The Life of Byron...

This is Byron Bay

Its good.

Byron Bay was our first foray into SHARED ACCOMMODATION!, sleeping in bunk beds, general BO, general clothes everywhere and general noise everywhere, I was not looking forward to it. Plus one night in an 8 person room cost the same the 4* place in Cancun ($25).

I actually liked it. Our room was full of Germans, I called in DeutscheBunk.

Jack later had to move rooms as we had booked and in his room there some proper LADS who tried to climb into birds beds while they were sleeping etc, fairly funny behavior

The hostel put on a thing every night which meant there was always a busy bar to go to. The first night in the bar you got a raffle ticket for a free skydive with every drink. This meant that the drunkest person had the best chance of winning an extremely dangerous prize. Although I wasn’t keen on the skydive, I did want to win; and J Bird didn’t want to win so I had his tickets and we got on it. I was sure this one was in the bag. It came time for the DJ to announce the winner; I was planning an acceptance speech in my head. Then surprise surprise, some girl in a group of girls hanging around the DJ booth won. I left in a huff.

At this stage I would like to show you J Bird’s hair, it’s ridiculous. He looks like Niffty who was a dinner lady come 6^th form canteen lady at school. Nice woman but she looked like a massive lesbian.

You can take a minibus to a town called Nimbin, we were told it’s like Amsterdam. The person who told us this has clearly never been to Amsterdam or even seen a picture of Amsterdam or even heard anything about Amsterdam because Nimbin is nothing like Amsterdam. It’s basically 1 street with drug dealers walking around and drug paraphernalia shops.

About 45 minutes into the way there the emergency exit roof hatching thing of the minibus flew off. As in flew away into some field. It was raining so the cabin just completely filled in with water and passengers moved seats to avoid the flooding. I was sat at the back of the bus like a LAD so I just saw the whole thing unfold. When we arrived at Nimbin the bus driver turns around and says:

Driver: “oh, have we had a leak from somewhere” He looks up “oh Christ, where’s the roof?

Passenger 1: “it flew away”

Driver: “it flew away?”

Passenger 2: “yeah, it flew away”

Driver: “why didn’t anyone tell me”

The whole bus shrugs their shoulders

In hindsight that is a pertinent question, I still don’t know why anyone didn’t tell him. Someone should have told him really. Not me, but someone.

We went out again, no stories but got some funny videos and texts.

So next up is Surfer's Paradise (that's actually the name of the town) according to one of the LADS in Jack's room, in Surfer's; "even the dirty birds are fit... probably an average weight of 8-9 stone". What a ridiculous thing to say to a stranger

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Oh and don’t get me wrong, Byron aint all drinking and shouting, it’s got bloody lush scenery too

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One Week in Sydney...

G’Day you flaming drognogs, you bloody Galahs etc!

We got to Sydney no trouble and with such an early arrival time we thought it prudent to walk around and get a feel for the surroundings. This of course came with the customary walk around a foreign supermarket to point at things that are slightly different, like this ridiculous confusion:

And to take note how amazingly expensive everything is in Australia ($1 = 65p). So when I saw this item, my mind was completely blown:

Other examples include a small pint of beer called a schooner costing 6-12 Freddos or a cooked breakfast ranging from 10-17 Freddos.

At one point we went for a breakfast run by some lovely Chinese lady and the food came out with no ketchup, well that isn’t a breakfast. So I asked the lady,

“can I have some ketchup please?”

The polite lady nodded a scuttled off to somewhere and reemerged with a straw, plonked it on the table and started to walk off. I was startled but managed to compose myself enough to swivel on my seat and catch her attention.

“sorry I meant, can I have some ketchup please?”

The lady apologised and again scuttled off to return with the much anticipated red elixir. I turned my head to look at some Chinese “artwork” on the wall and turned back to see a pepper grinder placed on the table. At this moment I was faced with a difficult choice; accept the pepper grinder and continue with my rapidly cooling breakfast without the lubricant needed for the morning’s best activity, or risk it for a potentially embarrassing situation. It was just like deal or no deal.

I took the risk, and explained the lady that I would like some “ketchup… you know…. red… tomato sauce.”

“Oooooh” she said, returning with the bottle of the delicious loveliness.

“Sorry about that” she said.

“Not a problem” I replied.

She then pointed at the pepper grinder and stated “I always think that is ketchup”.

I spent the rest of the day wondering who taught her English, and how one would ever get the two confused.

We also walked around Sydney; seeing the famous sights, humorous signs and bald rats:

After that we went back to the room and got hit by jet lag due to not having a Sunday I guess and slept for 16 hours. But after that we were alright and headed over to Manly, a super lush beachy suburb of Sydney to stay with Mark and Michelle and the Babbas.

It was really good to have nice rest point to sleep, shower, eat home cooked lush meals and forget about lumbering around stupid annoying backpacks. We also had an awesome day trip a some fish markets full of Chinese people and fish as well as Bondi Beach, which was raining but still good; and we saw a group of gay deafs doing very flamboyant sign language. Cheers M&M.

Literally a 2 minute walk from the Bilsons was my old mate Ed Hunter the former Head Hunter. So we went out with him in Manly, #Referee. I decided to record the events in a real time note:

The next morning we worked it off with a trip to Palm Beach, which is where they film Home & Away. But seeing as I’ve seen probably 20 mins of Home & Away accumulatively in my life it was a little wasted on me; but you can’t argue with 31 degrees!

The next night it was back to Michelle’s and went out in Manly again with no Ed (because he couldn’t hack it) but unbelievably weirdly I bumped into an old mate, Rohan from Marlow. He lives here now so was literally just a coincidence, bizarre. Unfortunately I only have this terrible picture.

Saturday rolled around and Ed had recovered so we went central Sydney with Ed’s gf, Em. We went out in the area where we arrived and slept for 16 hours, Kings Cross. Famed for its prostitution and drug ridden tramps; these had proven to be very vocal earlier in the week, unlike LA tramps. Nether the less this was a good night out with plenty of shape throwing. We left the club at 3.30 but for some reason no cabs would take us home, so we had to take two buses eventually arrive home at 6am after Ed ate 2 burritos. I don’t do buses.

After more sleeping we eventually left Sydney, great town. Oddly it was cheaper to fly to out next destination (including transfers) than it was to get a bus or train. So another flight we took, off to Byron Bay.

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The End of Chapter I...

So it’s the end of the USA & Mexico leg so I thought I’d tie it all up. After Acapulco we got to Mexico City, we were only there for 2 days so not a lot happened. We looked around the Anthropology museum which was just more Mayan shit; I’ve only just noticed that at no time, in 3 weeks in Mexico and walking round numerous Mayan based places, did anybody mention the end of the world 2012 thing. You would think that that would be a big tourist attraction, maybe that’s what all the masks were about? We also just walked around the town, and saw a yellow monument.

Aside from that MC was pretty ordinary, except there was an Irish bar we went to where everyone was signing along to a band playing Cosmic Girl by Jameroquai (no idea how you spell that)

Here is a map to show you where we went, covering 2500 miles.

Following Mexico we headed to LA for a 2 night stay over before heading to Sydney. This flight, Mexico City to LA was provided by Alaska Airlines and was populated by mostly Chinese passengers. That sentence seems odd to me but it’s true. Oh and they definitely weren’t Eskimos heading to Alaska, they were completely Chinese.

To Summarise Los Angeles I will no present our stay in statistics.

Number of haircuts: 1. I went to a barber shop and it was just like a film, where they were watching Sons of Anarchy and talking about ridiculous subjects like one guy had “a terabyte for sale, Dawg” because he said “my homeboy hooked me up and fixed by broken terabyte so now I got two terabyte but I only need one terabyte, Dawg”. One well-dressed chap was caught eating a salad, when quizzed he claimed he was going vegan to lose weight. Moments later a delivery man turned up with chilli cheese fries for him, he said they were vegan chilli cheese fries.

Number of Andy Ball look-a-likes from behind: 1 uncanny chap. 

 

Number of racist taxi drivers: 1. We couldn’t have landed a funnier first cab to take us to our hotel. He was an Iranian guy who looked and sounded almost exactly John Toturo in Mr Deeds (look it up). En Route he got into a monologue explain all the areas we were driving through. The opinions quoted below are those of the taxi driver and not those of the author of this blog.
 
“this is Santa Monica, its is full of gays and lesbians, so if your going out in the evening stay away from here, I am Iranian and we not used to this. When I first arrive I pick up this girl and I say, you are beautiful you need a man, she say I am lesbian and I say Whaaaaa? Get out of my cab.”

“this area of LA is so so… for gays”

“In LA there lots of blacks, I’m not racist but every time you get black they make problem. You drive slow you drive fast, either way they be making trouble, it’s difficult for me”

Classic

Number of ridiculous conversations with Jack: Various, here’s an example.

Number of tramps: stopped counting once we reached 100. I like to think they are all failed actors just looking for a big break, not getting it, and resigning themselves to life without shoes and clipping toe nails.

Number of lifts with strangers: 1, Jack got a lift back to the hotel from two ladies names Shakira and LaQueesha. I’m still laughing at this.

Number of lush cars spotted: loads and loads.

Number of celebrities spotted: 1. Matthew Perry (Chandler off of Friends)

Number films watched on the LA to Sydney flight. 5. Katy Perry: Part of Me is truly harrowing. The plane had the stupid ability to chat to other passengers on some internal text system, pointless
 

Anyway we got to Sydney, but missed Sunday. The flight took off at 10pm on Saturday, we landed at 6am Monday; mind boggling!

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