melbourne

arrived in melbourne; ended up in a hostel on flinders lane which is right in the heart of the city, a better location than the YHA I'd been planning to stay in near the Queen Victoria market. Took Korean friend for indian - bizarrely (at least to me) she's never eaten lamb.

it always make me laugh

it always makes me laugh when reading carrier's small print about what is not allowed to be brought on board. Virgin Blue advises that I may not take my lawnmower as cabin baggage. Not as good, though, as the Catalina Island ferry in California which would not let me take a human corpse with me to or from the island.

snorkel

back from celebrating Thanksgiving by snorkelling over the great barrier reefs, off the coast of Cairns. also did an intro scuba dive which was fun except my sinuses are very angry now. sharks and turtles! I got a shitty disposable camera. There are three pics left; once I have taken them (perhaps I'll have to go diving in the bathtub?), I can throw the camera away. Nice boat with a little bar, über-airconditioned rooms and pretty good food. Interesting people to meet on the boat, slightly different from the drunk backpacker party crowd that I cannot seem to get away from easily - two japanese speaking whitegirls (one spoke cantonese and had lived in Hong Kong for childhood) and one who couldn't read the korean on her t-shirt, plus some german girls who spoke good english apart from the accidental misidiom "you're pulling my legs off" when we were teasing her about something. Now I'm back on land the world seems to rock too and fro'.

Tomorrow fly to Melbourne.

ginger beer

there is ginger beer in this country!

Cairns

I'm in Cairns in northern Queensland, and have been for a few days. Laptop access here for $4 for 1h in shop that I just found. Its humid. The aircon in my room does not seem to run, but I never get round to asking them to fix. Hostel is cheap, though - AUD18 for a room in a 6 bed dorm that at present has only me in it. I've booked a snorkelling trip for this weekend on the reef - go out on saturday morning and come back on sunday evening. some snorkelling in between. Then on Monday flying down to Melbourne to visit my Korean friend again. Lots and lots of 日本人 here so lots of signage (maybe as much as 40%) is written in 日本語。I can read a few words, but not enough to really understand much. Not so much Korean or Chinese which is a bit surprising as some cities I've been to have been covered in signs in those languages. Beer in hostel gets served in pints by default, better than further south where pots are the norm, some kind of gay 250ml glass (funny to watch australian men trying to impress UK girls whilst sipping on this little thimbles…)

humid

humid here by the sea - maybe I will head inland to the dryness again at some point.

next

In about an hour, getting greyhound bus to Mackay which I know nothing about; will arrive tomorrow morning, hang round awhile and then tomorrow afternoon evening off to Cairns overnight again. So no shower for a while, just like Russia!

This morning has been spent basically eating and drinking - first a pint of freshly squeezed and groundup vegetables, then coffee with poached eggs on toast, then a meat pie and some fizzy lemon drink.

Two notes on coffee:

i) there's still a coffee sachet that I got on the train somewhere near moscow floating round in the bottom of my rucksack. I suppose I could put it in water and drink it.
ii) spent some time trying to work out which country it was that I'd been to a Hudson's Coffee (where I get my internet access at the moment). After a day or so of puzzling realised it was Australia - I'd somehow forgotten that I'd been here before.

hemisphere

All of my travel since leaving LA (using great circle lines to join points and assuming my applet is projecting correctly) appears to fit inside a hemisphere centered somewhere on northern Japan / far-eastern Russia. Maybe New Zealand will break this... if not, I'll make it all the way back to LA having avoided half the world...

fly

fly to melbourne from cairns, booked for monday week

Noosa

Got a 6000km open greyhound pass - can travel anywhere on the national bus network up to a total of 6000km. For the first hop, I've headed very slightly north from Brisbane to Noosa (recommended to me 2y ago by a canadian girl called Tracey who was staying in Melbourne YHA at the same time as me). Then to Mackay - dunno anything about there but it is half way to Cairns which is my last bus trip in this present hop. Then down to Melbourne by plane (can go see Korean friend again! she drove overland from Brisbane down to Melbourne earlier this week...)

monday

Awake at 4am to say goodbye as the Korean girl vanishes off into New South Wales; I sleep until 0800 or so then down to the bus stop to head to Brisbane (via Toowoomba). Around 1700, an hour or so outside of Brisbane a panicked radio controlled demands our bus stop immediately and unload all passengers - there's a brisbane wide transport bomb scare and it seems that suddenly our bus has been included in it. So out into some random australian town we pile, hoping that our bus will not explode. This is all a novelty for the Australians on the bus. I cough politely and mumble something about living in England in the late 20th century.
Finally though we make it to brisbane. The bus station has little blue "backpackers this way" signs. I go this way and end up in a little pickup spot where minibuses pick up backpackers to hostels. There's only one hostel's bus there - I get on and am wisked out to the West End where they accomodate me (after much humming and haaaing at the reception desk, they realise I am travelling alone and don't give a shit how many people are in the same dorm as me).
So here I am in Brisbane.

sunday

Up early and go with Korean girl to her Church, which turns out to be Anglican. They give me a free biscuit and some red wine! Next to Video 2000 where I become a member (all this bureaucracy to check my ID etc when I have stated clearly that I am just in town until the next day and don't live in Australia and will soon disappear into nowhere). I pick out the Rocky Horror Picture Show (with subtitles for the hearing impaired) which bemuses my friend. "Do you want a beer?" I ask, as my motel fridge is full of bottles acquired the previous night from the bottle shop. "No" is the answer, so I open one for myself. Magically the answer changes in an instant to "Yes"! I like this chick. For dinner we go out for pizza. $20 again for a large pizza which turns out to be massive - it serves both me and the girl for dinner, and then me for breakfast, and then me again for lunch. Watching Koreans eat pizza is pretty funny - like watching white man try to use chopsticks, I suppose. To the pub, but its sunday night, no one is there and closing early, so just a single drink (VB for me and tequila for my alcohol-monster friend) and then to bed.

saturday

walked round St. George - its a wee little town with three churches, three pubs, a cricket ground and a war memorial.
It also has a municipal swimming pool - the Koreans and I headed there in the afternoon to splash around. Seems I can still swim - I suppose its like falling off a bicycle. That evening again to the pub - just me and the girl this time. I ordered mixed grill for AUD20, which was massive - I struggled to get it all down, eventually giving up and leaving a few of the vegetables behind. Then to one of the other pubs which as we sat there became more lively - there was a hen night or something going on I think (unless this bunch of girls regularly goes to the pub with penis-straws to suck their drinks through). Locals in St. George really friendly, and pretty interested in chatting about where I am from and what I am doing here etc. We try some pre-packaged shots (paid for by another dude sitting at the bar who we'd been talking to) then I return to my beer and Korean girl switches to tequila shots. Sleep in motel this time.

friday

After travelling in fits and starts (three different buses of between 2h and 6h journey time each), I ended up in St. George. By chance, the motel (Balonne Motel - a nice place) that I had booked was in the lot adjacent to Kamarooka Tourist Park where my friend was staying with two Korean blokes. They invited me for dinner which started off with a couple of pints of wine each for me and Korean chick, then some pork-based food and some chicken-based food. Suitably primed, we headed down to a nearby pub where we consumed only one more drink before it was too-much-to-drink-must-go-to-sleep time. I ended up crashing in the Korean's little cabin rather than motel that night.

thursday

Thursday night at the hostel in Byron Bay with the prospect of 0415 bus ride, my choice was either go to bed around 2000h or stay up. I was leaning towards the former when (over all you can eat meat for $10 weekly BBQ) I got chatting with an Australian who had no beer - I gave him a couple of my VB (having purchased extra specifically for the purposes of sharing with the people who failed to bring their own - that worked well at BBQ on New Year's Eve in Melbourne 2y ago...). He wanted to go to 'Cheeky Monkeys', the main backpacker bar/club in Byron Bay as they were holding their weekly wet tshirt contest that day. So along we went. Free admission before 22h for backpackers (which consists of uttering the name of the hostel you are staying in to the bouncer). Tried a bunch of different beers on tap, first in glasses and then by the pitcher. Eventually the wet tshirt contest started and was jolly good fun - girls from the backpacker audience had been taken back and primed with champage then fitted out with special skimpy shirts. There was big, there was small, there were twins! The only disappointment was the token australian who had not taken off her bra :-(
Midnight rolled round and there was much dancing. I was wearing the shitty flip flops I got for 8元 in Shanghai - these finally gave up the ghost when forced to choose between sticking to the beer covered floor or remaining attached to my feet. I had to keep attempting to wear them, though, as the bouncers shouted at me whenever I took them off (at one point this triggered a drunk pretty blonde to tell me how beautiful I was - at least I think she was pretty, but I was drunk too... it didn't fix my shoes though).
0300 or so, the place closed, I walked out, threw the flipflops into nearest rubbish bin, and headed to Byron Coffee Co which was still open selling snacks - I stocked up on coffee and blue Powerade (blue drinks being the universal cure for alcohol), grabbed my bag from hostel and headed to bus stop.

somewhere in brisbane

I am somewhere in Brisbane, not sure where -- got off Greyhound long distance bus to find that the bus station had "backpackers this way" signs, which led me to a little area where hostel pickup buses wait; so I got on one and ended up at some hostel.

Fun weekend, which I suppose I will write about on mac and upload later (using internet cafe machines at moment).

A Taste of the Orient.

For supper had re-hydrated noodle pot labelled "A Taste of the Orient" and claiming to be some Thai flavour. Oh yes, it was just like being back in Thailand. Not.

I ate with the chopsticks given to me by a Russian girl on the trans-siberian (¿Nadya?) that I have been carrying round for use in Chopstick Emergency.

vim this

my attempts at posting to blogger via email having mysteriously failed
(it used to work in the good ole' days when I had cameraphone photoblog
set up…)

so now i'm writing this in a text editor and will perform a cut-and-paste job when I get online.

if I was in the mood for web-services, I'd hack up something using Atom to do it magically for me. I'm not that bored with the australian backpacker community yet, though. Alternatively, I'd ditch blogger and do it all in my own webspace with a bunch of hacked together bash scripts and XSLT processors. mmm.

The easternmost point in australia and I forgot to take my monkey.

Turns out that the easternmost point in mainland Australia is less than an hours walk from where I am staying. When I got there I discovered that my rucksack full of unnecessary crap did not have my monkey in it, so I could not take a picture for the collection ☹

Other than the misfortune of the monkey, it was a pleasant walk. Feeling wise this morning, I purchased some sunblock (SPF=30) and stopped for a few minutes on the beach to grease myself up like a pig; someone else in my dorm has his scalp peeling off in most unpleasant fashion because he was surfing too long without any sunscreen.

There's a nice walking route from the town along the beach, up over a hill through a forest, back down and along the next beach then up up up and down down down to some lookout where you can allegedly sometimes see dolphins (at first I thought I could see some, but it turned out they were just stones - reminds me of a dog I once met in Chicago).

Then up up up up up to the Easternmost Point (where an english girl was sitting on the grass having just been stung by a wasp and fearful that she was going to have an allergic reaction - there were plenty of other people round though so I paid her no heed) and then to the lighthouse, where I was looking forward to buying some overpriced water or powerade but was frustrated in doing so because the shop was closed for lunch.

Otherside of the lighthouse, can look along the coast (southwards, I think) at miles and miles of light blue sea and golden sandy beaches, with patches of people spread out in clusters. The walking route continued and at one point a fork led off down to those beaches, but I was getting a little tired by all the climbing, so I kept to the path that led me down and back into the town.

St. George

I am attempting to arrange a voyage to St. George (some large number of hours and larger number of miles inland from Brisbane). It has taken me several weeks to discover where the town is, which I did on Monday. I mentioned the place to a travel agent here on that day and she had not heard of it and mumbled something about getting a bus maybe. So back to the internet and (after initially thinking that the only way to get there was by light aircraft for approaching AU$1000 - far too much unless I was very drunk during ticket-selling hours) I found a bus service that connects the town to Toowoomba which is almost Brisbane but not quite. Luckily there's a connecting service from Toowoomba to Brisbane on Greyhound. So to the travel agents again I went, and said "you will not have heard of St. George, but perhaps instead you can sell me a ticket to Toowoomba". "Indeed good sir," the girl replied, "we have not heard of St. George, but neither have we heard of Toowoomba". "Be so kind then as to bring up your computerised reservation system and type in these obscure location codes that I have prepared for you so that you can sell me a ticket that I could have brought off the internet for two dollars less had I not wanted to pay cash" (the experience rather reminded me of preparing all my flights for work using online reservation systems then printing the details, cancelling and submitting the information into my employer's Bureacracy so that the flights could be purchased at more expensive prices from their preferred vendors). She did, and so now I have ticket from here at 0400 on Friday morning, changing at Brisbane and arriving in Toowoomba around 0830. Now I must somehow arrange to get from Toowoomba to St. George - there is one bus that day, leaving Toowoomba at 1030 and arriving around 1600 at St. George, provided by a company that I found only after great difficulty (over an hour's Googling).

Earn bonus points!

Earn points by handing over the correct lat/long pairs for the following to put on my java map (in addition to +1 point for each long/lat pair, you can have your name in the markers file).

#tiumen (somewhere between moscow and omsk, I think)
#listvyanka (near irkutsk)
# "sai kung" (I think its north of kowloon, but maybe I am mistaken and its on hong kong island)
#patong beach (thailand)
#phuket town (thailand)
# Konark (near puri, india)
# Kanyakumari - tamil nadu
# Kochi - kerla?
# Vagator (goa)
# Calangute (goa)
# Anjuna (goa)
# Agra
# Byron Bay
# JB - cannot even remember the name of it, but its the one just across the causeway from singapore

these you only get the points for if I actually make it there:
# toowoomba
# st. george (as described elsewhere, approx due west of Brisbane - not the one that apparently exists near Cairns)

green lemonade and ham

at woolies today got a 2l bottle of bright green own-brand lime-and-lemonade; reminded me of children's parties when I was 8.

electricity

there appears to be some kind of electricity coming out of the metallic "open case" button on the front of my ibook. makes my fingers tingle!

SARS

They sell a drink in the supermarket near the ginger beer called "SARS".

If thats not enough, you can also get "Double SARS".

Byron Bay

Arrived ~10am at Byron Bay, to be presented with the australian backpacker version of the hard sell for hostels and coffee shops and travel agents, which compared to the now-exploded Paharganj and the should-be-exploded Khaosan Road is soft as multiply toilet paper. I ended up in the YHA here; also am now in a travel agent which lures people in with as much internet as they can eat in order to get their custom for booking onwards travel. I said I was next going to "St. George" in Queensland. A map was produced. The town was eventually located. They mumbled, coughed politely and let me off to use internet for free...

In same area, next to big woolworths (I went browsing for supermarket food with the intention of perhaps buying some later on to cook for myself) I found one of the many many internet cafes (which is also a video rental store (all the other ones are also bars or also travel agents)) with a big "laptop access" sign. Hurrah!

wireless

AUD11 for 45 mins in starbucks... foolishly i did not properly charge my laptop beforehand and there appears to be no free electricity here.

getting a (very few) more pics uploaded, though

nextnum

+61 434 958 496

phonebook not yet recoverable from Previous Lives, so if you love me you will send me SMS with suitable nick/tag (but I will not trust it very much until I verify it offline)

a night off

took no beer last night, sat round programming in hostel common room 'till about midnight; in the elevator on the way home a couple of english girls who had been swilling beers in Bondi leaped in with me. They had 2-for-1 cards for drinks at some other bar and were trying to puzzle out where it was so they could go the next day. Being merely extremely tired rather than blind drunk, I was able to decypher the writing on the front of the card (it was printed in English, so not a hard task); "Auckland," I said (not even lying). I suspect they will not go.
Also after some brief biographical exchange they got stuck on repeatedly asking when my parents had moved from California to Guildford. Then I went to sleep until 1230. I still feel a little tired. Poor me. Big big greasy breakfast in Central Gourmet Cafe, which is part of the central YHA that I'm staying in (three sausages and six bits of bacon, two eggs, a tomato, two slices of toasted bread, long black (that wasn't very long but tasted great) for AUD11.30 -- have not internalised what an AUD is wrt other currencies yet so don't really know how much - maybe 5 sterling 8 US?)

geeky perhaps useful to me link of the day: http://www.stopdesign.com/log/2004/09/27/sydney-wireless.html

10days worth of hangover...

10 days worth of hangover accumulated; today no beer - maybe better tomorrow? I have been to see the ANZAC memorial. It looks like it did last time. Also I had my first shower in australia. The hostel showers are also the same as before, and furthermore I have found the branch of Gloria Jean's Coffee (proudly australian owned and operated) that I used to have morning coffee in. Maybe tomorrow I will go there.

VB

mmm good old VB in 'scubar - the down under bar' (it has a water theme, and is under the hostel, and also in australia - ho ho ho). too much though - had one last pint about four times, the last one almost finished when swedish barmaid presented me with a postcard to sent to my swedish friend that advertised scubar - if I filled out, i got 2-for-1 beer, which I did, meaning I ended up with two extra VB that I really didn't need.

then walked to Opera House and back to wear it all off. went to 7-11 for water and drunkenly purchased some shampoo. luckily it was still shampoo in the morning, so I suppose I can't have been that drunk.

have been wearing the same clothes for past three days - perhaps I'll try to pry them off and wash and put new ones on?

two more nights in sydney then somewhere else. but where? north on the eastcoast route, I think... somewhere up there there's a Korean girl I am meant to find.

chinese

there are a lot more chinese squiggles all over the place here - I wonder if that is new or just that I have forgotten from last time?

lamer

ook - went to post to http://marlonneke.waarbenjij.nu - the UI is unintuitive and also in dutch so now I look like an ass managing to post the same thing three times in a row.

Guerrilla ctrl-N

'new browser window' administratively disabled on this host. grrr. luckily can hack round it by go into gmail, find email with a hyperlink in it, click to open in a new window... suckers! i am invincible!

sydney

arrived in sydney; reassuringly familiar (even though I spent only about a week here 2y ago) - airport is the same, train ride into central the same, hostel is mostly the same (they have upgraded their public access computers and have redecorated a little - they have a tshirt of something from the hostel I stayed in once in San Francisco on the wall). I have been to the kebab shop next door which makes kebabs that taste just as I remember them - mmmm breakfast.

malaysia

yesterday went over the border to malaysia - was kinda boring, i was hungover and it was too hot so I went back to Singapore pretty quickly. got malaysian passport stamps, though.

red cough

oh dear. One of these dutch girls behaved a little bit too much like me, swilled a couple of bottles of red and spilled it all back out again several times in the night, moving from bunk to bunk as one after the other became soiled. I was out in 'Bollywood Dhoom', an indian bar at the time, they having abandoned me at Sahara for an early night so wasn't there to defend my bunk, but it appears to have survived the night unscathed.