Camera situation Volume 2

Now having gotten a new camera that I was really happy with and had taken quite a lot of photos with. (Museum, Thai festival, hostel, trip to Sydney with work) Some absolute mug steals it along with my bag, headphones, 2 memory cards, a notepad that I was writing travel plans/starting a diary in and Robs memory card reader. Right from inside a small room in the museum's internet area, in front of Rob and with two members of staff watching, some lowlife thiefed it. Now to say I was pretty annoyed goes without saying, however, I didn't expect the staff at the museum to be so incompetent. None of them seemed too concerned and wouldn't let me view the CCTV which even the police were suprised. Unfortunately, I don't rate my chances of getting it back too highly :(

If I was to see someone with my fairly distinctive bag, you can rest assured they will be getting the full array of WWE wrestling moves.

Down Under (Melbourne)

Now, where do I start. As I write this, I'm chilling at Melbourne Museum, home of the biggest Imax screen in the world and a ton of cool stuff. The date is 25th March so I am welllllll behind, considering I've been living in the city since early January.

Melbourne is the capital of Victoria and has 4 million people living inside it. It's pretty much Australia's capital in terms of the arts, sport, entertainment and most importantly, cooool stuff. It has the biggest tram network in the world (easy for getting around) and is ranked as the 3rd most liveable city in the entire world.



Arriving into Melbourne, me and Tom didn't know too much about what to expect. The reason for heading here next was primarily for work reasons. Also, our great friend Robert Weber has lived here on and off for a number of months and had raved about the city, so we felt we ought to jump on a plane and see what the fuss was about. For the first week or two, me and Tom checked into various hostels, trying to find those that were reasonably priced, did lots of exploring of the city and it's various metropolitan districts, and did lots of job hunting before Rob got here from trip number 50000 to Thailand. Arriving in January meant that the weather was very, very warm and actually included the 'hottest night' in Australian history. I think it was something like 46. Absolutely mental. Somehow, I managed to sleep really well that night regardless.



The first significant event to occur in Melbourne was myself getting a job at a marketing company called Red Hot PR. This 'job' basically involved me walking around shopping malls, the streets, universities, food courts, offices etc and trying to sign girls up for a VIP hair session at some of the top hair salons in Melbourne. With an 85% discount. In theory, it sounds like the perfect job, however, it's much harder than you think getting 90 dollars off someone in the street. I have just finished my employment with Red Hot after just over 2 months. For the most part, these were months that I thoroughly enjoyed. I made lots of new friends, hung out in the sunshine talking to girls from around the world and at times made a lot of money doing it.

I decided to leave as I wasn't saving enough, due to spending quite a lot of money on lunch each day and alcohol after work a lot of the time. Also, I lost enthusiasm for the job as I was having to get up quite early each day and felt I was missing out on things other people were doing. This means that as of this second I am UNEMPLOYED. Here's a look at some of the people that I was working with:











Due to being so far behind on this, I'm not going to recall every week I've spent here but fill you in with some of the things I've been upto. Melbourne is a city that always has things going on, from tons of live music, festivals, sporting events, parties, it never stops entertaining. During my time here I've watched live music and eaten barbeques on the beach, sat and watched massive protests, visited museums and exhibitions, Thai festivals and met people from a hell of a lot of countries. At the moment (27th March) I call Melbourne my home. I'm staying at a hostel with a bunch of mates and have no intention to move on until I have saved enough money to travel.

The second big significant event to occur since I've been in Melbourne was the departure of Thomas Kevin Wright. Now, as you will remember I left England with Tom and we did Thailand, Sydney with each other. Unfortunately, due to running out of money and not being able to find a job, Tom decided to leave and finish his round the world tour in a much shorter time. This was sad for me and Rob and I'm sure Tom, and it still feels odd that I am to do the rest of the travels without him. Here's a picture of me, Tom and Vinay out on the razzle dazzle.



RIP

Soo yeah, in the room in my hostel we have some quality people. There's Rob, obviously one of my oldest buddies from home and travelling companion for the last 4 months give or take a bit.



Also, in the self titled 'Room 5 LEGENDS' we have Jon Lee. A man so in touch with Asian culture, cooking and women he may as well change his first name to Bruce. Jon is a quality guy and me him and Rob spend a fair amount of time hanging out.

Simon 'Unbelievable' Colenbrander. The nicest dutch guy you will ever meet. He uses the word unbelievable a lot, and every time he says it I'm reminded of Chris Kamara from Soccer Saturday. Simon has to put up with a lot from us English guys, putting lockers in his bed, stealing his mattress etc but he always has a smile on his face!





English Meg is the only female in here at the moment. She is a cool girl, often forces me to watch Sex and the city, steals alcohol from the restaurant she works in and puts up with our very male senses of humour.

The final member as it stands is European Phil. He is a funny character, looks a bit like Jimmy Bullard and sleeps a hell of a lot. He doesn't speak much English but will always greet us with 'here he is' which is nice.



At the moment there is potentially one or two spaces available as a room 5 legend, with the departures of Meg and Phil. All we ask from possible candidates is that they don't go to bed too early and kill a member of the rival King Street backpackers which is across the street. How they complete the killing is entirely up to them. Frontrunners for the available spots in the room are Leeds Matt, quality guy who ALWAYS wears some sort of Leeds sporting top, has a good taste in music and gives us free stuff at Grill'd the restaurant where he works. Personally, I'd like the other spot to go to American Mike, a MASSIVE bodybuilder from Texas. The only things that put me off him are the quantities of protein he would bring into the room and the mood swings he often has (as a result of all the protein he eats no doubt)

Other characters include; Maclorraine, a Phillippino, Hawaiian, Canadian who enjoys getting naked, drinking chocolate milk and generally being absolutely mental. There's a Nottingham contingent with James, Christian and Ben all being decent guys, Ben earning the name racist Ben despite being nothing of the sort and James walking around saying 'Fuck em' a lot in a northern accent. Noey is the most french person I've ever met. Vincent Van Bueren knows more about football than anyone in the world. It's quite mindboggling. He also refers to himself as Prince Vince, used to play for Ajax as a kid, is possibly the most over confident person I've ever met, looks like a young version of that old model Fabio and is the cause of split opinions.

Anyway, back to the subject of what I've been upto. As I've made a massive balls up by not writing about specific dates, I'm just going to mention some of the stuff I've been doing.

Cinema trips (including a free one to watch 'Kick ass'
Drinks with boys
Drinks with girls
Hostel chilling and causing mayhem
Walks down Brunswick Street/Chapel Street
Museum
Graffitti checking out
Watching football at the hostel/Casino at god awful times
Reading books in the sunshine
Beach BBQ's
St Kilda

Over the next weeks, I hope to be able to add an AFL game at the MCG (120,000 capacity!), Reginald D Hunter and one other comedian at the Melbourne International Film Festival, trip to Dandenong mountain ranges, trip to see the penguins at Port Phillip, checking out the Australian Centre for the moving image, Rugby League at the new stadium and joining a gym to my activities list. The beauty with Melbourne is that it never gets boring. The coffee culture, the street art, nice weather, interesting people, music all makes living here very enjoyable.

Down Under (Sydney)

After a 9 hour flight in which I slept for approximately 18 seconds and our plane travelled through lots of quite gigantic lightning storms, we arrived at Sydney's Kingsford Smith airport. Tom had his photo frame from Thailand confiscated because they claimed it was made from elephant dung. This was literally bullshit. I kept quiet about mine and still have it now so am probably violating international law. Bearing in mind that we arrived on the 29th December, our decision not to book a hostel was to prove near suicidal.

At the airport we bumped into Justin a lawyer from London and all round nice guy. Turned out that he was in a similar situation to us and needed a room for the night before he met his mate Owen. After lots of grovelling to the women in charge of accomodation at the airport, we ended up in a Novotel at a place called Brighton Le Sands. Not really near to the city. Unfortunately, we had to pay quite a lot for this room and whilst it was really nice, with a balcony, 2 double beds, tv, bath and TWO types of toilet paper, we had to cough up prices that we didn't really want to pay as backpackers. Not dwelling on this, we had a massive nap to try and get some energy back and headed out for a wander and some food. (Justin, went to the beach, fell asleep and literally got more sunburnt than any human being ever)

That night we all decided to venture into Sydney city centre for a few bevvies and a look at our home for the next week. Sydney by night is proper cool to look at and we enjoyed taking in the sights that were very different from Thailand. After a couple of beers we went and got a Mcdonalds. This was not a good idea. After waking up from an amazing sleep in a really comfortable bed, I realised I had a very violent stomach ache. Thinking nothing of it, as I usually have a pretty strong stomach, I got in the shower only to be violently sick for about 10 minutes! I can only come to the conclusion that this happened because of a mixture of the burger I ate and my body still being hammered from what Thailand had thrown at it.







A significant event that happened in Sydney was I discovered my old mucka from Uni Katie was there at the same time. After a facebook message we met up and hung out for a few days whilst we were there. Was weird seeing someone thousands of miles from home that I had previously only seen in Leicester. Reppin' Liberty Park. We went out on a few nights out with Katie, went down to the famous/infamous Bondi and went to watch Australia v Pakistan at the SCG.

Thinking back over our time in Sydney, me and Tom didn't really see enough of it. We spent most of our time pretty central, ignoring areas like Manly and Coogee that I'm definitely checking out when I return. (As I write this I'm actually preparing to be flown to Sydney with work for a week)









The real story of Sydney for us, was the difficulty that we had getting a place to stay for the period over New Years. JEEEESUS CHRIST. Having woken up feeling awful and with chronic food poisoning, I had to walk miles carrying 20kg of luggage. How I didn't pass out was a miracle as I was unable to eat or drink at this point. Things were getting really worrying at this point as New Years was a day away and we had nowhere to stay. Justin was proper helpful and came along to try sort us out before he went off to meet his pal. The only room we could find was in a hotel just outside the city centre. This was going to cost like 60 quid a night so we really weren't up for it. The fella behind the reception was one of the nicest people in the world and actually offered us a sofa at his missuses if we were still stuck. God bless Nigel! Luckily, two girls from Bristol that we had met the previous night sorted us right out by getting us a room where they were staying. Was WAY more expensive than it should have been but we took it. After all, it gave me a place to be really ill for the next day and a half!

This wasn't ideal preparation for New Years in such an iconic city. I literally was unable to move other than to run to the bathroom for 24 hours. Had to take some medicine and try to sort myself out so I could go watch the fireworks the following day.

NEW YEARS- In truth, this was a bit of an anti climax. Whilst it beat being in Norwich, my lack of health, the cost of everything and the crowds meant it wasn't half as good as it should have been. After hitting Kings Cross for a few bevvies, and an ogle at 2 of the most attractive women I've ever seen in my life, we headed down to the harbour to see some fireworks. Was really cool being there and there was a great buzz about the place. Fireworks being fired from massive skyscrapers and off the harbour bridge kept us entertained for a while, but I was still feeling pretty rough and so didn't get massively into it. Beer prices were astronomical and me and Tom's lack of knowing what we actually wanted to do, threw a bit of a spanner in the works.





















The rest of our time in Sydney was spent doing a combination of things. All of these things involved spending money, so my bank balance was taking a hammering. Shopping, eating out (as we had no kitchen) and drinking with Katie/Justin etc were all enjoyable activities, however, upon leaving Sydney I was NOT happy with how much money I had spent. Being as I do enjoy animals (particularly dangerous ones), the trip to the aquarium was pretty good. A noticeable improvement on Great Yarmouth's Seal Life Centre I might add.

















Sydney is a wicked city from a touristic point of view. The harbour complete with Opera House, bridge, flashy restaurants and massive cruise ships really make an impression on you. It's a city that is very in your face, at times this is a good thing. Everyone looks like a model, the buildings are huge and the city never sleeps. However, the attitude of people is much different to that of those in Melbourne. (my current hometown, and a place you will be hearing a lot about)Sydneysiders have a bit of an unpleasant arrogance and attitude about them which makes it difficult to fall in love with the place. Having said that, I will be returning as I fly out of there on my way to New Zealand. This time, I fully intend to visit the Blue Mountains, Manly and a few of the lesser known gems of Australia's most well known city.