Just turned twenty-five and realized I have so much to see. I Looked into an around the world ticket... hoping to leave in August 2007.
The land of Oz
AUSTRALIA | Sunday, 4 November 2007 | Views [214] | Comments [3]
I'm slacking aren't I? I've been here close to three weeks and haven't written a thing!
We flew into Sydney and I left my passport on the plane so couldn't pass customs... it's an Aysha thing to do, really it is. I ran back to the plane and it was right on my seat (#54 of course) where I left it. On the flight I sat next to a sweet girl, Mac. She was also In NZ for a month and was coming to Aus to work. She recognized the boys that I was rooming with from a party in Qtown.. small world. So we all chatted a bit when waiting for our luggage. A couple of people mentioned this great hostel called Wake Up.. so that's where we headed.. turns out she was going there too. The boys were off to see if a car they parked on the street a month ago was still there.
Wake Up! Has a great lounge and nice staff, but the kitchen was lousy and it was pricey. $30 a night AUS Dollar, which is now the same as the USD. Great! No not really. We cruised around the harbor that night and checked everything out and the next day did a tour of Hyde park and the beaches... Bondi and Coogee. It was such a beautiful day so nice to be back in hot hot weather. I was a bit scared to swim in the shark infested waters.. so I sort of just waded around.
The next day I decided to switch hostels and went to base.. it's a bit cheaper and I liked the location much better. We headed to Manly on the ferry. I had a job interview that a friend from LA hooked up. I get there and he tells me they don't have any work.. long term or short term.. great. We walked around and spent the day there.. it is so beautiful and peaceful. I could see myself spending more time there. That night after walking alllll day I just craved a nice cold beer. We placed a place called The Spanish Club and it had $2 happy hour beers. score. I bought a beer, pulled out my sketch book and took it easy. It was maybe 30 seconds before Jaymie started chatting w/a nearby solicitor who worked for the gov't (he was keen on mentioning this a few times). Turns out it was raffle night at the seedy Spanish club and it's there Thurs ritual to hang out there. A few more of their friends showed up and they asked us to join them. We didn't win the raffle, but they won three of the prizes. We started to get hungry and had dinner back at the hostel waiting for us. Rick, one of the lawyers, handed me a card w/his mobile and said to call if we didn't see them back at the Spanish club. When we headed back out and passed by they weren't there...we decided to check out the three monkeys bar.. not sure what it's called. Shayne, our youngin roomie, headed out with us. We waited for the band to come on and in the meantime ran into some financial investors... fun fun fun . We drank and danced with them for a bit and then headed home.
Friday we headed to the opera house w/our roomie Shayne again.. quite a nice guy for a kiwi haha jk. There was an aboriginal man playing dudjerido outside .. it's really a neat instrument. Since I didn't get a job I decided to sign up for WWOOF (willing workers on Organic Farms) with Jaymie. That night Rick invited us out to the Mandarin Club. Surprisingly it was another seedy bar... we didn't stay there too long.. we headed to soho or something like that for karaoke night. It was so much fun. We met quite a few more Aussie and it was good to get away from the backpacker bars for a bit. We stayed until closing and headed for some late night Chinese food. Micky took the liberty of ordering a lot of duck... I snacked on calimari. We ended up home very very late... maybe around 4... and Jaymie stayed out much later. Sunday we took it easy. J headed back to Manly for a crafts fair and I stayed around base catching up on reading and chilled with the roomies. I ended up running into a few people from New Zealand. That night we just went out to play pool w/Rick.. we ended up at a bar called The Scary Canary.. it was Islander night. I was so out of place and I think Rick felt like it too so we called it a night. The next day we headed to the aquarium. This was hard for me since I hate animals in captivity, but I did want to see the shark tunnel... I sucked it up and went in. Walking in there was a display of jellyfish and the harms and the remedies if stung. I know have a huge fear of jellyfish.. thanks Sydney aquarium. We saw a platypus.... it's such a bizarre animal. Cute penguins and seals. And the shark tunnel... so cool! After we roamed around and checked out the street performers. Ther was a contortionist.. I couldn't watch some parts of that. We headed back to the hostel and our roomies invited us out for dinner. We went to a place called Sruffy Murphy's for $5 meals. I had fish and chips of course. Jaymie went home after dinner... she was staying at a different hostel, but I stuck around to watch the roomies sing karaoke. There were to magnificent drag queens heading the show.. how could I not stay? I ended up meeting to Irish gals and we hung around until closing. At one point I drew super pig on a guy named Drew and this big man came up and asked me to draw one on him. I opted to draw a kitten and wrote meow. It was too funny. The girls went around drawing on everyone else in the pub... great night! I headed back to Base, but didn't have a room key... we knocked and called a couple of phones. Finally Drew said I could crash at his place. I slept on a lumpy bean bag that night. The next morning we headed back to base, had brekkie. The boys were taking a train to a park and I was heading to Central to meet J so we could go to the Blue Mountains for our first WWOOF. They helped me w/my stuff and off we were.....
More about WWOOFING to come.
Miss you!
Tags: Sightseeing
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