Wild ones. A whole herd of them.
So, no, we didn't actually ditch the GB. Really, would I have wanted to miss out on going somewhere I've wanted to visit since... sixth grade? Probably not. So yeah. Ayers Rock? Way awesome. The Anangu name for it is Uluru, so that's what I'll be calling it. Try to keep up. And the Olgas? Kata Tjuta.
Aren't those some exciting words? Yes, yes they are. They're even more exciting with an Aussie accent. Allow me to enlighten you. Uluru. Actually, it's pronounced exactly the way you would think. oo-loo-roo. With the primary stress on the last syllable, and the secondary on the first. Heh.
Anangu. I didn't really hear the NG pronounced very much. And because I'm in Oz, the word has invisible R's. ar-na-n(g)oo. Stress at the beginning. Ok, just one invisible R.
Hey guess what! Kata Tjuta has an invisible R, too! ka-ta choo-ter. Heheh. Wee bit o' stress on ka, mainly on choo. And it's kind of a combination of CH and J. Hard to explain, but play around with it, and I think you'll get what I mean.
So we had an incredibly awesome tour guide. No, Inarguably Awesome. His name was Ryan, and if you ever go to Uluru, I'll give you his last name so you can try to find him, but I'm not going to just put it out on the internet. That would be rude.
Anyhoo, while we were there we did a stargazing tour-thingy. It was great. I can now officially find south! :D We also did both sunrise and sunset tours. Quite amazing. It's one of those things that it's really hard to describe without getting caught in all sorts of clichés. So I won't. Not today, anyway. But I will say that everyone needs to put Uluru on their list of places to go. Everyone. No exceptions.
When we finally flew back to Cairns, Max and I were pretty excited. Almost on our own! We had gelato and ramen for dinner (haha), plus some very tasty ginger beer. Finally, finally, the GB went to bed. And you know what that means? Freedom! We had a 6am flight to Brisbane, which meant a 4:30 taxi, which meant getting up at 4... which meant why bother going to bet at all, right? Surely you see the logic. We had thoughts of going to the gay bar in search of a manly pink drink, but it was too far to walk. So instead we went to Gilligan's, a local hostel-resort-bar-club-thing. Loud music, lots of booze, crowded, good fun.
CRAZY OLD MAN. Hilarious. He was already completely drunk by the time we got there around 11. Between his very thick accent, the music, and his total inebriation, I didn't understand a single word he said for the entire evening. He would just shout things at us and then laugh like it was the funniest thing in the world. So we would just nod and laugh, too. And then he would try to make a serious face (failed every time 'cause he couldn't stop smiling) and hold his finger to his lips. Since I haven't got a clue what secret we were supposed to be keeping, I'm pretty sure it's safe. Excellent entertainment.
You know what else is excellent? Free booze. Especially in a country where everything is expensive. Stupid useless US dollar. Argh. I digress. Free poison. We met a few people and bonded with them over the insanity of the old man. This one girl kept telling me to have fun (which I was), and eventually started giving me drinks. She would drink about half of one, and then tell me to drink the rest while she went to get another. Hahaha. Needless to say, I was wasted by the end of the evening... slash I was still wasted when I went back to the hotel to hastily pack before the taxi arrived... and was still wasted in the taxi... and in the airport (that was fun)... and finally on the plane. It's definitely a good way to be able to sleep on an airplane, but the downside was that I slept through breakfast. Damn. Ah well.
Despite the massive partying that had ended only a few hours before, we managed to figure out the train AND navigate from the station to the hostel. Only to discover, of course, that we couldn't check in for another three hours. Figures. But no worries. Checked in eventually, spent most of the day in a daze, then slept for a very long time. Lovely.
To bring you up to the present probably won't be that exciting, so I'll just overview it. The hostel is nice enough. Bunk is the name, if ever you're in the area. Nothing too spectacular, but it's a hostel, so... and it's not a dump. This is by far the most important information I've learned over the last week or so: Want to make friends? Make cookies! It works so well, it's not even funny. Oh man, cookies sound good right now. Lucky for me, we have cookie dough waiting for us in the fridge back at Bunk. Heehee.
Well, with that thought, I doubt I'm going to squeeze any more information out of my brain. All I can think about is cookies. Mmmmm... so warm and tasty... and no eggs! No, seriously, we didn't have eggs, so we had to do without for this batch. It works just fine. Really. Just add a little milk instead. 3-5 tablespoons should do ya.
Now I'm just going to shout about a few things, and then we can all go to bed. Or eat cookies.
Shout: Go see Batman! I think I've been pretty clear on this. Go. See. It. Also, I've just seen The Bank Job, and it's brilliant. So go see that, too. But see Batman first.
I think I'm done shouting now. Time for sweet, sweet chocolate-chippy goodness.
Cheers.
29 July 2008
16 July 2008
Because it reminds me of home?
Tuesday and Wednesday were cold, grey, and rainy rainy rainy rainy rainy. It was great. Definitely the best days so far. And by cold I mean in the 70-degree range.
So, Tuesday. It turns out there's some pretty rabs shit in Oz. Have any of you seen Wendigo? Remember the Native American guy that gives the kid that figurine? Definitely creepy vibes, but he seems wise and knowledgeable, so you mostly want to believe him? Yeah, we basically met that guy. Except that he was French. Probably. At any rate, we were taking a train to the hidden village of Kuranda, and he was serving drinks. Max and I both got tea (the GB was asleep), but before I can ask for some milk and sugar, this guy starts going on about "when I was your age..." Yay. Incidentally, don't ask for cream here unless you want the whipped variety. But yeah. Apparently when this guy was our age, he decided to wander off into the Australian jungle in search of some magic beans or something. His accent was kind of hard to understand sometimes (think French-Australian. It's pretty weird), but basically what I gathered was that he spent ten years of his life eating random plants in hopes of becoming immortal. WTF? Seriously. Come to think of it though, he did look pretty ancient and craggly, so maybe he succeeded after all. Meh. Eventually he stops talking, tells us to enjoy our tea, and moves on to the next car.
Well, we enjoyed it, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't tea. For one thing, it didn't taste quite right. For another, I'm pretty sure tea doesn't fuck with the space-time continuum. And this drink definitely did. The French guy explained it to us later, but damn it was terrifying at first. I mean, what would you think if one minute you were on a train and the next you were in the middle of the rainforest? My thought was that the train crashed and I had blocked it out of my memory, but as Max pointed out, the probability that we both completely blocked out everything seems pretty slim. So there we were. We wandered around a bit, but we didn't want to go too far in case someone was looking for us. Plus, we didn't want to get lost... not that we really knew where we were anyway, but... you know. The upside of being lost in "Tropical North Queensland" is that mangoes grow in the area. The downside, naturally, is that it's winter and the mangoes aren't ripe. We had some minty cookies ("biscuits"--and damn were they tasty), but eight cookies is not enough food for the day, let alone the indefinite future. Rationing the cookies seemed pointless, so we ate them all and decided to see if we could figure out what the hell happened.
Lucky for us, this was exactly the right thing to do. We hash out everything we can remember, right up to the point where we finish our tea. And then... we wake up, I guess. We're certainly back on the train. The GB is still asleep, but our teacups have been cleared away. Max and I compare notes. Either we both had the same bizarre dream or we really were transported through space and time... there was probably something funny in the tea. And the French guy's stories about tramping through the rainforest must have permeated our brains. Or something...
Anyhoo, we get to Kuranda and it's pretty cool, I guess. We got a chance to pet some baby kangaroos. And we had tasty ice cream. And mango smoothies. And some amazing sandwiches. And it rained and we got nice and wet as we wandered around the village while the GB went on some sort of "jungle walk" thing. We took the Skyrail back to Cairns, which was way awesome. The foliage is so thick that it becomes quite difficult to see the ground from above.
Exciting Tuesday, yeah?
Wednesday was also exciting, but in a different way. What way, you ask? Dude, we went snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef! And no, Terra, no one died. It was cloudy and wet (well, duh, but it was wet from the sky), so the water wasn't as clear as it could have been, but it was still absolutely amazing.
Have I mentioned yet that I started writing this Thursday morning? Well, I did. So I apologize for the delay. More things keep happening.
You know what's awesome? Batman. If you haven't seen it yet (poor unfortunate souls), you need to. And make sure you pee before the movie starts because you really don't want to miss anything.
So that was Wednesday night. A very good night indeed. Made even better by the fact that Max and I were able to buy some booze legally, and we didn't even get carded. I love this country.
*Phew* Wednesday done. Now... Thursday. Um... yeah. Really nothing exciting. Did not much of anything during the day, and then had Greek food for dinner. Which was quite tasty. By far the best spanakopita I've ever had. And really yummy baklava. And fun times writing on the tablepaper. Math and limericks and quotes and things. Fun.
Friday morning was uneventful. Friday afternoon we went to the botanical gardens. They were pretty cool, but the slightly less tamed version across the street was better. But you know what the best part was? Eating starfruit fresh off the tree. Starfruit in America officially suck.
Friday night... oh, Friday night. We drank sake out of boxes (actually, the pine flavour from the boxes was nasty, but the idea was fun), and we were gifted one of the extra bottles. Heheheh. Dinner was good. I've decided to include the menu so some of you can be jealous (I'm sure some of you won't care).
So, dinner:
--Salad of avocado with hazlenut and chicory salad finished with raspberry balsamic. So good. I gave my avocado to Maximus.
--Seared fillet of reef fish on fresh herbs and rich cheese cream sauce with broccoli florettes. The fish and broccoli were overcooked, but the "herbs" and cream sauce were tastylicious. Especially the cream sauce.
--Strawberry and apple crumble slice and white chocolate anglaise. I love crumble slice. It's my favoritest thing ever. It was good, but really sweet.
--Tea and coffee and beer and wine and suchwhat.
In case anyone is wondering, the big beer here is XXXX Gold (4 ex gold-- don't even think about saying "quadruple").
So with free beer and wine, no one seemed to feel the need to limit their alcohol intake. Imagine a room full of scientists all getting tipsy together. It ends in really, really awkward dancing. When they started asking us to dance, we decided it was time to leave. We being Max and Andrea and I. Andrea being a German girl we met and who sat with us at dinner.
On the way back to the hotel, we're trying to figure out what the hell we're going to do with an entire bottle of sake. We certainly don't have time to drink it, and trying to put it in our luggage would probably end badly. We could give it to someone, but we don't know anyone. Blast. Such a waste of good rice wine. Oh well. Maybe we'll leave it in the hotel room for the housekeeping people to have.
THEN
we pass some guys by a van. Woo! Best night ever. Went to bed and never woke up again. Haha. No, we decided to offer the sake to them. And I'm really glad we did. One was Irish, one was English, one was a Kiwi, and they were happy to take our alcohol off our hands. They said we should share a drink with them before we left, so we took some swigs from the bottle (way better than out of pineboxes). And of course we started chatting about this and that. What are we doing in Australia? Do we like it so far? What's going on in America these days? Things like that. We share stories and suchwhat. It was muchly enjoyable. Probably ended up talking to them for half an hour or so, and it turns out that the three of them and a Swedish girl are traveling around the country in a van, getting work wherever they can find it. Dude! Sweetness. And isn't that basically my goal? Yes, yes it is. In fact, I think it is more my goal than the goal I had before. Yes, that sentence makes sense. So, long story short (or short story long, at this point), Max and I have decided to join them in their adventures. The guys get off work in about an hour and then we'll set out, probably south along the coast. Woo! It's about time the real adventuring started.
I can't guarantee what the internet will look like from here on out, but I'll try my best to find some and keep y'all updated. Oh, and I've yet to find batteries here that work in my camera, so pictures (though they are forthcoming, I swear) may take longer than expected.
So, Tuesday. It turns out there's some pretty rabs shit in Oz. Have any of you seen Wendigo? Remember the Native American guy that gives the kid that figurine? Definitely creepy vibes, but he seems wise and knowledgeable, so you mostly want to believe him? Yeah, we basically met that guy. Except that he was French. Probably. At any rate, we were taking a train to the hidden village of Kuranda, and he was serving drinks. Max and I both got tea (the GB was asleep), but before I can ask for some milk and sugar, this guy starts going on about "when I was your age..." Yay. Incidentally, don't ask for cream here unless you want the whipped variety. But yeah. Apparently when this guy was our age, he decided to wander off into the Australian jungle in search of some magic beans or something. His accent was kind of hard to understand sometimes (think French-Australian. It's pretty weird), but basically what I gathered was that he spent ten years of his life eating random plants in hopes of becoming immortal. WTF? Seriously. Come to think of it though, he did look pretty ancient and craggly, so maybe he succeeded after all. Meh. Eventually he stops talking, tells us to enjoy our tea, and moves on to the next car.
Well, we enjoyed it, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't tea. For one thing, it didn't taste quite right. For another, I'm pretty sure tea doesn't fuck with the space-time continuum. And this drink definitely did. The French guy explained it to us later, but damn it was terrifying at first. I mean, what would you think if one minute you were on a train and the next you were in the middle of the rainforest? My thought was that the train crashed and I had blocked it out of my memory, but as Max pointed out, the probability that we both completely blocked out everything seems pretty slim. So there we were. We wandered around a bit, but we didn't want to go too far in case someone was looking for us. Plus, we didn't want to get lost... not that we really knew where we were anyway, but... you know. The upside of being lost in "Tropical North Queensland" is that mangoes grow in the area. The downside, naturally, is that it's winter and the mangoes aren't ripe. We had some minty cookies ("biscuits"--and damn were they tasty), but eight cookies is not enough food for the day, let alone the indefinite future. Rationing the cookies seemed pointless, so we ate them all and decided to see if we could figure out what the hell happened.
Lucky for us, this was exactly the right thing to do. We hash out everything we can remember, right up to the point where we finish our tea. And then... we wake up, I guess. We're certainly back on the train. The GB is still asleep, but our teacups have been cleared away. Max and I compare notes. Either we both had the same bizarre dream or we really were transported through space and time... there was probably something funny in the tea. And the French guy's stories about tramping through the rainforest must have permeated our brains. Or something...
Anyhoo, we get to Kuranda and it's pretty cool, I guess. We got a chance to pet some baby kangaroos. And we had tasty ice cream. And mango smoothies. And some amazing sandwiches. And it rained and we got nice and wet as we wandered around the village while the GB went on some sort of "jungle walk" thing. We took the Skyrail back to Cairns, which was way awesome. The foliage is so thick that it becomes quite difficult to see the ground from above.
Exciting Tuesday, yeah?
Wednesday was also exciting, but in a different way. What way, you ask? Dude, we went snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef! And no, Terra, no one died. It was cloudy and wet (well, duh, but it was wet from the sky), so the water wasn't as clear as it could have been, but it was still absolutely amazing.
Have I mentioned yet that I started writing this Thursday morning? Well, I did. So I apologize for the delay. More things keep happening.
You know what's awesome? Batman. If you haven't seen it yet (poor unfortunate souls), you need to. And make sure you pee before the movie starts because you really don't want to miss anything.
So that was Wednesday night. A very good night indeed. Made even better by the fact that Max and I were able to buy some booze legally, and we didn't even get carded. I love this country.
*Phew* Wednesday done. Now... Thursday. Um... yeah. Really nothing exciting. Did not much of anything during the day, and then had Greek food for dinner. Which was quite tasty. By far the best spanakopita I've ever had. And really yummy baklava. And fun times writing on the tablepaper. Math and limericks and quotes and things. Fun.
Friday morning was uneventful. Friday afternoon we went to the botanical gardens. They were pretty cool, but the slightly less tamed version across the street was better. But you know what the best part was? Eating starfruit fresh off the tree. Starfruit in America officially suck.
Friday night... oh, Friday night. We drank sake out of boxes (actually, the pine flavour from the boxes was nasty, but the idea was fun), and we were gifted one of the extra bottles. Heheheh. Dinner was good. I've decided to include the menu so some of you can be jealous (I'm sure some of you won't care).
So, dinner:
--Salad of avocado with hazlenut and chicory salad finished with raspberry balsamic. So good. I gave my avocado to Maximus.
--Seared fillet of reef fish on fresh herbs and rich cheese cream sauce with broccoli florettes. The fish and broccoli were overcooked, but the "herbs" and cream sauce were tastylicious. Especially the cream sauce.
--Strawberry and apple crumble slice and white chocolate anglaise. I love crumble slice. It's my favoritest thing ever. It was good, but really sweet.
--Tea and coffee and beer and wine and suchwhat.
In case anyone is wondering, the big beer here is XXXX Gold (4 ex gold-- don't even think about saying "quadruple").
So with free beer and wine, no one seemed to feel the need to limit their alcohol intake. Imagine a room full of scientists all getting tipsy together. It ends in really, really awkward dancing. When they started asking us to dance, we decided it was time to leave. We being Max and Andrea and I. Andrea being a German girl we met and who sat with us at dinner.
On the way back to the hotel, we're trying to figure out what the hell we're going to do with an entire bottle of sake. We certainly don't have time to drink it, and trying to put it in our luggage would probably end badly. We could give it to someone, but we don't know anyone. Blast. Such a waste of good rice wine. Oh well. Maybe we'll leave it in the hotel room for the housekeeping people to have.
THEN
we pass some guys by a van. Woo! Best night ever. Went to bed and never woke up again. Haha. No, we decided to offer the sake to them. And I'm really glad we did. One was Irish, one was English, one was a Kiwi, and they were happy to take our alcohol off our hands. They said we should share a drink with them before we left, so we took some swigs from the bottle (way better than out of pineboxes). And of course we started chatting about this and that. What are we doing in Australia? Do we like it so far? What's going on in America these days? Things like that. We share stories and suchwhat. It was muchly enjoyable. Probably ended up talking to them for half an hour or so, and it turns out that the three of them and a Swedish girl are traveling around the country in a van, getting work wherever they can find it. Dude! Sweetness. And isn't that basically my goal? Yes, yes it is. In fact, I think it is more my goal than the goal I had before. Yes, that sentence makes sense. So, long story short (or short story long, at this point), Max and I have decided to join them in their adventures. The guys get off work in about an hour and then we'll set out, probably south along the coast. Woo! It's about time the real adventuring started.
I can't guarantee what the internet will look like from here on out, but I'll try my best to find some and keep y'all updated. Oh, and I've yet to find batteries here that work in my camera, so pictures (though they are forthcoming, I swear) may take longer than expected.
14 July 2008
No postcards for you...
Yeah, so at $1.30 apiece (US$1.26), I think postcards are out of the picture. And since I've started talking prices, I might as well continue to do so. It certainly makes for some interesting comparisons. AUD/USD
Gas (or "petrol," as it's called here)
$1.70/litre ~ $6.23/gal
Guess who is super glad she doesn't have to do any driving while she's here? Huzzah for skyrocketing fuel prices, right? It costs about as much to fly from Cairns to Brisbane as to take a bus. Which Max and I might be doing, but more about that later.
Movie Ticket
Matinee: $14/$13.55
Evening: $14.80/$14.32
This one annoys me more since I do plan on seeing movies. In fact, we saw one this afternoon and will be seeing another on Wednesday. But more about that later.
Booze
Haven't got a freaking clue. We haven't managed to purchase any yet, mostly because of the threat Grandma gave us: "Anyone who goes out and gets drunk is paying for their own food for the rest of the trip." Awesome. However, the brother and I may have a few tricks up our sleeves. But more... well, you know.
Coffee
$4.50/$4.35
That's an average price. I've seen it both cheaper and more expensive, and of course it depends to some extent on what you get.
The Zoo
$31/$29.99
Yeah! We went to the zoo. That's a per person price, by the way.
I'm pretty sure there were more prices I wanted to put up, but I can't think of them right now. Plus, I want to get on to the stories. I'll put up more prices as I think of them (if any). So... Stories!
Going to Brizzy (Brisbane):
I don't love Cairns. Actually, though I'm fine putting up with it for now, I will definitely be trying to find somewhere else to live for the rest of the year. It's waaaaay to touristy. It was billed in my travel guide as a tourist city, but I didn't realize quite to what extent. We've read up a bit on the scene in Brizzy, and it sounds considerably more pleasant. The question of course is whether it is worth it to shell out the extra money for transportation. I asked at the hotel's front desk about hitchiking. The woman didn't say that we shouldn't do it, but her facial expression was not reassuring. We'll see. Whatever we do, it'll have to be decided by the end of the week.
Seeing movies/boozing:
We saw Hancock today. It was entertaining. Not life changing. Probably won't see it again (or at least won't pay money to see it again). Actually... I really don't feel like it was anything special at all. But it did provide some laughs and something to do for an afternoon, so it served its purpose in my book. Much more important, however, is... Batman! Max and I have tickets for a 9:20pm show on Wednesday. Which is... between 4 and 7 am Wednesday for all you US types. So ha! We have hopes of maybe getting slightly tipsy before the show. It will require a bit of subterfuge, but hopefully nothing too extravagant. The issue is how exactly to go about it. A bottle of something would be more than we want to spend and more than we need to drink. A six pack of some sort of girly drinks would probably be best, but then where would we drink them? Bringing them back to the hotel would most likely cause some friction with the GB, and we can't just walk around drinking them on the street. So going to a bar/club seems like the logical method, though that would be more expensive. So... we'll see. Maybe we should just go to the drive-through liquor store. Wait... did you read that correctly? Go back and check just to make sure. Are we clear on this concept? Drive-through liquor store. People in cars driving up to an attendant and ordering booze. What? Well whatever. It's kickass.
...The GB, for anyone who is wondering, is Grandma Betty.
Boys:
They do exist here! Woo! On the whole it seems to be a pretty normal mix as far as looks go. The most attractive one I've seen so far was in the SeaTac airport. He travelled with us as far as Auckland, but went on to Sydney instead of Cairns. Poo. I've seen a few nice ones working in restaurants, which leads me to believe that I may want to look into that line of work... heheh. I even left my email for one, though I doubt he ever saw it. That's ok. It was fun. I'm hoping there will be a chance to meet more people (both male and female) once Max and I are on our own.
Pictures:
Yes, there will be some pictures soon. Possibly tomorrow, but no guarantees.
And now, sadly, this post must come to a close.
Get off the internet and go outside.
Cheers.
Gas (or "petrol," as it's called here)
$1.70/litre ~ $6.23/gal
Guess who is super glad she doesn't have to do any driving while she's here? Huzzah for skyrocketing fuel prices, right? It costs about as much to fly from Cairns to Brisbane as to take a bus. Which Max and I might be doing, but more about that later.
Movie Ticket
Matinee: $14/$13.55
Evening: $14.80/$14.32
This one annoys me more since I do plan on seeing movies. In fact, we saw one this afternoon and will be seeing another on Wednesday. But more about that later.
Booze
Haven't got a freaking clue. We haven't managed to purchase any yet, mostly because of the threat Grandma gave us: "Anyone who goes out and gets drunk is paying for their own food for the rest of the trip." Awesome. However, the brother and I may have a few tricks up our sleeves. But more... well, you know.
Coffee
$4.50/$4.35
That's an average price. I've seen it both cheaper and more expensive, and of course it depends to some extent on what you get.
The Zoo
$31/$29.99
Yeah! We went to the zoo. That's a per person price, by the way.
I'm pretty sure there were more prices I wanted to put up, but I can't think of them right now. Plus, I want to get on to the stories. I'll put up more prices as I think of them (if any). So... Stories!
Going to Brizzy (Brisbane):
I don't love Cairns. Actually, though I'm fine putting up with it for now, I will definitely be trying to find somewhere else to live for the rest of the year. It's waaaaay to touristy. It was billed in my travel guide as a tourist city, but I didn't realize quite to what extent. We've read up a bit on the scene in Brizzy, and it sounds considerably more pleasant. The question of course is whether it is worth it to shell out the extra money for transportation. I asked at the hotel's front desk about hitchiking. The woman didn't say that we shouldn't do it, but her facial expression was not reassuring. We'll see. Whatever we do, it'll have to be decided by the end of the week.
Seeing movies/boozing:
We saw Hancock today. It was entertaining. Not life changing. Probably won't see it again (or at least won't pay money to see it again). Actually... I really don't feel like it was anything special at all. But it did provide some laughs and something to do for an afternoon, so it served its purpose in my book. Much more important, however, is... Batman! Max and I have tickets for a 9:20pm show on Wednesday. Which is... between 4 and 7 am Wednesday for all you US types. So ha! We have hopes of maybe getting slightly tipsy before the show. It will require a bit of subterfuge, but hopefully nothing too extravagant. The issue is how exactly to go about it. A bottle of something would be more than we want to spend and more than we need to drink. A six pack of some sort of girly drinks would probably be best, but then where would we drink them? Bringing them back to the hotel would most likely cause some friction with the GB, and we can't just walk around drinking them on the street. So going to a bar/club seems like the logical method, though that would be more expensive. So... we'll see. Maybe we should just go to the drive-through liquor store. Wait... did you read that correctly? Go back and check just to make sure. Are we clear on this concept? Drive-through liquor store. People in cars driving up to an attendant and ordering booze. What? Well whatever. It's kickass.
...The GB, for anyone who is wondering, is Grandma Betty.
Boys:
They do exist here! Woo! On the whole it seems to be a pretty normal mix as far as looks go. The most attractive one I've seen so far was in the SeaTac airport. He travelled with us as far as Auckland, but went on to Sydney instead of Cairns. Poo. I've seen a few nice ones working in restaurants, which leads me to believe that I may want to look into that line of work... heheh. I even left my email for one, though I doubt he ever saw it. That's ok. It was fun. I'm hoping there will be a chance to meet more people (both male and female) once Max and I are on our own.
Pictures:
Yes, there will be some pictures soon. Possibly tomorrow, but no guarantees.
And now, sadly, this post must come to a close.
Get off the internet and go outside.
Cheers.
12 July 2008
Hey guess what... I'm not dead
I'm in Australia. Woo! And the internet is finally working. Double woo! I think this is mostly going to be travel-bloggy stuff until I start living a real life. Um... woo?
Since I know everyone is wondering, I will get this out of the way right now: toilets don't spin the other way when you flush them. In fact, they don't spin at all. Every toilet I've used so far shoots the water straight down. However, I do not yet have a decent sample size, so if I gain any new information, I'll try to get the word out as soon as possible.
I have another myth to bust. Kangaroo does not taste like chicken. It tastes like cow. Or steak, to be more specific. Really good steak.
Some things you have heard are true, of course. Australians do, in fact, have Australian accents.
I don't know what else you might have heard, so if you have questions you can ask them instead of me trying to guess what they are.
I could really get used to living in the tropics. "Winter" in Cairns means maybe a low of 60 at night. Right now it's 70 ish with a nice breeze. At six o'clock. Of course, it's also getting dark, but since Cairns seems to be a nightlife city, I'm not too worried.
Cairns, for those who don't know, is generally pronounced CANS, though I've also heard KEENS and CANES a few times. As long as you drop the R, you're probably good. Which grandma hasn't quite managed to figure out yet.
I'm done now. Abrupt yes, but... I will blame jetlag.
Cheers
Since I know everyone is wondering, I will get this out of the way right now: toilets don't spin the other way when you flush them. In fact, they don't spin at all. Every toilet I've used so far shoots the water straight down. However, I do not yet have a decent sample size, so if I gain any new information, I'll try to get the word out as soon as possible.
I have another myth to bust. Kangaroo does not taste like chicken. It tastes like cow. Or steak, to be more specific. Really good steak.
Some things you have heard are true, of course. Australians do, in fact, have Australian accents.
I don't know what else you might have heard, so if you have questions you can ask them instead of me trying to guess what they are.
I could really get used to living in the tropics. "Winter" in Cairns means maybe a low of 60 at night. Right now it's 70 ish with a nice breeze. At six o'clock. Of course, it's also getting dark, but since Cairns seems to be a nightlife city, I'm not too worried.
Cairns, for those who don't know, is generally pronounced CANS, though I've also heard KEENS and CANES a few times. As long as you drop the R, you're probably good. Which grandma hasn't quite managed to figure out yet.
I'm done now. Abrupt yes, but... I will blame jetlag.
Cheers
09 July 2008
And so it begins
Welcome to the future, me hearties. As I understand it, the world will be ending in four years, so let's live it up while we can, yeah? Awesometimes.
...Oh, and I'm going to Australia in 15 hours and 10 minutes. Bam.
...Oh, and I'm going to Australia in 15 hours and 10 minutes. Bam.
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