The tour of all tours of bali headed first to the balinese dancing place that all the tourists go and consequently was
crap. Othe to ubud where we observed all the wildlife in the monkey forest, including a lovely tall blode girl from australia
walking around in the smallest pair of shorts both brian and I had ever seen. Interesting.as was the statue of the monkey
holding its oversized penis which funnily enough was as big as its head. Then on to the crater-surrounded mountain of gunung
batur and the café with the 4 buck coffees. But the view was pretty speccy so It was worth it. The mother of all temples was
next the besakih temple oin the side of the islands biggest hill Mt.Agung (only 3100 m high). Our compulsory local guide was
a bit of a weirdo, that was before we saw his defomed foot and hand. Theres something to be said for not using uranium as
a subsitute for vitamin b.
After another useless suggestiuon by our drivers as to where we should stay for the night (ie the place where they got
the biggest commission!) we ended up in Tulamben on the east coast of the island in preparation fro diving the USS Liberty
wreck in the morningwhich we did well I didnt but the other guys did. I just hung around the top of the water snorkelling
like a big pasty white seagull. Consequntly the next few nights sleeping were a bit uncomfortable as I couldnt reach all parts
of my back with the sunscreen..
After dodging and getting caught in a couple of balinese new year parades, we got to our next stop in lovina -not right
in the touristy part, so it was nice especially with the local boats leaking petrol and oil in the water in front of the hotel.
Sweet. We managed to wrangle air conditioned suites with hot water for all 6 of us and had our first night of involved drinking
and being eaten alive by mosquitoes. The true bali experience.
Back in Kuta and to the Aquarius Star hotel on Legian Road where we would spend the next 4 days, including the total shutdown
day of Nyepi (pronounced Yipee!) where nothing not even the scungy dogs were out in the streets. Unfortunately we all had
to spend that day by the pool eating, drinking, swimming and playing pool. Bugger, eh? When the lights went out at about 7pm
though, playing pool by torchlight was quite interesting.
The rest of the time on the island was spent shopping, drinking, going to the beach at kuta and getting water poisoning,
going to a cool ittle surf beach at uluwatu, and drinking. Fun was had by all after you had sobered up and gotten over the
hangover - ie. After 5pm each day!
Nice one.
Flight to Singapore and an 8 hour wait in the airport was a bit disconcerting with every 5th person wandering
around with a face mask on. Decided to take a free tour of the city, which wasnt too bad it was raining so we couldnt get
off the bus and have a boat tour. So more time in the SARS- infected enclosure for me please!
Off to London and some inconsiderate bastards decided to blow each other up making the flight an hour or so longer than
it should have been. Geez.
Stayerd a couple of days in ealing with my little cuz Carolyn and her baby Amber, and of course her hubby James. Was accosted
at the Redback pub but managed to survive the onslaught! Journeyed the hour up into essex to the Whites where I am at the
moment working at the Bull pub at Blackmore end, at a pheasant farm making pheasant sheds and playing cricket for Shalford
(a village team) and Braintree (a bigger towns team). AM currently leading the batting averages at Shalford (27/4) with 62!
Bowling like a monger though. -Update- before leaving for Newquay, the big fella was averaging 42 with the bat and 11 with
the ball at braintree, and something similar at Shalford. Is there anything this man cannot do??????
The essex tradition was broken with the itchy feet of the wandered leading him and a mate met on the way to Barcelona last
year, Sarah, to head to the far west reaches of the country and ending up in Newquay - famous for its surf (giggle!) and nightlife
in summer.
two weeks were spent in the Zone backpackers not far from the big surf beach, Fistral, and I got work within a few days
glass collecting at the big pub in the middle of town - funnily called The Central. Many glasses were collected and many people
were met over the four weeks working there, but a dibilitating case of the could give a stuff's led to the hard working young
lad exchanging the 45hrs a week for the occupation of being a lady of leisure until the imminent departure back to essex.
Oh yes, my child, there were many a pint, many a late night, and many a bikini seen while in Newquay, but, as the beachy
saga comes to a close, all that remains is the need to sleep for a week, a larger belly and a few friends to have fun with
in another space and time.
AND..we're back!
After the newquay odyssey, it was back to the White household in Great saling, Essex for a month and ahalf to enjoy the
hospitality, good company, and ever amazing good looks of Steve and Mary, while playing some superb cricket and working
in varied jobs ranging from a brewery delivery driver to a waiter at a huge country manor house-cum hotel.
And..intermingled with all this fun and excitement that the essex countryside has to offer, the traveller managed to scoot
off around Britain to Liverpool, the Lakes District, Nottingham (to visit the fat bastard known as Ben); as well as nipping
over to Hamburg and Bremen in Germany to meet some friends made in Newquay.
SPAIN, PORTUGAL & MOROCCO
Portugal
The next port of call for a bit over three weeks was Portugal and southern and central Spain, previously undiscovered by
the man-monkey. This leg began with a lovely flight into Lisbon and two days in the city and out to Cintra, a bit of a mountain
village, and Cascais, a dodgy seaside resort, reminiscent of Margate or Southend in England...even the electricity couldnt
wait to bugger off - a big black out cut short the night out!
Got a train back into Lisbon then a bus down to Lagos, a bit of a lower end tourist resort, with heaps of little bars and
restaurants round the place, and lots of pissed people running round the streets after 4am. got severely smacked on the half
alcohol-half juice 2-for-1 cocktails one night, and was very unhappy for the next couple of days.
i did some cool walks around the cliffs and caves of the point near Lagos, which reminded me of the 12 apostles near Melbourne,
except without the rain and the japanese tourists. Also went down to Cabo de Viincente, the most south westerly point in europe
- some mad arsed cliffs there too and some just as mad arsed fisherman dangling their huge rods over the precipice and shaking
them round a bit. interesting to watch....
next, onto Faro, and halfway there i decided that i didnt want to go there, and told the nutty bus driver that i was buying
a ticket on to seville and that my bags were still on the bus...can you guess what happens next? after 5 minutes of calm and
collected yelling, my bags mysteriously qppeared with the kiwi girl alex i was chatting to on the bus...she had apparently
gone mad at the driver for taking off and made the nutter stop and drop the bags off....so that was how i ended up in Faro.
Was worth it though i guess...had a sweet dinner with alex, another kiwi lady and a canadian in a tiny little restaraunt,
then hung out with the fuinky students all bopping along to really dodgy spanish folk music til about 11.
A bit of Spain next...
Actually made it on the bus to seville the next morning and got a hotel right downtown which was cool and spent the day
cruising round the cathedral, palace and the bull fighting arena. pretty cool. also went to a flamenco dancing place, but
wasnt impressed by the warbling fat old lady and the flabby bird flopping bout the place as the main stars. By this point
alex and i had decided that a side trip to morocco would be very cool - for the experience, and keeping a few more bucks in
our wallets than if we stayed in spain....so we caught a bus down to tarifa, the windsurfing and kiteboarding capital
of europe and stayed a night there to catch a ferry to tangier the next afternoon. A couple of bottles of 1.19euro rose wine
went down quite nicely and i passed out at about 10!
Morocco
We (well actually, I) were impressed by the totally estonian crew that worked on the ferry across....definitely a place
i'll be going some point soon in the future! Arrived in tangier and managed to get ripped off only once out of two attempts...the
first being as soon as we got off the ferry with a guy telling us that we were going to get robbed as soon as we got out of
the port, and he would look after us with a taxi, a recommendation for a place to eat and a place to store our bags in his
mates shed while we walked around. A convenient one finger hand signal later and we were off to the train station and after
being ripped off by almost a factor of 10 times on the ride, we got a train to Fez.
As you do, we had our hotel for the night organised by a helpful man who just happened to have a mate who had a hotel and
could get it half price for us.....dodgy you might say. and you might be right.....but it worked out ok and the bright pink
hotel was as good a place to stay as any in the old town in Fez, which was mostly made up of tiny little lanes filled with
either donkeys, mad gibbering old men or hides drying out to make leather goods. spent the day wondering round the little
markets and lounging in the persian room in the hotel before catching a night bus to Er Rachidia and Erfoud on the edge of
the Sahara. We again got stuffed around about getting to a hotel and eventually hired our own mercedes benz taxi to take us
the 50km out to the hotel on the edge of the sand dunes. was pretty sweet i can tell ya - it looked like something straight
out of lawrence of arabia - a big castle thingy at the bas of huge sand dunes...which of course we had to climb....and I had
to run and jump all the way down like a nutter....it had to happen!
caught a local bus the next day to the closest little town and then got three different mercedes benz (grande) taxis, which
dont leave til they have 7 people in the including the driver. We ended up in Boumalne Dades at the base of the High Atlas
mnountains, and near the Dades gorge, which was pretty. Stayed there the night and then got a bus to Marrakesh the next
day - going over a road that made the great Ocean Road near Melbourne like an airport runway. i think we went down 2000m in
about an hour. the bus driver was taking the corners like he was in a ferrari. madness.
After detatching myself from the walls of the bus we got a room just off the main square in the old town of Marrakesh and
had a feast and a nice browse round the marketplace there....which we did for the whole of the next day, going through pretty
much all of the 30 markets in the old town. got some super prezzies though! Ate 40 sausages for dinner at the market again
and had nice sleep before jumping on a bus to rabat...which finally got going an hour after it was meant to leave. it took
20 minutes to even leave the bus station, and spent over half an hour at the petrol station round the corner waiting for people
to fill the bus up. now for you who havent been to africa and some place s in asia, the buses dont like to leave unless the
bloody thing is full, and they keep stopping to pick up passengers if there are any free seats, or if there is any aisle space
in the bus. gets a bit annoying when your 6hr bus trip takes 8. hmm.
got a dodgy arsed room in the old town in rabat for 5euros for the both of us and went wandering round the place. *have
you all noticed yet that i havent talked about alcohol at all since i got to morocco? well...you do now...cause its bloody
hard to get unless you're in a big swanky hotel, or you can find the well hidden bars and want to pay 10euros for one. Anways,
we were shown where a beer store was by alovely local fella called Ali and he also invited us round to his house to drink
them. interesting fella, but he had a bit of an obsession with DHL, the delivery company. After escaping, we wandered
round another night market, and i had to restrain myself from buying another dodgy mp3 player, like i did in singapore last
year, and which blew up and covered itself in white powder. very nice indeed.
Caught an express (!) bus back up to tangier the next day and we managed not to get robbed or beaten up as you are
lead to believe in tangier...although i did manage to get stones chucked at me by a little beggar boy who i accidentally knocked
off a walkway when he wouldnt get out of my way...
another lovely estonian ferry ride back to SPAIN..
..and we picked up our bags that we left in Tarifa and then went through Algeciras and La Linea to get to GIBRALTAR, which
involved walking across the international airport's runway on the way in. i can tell you that its not easy to avoid a 400ton
jet with 40kg of gear on, but i can proudly say that i did it without losing too many braincells and limbs.
Stayed, unwillingly, in the worst hostel in europe, and had a good night out - with beer! yes!!! happy days are here again!
also got to have pizza hut all you caneat again. had to stop at 25 pieces though. stretchmarks. not good for impressing the
ladies. nuh uh.
funny thing about Gibraltar - walking down the street and seeing a fully kitted out bobby policeman, then hearing him speak
fluent spanish to a little granny wanting to know where the nearest monkey-slapping disco is.
Caught a bus to Granada from La Linea, and bid farewell to Alex in Marbella. Looked a bit touristy for me....which would
have been ok but i didnt see any topless german or swedish girls on the beach as we drove past, so it wasnt really worth it.
got to granada and did a heap of walking round the town and up to the alhambra, a big castle and garden that had been added
to and ruled from by the kings of the area for hundreds of years. i saw and laughed at to american girls who had walked all
the way up the huge hill with their giant backpacks on and were wandering round the place. they werent too happy when they
found out that i was sitting right next to them in the train to madrid that afternoon. they stopped spitting at me after an
hour or so and we had some nice conversation......
you know you're in a popular hostel, and there's australians involved, when at 11pm guys and girls were already swapping
clothes at the pub, and the fella comes out wearing nothing but pants and a bra. thats my kind of partying! We got a
little anzac group together and went off to toledo for the day and managed to cause hundreds of yearsd of wear and tear to
the statue of the town's hero's statue with a footy. c'mon aussie c'mon! Also spent a day wandering round Madrid and taking
in the palace, the adult theatres and sex show areas and the big park. nice stuff to see, but all trips had to come to an
end, which this one did.
Back in essex for a couple of weeks being a lazy bastard and getting my shit together to prepare for moving to the next
continent - NORTH AMERICA, which is where i am now....Vancouver to be exact, again being a lazy bastard til work up on either
of two ski mountains in the rockies starts later in november. thats where i is .
Just one last thing....i have to send out the biggest thank you that's ever been thought of in the world to the White family
- Steve, Mary, Jon, Ben, Paul, and -Bailey, Smudge, Barney, Scampi and Fennel (the pets), for looking after this little boy
for most of the last two years. i had an amazing time and am already missing you guys heaps. and a bit more than that.
Right then.....
CANADA
The allure of the second largest country in the world was too much for this worldly fella to pass up - as the first time
he was here, just too much fun was had to be packed into a year. So it begins again.
the frist two weeks back in the country were spent in the lovely city of Vancouver, where the big fella had a lazy-arsed
time wandering around town, going out to UBC (University of British Columbia for those not in the know) and hanging and staying
for a week and a bit with Shane and Pip, who i went to uni with when i was here 3 years ago. Went to see a few basketball
games and ended up partying a fair bit with the players form UBC as i knew a few of the including the coach Kevin Hanson from
managing the Langara College team in 99-00. Good fun and a good excuse to get pissed!
I finally got the good word from Manning Park Resort, and had a couple of interviews then moved up there after a couple
of weeks, heading there with young Trav from St.Arnaud in Victoria, and getting into the swing of things pretty quickly.
Probably one of the most remote ski resorts on the planet, Manning Park gives the true meaning of butt-f**k nowhere, and
besides drinking, eating, snowboarding and sleeping, theres not much to do. Had fun there for a couple of months but
got quite bored over the last few weeks and buggered off to Banff on Australia Day.
Which to my surprise is probably the biggest party day in Banff, cause the majority of the population are aussies! I caught
up for the boring and laziness at Manning Park, by going out and living rather lavishly for the first 2-3 weeks, living at
the Global Village, and hanging around firstly with Beck, who i did some classes with at uni in melbourne, Todd and
Justin, from tassie and then with another big (but frikkin skinny) fella from Brisbane, James. We are the ultimate team when
it comes to partying and its been a blast since i got here. Good one fella. Heaps of people in and out of the hostel and had
many keg nights, pub crawls and general piss ups since being here.
Am working at the mo - for the last 3 weeks at Mount Norquay, the smallest of the ski hills in the area as a lifty, which
means i work maybe 2 and a half hours a days, the rest consisting of reading, eating. sleeping, 2 hours of snowbaording, and
watching and laughing at people who are uncoordinated enough to stack as they get off the chairlift. need to get a video camewra
- some funny shit i tells ya!
at a bit of crossroads as to where i'll be for the next bit, but i'm sure some sort of sign or a job that pays more
than 6 bucks an hour will come about soon!
til then..... :p
