The big relax

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We’ve been staying at a really small hostel for ages now. There is an 8 bed dorm and 3 double rooms, compare that to the hostel I’m using the internet in now, something like 50 dorm rooms, or Koala’s which is a huge complex of 4 bed dorms, and the place I’m staying is more of a house than a hostel really.

So here’s the issue. We’ve been staying for absolutely ages now, much longer than anyone in the hostel’s six month history. The owner, the nicest guy in the world called Nick, is getting a little annyoed with us we think. Due to the tiny size of the place we see him every day without fail and always at very close intimate quaters, there’s no diluting us. I know that the arguement runs that we’re filling one of his rooms every night and he’s getting money, but at the same time he does constantly ask us when our leaving date is. We’ve both been too chicken to tell him that it’s not for another two weeks yet…

So now we have to live in semi-awkwardness, indeed staying in our room until half twelve today just so we didn’t have to bump into him and explain ourselves. I’m not really sure how this will resolve itself, hopefully he’ll just accept us there for another 14 days and no more will be said… we shall see…

Other than this relatively blown out of preportion piece of non-news, Noosa remains dull by any standard you care to set. Come on Guatemala, hurry up.

Sitting in the bar at work last night (yes, we’ve become like the rest of our coworkers and spend our time off at our place of employment,) we got speaking to some of the regulars. These people must be pretty well off for living in Noosa, average house prices roam easily into the millions, and they were fairly well traveled, indeed they visit Sri Lanka for a month in a week.

We also met a young Texan who actually liked G.Doubya.B.

Boring to read? Uhu.

At least you can all go and do something more interesting now, we’re stuck here for another three weeks.

sorry, hungover and like to whinge.

The big fish/small pond syndrome only highlighted iteself further this week with some relatively disturbing news from my work mates. They had an ex co-worker ‘checked out’ by one of their policeman friends, and actually looked me straight in the eye without a glimmer of amusement as one of them told me, and I stress, in all seriousness – ‘[the guy who was checked out]has no passport, no birth certificate, he doesn’t exist.’  It’s like I’ve stepped onto the plot of some semi-retarded X-Files rip off. I looked back blankly and asked my work colleague ‘are you sure your mate didn’t just not find anything?’

‘No, he’s very good. He’s a pro.’

I am shocked. It almost makes me want to link my name with international terrorism so that when me and Lauren finally skip town (more on that later) and they ‘check us out’ with their slightly bent cop mate, they can all stand together and nod ‘I knew it’s’ gravely to each other. 

It might be worth adding at this point that asking law enforcement friends to check out ID’s of people for non-cop’s was made illegal largely because of the amount of rapes that occured from people knowing too much details about potential victims. At least, that’s what my slightly blurry memory of a Discovery Chanel show tells me. I mean, there’s a reason that you can’t just ask a cop mate to find out private info about people. One particular work colleague in general (the one who used the ‘he doesn’t exist’ line) takes himself so seriously that he has a mohawk -without any sense of irony, brilliantly, he also turns to me reguarly and says he’s been working on his music but can’t get anywhere because Noosa (population 20,000. Population under the age of 60; 1,000) has no ‘hardcore dubstep scene’ What the hell is a hardcore dubsteb scene and why would a town that is in essence an enormous retirement village, have a specialist dance music scene?! Tool tool tool.

So, to our escape:

Bus to Brissy: Booked for 13th Feb (that’s a Friday the 13th people, dun dun duuuh)

Flight to Sydney: Booked for same day.

Deep breath…

Yeeeeeeeessssssssssss!!!!!!!

And relax.

Unfortunately, we still have a grueling however long (I think a month or so) of work before we can get on the way.

Still, the tickets have been booked, we’re flying air Mexicana I think. It’s got Mexico in the title, so hopefully it won’t be held together with duct tape and chewing gum (Air Laos, anyone?)

Still relentlessly studing Spanish on a daily basis, I’m picking it up, but some modules are pretty taxing. We’re playing around with the idea of taking a one week course when we get to Antuiga, it won’t make us any good, but might give us just a bit more understanding of the basics.

Scorching weather the past few days, well into the thirties. Slapping on plenty of sun lotion. There’s something called a King Tide which has been harrassing the coasts the past week or so, it basically just means big waves. Really big waves. I’ve been out in the sea a few times and *gulped* as a dark shadow stretched over three feet above me, and I’m 6f 4in. Yikes! Still, I have managed to put off drowning so far and have intention of doing so, so I think I’ll be fine. Looking forward to getting surfing lessons come next pay check.

I’m enormously hung over, so I’m at a loss of anything else to say. Unless of course, anyone wants to bring me a bacon sarnie and cup of P.G. Tips. Ooo lovely.

Today saw us get the free bus to Australia Zoo, the late Steve Irwin’s zoo in Queensland. It is around an hour coach ride from Noosa, and it is absolutely awesome. After my day there, I am now officially afraid of nothing.

The first part of the day went pretty fast. I got it over and done with and visited the snake section. For those of you who don’t know, I couldn’t even look at a photograph of a snake (or even a long worm on bad days) around seven months ago. I saw my first ever live snake in Thailand around 7 months ago in a snake farm and since then I’ve been much better, able to see them on T.V. without flinching and of course saving Lauren from kicking an Eastern Brown Snake (2nd most deadly in the world, folks!) the other day.

That over and done with, and we headed to the ‘Roo Heaven’ Kangaroo enclosure. We got to pat ‘roos and wallabes (sp!) to our hearts content, great fun. After that we headed over to the Crocoseum (which I ‘hillariously’ pronounced as croCAREseum for the entire day,) for an animal show.  Hmm…

The show was aimed at the kiddies in the audience, and they did seem to love it, not so much the adults though. The first agonizingly awkward 39 minutes consisted of the heavily-franchised daughter of Steve Irwin, Bindi Irwin, performing songs with her ‘Crocmen’ from her forthcoming DVD. There were many highlights of this 39 minute extravaganza, most notably the song about the tiger which had an unnerving feeling of pedophile references. Lyrics along the lines of ‘He’ll lure you in/ with his enigmatic smile/ but don’t be fooled children/ get away while you can’ did little to help the image of the show. Here’s a picture of Lauren laughing so hard she’s crying:

The Crocmen seemed particularly half-arsed and badly rehearsed, sloppy dance moves abound. I’m not sure either, but Bindi didn’t seem to happy to be there either. Still, the kids in the audience loved it.

Then came the actual animal ‘show.’ Snakes were brought out and some descriptions were given and also the strong theme of wildlife protection was highlighted here. Then the bird section. Various birds flying in and out of the arena. To be honest, it wasn’t really all that, and we left halfway through the bird-bit. Again though, I’d like to stress that it was clearly aimed at the little ‘uns and they seemed to be having a hoot.

This brings me on to another point, the staff at the zoo were awesome. Very approachable, and regularly carrying some animal or other and happy to talk to you about them, they were a real asset to the zoo.

After lunch came a fairly momentous event in my life. I held a 3 meter long reticulated python. Oh? didn’t quite get that? The guy who couldn’t even look at them on T.V. until under a year ago held one of the brutes? Wait a sec, I’ll get some proof…

Uhu, so that was really quite something for me. My hand didn’t stop shaking for around half an hour afterward and I can’t stop thinking about how the beast felt like pure muscle under my fingers, but I did it. What’s more, the snakehandler was really awesome, I obviously told him about my fears and he was really calm and relaxed and discussed a brief history of the snake with me before letting me gently pat it. It was awesome. I’m pretty much immune to fear now.

Lauren also had a go at patting a snake on one of the roving staff members, although it was a little smaller than my one.

Again the staff lady here was very friendly, making the experience informative and relaxed.

After my big adventure holding a snake, Lauren wanted to have a go at something slightly less adventurous but still just as great. She wanted to hold a koala. They were the second most cute animal in the zoo (first place goes to the ridiculous wombat,) but by Lauren’s reckoning, you can’t get any cuter. So we lined up once more and Lauren got a chance to hold Kramer the Koala.

Before I ran in for the professional shot:

All in all, a wicked day out. The highlight of Australia so far, would definately recommend it to anyone in the Queensland area, especially Noosa because you get a free coach to the zoo. It’s only $53 each and with the pictures and food and all we spent only around $80 for the whole day, that’s less than forty quids, well worth it.

Still cannot belive I held my biggest fear today. Woohoo!

Nick, the hostel owner, made a little bit of a boo-boo the other night.

He takes the majority of his bookings from Hostelworld.com and there is a function on there to select the dorm to be a ‘girls only’ one. Problem being that it wasn’t a girls only dorm, I was staying in there.

Cue Nick being full of apologies first thing in the morning. We had to pack up our stuff and leave the dorm. Not wanting us to sleep on the street (we were, afterall, moving back into the hostel the next night into a private double room,) Nick offered us the only spare bed he had – at his house in Noosa Waters (where property starts at around the $1,ooo,ooo mark.) We didn’t kick up any fuss at all, how could we? he was obviously ina very awkward position and was trying to sort us out as best he could.

This strange turn of events lead us to dumping our day bags over at Nick’s just before work. His children didn’t seem too unduly surpirsed to see a couple of pommes in their house so maybe this isn’t a one off occurance. We whacked our bags in the spare room of the beautiful place overlooking the river, and Nick took us to work.

Once at work (which is only getting more claustraphoibic – there is nowhere in Noosa we can go where we don’t see at least 2 people that we work with/are regulars,) Nick dropped by to give us our keys to one of the double rooms at the hostel, apparently someone hadn’t turned up!

Even better, he wouldn’t accept any payment for the room for the night because of how bad he felt for accidentally booking the room out as a girls only. A saving of $60. Nice.

Even better, we had a surprise lump sum of around $600 put into Lauren’s account. It was the deposit from our Melbourne appartment, so that’s our L.A. -> Guatemala City tickets paid for.

Today marks our first day off since we started our barjobs 8 days ago. We’re going to have some beers by the river today as well as booking our flights from L.A. and then tomorrow we are going to the world famous Australia Zoo the Steve Irwin one. I’m really excited, can’t wait to see a wombat, they look like freakin’ Pokemon.

To add to my photo’s, here’s some pics of Noosa National Park, oh, and one that I found of Lauren and I at Glastonbury 2007 and felt I needed to share.

After describing our encounter with the snake to our colleagues we have whittled down the culprit to the Brown Snake. Nothing to worry about apparently, but just to bring you guys up to speed, here’s some facts about it that a quick google search produced…

The Eastern Brown Snake is the second most venomous land snake in the world after the Inland Taipan.^[2] Although Eastern Browns will seek to avoid confrontation, their venom is very toxic, and can be fatal; even juveniles have caused human fatalities. The venom contains both neurotoxins and blood coagulants.^[3]

Known fatalities

• A 16-year-old boy from Sydney died on 13 January 2007 after being bitten on the hand in a reserve at Whalan.^[4]
• 9-year-old girl Milena Swilks from Rocky River, south of Armidale in rural New South Wales, died on 8 March 2007 after being bitten on the foot while picking corn. She collapsed and was taken to hospital unconscious, with the cause not known until after her death two hours later.^[5]

Thankfully we didn’t travel down that trouser leg of time, I shudder to think of the ‘if’s of if  I hadn’t been looking at the ground at that exact moment.

Well done all of you who know where the trouser leg of time comes from. Shame on you those who don’t: The man is a national icon.

Regarding banks:

I’m with HSBC, I will never open an account with this bank ever again. More than once, after lenghty (and I do mean lenghty) phone calls to the bank while standing in dusty streets surrounded by people who can’t speak a word of English I have been assured that ‘It’s alright sir, your card will definately work now’

Innumerable times this has been a lie. Luckily I have managed to talk our way round owing money to people ‘cos I can be cheeky like that.  But more vulnerable travelers, lone girls for example, could be in a right pickle if they’re stuck in the middle of the night at some dodgy middle of nowhere and can’t draw money out to get a taxi away.

Secondly, Quantas- if you do buy a round the world be very prepared to spend a lot of phone credit and time on hold waiting to talk to their customer service/booking department. Just reached a new record of half an hour on hold. Did I get a sorry? Did I heck.

And Breathe. 

Now that the much needed rant is complete, I can break some charming news to all you folks back home who have been wearing black mourning garb since our departure – we have a new arrival date, and it’s 2 months earlier. While it obviously a shame that we are home so much earlier than intended, we both agree that there is very little point in staying in Australia just for the sake of hitting that ’12’ month goal. Especially as my contempt for the land grows more palpable with each passing day. We’d both rather a full 10 months, with the last one being in some new exotic land that I am ashamed to admit I wasn’t even really aware of until very recently. (Honestly, though, how many of you can say you’d heard of Laos before reading this?)

Our new plan is to be in LA for the 19th of Febuary, and out of New York for the 5th of April. That gives us the last week of Geb and all of March to career around Guatemala, El Salvador and maybe a little bit of Southern Mexico or Hondurras. I’ve even been practicing Spanish.

Tomo un kafe, por favour!