Australia: A Strange Into

G'Day blog fans!!

Its everyones favourite day of the week!
Blog update from down under!

Its been a manic first 2 weeks. Here's the low-down.....

So we arrived in Sydney from Christchurch and checked into Base Hostel in the centre of the city. It had a pretty crappy reputation on hostelworld etc, but like most things, it isnt as bad as everyone made out. Most people there were British or Irish, and there was a major divide between the people looking for work, and the people looking to get shit faced drunk every night... As tempting as it was, we needed cash, and we job hunted HARD from the get go.

In the first couple of days or so, our job starter pack helped us out a lot. We sorted bank cards, mobile phone and number, medicare... Also joined the library and got our CVs done. The job search guy was really helpful. He helped us get a office removals job pretty much straight away. Its not too bad. Pays $21 an hour. So cant complain for now. We had a couple nights out on our 1st week. Got on the GOOOON! Had the worst headache for FOUR DAYS. I slept on a bunk above this gay guy from England. He had to get up early every morning for work. But his alarm was "BUGABOO" from Destinys Child! lol! Was funny enough not to care about being woken up at 6am every day.

We didnt really have a lot of time or money to do much more in the 1st week. Didnt even see the Opera House, even though it was like a 15min walk away! Walked to the harbour and saw the monorail fly across my head. That was a nice surprise coz I didnt even know Sydney had a monorail. We found a few cheap places to eat and drink. It is expensive here, but some things aint so bad. You can get a steak and chips for $10 in a lot of places. But then, you could go into a corner shop for a KitKat and a can of Coke.... And come out with a KitKat and a can of anal rape. So beware.

After one week of hard work form me and Cat, her parents arived for their 10 day visit. PHEW! Was nice to check into the apartments. Felt like LUXURY! Away from hostel life for a while. Thank you Ambika for hooking us up :) Was nice to see the family face to face too. Walk around and see all the sights. The conversation between me and Cat has mostly come to "We need money - We need work - We need a night out." So to speak to the Himers about what we've done and how home is etc was a nice, needed change. Everything we did was good timing with them. Vivid Festival had just kicked-off, which meant The Opera House, Sydney Harbour Bridge, and all the surrounding buildings were lit up at night with funky lights and sounds. So it made the occasion even more special. The weather was good for the most of it. Had a few rainy moments, but when we visited the places that mattered like The Blue Mountains, The Sky Tower, Wildlife Zoo, Manly and Bondi Beach etc, we had good weather. Its supposed to be their winter here now. PAH! Me and Vicky got to pat a kangaroo in the zoo. Very Australian thing to do :p We also had a belated birthday party for Cats dad. We reserved a restaurant on the harbour for a saturday evening. Ferenc didnt know that they are having fireworks on the harbour every saturday night at 8:30pm, so it was a great surprise. We had perfect views of the whole thing. Plus, I ordered ribs, and it was the biggest Man vs Food meal in the history of life!! :o

Its The Himers last day here tomorrow. Cats upset that they're leaving, which is understandable. Dont know if its easier to not see your family for so long - or to see them, then have them leave. Its a weird time for us at the moment. All that sight seeing we've done in the city will become a familiar sight of our everyday life for a while. This is a marathon now, not a sprint. Nothing's set in stone, but we might be here in the city until after the new years. Its strange because we're in a city so familar to home, yet we have no job, and no perminant place to live. So feeling kinda lost at the moment. Im gonna try something different whilst im here. I dont know what career is right for me yet. Im a lost soul :( Hopefully I can get something soon and feel normal by the time our friends visit us. Just gotta remember to have fun. Because having fun, is number ONE!!

After this its back to life, back to reality....

We're seeing a lot more friends in the next month or so. If you are one of them, you'll be happy to know you are penned into the diary ;) If everyone else I like could visit at some point I would appreciate it :)

Til then.... Keep em tight.......
(ps. Australians LOVE batty riders. Im really surprised their balls dont fall below their shorts)
Keep them tighter than Australian batty riders on laudry dayyyy! :D
And Ill see you sooooon!!

Byeeeeeee!!!

Middle Earth (New Zealand)

Blog the builder, CAN HE FIX IT!
Blog the builder, YES HE CAN!! :D

Sorry about that blog fans. I'm back again!
Back to civilization and writing to you loyalists. Come to the end of our Middle Earth tour. It really is Middle Earth from Lord Of The Rings. Jheez! I've heard of a food orgasm, I've heard of a sex orgasm, but have you ever had a scenic orgasm!? Well, we'll see blog fans.... Got a lot of exciting and not so exciting things to report. So let's get to it! :D

So, we arrived in Auckland as our first stop since leaving Santiago. Straight away, culture shock! People were talking English, we spoke to the cabbie, we could read the roads signs, amazing. That feeling changed a bit once we unpacked and explored the city though. Basically because Aucklands a bit like one big massive china town! WTF! How many sushi places can you have? Bit of a mind f*ck to be honest. But not in a bad way. I found a barber that was doing free haircuts. Students cut my hair and I just tip them. Was my first experience of speaking to a local who didn't have a Asian accent. They speak funny. It's very similar to English. They use words that Americans don't, that seem to be very English. Like "bloody tossers!" :p Sometimes the convos can get a bit confusing. They seem to say "liift" instead of "left" and they end all sentences with "ey". A typical conversation could go "Excuse me, where's the bank?" (in Australian style accent) "Well, you go straight past the peeeta place (pita), then you turn liift bru (bro)". "....Errm yeah, I couldn't find it." "True? You must be blind ey." They say "true?" instead of "isit?" And "ey" instead of "init" .....it's phenomenal :-|

ANYWAY, Auckland was cool. We went to a museum and our FIRST NANDOS IN HALF A YEAR! Tasted like a sexy lesbian orgy in my mouth. Could of been my most satisfying nandos EVER! We picked up our campervan 2 days later and hit the road. Was pretty much a budget job, nothing fancy about it. We stopped off at our 1st supermarket and stocked up on all our food. Also felt the need to buy all 3 Lord Of The Rings films to watch at night :) Was very exciting. We first headed south and to the Coromandel area which was a nice hilly area with a lot of sea views.....I say "nice hilly area" but driving up hill in our camper got a bit of a chore as I had to do a lot of uphill driving in gear 2 at 10mph :/ Bit stressful. Guzzled the petrol and made Cat nervous and pick her fingers, but the scenes made it worth it. EVERYWHERE is a photo moment. Some times I drove whilst taking a picture. I put our life on the line, but it's better than trusting Cat with a camera... We eventually found our first camper spot on a beach, plugged in the electricity, cooked, and watched load of the rings :D

After that we continued south. I won't bore you with everything. People we spoke to about New Zealand told us to get to the south island asap as there's a lot more to see there. And now, on my last day here I can see that. One of my favourite days in New Zealdand was at our next stop, Hobbiton!! Was sooo cool. Got to see Bag End and the lake, sheep, pub and everything in the film. Still looks like the movie did. SO much detail went into it. Was best. We also stopped at Rotorua which is famous for its geysers and hot pools. The whole town smelt like egg, but I really liked it. There was smoke coming out of holes and drains everywhere. We went to a park to see a famous geysers and also got to see my first ever kiwi! (bird kiwi that is). Other than that we fast tracked the north island a bit, and got to Wellington. It's the capital of NZ but still a very small city. We visited Weta Caves which is where they made all the costumes, weapons, masks etc for LOTR. Also they've worked on loads of other movies like District 9, the new King Kong etc. Obviously LOTR is the main attraction. I didn't like Wellington too much to be honest. MAINLY because of parking. It's really expensive and usually all full. So you're driving around in a big chunky campervan in a city getting road rage. The best part was when Cat spotted a car park for cheap, so I enthusiastically drove into it. LITERALLY IN TO IT. Forgot a campervan is taller than most car park entrances... Kinda just sat there looking at Cat while parts of our roof rained on top of our bonnet. FML! Just had to tape up the hole with plastic bags and move on....

We decided to name the campervan Chip Douglas BEFORE that. It did have loads of chips and dents all over it. Chip Douglas is a character from the movie Cable Guy who is a homosexual stalker dude played by Jim Carey. I thought this suited the van well :p Except "Massive Hole Douglas" might of suited it better now...

From Wellington we got the ferry across to the south island. Was expensive (as everything is) but I actually consider that one of my favourite moments too. Approaching the south island was beautiful. Could see the "sounds" and all the grassy green hills and mountains as you approached. Loads of trees and sheep. SO many sheep and cows in NZ. I does make me wonder why the Welsh are named sheep shaggers and not them....
In the south Island our first stop was Able Tasman. By now we had become professional pikeys. We knew how everything on the camper worked. I am probably the best stir fry and omelette chef in the world now, and Cat the best dish washer lol. The westcoast of the south island was amazing! Saw a lot. Visited the glaciers and "blowholes." Trust me, they use dodgy names for things in New Zealand. Shags and Blowholes everywhere lol. Saw one Asain guy at the blowhole that had FOUR SLR cameras around his neck for photos. I thought, dont Japanese men usually only have 3?? :p At the end of the westcoast we went to Queenstown. DEF my favorite town in NZ. It was a really small town on a big lake. But it had LOADS of really good restaurants and bars all in a small walking distance. They do a lot of extreme sport trips from there too, but unfortunately we couldn't afford it this time round. Went to Fergburger. The world famous burger place. Got a chief wiggum. OMG....jizzzzz!

We did manage to pay for a Milford Sound cruise. Its one of the "to do" things in NZ. Def worth it. But I would say to most people on a budget that it isnt that much better than the island crossing to be honest. But atleast when people ask "did you do Milford Sound?" I dont have to sound lame and cheap by telling them no lol.

Coming back up the eastcoast towards Christchurch was really nice. The grass really is greener on the other side. Grass is greener, lakes are bluer, snow is whiter. It's def middle earth. We went to Cadbury world and learnt about chocolate making (and ate loads). Visited Dunedin which is apparently the furthest city from London in the world. The weather was crap and I def felt like I was nearer to home. I ran up the "steepest street in the world" there too. FML. I wanted to see the Otago Peninsula, which is a place where you can walk and see wild penguins and sea lions. But the weather was terrible again so we didn't bother. We tried to alternate our campsite from powered to non-powered ones to save money. But when weather was cold we needed powered sites for the heaters. Some places we stayed in where REALLY remote, and I slept with a kitchen knife next to me some nights lol.

Campervans give you messed up dreams, seriously...just a spoiler alert there for ya ;)

Slightly more north of Otago Peninsula we did a small walk (which we did most days), but we actually DID get to see wild penguins and sea lions after all! Was on a little grassy island by a lighthouse, and we were the only ones there. Wasnt even a popular tourist spot... Some rabbits were running around and we came REALLY close to yellow eyed penguins and sea lions sunbathing. They didnt even mind we were there! Def a NZ highlight... We saw the 'elephant rocks" which is where they filmed Aslans Kingdom in the Nania movie. We rented the film on a rainy day in Akaroa. Shame the movie sucks balls ey. Akaroa was a pretty french style town. Looks amazing from birdseye view. Luckily we had good weather on the day we left so we got to see it from the hills we were exiting on to take photos :) Eventually got to Christchurch and handed in Chip Douglas. Were a bit scared of the price we had to pay for the roof damage. Wasn't very confident. But I was past caring. The guy who worked for the camper company took me to the repair guy. He comes back after working out a quote: "Take a guess mate." "Errm $700?" "BUUURR gonna haveta squeeze your bum cheeks more than that!" it cost me $1230. Tossers lol. On our last few days here on Middle Earth we just wondered around Christchurch, went for a comedy night to cheer up our campervan blues lol. Had a nandos and looked at all the destroyed buildings and roads from their 2011 earthquake. The whole city is like a weird outdoor museum. Weird. The locals are really friendly. Everyone says "Hope we enjoyed New Zealand!" :D "YES WE DID!"

On our way to Oz now! The next chapter! Looking forward to earning money. To be quite honest, I'm looking forward to getting my first pay check and getting absoultly smashhhhedddd! :) I NEED A DRINK!! Looking forward to seeing Shona, Mark and Natalie. Looking forward to BBQs, looking forward to beaches, looking forward to settling down in one area, and living a normal-ish life.

Also looking forward to being more accessible for YOU blog fans! Hopefully will be able to blog, upload photos, and skype a lot more now! Maybe I'll even get a MOBILE PHONE! :o

keep it sexy
because I'm bringing sexy back!

keep your shorts tight.... and bulginggg! ;)

Speak soooooon!!
xxx