my little (mis)adventures

ch. 3 & 4: kruger and mozambique!

dianacchan — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 21:56:00 GMT

is damn freeeezing and raining out so am huddled here watching the royal wedding and have decided to be self-indulgent once again and blogggg a bit while watching. so am back in cape town now after best holiday ever with linda and angelee! we realized our trip could be segmented into 4 chapters so for now i'll recap chapters 3 n 4 while alls still fresh in my wee mind.

ch. 3 girls without a clue go on safari in kruger national park. so we were off! we knew we wanted to go on safari and we knew we were going to kruger but that was about the extent of it so everything was wicked cus we had no idea what to expect. we stayed in 2 rest camps, berg-en-dal and satara and we had the sweetest little bungalows. we'd spend our days driving around in our little shitty white hyundai hatchback, vehicle of choice for proper safari-goers you know. soundtrack for our game drives comprised mostly of the lion king soundtrack and britney spears' 'till the world ends'. pretty sure the people we'd pull up next to asking, 'heeeey so what do you guys seeee???' weren't too impressed.

2 nights we went on proper sunset/night game drives and the first one we went on was one of the most stressful things ever. me n angelee had two of the big search lights so we were supposed to be scanning for animals and oh god i've never strained and concentrated so much in my whole life (i also found nothing). but in the end, success! over the course of a few days we spotted the 'big 5' and so much more! we saw male, female and baby lions, buffalo, a million impala, buffalo, bushbabies, giraffes, elephants, vultures, lotsa birdies, other stufffff....and on the very last day after pretty much giving up home, we saw the elusive leapord!

ch.4 mozambique! we took a greyhound from nelspruit into maputo and was so damn hectic at the border. we were told we could get our visas at the border but then at the bus station they told us that's not so. luckily our bus would wait for us but we were told to fucking run like mad from border to border to get our visas cus it would take a bit of time. oh goddddd i need to like work out or something, i swear me n linda got about 1/3 of the way and just could not make it. it was a sad scene i tell you. aaaah but am so in love with mozambique!

maputo to me is like a cross between macau and delhi with bits of cambodia tossed in, all decrepit n super dirty but all sorts of awesome. we spent most of our time in tofo which was amazing. too bad it takes a harrowing 9 hr local bus ride where your ass goes numb, your knees are smushed up against the seat in front of you, you're crowded in with people and random shit like bags of onions and you only get to go pee once. but worth it! we stayed in a sweet lil' 'A-frame chalet' in bamboozi and spent our days mostly lying around on the beach or roaming the local market. we did go on an ocean safari which was something something. i thought we were going on some casual snorkelling outing but not at all. was more like we were on a little boat for almost 2 hours looking for whale sharks as i tried not to hurl everywhere cus i get dangerously sea sick. but we DID get to see a whale shark so that was cool. beforehand they had told us not to be on top of the whale shark, blah blah blah and so of course as soon as i jumped in the water, i was right on top of the animal!

otherwise, had some seriously great times in tofo, met great people, ate great food, drank local spirits, danced our little hearts out. we spent a solid ten hours one night at a place called dino's who even does shit like that. we had a super yummy home cooked meal made for us as angelee had been whinging on about her search for matapa which we didn't even know what it was really just that it was a veggie dish and finally we got it then plus the best chicken ever. plus how awesome to just roll into a dude's house and get fed a sweet meal? then it was back to maputo for the girls' last night in africa and conveniently enough it was angelee's birthday.

shit her birthday was funny! for one, we discovered local gin which costs less than a $1 for a bottle. then one of my top 3 favourite people on this continent, tinashe, took us to this highlarrrious club in the red light district. it turned out to be a full on sex show complete with a dude being led around on a leash fully naked and some explicit sex acts. we were the only foreign chicks there plus possibly the only non-sex trade workers, can't say for sure though, and we were front row hootin it up. then awesomely enough, this was followed by slow dancing on the stage. by the end of the night, we were just loving it, all these locals were on the stage/dance floor basically dancing with themselves in the mirrors. then lights on, we're still there, of course. so obsessed with mozambique. best holiday!

molo, i'm back!

dianacchan — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 15:49:00 GMT

so looks like i haven't written anything in over a month and i can only attribute it to pure lazines. plus i figure only my sister and like 2 other people actually read this blog but oh well, it is semi-self-gratifying anyway in a wholly-self-absorbed way. so am currently in george, along the garden route and up ridiculously early so why not write about myself.

not even sure what's been going on since the last post, there was a stick lodged in my foot at that point that we didn't know was there, was massively infected til christin decided to dig around in my foot with a safety pin n fished out the stick with tweezers. have a big creepy scar there now, it's really hot. from then til now...been in a pretty steady state of discomfort. cut off a bit of my toe on lion's head, had numerous heavy duty colds n now, just been mugged in guguletu and pretty sore from that. perhaps africa doesn't like me, but i still like africa!

realllllllly upset that my purse is gone and perhaps a bit unreasonable but mostly about all my sweeet photos from this past week! linda n angelee from back home are visiting and we'd been tearrrrring it up in cape town. also, i had been running a youth life skills workshop on friday afternoons at the Refugee Centre and i had all these great photos from the last workshop where we were giving out certificates and had a 'lil party. my absolute favourite kid and love of my life who is only 13 wrote a poem about human rights in 5 minutes and read it out in front of everyone it was amazing. linda has shed tears reliving the poem.

so we got mugged big time though details are sketchy it happened so fast! i think i got grabbed, hit in the face n shoved backwards cus i landed on my head on the road and linda had a gun to her. it's all very dramatic. we were with two intimidating, tall, super manly n ripped guys too (these details may or may not be accurate) so oh well but at the same time, what the fuck. am really really really bummed! i did gain however, a big bump on my head, soreness throughout the body and numerous scratches everywhere so at least i got something :P

so apparently this post is really about nothing. i'm sure that since my last one my life has been more than just a blur of vodka and cheeseburgers but can't really remember just now. there were lots of good times and some sad goodbyes. anyway, think it may be time to roam the streets of george in search of a nice massage. wish me luck!

let's tell time the african way

dianacchan — Tue, 1 Feb 2011 23:04:00 GMT

so i'm missing my first day of work and i am horribly horribly bored. perhaps its because my foot actually hurts even more now to the point that i cannot even stand and am completely confined to my flat, popping antibiotics and advil liqui-gels like it's nobody's business. perhaps my right leg muscles will become super-human strength from hopping around like a fucking gimp.

so i'm gonna take this time to share some learnings about telling TIME in south africa. this is what i have learned:

"just now" = anywhere from 5 min ago to like 7 hours from now

"now now" = soonish, more 'now' than "just now"

"later" = never

now i know that when my supervisor says she's coming back to me 'just now', i should just carry on without her or go hunt her down in 15 min time. and i feel that my foot will get better....later. i hope i don't lose a foot in africa, wouldn't that be a story to tell.

oh btwwww, for the 3 of you that aren't on facebook, check out my last posted album as i added some photos and also here are my photos from my fun day in gugz and kaiheyletsha:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=613053&id=614075396&l=8de05ade0f

aaanyyyyywayyyyys, i just wrote yesterday so i don't have much to report as i haven't been able to do anything. but i am to write a weekly 2 hr journal for my practicum liason about what i am doing at work and such sooo i thought if anyone wants to read about what i ACTUALLY do here and not just my bullshit ramblings, please let me know and i will email you my first couple entries. it's glorious stuff about UNHCR definitions, lies & deceit. bedtime reading, you know? so just let me know if you are interested! i will now continue to lie here in pain, stare out at the sunshine, and weep on the inside.

fun with horse races & townships

dianacchan — Tue, 1 Feb 2011 05:50:00 GMT

so the week was a blur of work and bars, bars and work and this past weekend was quite eventful. on saturday we got on our pretty lil' dresses n sunglasses and headed to the J&B horse races. it was touted as the most fashionable event of the year with the theme of 'larger than life' and overall it was very entertaining. there were male acrobats, there was a 'most elegant couple' contest with the girls on stage yammering on about how they've been planning their outfits for the past year. the double vodkas were flowing from noon onward and by the time i finally decided it was time for me to place some bets, the races were over.

yesterday was a day out in the townships, all my girlies went shark cage diving, so i went off to mzoli's. it was crazy packed with like a kajillion people there and it was great. people were getting down on top of a van, we had a cooler full of savanahs n beers, lots of peeing in the rank-as-india men's loo. then it was off to my friend solz's brother's bar in kaiheyletsha, which some say is the most DANGEROUS TOWNSHIPPPPPP (is not). took some night time photos of shacks while driving around, quality fun times. topped off with a trip to nando's and a whole chicken with stacks of portugese buns n butterrrrrrr YUM YUM.

now for my sad news: believe it or not, yesterday morning i was walking to the grocery store (stone cold sober, people!) and stepped on a branch or stick or something on the sidewalk and it snapped over and stabbed me in the fucking foot. didn't think anything of it, and now is fucking fat, puffy, infected and super painful. i dunno what i was thinking but i hobbled off to work today, barefoot through the cbd, getting on the train all that with no shoes. how nasty am i? pretty damn nasty. my supervisor took me to the doctor who's now put me on antibiotics and i hate antibiotics! BUT overall, its been a good week (though i don't even really remember anything about it) and weekend so hopefully i can walk again tomorrow and all will be well. til next time!

hungry mondays (and deep friend bread balls)

dianacchan — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 05:35:00 GMT

first off i wanna blow off some steam about today, one of my nightmare mondays. starts off with all the trains being a pain in the ass, stalling out all over the place. so i am 5 min past 9 trapped mere meters from my stop and our receptionist rings me going, "WHERE ARE YOU!? do not panic when you get here because there are a lot of people today". i get there and there are 2 massive queues leading out both sides of the door alongside the outside of the building, throngs of people in our waiting room and in our boardroom. oh MONDAYS! i had clients back to back from 9 to 4, so stressful that i am now breaking out and looking ultra attractive (plus right now im sweating in my friend polly's flat so i have a nice sheen on my face as well).

think will be quite used to not eating lunch (in addition to the breakfast that i never have) soon. was starving and was not til 2:30 that our lovely cleaning girlie gave me this big fat deep fried bread ball thing that she was cooking up in our kitchen. so hungry i burned my poor lil' fingers tearing into that sucker! i am starting to think that my eating style is quite aligned with the african ways as just as i was thinking that my bread ball would be great padded down with butter, my coworker pulls out the butter and starts slathering it all over his. yummmmm.

otherwise, my saturday was the biggest bust of all time as miserably hungover and had to miss my coworker's sister's boyfriend's cousin's braai out in gugulethu which i had desperately wanted to go to. (i felt inclined to include all that unnecessary detail because i really did desperately want to go and am still kicking myself for not being able to do so). did absolutely nothing cept want to die. double sadnesssss.

sunday was good though, as everyone hiked up table mountain, i obviously went the lazy route and went to the beach with my flatmate jenny (the vegetarian beauty queen from texas, not really a beauty queen but could be one) and got nice and roasted. then a bunch of us went out to kirstenbosch for one of the summer sunset concerts out in the botanical gardens sooo nice.

and so that's it! a bit of backward blogging n mostly whinging but now that i have it out of my system i am content. and still sweating.

random tales (mostly about meat)

dianacchan — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 07:40:00 GMT

cannot believe i've been here for so long already! on saturday morning (since when have i ever been not hungover and rolling around on the ground with a sausage mcmuffin in my hand on a saturday morning? since this past saturday morning) a bunch of us went to the old biscuit mill market which was quite cool, lots of little boutiquey shops and gourmet foods. then went for a stroll in bo kap which is where the freed slaves (i think, i am so bad at factual info) painted their houses in bright rainbow colours so is a beautiful area in the city bowl.

sunday afternoon was great, went to mzole's in gugulethu, one of the townships. i dunno how to describe it other than it is like a restaurant/various butchers & braais (essentially barbeques)/dance party with a dj. all you need to know is you can buy a beer or cider for like $1.50 and eat meat with your hands out of washing bowls. I wasn't gonna eat but it wasn't long before i started ripping off chunks of meat out of strangers' bowls and lemme tell you, the beef (at least i hope that's what it was) tasted amaaazzzinggggg. i also recognize that i cannot dance like a black chick which saddens me so maybe i should practice (add to list of things to practice as still cannot pronounce xhosa or any words in xhosa without people laughing. i was taught how to say good morning today and it did not go over well). a bunch of my coworkers also came out to meet up with me so overall was fun times. only downside is i didn't know what to do with myself in the evening after drinking all afternoon and couldn't stay there as not particularly safe to be out in the township after dark. so i cooked myself a big fat cheeseburger when i got home.

work has been good if not sometimes very stressful but that is not surprising. though i suppose i was not prepared for how much, how should i put it, misinformation would be given to me by some of the clients so that is something i am learning to deal with. sometimes it feels like detective duty really. am very tired everyday after work but am grateful that i am kept busy. and i think some people are curious about where the clients at the centre are generally from so thus far most of the refugees and asylum seekers i have met with are from Congo/DRC, Somalia, Burundi, Rwanda & Zimbabwe. many of my clients speak another language so i often need to have another client who is waiting to be my translator. i have been feeling inspired to learn french as I feel I should embrace Canadian stereotypes but more so as many Congolese speak french but i am certain this feeling will probably pass.

today during our home visits, we stopped in gugulethu at like this giant open air shack thing where women are swatting flies off various animal body parts like livers, gizzards, things i cannot recognize and some steaks. across the street they are cooking and selling 'smiley' aka SHEEP HEADS. sheep heads all over the damn place. anyway my coworkers picked out some livers and then the woman added slabs of fat that she yanked off literally a giant BLOCK of chunks of animal fat and took it over to get braaid. they were eating just gobs of liver n fat on sandwich bread and gave me so much flack for not eating any and really, maybe another time, but not when i do not have ready access to a toilet, yyyya know what i mean?! lots of 'aaah diana, this is AFRICA. foreigners never get to go to places like this but this is what africans really eat!' shame on me but that's just how it is. oh and that seems to be the universal word here among all the people: shame. i hear that word more than anything else. k i am going off on random tangents so the end for now. will let you know when i eat slabs of pure fat on bread cus that is a very real possibility.

first proper week at CT Refugee Centre doneeeee

dianacchan — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 01:16:00 GMT

so just home now, finished my first full week of work which has been very tiring but very great! mondays and tuesdays it's open to all walk ins so is quite busy and apparently it will get much much busier as it's only the beginning of the new year right now. i've been doing my own screenings of clients and sitting in on assessments which is really great as i really wanted more interactions with clients in this practicum. i work in the psycho-social department with 2 lovely social workers and there's a total of ten staff i think. everyone is great and i am realllllly liking it there!

i also go out on home visits like to the townships which is very cool as it seems that a lot of people feel that the townships are dangerous and you'll get robbed and shot 22x or something but i really do not think its like that and i feel very privileged to be welcomed into people's homes. if you've seen the photos of my flat here in the city u must realize that that is not how the majority of people live but rather most people live in the townships and housing ranges from the most basic shacks to houses. in one block in delft, it was literally rows and rows of what look like garden sheds made out of sheet metal on streets of sand so cape town is most definitely not just fancy flats and beaches. but i like going out on the home visits as i get to see all the different suburbs and areas which i would not really get to do otherwise i don't think. just now we went from driving along the coast where people can fish to next to what apparently is called like the bush of death or death bush or something which is where a teacher killed a bunch of kids and gang members now go to smoke up or something. see, such diversity on a trip out!

other than that let me think.... so turns out as a notorious child-disliker, i obsessively love babies. possibly only specifically refugee babies. like i am so in love that i want to rip my own heart out and give it to them to play with in the waiting room. not much more to be said on THAT. (oh em geeeeeee the babies are so cute. i even played with an actual walking-talking CHILD yesterday, i am quickly slipping to the other side ie. the kiddie loving side).

i also got my first home cooked south african meal at work the other day. aaaaand i didn't like it :S i forget what it's called but there were a lot of beans and something like maize involved and beans kind of repulse me ugggh! i feel so bad, i left it in the fridge for days and today i checked someone finally chucked it out. oh i am a bad person.

as a side note, i really also enjoyed flipping through an informational booklet at work produced by the UNHCR on HIV/AIDS. i dunno why but i am absolutely obsessed with this booklet. some key tid bits that have really stuck with me: the words "sex juices". one of the reasons why people have sex: "because they are lonely". and the suggestion that "if you are feeling sexy: go masturbate and have an orgasm". all so true, and so accessible for all readers i just am obsessed.

so that's about it on the work front! otherwise, have been not getting enough sleep due to mental winds that make me feel like my flat is gonna implode. because my flat faces the oncoming winds if it's bad out the windows, doors and walls literally shake and one night it was so deafeningly loud as well that at like 2 am i dragged my sorry half-asleep ass into my BATHTUB (i know, wtf) to try and sleep as there's no windows in there. surprise surprise, that did not work out. k til next time!

lazy sunday write up

dianacchan — Sun, 9 Jan 2011 21:19:00 GMT

I started my practicum this past Thursday and i am very excited to be there! The staff are all very nice and Mondays and Tuesdays are when clients queue up for screenings and stuff so should be quite busy then. And not a bother with the trains that seemingly everyone was freaking out about back home, i take the train to the southern suburb of wynberg and it’s not bad at all. So no more worrying, people! i bought a first class pass but honestly, i am not even sure if i’ve been riding in the first class or not as all the carriages look the same to me. Meh!

Is my first weekend here in Cape Town n I ventured out to long st on the Friday which is where everyone says to go but then got taken to dodgiest locals bar/club where am sure no tourist has ever ventured into so obviously was funnnnn! I dunno if it’s just at this place, but there’s some pretty entertaining fashion choices being made around here. For example, cut-off denim shorts with converse high tops and an empty backpack on a dude...why? i dunno.

Saturday finally took one of those double decker tourist buses for the first time as i had a free voucher and it was great! Though i’ve ventured around the city centre and waterfront on my own, it’s good to get a better grasp on where everything is. Plus it took us round to the other side of table mountain which is gorgeous beachy suburbs like camps bay so we hopped off there for a while. The water is freezing here, something to do with the wind blowing all the warm water out to sea so the cold water rises but the beaches are so nice must go there more often. And honestly have never seen people have so much FUN at the beach! Everyone is laughing and running around the waves like it’s the best thing ever, it’s quite great.

Otherwise, am just a tad hungover right now and the little brain seems a bit slow so not much more to say for now...is actually cloudy today so not sweating and just having a nice lie in in bed right now on a sunday pretty wonderful. already fried myself up a cheeseburger at 10 am. anyway, as my internet connection is complete shit here n i’ve finally got a connection right now figure i should write something. Soo random thoughts: there are a million kfcs here (yes i’ve already eaten there). Pedestrian street lights seem to serve no real purpose other than for decoration or something as we all cross on red but i’ve almost been run over when it’s on green. the supermarket i go to closes at 5 on a saturday and 2 on a sunday i found out yesterday at 5:05pm dammit. that's something a grocery shopping enthusiast/fanatic like myself will have to adjust to. Yeah ok, that’s it for now but for your viewing pleasure i have successfully uploaded some photos(yay!):

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=601904&id=614075396&l=53d2c13716

6 am mornings, glorious

dianacchan — Thu, 6 Jan 2011 15:38:00 GMT

yesterday was about 32 degrees and i am melting just a little bit here in cape town! went out n bought a fan for my room, thinking it would possibly be a life altering decision as perhaps then i can sleep past 6am when it starts getting haaaaawt. But here i am, 6am and up! Guess i’ll give it some more time. i start my practicum at the cape town refugee centre this morning so i've just been settling in and such. i know 2 things for sure already:

#1. i live across the street from a tiny little bar with barrels for tables and a jukebox so i will probably be there oh, like all the time. met a few lovely locals there so life is good. also, a vodka coke is like $3 (this is important information to have).

#2. i will be eating a lot of Simba brand chips (the packaging has a lion on it and it says ROAR, i mean c'mon!) and cheeseburgers from a fast food place (of course, it's me) called Steers. burgers there come with some type of 1000 island dressing and bbq sauce, evil genius. so looks like my december weight gain is here to stay.

otherwise, tuesday i took a very long sweaty stroll all over the CBD and walked all the way to the V&A waterfront. long street is packed with bars, restaurants n little shops so i can foresee myself being there a lot and the watefront has a massive mall and is crammed with tourists. got a nice sunburn on my shoulders during my little excursion and not sure if it's cus i ignored my sister saying i need to get SPF 30 sunscreen instead of 15 or if it's cause i was sweating bikram yoga-style all day so really, there was no sunscreen left on my body. probably a combo really.

so that's about it! my flatmate doesn't arrive til the 11th so for now i have the whole flat all to myselffffff. my building is lovely, right in the city centre and yesterday i went up to the rooftop where there's awesome views, a wee pool and a gym which i will never go into probably. what elseee... i find it interesting that i have basically like pay-as-you-go electricity so i've never been more conscious of turning off appliances n lights. will become hyper environmentalist. (ok this is a blatant lie. remember how i was saying i'm melting? well i am fortunate enough to have a flat that happens to have an air con machine in the living room (!!!) and while i've been reluctant to turn it on cus of the drain on my wallet, i mean on the environment, i have decided to give in for brief periods of time).

and on a final note, my goal for this week is to learn how to properly pronounce Xhosa. i was taught the other night at the bar that the 'Xh' part is like a tongue click to the side and i just can't seem to do it so i shall practice. First day of practicum in just under a few hours, wish me luck!

yo, i'm in south africa!

dianacchan — Tue, 4 Jan 2011 05:35:00 GMT

so i decided to blog a bit again while i'm here in south africa though my blogging could never be as epically awesome again as it was back in the day of no facebook and such with http://www.dianadoesasia.blogspot.com . (yes, i am self-promoting my old blog) but for the 2 people or so out there that may read this, i'll give it my best! so when the immigration officer at the airport hit on me, that shoulda been my first indication that men in cape town would be like the ones in italy. as in creepy n nutso. have decided to go buy some long ankle-grazing dresses asap. otherwise, i didn't know what to expect here as i did zero research and have zero knowledge about south africa but for some reason i still found it surprising to hear almost no english being spoken. i arrived this morning after a harrowing 27 hr journey (or something like including a nice extended stay in heathrow airport). i went grocery shopping twice (you know how i do), got lost a bit cus i decided to go for a stroll without a map, got some dude that followed me around's phone numba, watched a bit of a multilingual south african soap opera... and that's about it! will try to be more exciting soon!

Q: "is this organic?", A: "it's naturally irish"

dianacchan — Thu, 6 Aug 2009 20:06:00 GMT

some guy asked that to the shopgirl about a bar of soapp in one of the many souvenier joints in dingle and that was her answer, i just still think its funny.

so the dee & ed road trip continues: dingle was a good time, did a couple of loooong day drives. slea head, around the dingle peninsula was really good, saw like an ancient fort dating back to 500bc or something and some old beehive huts made out of stones that monks used to live in.

the ring of kerry was also good, we were on the road for like 9 hrs. valentia island was really nice and we ended in killarney which is like ireland on steroids or something. it had all the super irishness of small towns (ie. lots of souvenier shops selling anything that has to do with sheep, leprachauns, guiness and ginger haired dolls in green dresses, and chinese and indian restaurants and pubs pubs pubs) but as a city. well a city by ireland standards anyway. oh and i have to say, i am in love with paddy malone in dingle. this old man just singing his heart out and playing the guitar in onen of the pubs, he was sooo good. im gonna name my future cat after him. we went to see the cliffs of moher which were great. we had to climb over a wall and ignore the "extreme danger" signs to walk along the cliffs. we were the only ones in flip flops whereas EVERYONE else was in hiking boots. who are these people?! (prepared people, i gueeessss) we stayed in doolin which was a tiny little fishing village, spent most of our time in mcdermotts pub. did a day out to inis oirr, one of the aran islands and it was sooo good! the only drawback is you have to go in a smallish boat in the choppiest water EVER to get there (oh the seasickness, oh god). plus it was the ONLY fully sunny day i had in ireland, in 19 days, one day. but its so nice! its very small and had a nice sandy beach, and everywhere is criss crossed with old stone walls. we overheard one american say, "they must really like to build walls". i think that was the best part of all of ireland. and its irish speaking so everyone sends their skanky teens to the islands to learn irish. that part isnt the best but i just thought id mention it. ended our road trip in galway which was good. it was the horse races so it was mental, maybe too mental! and now im about to leave my friend claire;s in arbroath, scotland and go back to edinburgh!

cows, rain & knackers

dianacchan — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 07:06:00 GMT

had a great time on the horan family farm. had my first ever sunday roast dinner, mammy horan made roast chicken, bacon, stuffing, potatoes, carrots, brocolli, carrots...it was my first proper meal in i dont even know how long. defintiely the first time ive had vegetables in weeks.

ed met up with me in cashel and we went to see the rock of cashel. and just then it was SUNNY! it was really nice, castle ruins ontop of a hill, in the countryside. and it was sunny! irish miracle!

in the cashel visitor info centre i found the funniest thing: you can buy bags of IRISH DIRT. just a plastic bag of soil, for NINE EUROS. i'll admit, the packaging was flash, but seriously. oh and on it it says you can plant real irish lucky shamrocks (shamrock seeds not included). ooooh people will buy anything! (i shouldnt be allowed to talk, i bought a lanyard with leprachauns, sheep and cows on it)

back on the farm, i tried milking a cow. sort of. i put suctiony things on 2 udders on one cow. it counts i think. i like to think id be a good farmer, but i definitely didnt wanna rub cream onto the cows udders withmy bare hands, nuh uh.

so my main 2 big things in ireland are 1. cows and 2. pikeys/knackers. oh and ive seen knackers! the first time, i took a couple photos out the car window of their caravans in clonmel cus ed didnt wanna stop for fear of death by pikey. then at the tesco i saw heaps and heaps of fat pikeys! plus we had just missed a pikey brawl across the road. oh it was good.

on one of the days we went to kells priory which was really cool. all these ancient monastic ruins with sheep roaming around. then went to see kilkenny castle but i have to admit it was a bit disappointing. for example, in the tapestry room, there are no tapestries cus theyve all been stored for preservation or something. what the fuck. we also went down to waterford, but dont go there. its full of scummers. to round out our co. kilkenny experience, we went to piltown, mini's village to visit his mammy. she LOVED ed but she didnt know who i was for a good few minutes cus i introduced myself as diana. then a bit later she was like, 'are you dee!? i didnt know!' but she wants ed to live with her so thats good.

and now were on the ed and diana do ireland road trip! we been to cahir castle which is very good, there are some canon balls still embedded in the walls. there was also like this really old church thats all ruins with old tombstones all over the place all grown over with plants and weeds, it looked really cool. and we went to see a thatch roofed 'swiss cottage' which was cute. yay!

spent the last couple nights in ed's sister eithne's flat down in cork. on my birthday we went over to blarney and I KISSED THE BLARNEY STONE. i was never gonna do it but i did. its not what i thought, its at the top of a castle and you have to lie on your back and hold onto metal bars while some old guy's groping, ahem, holding you and you have to lean your head all the way back to kiss this rock. i hope i didnt contract any diseases. had a good night out and now were in dingle. its good cus ed has a mad 63 yr old lady friend margaret (shes totally mad, we drank with her and her daughter on friday, totally mad) and she's a b&b cottage here right next to the bay so here we are. living the dream!

"IN BRUGES"/in actual ireland, not just surrounded by irish people

dianacchan — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 20:03:00 GMT

so first of all, traveller's nightmare: i was robbed!

just while changing trains in antwerp, belgium, got my wallet lifted right outta my purse! professionals i suppose. it was absolutely horrendous, i cried and cried and tried to go to the bathroom and the attendant wouldnt even let me cus i didnt have the 40cents to go in. what a bitch.

however there was some really nice people who helped me out, this belgian guy actually bought me my train ticket onto bruges (while asking, where are your friends!? do you have weapons!? mace!? why are you alone!?) and these american girls on the train gave me 5 euro to bus onto my hostel.

luckily enough i have a credit card my mom doesnt use and after much trouble that i wont get into, i can now access money. yay!

ANYWAY! i went to bruges! my mom was like, "are you in bruges cus of that movie?" "if i grew up on a farm, and was retarded, bruges might impress me"...with lines like that from the film, dont you wanna go to bruges too!? apparently in the 1800s there was a book that made bruges out to be a total shithole and that drew in visitors. and now with this film calling bruges a shithole, there are again loads of tourists.

but bruges is lovely, its so...so..disneyland! seriously though, cobblestone streets, horse drawn carriages, gorgeous buildings, loads of tourists... it was great. of course, bruges is not like the movie bruges like for example the tower you need to queue up and there's wire mesh over the windows at the top so i guess what happened in the movie cant actually happen. and jesus' blood is put out for like an hour a day and you can donate to touch the glass case. oh but it was good.

and oh god the BELGIAN FRIES. oh the mayonnaise. oh the fries covered in mayonnaise. and so apparently the fries are fried in beef tallow and maybe even horse fat. i choose to ignore this.

then i was off to brussels where their city mascot is a little sculpture of a little boy pissing. and there you have it, what else can i say about brussels really.

and then off i was to dublin! cant say i did an awful lot there but i did manage to drag my ass to the kilmainham gaol where all the easter rising leaders were kept and executed. and that was the morning after 2nd ever pub crawl, i was quite impressed with myself. managed to see miss emma kenny whom i worked with in melbourne. what started as a nice lunch turned into 2 older irish gentlemen buying us bottle after bottle of wine starting at 3 pm till we could both not properly function. i ate a double cheeseburger, deep fried mozza sticks and garlic cheese fries and then was passed out in bed by 9pm on a friday night. it was good to see emma!

i also managed to go to trinity college and saw the book of kells and then...i went shopping. and now im here on ed's farm! but were off at the moment so to be continued...

"you want to see windmills? uhhh...."

dianacchan — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 01:01:00 GMT

oh i wanted to see windmills sooo bad. and no one seemed to want to tell me HOW.
one of the guys working at my deranged hostel told me i could take a ferry from behind the central train station (oh reaaaallly) and then take a couple local buses but hes not really sure. then the guy at the visitor info centre said it wasnt possible buuuuut i could take a tour for 35euro that would take me there. i said i didnt wanna take a tour and hes like maybe you could take a train to some town but it would be terribly uncomfortable and from there on, he doesnt know.

sooooo after much pain and suffering, I SAW WINDMILLS AND I WILL OPENLY AND GLADLY SHARE WITH YOU HOW.

just go to central station and lo and behold, you can just get a return ticket for 5euro to zaanse schans which is 20 min away by train and then when ur there there's free maps and a free ferry across the canal to like a freaking windmill village! so there you have it.

and it was so good, i was so excited! im fully aware of how lame i sound but i was super super happy to see real working dutch windmills! there were a bunch of them all lined up along a canal, in the countryside with COWS and sheep everywhere! and a cheese factory with free cheese samples! and a wooden clog shop! oh it was so cheesey (in both senses of the word) and sooo good. and it was actually sunnyish (because the weather here is absolute shit) so it was a great afternoon.

other than that, ive finally succeeded on going on one of the free walking tours that everyone keeps ragging on me for for not going on in the other cities. the museums here are really good even though there are generally massive queues for everything. and for some reason, everytime im queuing, its pissing rain. yay! but anyway ive liked all the museums i been to, anne frank's actual house (very depressing, surprise surprise), the van gogh and today the rijksmuseum which has a lot of rembrandt.

aaaaand what was EXTRA good about amsterdam is that i got to see michel, whom i knew from darwin and marc from back in the day in melbourne. actual yay! so good to see more friends whom i havent seen in over a year! and imagine that, hanging out with actual dutch people in the netherlands. crazy. michel introduced me to FEBO, deep fried EVERYTHING that you buy out of dispensers in the wall. apparently the dutch version of mcdonalds. while i dont like the log shaped deep fried meat things, i do like the deep fried cheese souffles. and it was very nice of marc and his girl to spend more time on the trains from eindhoven coming to see me than actually with me. just sad we didnt have more time, but i feel so special.

and im off to see a movie ALONE tonight! my cold has resurfaced and i generally feel rather shite so its a very good option for me. this is my new thing, i watched transformers the other night ALONE as well. it took a lot of courage but i did it. im a real independent woman now. like destinys child.

berlin... and christians in amsterdam's red light district

dianacchan — Thu, 9 Jul 2009 19:15:00 GMT

i LOVE germany!

dresden was really nice cept i came down with the mother of all head colds and could barely function. dresden was the most bombed city during WWII or something but theyve rebuilt it pretty damn good. due to my cold i was rather disoriented and am not really sure what i saw for most of my time there but i saw great stuff for sure. how about that. what i DO remember seeing is a CANADIAN RESTAURANT. ok i dont know why but im still getting such a kick out of it, i even took a brochure. words can not even describe so check out this link: www.ontario-dresden.de/ the wolf, oh the wolf!

then i was off to berlin where i ran into a couple people that ive met before in other countries, imagine that. i wasnt even going to go to berlin but then im glad i did cause it was really really good. theres so much to see and do but i did a big chunk of it, the wall, checkpoint charlie, that big gate thing, jewish museum... all sorts of shit! the big stretch of the wall at the east side gallery has some amazing art on it. there was one really good museum that had the whole gate to babylon or something in it (im probably totally wrong). also at the parliament building they built some massive dome on top that you can go up in and get a great panaromic view of the city so that was pretty cool.

also went on my very first pub crawl ever and i guess it was pretty good! not that i have anything to compare it to. the first bar was supposed to be set up like a beach or something, behind some big old buildings and there was some crazy old dude with a flame thrower. who knows. ended up in some club that had some rather unattractive cage dancers. not so sure whats going on with most of the bars in berlin, one night i went into one that was listed in the lonely planet (mostly cus it's right around the corner of my hostel)and it was supposed to be all the same decor as GDR times and they were playing some wierdo 60s music with beats, maybe? we were confused.

i even had time to go to the zoo and the aquarium (ok so i picked animals over museums and culture but whatever) sooo fun!

and now im in amsterdam, staying in the red light district. i know ive been hit on the head with a ping pong ball shot out of a thai girls cootch back in bangkok, but i still find the whole scene here kinda mental. just rows of girls standing at the window of their own little compartment, complete with bed and sink, trying to look hot in their bikinis or lingerie. and yes, lots of red lights. and fried food.

but you know whats the really fucked up shit? the CHRISTIAN hostel im staying in. i was like, oh its ok, how CHRISTIAN can it be! i like christians! well! there are numerous GOD LOVES YOU and JESUS signs, no drinking and smoking (ha!) and everyone that works there has to be christian. and then my worst nightmare: i met a crazy fanatical christian within 10 minutes of being there. there i was, eating some cheese, and this girl sits down. she works there. she loves jesus. starts reciting some bible verses, talked about how christianity saved her life from her 'dark years', talks about how hard it is to try and be as great as jesus cause jesus is perfect and did so much good shit. then i just sputtered, "ummm...im not christian" and she looked so wounded. she asked, "so where do u stand?" to which i replied, "like spiritually? uhhh nowhere. but my moms kinda catholic! and my grandma's buddhist..."

munich and on...heading back east (temporarily!)

dianacchan — Thu, 2 Jul 2009 02:58:00 GMT

so ive just arrived in dresden and i just bought the cheapest groceries (like 39 cents for a packet of spaghetti!) that its almost psychotic how excited i am over it. i am sooooo excited! and ive a kitchen in this hostel so i just cooked myself dinner which i also found verrrry exciting (im such a sad sad person).

anyway munich is definitely one of my favourite cities so far it was so good! one of the days i went out to dachau it was the first concentration camp and it was like the model for all the others so it was totally creepy and unsettling. its like youre in a room and itd say on the wall that that was the room where piles and piles of corpses were waiting to be cremated. sick!

the next day though i went out to fussen to the neuchwasstein (? im too lazy to google it) and...some other one that starts with a h...castles. the neuch one was built by crazy king ludwig or something and its the one that DISNEY based his castles on! the king was apparently quite mad and one of the rooms in the castle was actually built to be like a cave. crazy. only 16 rooms were completed before he died but definitely cool. only sucky part is being all hyper german organized or something you have to buy tickets for a certain time to go on a half hour tour of each castle sooooo this whole day trip took 10 hrs but i only spent a total of 1 hr in the 2 castles. oh well!

but munich itself is soooo nice just everything about it! the buildings are great especially the new town hall with the massive glockenspiel that has figurines dancing about when it chimes. theres a part where 2 knights joust and one gets knocked over and theres a collective GASP coming from all the tourists gathered around. i dont know if its THAT exciting now. and after that it play "i dont have a wooden heart" or whatever its called like the song by elvis which is probably interesting only to my mom and sister.

theres also a big english garden that for some reason has a chinese pagoda in it, with a big beer garden around it of course. and theres a river through it and part of it people SURF on. mental.

boo theres someone waiting to use the internet so i better start wrapping up. i was happy enough to meet up with michael who i met in croatia and is actually german. imagine, drinking in a beer hall with an actual german! and my obsession in munich: pretzels with butter and chives sandwiched in it. oh god. if i lived in germany, i would turn into a giant heffer.

the hiiills are aliiiive.../another city, another sausage

dianacchan — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 07:38:00 GMT

so even though linda tay already rang me for all the details, perhaps other people wanna know all about the SOUND OF MUSIC!!!

so i went on the sound of music tour and it was pretty fun i have to admit. we piled onto a big tour bus with a whole sound of music motif plastered all over it and went out around the salzburg area. saw stuff like the lake where the von trapp residence looked out over, the gazebo, out to a small town called mondsee where the church the wedding took place was in. it was totally good if youre geeky like me! they also took us out to a point overlooking one of the glacial lakes and it was all surrounded by green mountains and oooooh i love austria! the tour was 4 HOURS long but oh no, that wasnt enough sound of music for me.

they gave us a map showing where every single scene in salzburg was filmed so off i went, the abbey, the cemetary, the works. ooooh it was good! PLUS it was the first sunny day in austria in like a month so its like i dunno, god wanted me to have a good sound of music day.

now im in munich and its really good here, just wandered around the old town today. ive had my 3rd mystery sausage here, theyve all been different and i dont know what any of them have been but theyve all been yummy. i also went out to a proper bavarian beer hall and had my first beer in years, a whole half litre glass and i cant say i enjoyed it but it had to be done. well see if i can get a few more down while im here.

schnitzels, mozart...and h&m

dianacchan — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:28:00 GMT

so if it hadnt been raining absolute BUCKETS the last few days, vienna would have been even better! apparently its been highly uncharacteristicly bad weather and there were even flood warnings. either way, im so loving austria, eating schnitzels and mystery sausage.

i went to my first ever modern art gallery in viennas famous museum quartier and i gotta say, i totally do not get it. there was one canvas that was just grey. another with crayon scribbles like on brown wrapping paper. then i saw a lady admiring this one piece which was just a bunch of cardboard boxes piled up on each other and she was oooohing and aaaahing and all "just look at that formation, oh my god its amazing". so i stared long and hard at it and all i noticed that was one of the boxes was for fig newtons. oh well.

but the next day i went to the leopold museum and it was amaaaaaaaazing. not like i know anything about art but it was all austrian art from the early 1900s and it was so so sooo good. i also went to sigmund freuds old flat which had been turned into a museum which was interesting.

and one night i went to the opera. and yes, by myself. had to queue up to buy standing tickets and it was for mozarts the magic flute. apparently, quite famous. id never been to an opera before and i must say it was quite good. luckily there were little individual screens that showed translations or i wouldve been more lost than i already was. im still not sure what happened but there was a prince who loves a princess and needs to save her from an evil but turns out to not be evil cult, maybe? there were people dressed up like animals and a queen with a big sparkly crown, it was good. the only not good part was that it was THREE hours long which i hadnt anticipated and by the end of it my back was killing me and i was starving, but it was only 3 euro so what can i say.

other than that, i did a heap of shopping which id avoided til now but coudlnt help it, it was pissing rain! for some reason there are like 5 h&m stores all within walking distance of each other basically and i needed pants...and then today i bought 2 pairs of shoes....

anyway now im in salzburg and its absolutely gorgeous! walked all over and went up to this big fortress on a mountain which had the most stunning views, really. sound of music madness all over the place. and tomorrow im booked in for the sound of music tour (im sorry linda tay it had to be done!!!) so looking forward to that! im a total loser, i know.

buda! pest!

dianacchan — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 04:12:00 GMT

after split spent one night in zagreb, capital of croatia. it was ok nothing special really. i tried finding this lord of the rings themed bar but failed miserably. i was good and ready to leave croatia and here i am now in the pest of budapest'

met some great people at this hostel, love it here i actuallz have my own freestanding bed with a comforter its amaaaaaaazing, truly. met 2 great girls, alyssa of texas and beatriz of brazil and we had a girls night out on the town. went to this "ruins club" instant which was 3 floors filled with like shit furniture and weird shit that people would generallz chuck out. it was weeeeeeirrrdd.

then that night, we found "mitch buchanan". the only hot guy ive seen in all of europe so far and the hottest guy in the universe. hes a bartender and possible rock climber and magical, we spent hours upon hours just gawking at him. and it was obvious. the manager of the place told us his name is mitch buchanan and we totallz believed it, even though itd be a bit odd for a hungarian name...then this aussie dude at the hostel broke it to us that its a character from baywatch. oh well.

next day we went to the castle in buda and wandered about there and went to the terror house which was the best. it was where the communists and nazis had their headquarters and is now a really cool museum, very good.

had some dinner at a hungarian fast food joint, im not really sure what i ate. was it chicken, was it beef? we couldnt tell. had little bottles of wine in some plastic coca cola cups aka what the guy there called "wine glasses" this whole trip is just pure class. a bunch of us went to some club on maragaret island and got home maybe 6 am and then today: worst, most horrible, wanting to die epic hangover of all time. by 4 pm all id done was nap and eat 2 mcdonalds cheeseburgers.

but me and beatriz got our acts together and dragged our sorry asses to the largest thermal bathhouse in the city park. we didnt know what to expect and when we first got there it was totallz weird. the change rooms or whatever seemed like a mental institute. the baths themselves are kinda cool, its just loads of different baths with different temperatures of water. the best one was outside and since its actually quite grey and cold here, the hot water was nice. whats not so nice is that ive never seen more hairy backs, pot bellies and man boobs in my entire life. i swear, biggest collection of ugliness in one building ive ever seen. horrendous. course we didnt bring towels with us so afterwards, we dried ourselves...with hair dryers. and now were home, showered and about to order pizza delivery and watch some dvds. gooood times!

slooowly creeping along from naples to split

dianacchan — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:15:00 GMT

croatia has made me sooo lazyyyyyy.

backtracking, ended up having a pretty decent time in naples minus the harassment and groping. went on a day trip to capri with "i texas texas" scott which was full of posh people and posh things. highlight was our little venture into the magical blue grotto. it felt very disneyland, had to queue up to pay 10 euro to lie in a rowboat cause the entrance to the cave was soooo low. had a good view of our 'captain's ass as he got us through the entrance. inside its totally cool, something to do with light refraction or something so the water is all lit up bright blue. we hadnt seen a photo of the grotto so didnt know what to expect so was extra magical. best 10 euro spent for 2 minutes of fun ever!

5th night in naples, ended up in a piazza with a bunch of people from the hostel where there was us and like 70 possible mafia guys drinking and smoking joints while leaning up against their vespas quasi staring at us. the thrill of being out on the town in dangerous naples.

then it was 2 trains to bari which got there at 2 but no ferry til 10 pm so that was a bit shit. when i saw my overnight ferry i was kinda like, oommggareyoufuckingserious. it was absolutely tiny! like a mere fraction of the size of a bc ferry. but once on it it was quite alright i was pretty lucky to have a bunk and was absolutely infatuated with the fact that the cabin had carpet. i also got a shower which was very exciting. i dont know what that means when carpet and showering is super exciting.

got into dubrovnik by 7 am, then accompanied by noam, of vancouver who looks just like frew, and spent the next 2 days getting nice and burnt on the beach. at this point i must say for anyone going to croatia, beaches here are rocky so not exactly comfortable to sprawl out on for hours but the water is gorgeous. and prices arent low, its all about the same as italy which was a bit disappointing but what can you do. finally by the last day, made it to the old city which is very nice and walked around the top of the walls surrounding it. met dutchie valentijn in my hostel the day before i was leaving without knowing where i was leaving to. he said there was a ferry the next day to hvar, so off to hvar i went.

hvar's tiny but lovely and lounged around for a few nights there. our hostel was basically up on what i would consider a mountain so im thinking my legs are probably mighty and muscly by now. some good times in hvar, though it was pretty quiet i guess cause its not quite high season yet, one night of which i had zero sleep thanks to the boys in the hostel and an evening started off on wine and my smirnoff in a powerade bottle, classy classy.

now in split, we went to the diocletian's palace where the old city which is all like shops and restaurants and stuff is basically built in the palace grounds i guess. anyway me and valentijn didnt know that so we went in and saw that we needed tickets for the basement and asked the guy how we get tickets for the upstairs...he thought we were total retards.

will be off on a train to zagreb tomorrow morning and then will hopefully be off to budapest by the next day. these lovely quebecois girls i met in dubrovnik had a return train ticket to budapest they didnt need and gave it to me so hopefully i can use it and will soon be in hungary, land of....i dont know. hungarians.