I also had a cute little Sri Lankan boy sitting across from me who was absolutely enamored with his parents' cell phone and hte ability to watch videos and take pictures. I caught him several times sneakily taking photos of me and so I returned the favour and took a few of him, as well as showing him some videos on my ipod touch, which he really quite enjoyed. Cute kid!
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| Crazy salesmen on the train |
I arrived in Columbo and was supposed to be picked up by Roy who was driving all the way back with some friends to pick me up and drive me to the airport and then was to return back to Aragum Bay (which is like a 12 hour round trip!) What a guy! Unfortunately he was running behind schedule to pick me up so he had some other random friend of his pick me up from the train station. I eventually found his friend after a few broken English phone calls. His friend drove me to Roy's apartment where I met his wife, little son, and a boy who lived next door...I just basically relaxed and had some snacks while waiting on Roy, chatting a bit with the local boy who was quite bright and wanted to some day study to be a Doctor. He also shared some of the hardships that he faced being a Tamil such as not being able to play organized cricket because the teams in schools only took Sinhalese players at a young age, which allowed them to get the necessary experience to eventually become professionals in the sport..kind of sad for the little guy, but he's bright enough that I think his wits will carry him far.
Eventually Roy showed up and his cousin and him took me on one of the stranger rides to an airport I've experienced....his cousin was an absolute madman behind the wheel and fortunately I had a seatbelt just in case ha ha...at some points he was driving 120 in 60 zones and attempting to pass people by driving on the meridian..it was pretty funny...we also had to stop at several pharmacies on the way as one of the other guys in the fan had some need for some sort of drugs but couldn't find them...it was pretty random adventure. We eventually arrived at the airport and interestingly enough I found out that locals have to actually pay to enter the airport so Roy paid the necessary $3 or so to enter just to see me off...what a strange country! We said our goodbyes and I was off on my next big adventure to.....Australia!
Now a bit of a backstory here, my mates Dan and Dave from Sydney always invite me to their parties on weekends even though they know I'm living in Canada, and I always jokingly say that I will attend...I've always had this idea of one weekend booking a flight to Australia and randomly showing up for a party, which is what I did! I had found a flight for about $550 for the Friday which was the day before Dave and Dan's housewarming party, and I made secret arrangements with my buddy Nick Tumu to come stay at his place so as to not ruin the surprise. Nick, my father, and Amanda and Devon were the only people who knew of my trip, so it was pretty hush hush! I had to fly to Kuala Lampur first, so I did the obligatory check in at the airport on Facebook to increase the intrigue surrounding where I was off to next...to which Dan cleverly asked if I was on my way to their housewarming party...I of course chose not to respond, but he had a great suspicion. I also purchased the obligatory celebration cigars and some tequila for the housewarming!
I arrived in Sydney, purchased a sim card and contacted Nick for directions to his place, but he was kind enough to come pick me up from the airport as he only lived 15 minutes away...too easy! I got to Nick's place and met his lovely wife Kayla, and we just chilled out for the evening, keeping things low key. A bit of a side story again about Nick, we were pretty good mates early on in university, in fact I think he was the first guy I talked to and made friends with, then we kind of drifted apart and had different groups of friends until my final year when he moved in with Doug Fisher who I had all my classes with...Doug and Nick both worked at the campus bar as bouncers, which I frequented quite often, and as such I became pretty good mates with Nick again as I would often crash at their place after a night at the bar. We kept in touch via facebook usually, until he suddenly disappeared for 2 years off of it....and then suddenly he was back on, was married, and was living in Australia...wow crazy! So yeah that's my side blurb on Nick, but it was good to meet up again with the gentle giant (he's a 6 foot 2, 220 lb dude, and was even up to 265 lbs during the uni days).
The next day we went into the city so that I could find a costume for the housewarming party, as it was a jungle theme. I bought this sweet fake leopard fur coat that was a women's size small and barely fit, as well as some leopard ears and a tail and bowtie...pretty sweet getup, and I also managed to practice my bartering skills at the market, and was thus able to save $20 off the sticker prices, sweet eh! Nick and I then just wandered around downtown Sydney for awhile, grabbing a beer and trying to find the hockey game on tv, but we had just missed it. We then went back to Nick's place and I prepared for the party. I caught a train to a nearby station and then wandered aimlessly using a small map downloaded on my ipod, trying to find the apartment for the party, all the while walking through some pretty dodgy places with public housing (which wasn't the smartest thing to do according to my mates, but it ended up being fine). I arrived at the party and rang up, and was on my way up. The elevator opened and there was Dan dressed as a gecko ( jungle theme fail I think but hilarious!) and he was of course absolutely stunned, and then proceeded to gloat a bit about calling the fact that I was going to show up at the party ha ha. I walked into their awesomely huge apartment and was met with the absolute shock and amazement by my mates that I was hoping for :)
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| Dan trying to open the tequila bottle with a large knife..it worked but quite scary |
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| Jungle theme fail on the Beaver Costume Dave, but still fun |
The party was a pretty good time, and there were some awesome costumes and a large amount of people..it was so great to catch up with some of the best friends of mine, that I hadn't seen in ages. The party was going all good and was even complained about by a surly older man who lived in the building. He showed up at like 9 pm and walked into the apartment yelling at everyone to turn it down, to which Dan replied "get the f*** out of my apartment lol. The older guy then said he was going to call the cops to complain, which he did, and they showed up and basically said that there was nothing wrong since it was only 9 pm and noise complaints can't merit a party shutdown until after 11 pm...that's a win for us! Everything was going along well until a minor incident happened which kind of put a damper on things I won't go into details for the sake of being a good mate, plus the stories are conflicting as to what happened so we'll just leave it at that ha ha....So yeah the party was basically shut down around 11:45 pm. I had just lit up my cigar and was sharing it around and didn't really want to just stay and end the night so early, so I hopped in the elevator with Dave's brother Chris and his cousin Will. I offered Chris a puff of the cigar and he was just taking a puff when hilariously the elevator stopped at a floor and in walked the surly old man who had complained earlier...oops! He saw Chris with the cigar, and I said "well this is awkward, we're probably not supposed to be smoking in here are we?" to which the man replied "No you sure as hell aren't supposed to be!!" It was a rather funny incident and added further fuel to his fire (I later found out he was on the apartment strata and the boys got a rather nasty letter but fortunately they weren't evicted ha ha).
So Will, his ladyfriend, and I went out to the cross and found a nightclub that would actually allow us to enter even though we were still wearing jungle attire...Will had a hilarious zebra suit he had made in Indonesia, and myself with my tail and bowtie and ears...the outfits were quite the hit at the nightclub and we had a pretty good time, but then as per usual, I found myself lost and all alone looking like a fool...fun times. I just grabbed some pizza, and watched the fights in the street which are a regular occurrence in 'the Cross', as anyone who has been to Sydney can attest. I just cabbed it back, and woke up a very angry Dan at like 4:30 am by repeatedly hitting the buzzer to get in. I only had a small space on the floor to sleep.
I was up pretty early the next morning, and feeling my first hangover in quite sometime, as I find that Western countries put a lot of junk in their beers, which leads to hangovers. It was nice sight in the morning though, as Dan and Dave's attractive roommate was wandering around in her underwear ha ha...I then just lounged around for the day until Dave and I went to his dad's place for dinner. When we had breakfast earlier in the day, Dave had dared me to hit on his sister over dinner with his family, even though she had a b/f. Being willing to do pretty much anything without shame, I of course accepted the challenge. From the moment we picked up Bec, the constant creeping begun. At one point we stopped at the supermarket for some food for the evening, and whilst the Budd siblings shopped, I suddenly felt the real effects of the previous night and ended up having to have a spew in the supermarket bathroom...first spew of the trip lol...that of course didn't stop me from continuing to hit on Bec all night, which was met with great fun and laughs from Dave and his Father and Brother. We had a nice dinner anyways and it was back off to my mate Nick's place.
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| This is what kind of family the Budds are ha ha, a real bunch of jokers! |
The next few days again didn't have a lot going on, as I was on my way to Melbourne on Tuesday. Before leaving Sydney, I made sure to grab a gift from Dave that was to be delivered to his "enemy" Nico, who I was meant to be staying with in Melbourne. Dave is a fairly sarcastic individual and makes lots of cheeky comments on facebook, and last time I was in Australia, Nico decided he wanted to be enemies with Dave and always made fun of him, so I told Dave about this, and he's been trying to befriend Nico ever since, as a funny joke. Anyways, Dave sent me some nice candles with a funny post-it note to be delivered to Nico, which Nico just loved ha ha. Here's a photo of the gift delivery.
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| Nico loves his gift from Dave! |
The last time I visited Melbourne, Nico had promised to take me out and show me Melbourne, but he ended up getting a really bad sunburn and sunstroke and spent a few days bedridden, so it was nice to see him healthy this time around and able to actually show me the town a bit more. He had several fun days planned which was pretty good. The first day we just caught up over lunch, dinner, and lots of beers and cider. We eventually ended up downtown at a trashy bar called Eurotrash and then decided to leave and have some drunk shenanigans. We ended up finding a desk that was being thrown out by some business so we moved that and blocked off the one alley that leads to the Eurotrash bar, and this ended up angering one of the bouncers who came running out into the streets to try and chase us down and chew us out, but we saw him coming soon enough and were able to escape. At this point, I decided to start playing the "open random doors game" and proceeded to end up in several small private Chinese bars, where the patrons were quite shocked to see a few drunk white guys wandering in.....One bar was shut down but hadn't locked the door and I walked in and started playing with the owners dog before she realized that there were people in her bar, hilarious.
I had also earlier read about this recent practice called Planking. Australians have taken to finding strange locations and laying their body down, and holding a rigid pose, such that they look like a plank. The reason I heard about it was because a guy was planking on his apartment and ended up falling to his death, so it made the news. Either way, I thought it was a hilarious idea, so I started taking up the practice myself. Here's a few of the funny photos.
I also ended up chatting up some local girls and they were totally into the planking thing as well, so they threw down some planks as evidenced here. All in all, a pretty fun night considering I was running on little sleep.
The next fun adventure night was on Thursday night, as Nico had a "funny surprise" for me that evening. Another side story here, back in 2008 when I was visiting, we went out to a pub in Southern Aus and there was a girl who was flirting with my quite hard all evening. I thought all was going well, until the very end of the night when another girl came up to me and informed me that they were lesbians and were dating, which obviously came as a huge shock to me. Well played ladies....
So anyways, Nico decides to take me to a bar where his mate Jessie worked...what I soon found out, was that it was Lesbian night, and it was quite a laugh. I've never attended a bar on a gay night, so it was hilarious to see all these hot and butch lesbians fighting over each other and just walking into either the womens or mens washrooms and just hooking up all the time. Quite a treat. We ended up having quite a laugh all night and then waiting for Jessie to finish up work, and heading out for more adventures around town until quite late in the evening. We eventually ended back at Nico's place with Jessie, this girl named Kaitlyn, and myself all hanging out watching tv, but I decided to call it a night. At this point, I guess Jessie was trying to make a move on Kaitlyn and wanted Nico to give up his bed so he could be alone with the girl, but Nico then tried to kick Jessie out of the room. He told him to go crash on the bed I was using, and Jessie replied that "I'm not going to go sleep in the same bed as your gay Canadian friend" ha ha ha....obviously I got pigeonholed just cause I was hanging out with Nico at the gay night lol. Eventually Nico just kicked Jessie out and I guess he put up a big fight over it, but they made up the next day.
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| The almost happy family, until Jessie wanted Nico to leave his own bed so he could make a move ha ha ha |
The next fun event in Melbourne for myself was attending my first AFL match. AFL is a type of rugby where points are scored purely through kicks. It's an interesting hybrid sport, and can be fairly high scoring. Nico's family lives in Carlton, so that's the team he was supporting at the game, whereas I decided to be an antagonist and cheer on the visiting Geelong team. I was clearly in the minority, but we had a pretty good time at the game, even though we were only able to get standing room only seats. Here's a pic from the game.
Carlton ended up losing to Geelong, so not only did I win a beer in a bit with Nico, but I also was able to taunt and gloat over Nico for the rest of the evening ha ha! We were still pretty tired from the past few days after that so we just grabbed another beer and played some buck hunter, then called it an early evening. However, I couldn't fall asleep and ended up pulling an all nighter watching Californication until one of the NHL games started at 9 am the next morning. This obviously messed with my sleep schedule a fair bit so Saturday night was kind of a write off as we were all worn down a bit. At this point Nico decided to ship me off to Mira's place in Southern Melbourne as he had a busy week coming up.
Over the next week I was mostly just planning out my next destination, as well as sorting out some Europe details so I didn't get up to a whole lot. I did go check out the King Tut exhibit at the Melbourne museum, and then was randomly invited to the St. Kilda film festival by some people that were eating dinner at a table next to me, and who had an extra ticket. They were a pretty nice group of people, and the one girl was going to be moving to Hollywood in a few months time to further her acting career. The short films were quite entertaining, and we had a good time. After the film festival, there was an after party, but they only had tickets for themselves, however, one of their friends stopped them at the end of the show and offered up her ticket, so I was able to score that. The after party was an interesting mix of creative minds and unique style, which I clearly didn't fit into, since I'm not exactly the artsy type. I met a few interesting people, but was generally a bit of an outcast. Probably the funniest moment of that evening was when some random woman approached me and was all excited and asked if I was Roger Federer....I was so shocked that I didn't even know what to say initially...all I could think about was that Roger would have a $50,000 wrist watch, whereas I was wearing a $100 watch.....the lady was quite adamant that I was Federer and wouldn't take no for an answer....I contemplating playing it up, but it was just too difficult of an impression to go with ha ha. I didn't stick around much longer and just headed back to Mira's for the night.
The next big adventure was Thursday night where we went out for some good Moroccan food, and then wandered over to Alia for Lesbian night part deux! This time we even had a girl with us who had just returned from a few months in Asia, and who happened to be into women. We went and had a blast again, receiving free drinks from Jessie who had decided to quit the place, so he didn't care too much about receiving any grief. There were two smoking hot girls there, and Nico told me that they were bi-sexuals for sure, as "all the hot ones always are" according to Nic. I ended up chatting them up, and only the one was bi, the other one was straight, so that was a pretty good win. Shelly ended up taking a liking to the one girl, which resulted in this beautiful sight.
Epic photo bomb! We ended up just partying with the other girl all night, and at one point, Nico had them convinced he was actually gay so that they would make out with him ha ha ha....sneaky bugger. I ended up finding myself an older lady who was there with some gay friends, and ended up wandering off with her....yeap, I picked up at lesbian night ha! Fun times. We also were invited to attend the one hot girl's birthday party on the Saturday night, but it was going to be at another gay bar, so we figured one night at the gay bar was enough for the week. On a funny side note, I hadn't shaved in a few weeks time, but shaved after hooking up this night, so I've decided to start a funny tradition where I won't shave until I find a lady friend (I may keep a shave counter for a laugh, we'll see ;))
The next day I ended up just hanging at Nic's for awhile, and he decided to dress me up as a proper Melbournian, since my style was quite Bogan (which is comparable to white trash), and I didn't fit in with the Melbourne style ha ha. Being a
To be honest, the getup definitely isn't anything close to what I would normally wear, and I thought I looked kind of like a goof ball, but apparently the girls thought it looked good. Here's a few pics of the getup.
As the party was winding down, it was time to hit the spa, which was quite a treat. A few of us just hung out drinking champagne and bs'ing, until it got really late and people started to go home. Much to my surprise, one of the girls from the party stuck in the spa with me, and all of a sudden she was all over me as well....damn that getup worked well! Ha ha ha.....we ended up staying up until like 8 am but then I was pretty knackered and ended up crashing at Frank's place. I didn't get up until nearly 5 pm the next day, and apparently Frank was asking Nico if I was a heavy sleeper, and was even thinking I might be dead, as he was in the room making a lot of noise and I didn't even wake up....When I did finally awaken, I came out into the main room, and there was a group of 7 ppl who were still up from the previous night, and they were all wearing these matching pyjamas, which I was super jealous of....I wish I had grabbed a photo, because it was pretty hilarious. Frank then mentioned he had a good laugh about the previous night, as their house had cameras EVERYWHERE including one covering the spa.....ha ha oops....busted on camera ;) Fun times nevertheless, and a reason for another shave lol.
I didn't make it back to Mira's until 9 pm, and was meant to catch a flight at 9:30 am the next morning, so I decided to pull an all nighter, since I had to be up and leave the house by 5:30 am to grab the shuttle bus to the airport. Well that nearly turned into a disaster, as I decided to have a nap at the departure gate while waiting. Well I ended up sleeping through my alarm, and woke up in a groggy state. I wandered over to the departure gate which was all closed off and the monitor said final call, and the lady at the counter asked if I was Reilly, and told me that my bags were just about to be taken off and that they were paging me over the intercom...Fortunately I was able to get on the flight, but I was pretty lucky. That's actually the 2nd time I've almost missed a flight in Melbourne, and both times I was at the airport several hours early, but had some stupid set of circumstances happen to me, ah well!
So I was off to lovely New Zealand, landing in Christchurch....I didn't really know what I was going to get up to, other than just wander around the city, unfortunately I was so tired from the lack of sleep the previous evening that I tried to just have a nap in the afternoon, but this ended up turning into a 11 hour nap!
The next day I decided to wander into the city to try and see some of the damage caused by the earthquakes. I was trying to figure out where to grab a bus, looking a bit lost at the signs, when an older gentleman approached me and asked if he could help sort me out. My first experience with the friendly nature of Kiwis! He helped me find the bus I was looking for and I was off into the inner city. Unfortunately, the majority of the inner city was all cordoned off, and you had to be an approved worker to enter the areas. It's really quite sad to see how much destruction has occurred. I ended up speaking to one of the workers in charge of permitting workers to enter the downtown core, and he figured it would take at least 20 years to finish demolishing and rebuilding the remaining buildings. Sad times. I spoke to a few other locals, and realized there really wasn't much to see and do in Christchurch anymore. I ended up just wandering around a bit, took in the Botanical Gardens, and then wandered over to a movie theatre to catch a few flicks.
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| Earthquake damage |
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| City centre is cordoned off |
Once I realized there wasn't much going on, I decided to try and sort out a way to get out of Christchurch and head on South. I randomly came to realize that a friend of mine from Germany had just arrived in Christchurch, so I got a hold of her and tried to figure out if they had any plans. I also put out some ads on the internet seeing if anyone might be willing to pick up a hitcher and head down towards Queenstown. I ended up hearing back from Katrin the next morning via Facebook, but her message said they were heading south early in the morning, and they were meant to be leaving within 15 minutes of when I woke up. I tried sending her a message saying I was interested, and then bought a phone card so I could call her, but she didn't answer. I just assumed that I missed out, and that I would have to find other means to get down South. I decided to walk over to the Antarctic exhibit to check that out, which took me about 2 hours. Upon arrival, I grabbed a coffee and some free wifi, and found that Katrin had messaged me saying they were still in town and were going to be at my hostel at 1230 pm to pick me up....I got this message at 12 pm....damn! So I had to make a quick decision whether I would call them and tell them to not bother, or if I would turn around and head back to my hostel...well I decided to run back to the hostel and skip the Antarctic Exhibit.
I ended up getting back to the hostel at 12:35 pm, and there was no sight of Katrin. I ended up sitting outside the hostel until 1:30 pm, figuring that I had missed them, and had wasted $23 on cab fare to get back to the hostel....when they finally showed up. They had bought a sweet little van, so I hopped in with her and her b/f Roland, and we were off on a little road adventure....We didn't quite make it to our destination of Lake Tikabo, so we had to stop for the night in a small town called Farley. Katrin and Roland had their van set up for camping, but there wasn't room for me, so I had to find a cheap hotel for the night. Here's a nice pic of the scenery near Farley.
We got to Lake Tikabo early the next morning, and it was quite spectacular as evidenced by the photos here.
After hanging around that area, we continued on to Mt. Cook, where we did a nice little 4 hour trek. Here's some photos including one of me planking on a large bridge, although it's a bit hard to see me, due to the lack of light at that point in the day.
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| Yes someone put a sticker that says Fail on the sign..I thought it was funny |
Really quite a beautiful area. We ended up camping near the mountain for the night, which was a bit of a silly move on my behalf, as I slept in a tent that Roland and Katrin provided, unfortunately it probably got down to at least minus 5 that night, which made for a VERY cold sleep....probably the coldest one since Nepal. I nearly froze to death that night, and my tent was all covered in frost the next morning. Not the most pleasant sleep, but oh well! Katrin and Roland had to make their way back to Christchurch that day, and I wanted to continue on my way down towards Queenstown, as many people had raved about the area. I decided I would try and hitchhike there, so I had the Germans drop me off at a nice spot near a town called Twinzel. I figured I'd get picked up for sure, but I spent nearly 3 hours standing there, and no one picked me up! Maybe I just looked really sketchy I don't know ha ha ha. Here's a pic of me hitching...or at least trying to.
Eventually I just broke down, and headed into Twinzel and found a bus to Queenstown. I ended up finding a pretty sweet hostel called Nomads, which was probably one of the coolest hostels I've ever seen. They had a sauna, movie theatre, huge kitchen, nice reading room, and pretty much any other amenity you could ask for. I met a few people from my room, and ended up having a few beers with some English folks in the kitchen. The hostel was a stopping point for the Kiwi Experience bus tours, so it was generally packed with 50 some people each night from those buses who were just on huge party benders....it made for a pretty wild time. I ended up heading out to a few pretty cool bars and met some fun people.
One thing about Queenstown, is that it's such a fun and easy going place, that if you want to stay for 2 days, it will suck you in, and before you know it, it will be 4 or 5 days and you're still there. The city itself is very comparable to the Okanagan. Here's a few pics just of the big lake that the city is situated on.
My second day consisted of just wandering around and sampling some of the local seafood. I found a pretty good fish and chips shack near the lakeshore, and sat down there. I ended up chatting two Asian girls, and they were pretty friendly. They told me of a place that had free wifi, and where there was some pretty good coffee and gelato. They invited me to join them, so I said sure. I ended up heading over to Patagonia, and had a coffee and gelato, while waiting for the Asian girls. Well they ended up being nearly an hour late, and finally showed up with another Asian that they met at the hostel. This started a hilarious trend throughout the evening. They invited me to dinner with them, but I was going to head back to my hostel for the free dinner that night, as they were serving Red Chicken Curry. I agreed to head out for some drinks with the Asians after dinner though, and told them to meet me at my hostel around 8:30 pm.
I got back to the hostel at 6:15 pm, which was 15 minutes after the free dinner started. Well I learned that you have to be there about 15 minutes before it even starts to get anything, so I ended up basically getting a bowl of rice, and no curry chicken, fml! And of course there was no free basket with soya sauce, or anything to add some flavour to the rice, ha ha damn. I had my few bowls of rice, and met a few cool Canadian dudes and agreed to head out and meet up with them eventually.
My Asians showed up at 8:30 pm, and of course they now had a 4th Asian with them, so we set out to find the World Bar where there were some good drink specials. The two girls I met earlier in the day had been to Queenstown a few times before, yet they didn't seem to know where anything was ha ha....so basically they had me leading them around to bars, even though I had only been there one day...talk about the blind leading to blind! So we're walking down all these streets looking for this World Bar, when another Asian comes walking out of a random restaurant, and seems to know the others...so he joins our group, and now I have my litttle "Asian Harem" as I called them ha ha.....we ended up at World Bar and had a pretty good time. I also ended up finding a Smirnoff Ice and performing the required Icing that was delivered to me by a friend back home. For those who don't know what Icing is....basically you have to present a Smirnoff Ice in a clever manner to an unsuspecting individual, and they are required to get down on one knee and chug the bottle. Well my friend Chelsea posted a picture of a Smirnoff on my Facebook wall, so I had to do the icing at some point. Here it is!
Eventually the Asians wanted to go find some Sake Bombs, so we wandered down to a Japanese bar, where we ended up having a few rounds of the bombs, here's a funny video of the event.
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| My Asian harem ha ha |
One thing about Asians, is that they really can't handle their alcohol very well....so by about 11 pm, two of the Asians were actually passed out at the table ha ha...poor guys. I decided it was probably time to move on, so we said our goodbyes, and they went off to sleep off the drinks. I headed back to World Bar and ended up meeting up with a pretty cool Finnish girl from my hostel, and chatting with her for quite awhile. We ended up grabbing a Ferg Burger (which has actually been rated the best hamburger in the entire world by a few travel journalists). Eventually she had to head back to the hostel, and since she had a b/f, I wasn't pursuing her or anything.
I headed back to World Bar again, and met up with the Canadians, then a British girl started making eyes with me, and before I knew it, I had another lady friend ha ha. We ended up getting along pretty well, and ended up hanging out for the rest of the night. The next day I decided to finally go and get some exercise, and was excited to find out that there was an ice hockey rink where I could rent hockey equipment! I ended up playing some pickup shinny, which was really quite great, as I often miss playing ice hockey when away from home. After playing some hockey, and cleaning up, I met some pretty hilarious Kiwi guys who were wearing ridiculous hats.....seeing as how I also have a ridiculous hat, I decided to join their fun group. Here's a pic of the boys.
We ended up heading out and having a pretty fun pub crawl type night with our ridiculous hats, and meeting loads of fun people again. At one point, I lost all the people I was with, and was about ready to head home, when a group of girls approached me. The one asked me who I thought I was wearing this ridiculous "cat hat", and I just mentioned that I was out having fun with some other silly hat guys. Then all of a sudden she drops this hilarious "don't you judge me!" line, which I had no clue where it came....she then left, but her other friend Karen hung out and chatted me up a bit. I met another 2 of their friends, and they were going to do a shot, which I was initially invited to by the Karen, but then another one of the friends pushed me back and said girls only....at this point I was pretty much ready to just head on to the next bar or else head back to the hostel, but then Karen came and grabbed me and suggested that I tag along with them on to the next bar. I ended up getting along really well with Karen, even though she was a bit of a rough gal with kissing ha ha. That's the only time my lips have been bleeding from someone biting me so hard when kissing...funny times!
We ended up spending the night together, and ended up hanging out the next few days, just enjoying each other's company ( of course leading to another shave as well ha ha). It was quite nice to have a cool gal to hang out with while on the road. Other than hanging out with Karen, the main thing I finally did in Queenstown was bungee jump! I'm terrified of heights, so this was a very large stepping point in my life especially considering the jump is 132 m. A huge part of my trip is about experiencing and doing things I normally wouldn't do back home....Here's the sweet video of my bungee jump, which is highest jump in New Zealand....crazy!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvQ4kshf__U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W58ZAD6IHdY
It was an awesome experience, but it also brought the end of my time in Queenstown, as I decided to make my way back to Christchurch and fly off to Wellington for a few days. I managed to check out the Antarctica exhibit in Christchurch the day I was flying out, so that was a pretty cool experience (pun intended). They have a 4D cinema, where you get the film in 3D but they also put little devices that spray water and wind, etc. To get that fourth dimension...pretty cool!I got to Wellington and met up with my old mate Gwynn who I had met while traveling in Europe a few years back, and it was great to catch up with the guy. He had to work while I was there, so I did some of my own touring of the city. I grabbed some beautiful views from up on Mt. Victoria, even though it was a super rainy day, as well as exploring the New Zealand parliament and some of the former government buildings. Here's a few pics.
We only really had one night to get out on the town, but it was a pretty fun night, as I met some pretty cool Kiwi girls and ended up doing a little pub crawl with the one gal...fun times.She was a pretty sarcastic one, but we got along pretty well. We ended up hanging out the next day and wandering around the area south of Wellington, which was also quite nice.
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| Infamous Wellington Blanket Man |
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| love those disco balls! |
Unfortunately, Gwynn had made some plans to head up to a friend's farm for the evening, and was anticipating me coming with him, but I had such an early flight that I had to stay in Welliewood for the night. I just wandered around, trying to find a phone charger, as I realized that I had forgotten my charger in Queenstown, but wasn't able to, damn! I just had to make do with my low battery phoen for now. I was up pretty early and off to Australia again, where I was to meet up with my mate Danny in the Gold Coast.
I arrived in the Gold Coast, and was expecting to find Danny at the airport to pick me up, as he had mentioned he could do that, but he was nowhere to be found! I ended up finding a payphone and trying to get a hold of him, but without any luck. He finally got back to me, and told me he was already out at a bar, even though it was only 7:30 pm! Ha ha ha, what a guy. He told me to catch a bus into town, grab a hostel room, and that he would call me back and tell me where to go to meet him...well he never did call, so I tried to get a hold of him several times, but no luck, bastard! I ended up just having to head out on the town by myself, and checked out a few cool places. I ended up meeting a pretty cool Italian/Australian gal, and just ended up hanging out with her for the evening. We agreed to meet up the next day for a few hours, since I didn't know if I would ever get a hold of Danny, especially since my phone was now dead. I ended up breaking down and just buying a new phone, since a charger was going to cost $35, and a new phone was about the same price.
I met up with the Italian gal, and had a nice coffee and walk, and then Danny finally got back to me, and let me know that he had forgotten his phone in his car the previous night. We agreed to meet up and had some amazing Italian food, as evidenced by this feast photo! We just hung out for a few hours, but we were both pretty tired, and agreed to meet up the next evening for a proper night on the town.
I grabbed a hostel the next morning, and managed to get down to the pub to watch game 6 of the Stanley Cup playoffs with a German girl I met at the hostel. She was cheering for Vancouver, and I was going for Boston, so it was a fun lunch full of smack talk and teasing. After the game I went back to the hostel and enjoyed the spa, and then met some cool Brazilian dudes. I made good friends with them, and we agreed to all head out that night with Danny. We ended up finding some Shooters bar that was offering all you can drink from 10 pm until 12 am, for the price of $50 a person, but Danny talked the Club Rep into giving me free entry, as he said it was my birthday. This somehow worked ha ha ha! We ended up having a pretty fun night, and Danny got up to his old tricks with the ladies, including making out with one girl right in front of her brother, who was NOT impressed! Fun times. We ended up staying out till pretty late, but then had to head home and get ready to head to Brisbane the next morning.
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| Surfers Paradise |
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| Amazing Italian feast |
I hopped in a car with the German girl, who happened to be driving up to Brisbane the next day, so that saved me sorting out transportation. She dropped me off at my mate Bobby's place, but unfortunately Bobby was out in the field for the next few days, so we weren't going to have much of a chance to catch up. I was able to get a hold of my other mate Lawrence, who I met in Thailand in 2010, and we met up that night to watch some rugby. We ended up having a good catch up, and I ended up heading back to an after party at his place. He had a pretty cool group of mates that he was living with, and we had a blast.
The next day I attempted to take buses to get back to Bobby's place, but failed quite miserably. I thought I had an idea where I was going, but I ended up probably about 10 km away from where I was supposed to get off the bus.....oops. At one point I stopped some guys walking and asked them if I was anywhere near where I was meant to be, and they actually burst out laughing and said I was better off finding a taxi ha ha...So a taxi it was. I was meant to go back to Lawrence's place that night for some tacos and beers, but I ended up missing the last bus, so I just had a low key night to myself.
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| Some crazy beer that has a Chili Pepper in it...spicy! |
The next day I basically hung out, waiting for Bobby to finish work and get back to his place. It was great to catch up with the dude, as we become pretty good mates back in Canada, and then he moved to Brisbane to find work. Life is pretty good down there, and I like Brisbane enough that I'm thinking of trying to find work down there next year as well. Anyways, we just ended up having dinner, scotch, scotch, and more scotch, then wandered out into the town for a few hours. It was a pretty good night, and we didn't get back until 4:30 am...and of course I had to be up at like 9 to head to the airport, so it was a sleepy/rough morning but oh well.
I arrived in Sydney, and made arrangements to meet up with Dan and Dave. They agreed to pick me up at the train station, as long as I purchased toilet paper for their place ha ha...so here I was, sitting on the side of the road with toilet paper when they picked me up. We ended up just hanging out, playing mario kart and having a few beers, before heading out to dinner and then doing a big pub crawl for the night. It was another pretty good night, and I ended up pulling another all nighter, since I had to leave at 6 am for the airport again. Karen also happened to be in Sydney, so we met up, and I had another reason for a shave ha ha ha.
So that's wraps up the crazy New Zealand/Australia adventures. I boarded my plane, and made the 30 hour trip to London UK....I'll update on that and Denmark after I finish attending the music festival I'm going to today!
Cheers,
Rye
