Let me first apologize for the rather extended hiatus that I have taken from the blogosphere. I could give you some spiel about how busy I’ve been absorbing the Australian culture but in truth the combination of alcohol fuelled nights and a very lazy attitude have added up to a rather apathetic approach to blogging. Let me make it up to you now with a sprinkling of stories from Laos and Australia.
Laos
Laos was frickin awesome. The highlight, of course, was tubing. For those of you, ignorant about the joys of tubing let me quickly educate you. Tubing consists of floating down a large merky river on an inflatable rubber ring. As you drift through the disease infested water centimeters above jagged rocks, little Laotian men arrow empty water bottles attached to rope towards you and your tube. Once you catch the rope, the little Laotian men drag you in and you clamber up yet more jagged rocks to reach the bar. Besides the obvious dangers of drunk tubing, there are jumps, zip lines and slides that entice many to fling themselves head first into the river with often nasty outcomes. On the first day of tubing I jumped, flew and slid with the zeal and enthusiasm of a weightwatcher surrounded by half price pies. That was until I saw someone emerging from the water with their feet facing in opposite directions. The pies didn’t look too tasty after that.
After our time tubing in Vang Vieng had come to an end, we travelled to Vientiane (the capital of Laos) for a day. There’s really nothing special about Vientiane and so in the evening we ended up going bowling as a source of entertainment. With communist flags draped on the walls and the Justin Bieber album being blasted through the sound sytem, it turned out to be a rather bizarre experience. I don’t know about you, but I felt the combination of the communist hammer and sickle with the very much product-of-capitalism-12 year old’s music funny enough to be included in the blog. But that might just be me.
Australia
After Laos, and a few final days in Thailand, I travelled to Australia, where I have now been for four weeks. Any preconceived ideas of an idyllic paradise bathed in glorious sunshine have quickly been washed away. The weather has, in all honesty, been shit.
That being said, we have still been able to have a pretty sweet time.
We spent Christmas in Melbourne and had two equally awesome experiences. Firstly, our half Aussie, half Icelandic Christmas eve dinner courtesy of Brendan and Jana (whom I met on the Joburg-Vic falls trip – remember that?) and Jana’s family. And secondly, two and half days of one of the greatest ashes tests.
To see the Aussies be bowled out for 98 on Boxing Day, at the MCG, was a truly remarkable and yet unexpected feat. It wasn’t all about the cricket however. The atmosphere – with over 87,000 people in the stadium-was equally special. Banter bounced back and forth between the Barmy Army and the Aussies, whilst chains of beer cups were formed that spanned whole tiers. The security and the police acted as the pantomime villains, curtailing any fun that they perceived was being had, and throwing fans out for the most absurd reasons. Skulling a beer, starting a Mexican wave and singing Justin Bieber songs were all possible offences that could result in being chucked out. Ok, I made that last one up- we’re not in Laos any more.
In Sydney, on New Year’s Eve, we watched a couple of fireworks beneath the harbor bridge. One and a half million people, $5m worth of fireworks, 12 minutes of bangs and flashes- bit over the top really- they didn’t even have a Catherine’s wheel.
Leaving Sydney, we joined the Oz Experience – a hop on hop off bus, travelling all the way the east coast up to Cairns. We have now stopped off at four different places- Coffs Harbour, Surf Camp, Byron Bay and Surfers Paradise. Here’s a quick summary of each place:
Coffs: Lots of rain and lots of drinking
Surf Camp: A 2 hour Surf lesson- Improvements have been made since South Africa- I was able to stand on at least 3 occassions
Byron Bay – Even more rain, and even more drinking
Surfers Paradise – Sunshine!
Whether it be floating down the river in Laos or the rain that has plagued our journey so far, water has been the consistent theme of the last five weeks. Okay, so the connections are slightly tenuous, but I had to come up with some idea to hold the blog together.
Of course, the floods in Queensland have been the biggest problem. We were due to travel to Brisbane in order to carry on our journey up the east coast, however now we have had to change our plans. We will be flying to Cairns tomorrow and then working our way back to Brisbane.
Right, time to go- I forgot how exhausting blogging was. Im going to go get a drink now-I can guarantee you it won’t be a drink of water though!
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