop is our Whitsundays Trip, but i have now progressed from Tea to Red Wine and the keys on this wonderful computer are becoming blurred so i shall depart, and return, oh so soon with more tales. I'm gonna go lay on a couch. Yep, all to myself. OHYEAH.
Wednesday 6 May 2009
YOU SWINE!
Just thought i should post a little explanation about the lack of Photo's and videos and such lately. I thought i already did this in my previous post, but looking back i can't seem to find it. Could be something to do with the way im feeling right now. You see, in OZ, it is a criminal offence to use a USB to upload photo's, however, i am retreating to a sanctuary in Sydney in about 2 weeks time, where a beautiful girl, with long, fiery locks shall welcome us into her lap of luxury where hopefully, i shall be ready to uplaod photo's again. However, a warning. You see, this whole Swine Flu business that's going about, the strain over her ein OZ has reacted badly with some people, myself and Jo included. So, when you see the photo's, just, you know, pity us, but do so quietly. We are learning to deal with our ailments. All the best, and speak soon. I have attached some recent snapshots of us both below, to ease you into our new look. Stay safe, take ya Beechums.x
Chris and Jo.xx
Chris and Jo.xx
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