Hello!

Really not sure why im writing this anymore but i thought i should as it's the last one in the series! I have spent the last month- odd working in Cairns at "Tha Fish". It quickly turned into the worst job ever...they took their dishes extremely seriously and I just couldnt hack it! However the pay was good and i actually managed to save a little money- or so i thought! I am now extremely overdrawn BUT very happy i managed to hold down another job and get me some saving money!

About 3 weeks ago Amy and her friend Loz arrived in Cairns and me and amy got back together! Yay! (aww) We went north to Port Douglas for 2 days where i sneaked into their posh hotel- very nice! When I arrived back in cairns amy and loz went south to do the whitsundays and see noosa, brisbane etc... Loz had decided to go home and I decided to hit fiji with amy! EXCITING!

very little to report on my time in cairns, i worked hard and ate lots, and the sun never shined...however, im now in fiji!! It was sad to leave australia- had some amazing times and met some friends who i will no doubt know for life, and the only currency i really understand the value of at the moment are Australian Dollars! However, i am glad to leave and im not sure ill be returning for a good few years

The rest of my trip can be seen at this address: lozandamygotravelling.blogspot.com hahaha!

Thanks alot for reading this over the months people who kept up!

See you in England!!!

Bobs xxxx

Where the HELL do i begin!?
This (again) will have to be brief.

Since speaking last I have:

• driven over 1000 km
• slept in over 15 different carparks/industrial sites/residential streets
• unsuccessfully tried to make decent barbeques
• had about 40 cold showers
• had the s***s twice
• partied hard but not spent a penny
• bought and rejected "legal drugs" from Happy High Herbs
• had a surfing lesson by a man so fat he didnt even get on a board (i rode a wave)
• Extended my overdraft 4 times
• Spent 2 days and 2 nights on a boat (long live the tongarra!) visiting the Whitsunday Islands!!
• Crashed one van into the other
• Filled up the vans about 6000 times
• driven for 2 hours to satisfy mcdonals craving, avoiding kangeroos, large flightless birds and trains
• Been started on twice
• watched nathan do a skydive from the other side of mission beach because we got the landing location wrong
• met an american sailor (5000 in cairns at the moment)
• cracked a windscreen
• had countless arguments with nathan, mostly about the way i "accidently" dig my knees into him every morning when opening the van door to escape the oven of general shitters

 

• visited 1770, Bundaberg, rockhampton, mackay, airlie beach (best place ever so far!), townsville, innisfail and CAIRNS!

Love it! So we arrived in cairns yesterday, and had the most hectic afternoon ever- dropping off  and cleaning the vans and finding a hostel doesnt sound like much of a task, but you know...
The guy didnt notice that we had crashed the vans, cracked the windscreen, buggard both windows and pulled half the roof in so we all got our bond back which is a big relief!

We stayed at gilligans which is mad- it is huge and has a kitchen and tv lounge on every floor, not to mention a gym, swimming pool, restaurant and 2 bars. It was a little expensive though so tonight we are at koalas.

I am super overdrawn and everyone has said it is super hard to find work in cairns- I would just like to say...2 hours and I have a job! Proudest moment of my life! Can't wait to tell my ever suffering parents!! I am soon to be a kitchen Porter (who'da thunk it?!) for a restaurant overlooking the sea. sick!

Apart from that nothing new- seeing amy next week- mad!! Cairns is beautiful and tonight I shall celebrate!

R.I.P General S******s and BunnyF**k.

LOVE, ROB! XXXX

ps: I forgot you can't swear on this. Im now going to spend about an hour findign and changing all them into stars. F**k my Life.

pps: I couldnt be bothered and have changed them into gradparent friendly words!

Hello!! Finally another update for my adoring fans hahaha! Must make it quick because not much internet time...

So finally finished working at chill in Brisbane. Worked 7 straight 12 hour shifts the last week to earn some extra cash, enjoying my hard earned break!! We (5 of us) hired two campers from Wicked campers, both graffitied to the max, getting us some rather uneeded attention as we're squeezing 3 in one van because a 3 seater was hell expensive. We then set of for Noosa, 3 hours north. We quickly realised that one of the vans, which we have renamed a variety of names revolving around the word s**t, was exactly that. The engine barely starts, the heater is broken (needed at night!!!), the sink hole leads to the floor?!!?!, the passenger window wont roll up etc etc etc, but i have quickly developed a relationship with it unmatched by any other human, and i love it with all my heart.

Noosa is dead. Dead dead dead, so very little to comment on. We have quickly settled into a routine of little arguments over nothing at all, (especially nathan and i) but they become more halarious with each one, and were all getting on very well, regardless of the petty fights over sand, destinations, money, sand, sand, sand, bloody f*****g sand in the van!!!! We slept in a car park (memories of belgium) and were moved on by a friendly ranger in the morning, the poster of "no freeecamping allowed" is proudly flying on our camper window. More unneeded attention. The next day we went to rainbow beach, again. dead. I had an argument with a girl over where to park.

Feeling like a change, we decided to head inland the next to maryborough. Maryborough is the birthplace of the author of Mary poppins, and it's the weirdest little town in the world. It's OLD, and i mean OLD, but very pretty and full of nice strange people wearing cowboy outfits and talking about mary poppins. We stopped at a pub and had a "pot of four x" and me and nathan went on the "pokies" (fruit machines) and we won 40 dollars! Hello gambling addiction!!!

After being handed 15 million maps at the information centre we headed to hervy bay, which is also dead. WHERE ARE ALL THE PEOPLE!?! I think it's time to head inland, because I think most people are chasing the sun up north so we might as well see some "culture"!! There are some really cool drives you can do through eastern queensland so were going to attempt some tomorow.

Very brief outline, will update more thoroughly next time. General concensus is it is so much fun and very freeing, the weather is straying good and im with some great people! Pity our fire making skills are shocking!!

rob


P.s: Ozzie drivers are c***s.

Hello! quick update! Brisbane has no work at all bt somehow i have managed to get a job at "chill" hostel! Yes! Only boy who works there, i am front of house/receptionist and its the easiest job ever-just meet new people all day! I get free accomodation/internet/trips and tours (australia zoo/islands etc) booze and a bunch more and 250 dollars a week, which is not too bad!!!
Plan is to save our asses off, buy a car and head north!
Finally!!!!!
Hope you're all well, if anyone even reads this anymore!
ha!
simon, get involved!
xxxxxxx

yoyoyoyoyo!
Australia is a great place to live but it's not all it's cracked up to be! However I have met some wicked people and am travelling with my new friend Joe.
10 Minutes after i wrote my last blog Joe arrived in our room straight from the UK, and jetlagged though he was I demanded he came out with us, which he did, and we had a great laugh, so the next day he decided he'd come to byron bay with me....he saw the opera house and the harbour bridge on the bus on the way out of sydney, only when i pointed them out to him. My kinda guy!

14 hours later we arrived in Byron Bay which was really really good. Very chilled out, full of hippies (not quite koah san hippies but it'll do) and a great beach. Joe surfs so he loved it, I make sandcastles so i loved it. We quickly met people and established a crew, the names i can currently remember are Lewis emma sam ed alex kate becca kevin susie but im sure there are a few more. The days we were there passed much like they did on the islands, a mix of days on the beach with some pretty nuts nights!! The main bar, cheeky monkeys had naked staff with their home country flags painted over their bits- thats a bit more like it! We also had a barbeque evening, however without any ozzies to help it ended in a load of mushy, uncooked meat, but was bloody (get it?) good fun.

However, being the spack i am, i managed to ruin paradise and have been bitten by something or other TWICE on the leg (im going to continue that it's a spider because it sounds cool!!) and for the second time in 3 weeks im in a bandage and on antibiotics! yippeee!!!

I am very poor, as in VERY poor. We met Jean, the canadian I met in Thailand, who currently lives in brisbane for the last night in Byron and he drove us up to Brisbane, which has to be one of the most boring cities i've ever been to. It's not that there's nothing to do, it's just that it's very slow, liveable and spaced out,which makes night's out effort (when you hobble everywhere it's double effort) and the days kind of pointless if you're not working (which im still not!) because there's very little to do. No aquarium here!!
Going back to the poor thing, we got our blue cards which means we can work construction, have applied to every shop in the world, every farm in australia, joined two agencies, and are going to get our RSA (responsible service of alcohol) licenses so we can go back to bar work (yay!) and stil nothing! Ozzie is just hitting the recesion so everyone's desperate for a job. If worst comes to worst, i have 2 options (A go back to asia for the next few months) B come home...Hello bangkok:D
So to sum up, my days in brisbane revolve around a sweaty fever, not being able to walk properly again, trying to find a job, not being able to drink, sleeping in a 30 room dorm because it's all we can afford, eating cereal and beans on toast for every meal because it's all we can afford, and doing nothing in a city that offers nothing!!! On the bright side, we have some very good friends and it's still a laugh, even though it is nothing on asia.
As pessimistic as i sound this isn't the real australia, and as soon as i can make it to the outback and the barrier reef i'm sure i'll be back on form!!
Lots of love
bobbie xxxxx

Hello!

I like sydney...I don't love it-but i like it! Missing Asia quite a bit, sydney is beautiful but life is very normal again so far but i am going to head north soon and i've heard it's all good up north, plus i really want to see as much as i can of the outback so i i'm going to try and get me a farm job!

Not much to comment on the first three days i was here, as i slept ALOT and got used to shopping in supermarkets, washing my own clothes again, being able to understand every conversation, not speaking in pigeon english(!) and other normalities of western life! I quite enjoy being able to shop in supermarkets and cooking food myself i gotta say. I stayed at Base Hostel by darling Harbour for 4 days, on my first saturday night here none of my roomates wanted to go out, but one thing led to another and at 1am we stumbled onto the street after some GOON (cheap wine!), and onto the clubs, the first of which i performed a ridiculous solo dance/strip tease on the dance floor then promptly threw up outside (not my fault, been on antibiotics-havn't drunk in weeks!), the second of which everybody went home apart from the mega-weird german called adrian who followed me around like a limpit, however, i craftily escaped and made my excuses later that morning.
 
The next day i FINALLY saw the sights and went to the opera house, the harbour bridge and the AQUARIUM! Kinda loserish as i was on my own and was just as excited as the little kids in there but it was wicked! They had sharks and turtles and penguins and seahorses, the lot! Spent a good long time in there and was tempted by the photo of me on my own with a plastic reef behing me at 35 austrlian dollars, but i after carefull consideration decided it wasn't my proudest moment in life. I did however buy lots of souvenires.

After my day of fun i decided i couldn't justify my crappy roomates anymore and i met up with Kim and Dyllis, 2 girls i met in thailand, and then cambodia who i get on great with, went on a night out with them at their Hostel's bar then to another place called scubar (see what they did there?), met their roomates, ended up buying about 50 rounds (at real prices, something else im getting used to again!) and sleeping on their floor/empty/full beds at 5.30 am, got up at 8 to walk back to my hostel, checked out, and moved straight in to wake up! That's more like it! Possibly the worst hangover of my trip so far, and that is saying something! Tonight i am going for dinner at the harbour with them and their roomates and deciding when to go north!

Overall- happy but looking forward to moving on. Need some beach!
xxxxxxxxx

Not really worth a name this one, but i have successfully made it to sydney! Waiting for a free bed in my dorm and dont know how the money works, what time or day it is or why everybody is white again! It's the weirdest feeling. Also it is VERY expensive, but it seems i have been offered a gardening job. Watch this space! Technically someone should have checked out by now so i might ruin all possibilities of friends and go upstairs, wake them all up and remind them that check out time was 45 minutes ago. ahem. I'm tired!
Miss you asia
Bring on ozzie!
xxx

yo

From Krabi i went through the overnight boat hell once more, the bugs were no problem, i feel finally like a semi-hardened traveller.

Got to koh tao early in the morning and waited around for an internet cafe to open so i could find out where the guys were, no one had replied so i immensely foolishly hired a moped to ride around and find them, still stoked up on valium from the boat ride. Inevitably i crashed it, without insurance (on the bike) because you can't get it on koh tao, and buggared up my hands and feet and legs. Hopped around for a little bit, checked out the bike and wondered whether my parents could sell their house for me, and got back on, with determination like no other man has ever had before!

Finally found casey (found as in; saw driving the opposite direction, madly skidded in the middle of the round and performed a police style chasse through koh tao until he saw me, i was quite manic at this point) and his girlfriend and they had lunch whilst i dripped blood and cursed lfe. I found a bungalow, got cleaned up (so i thought!! DADAAA, twist on it's way!) and found the guys. We had a porch party drinking games session which turned into quite an epic,apart from for yannick, our canadian friend, who bravely, but purely voluntarily, downed a bottle of rum at half 8, so was in bed by 10, then went to the beach-happy days!!! The next day i lost the key for the broken bike, woohoo! So spent the majority of my time trying to find it, got on it and it wouldn't start, so asked a friendly thai man to start it for me, took it back, paid an astronomical amount of money and went home. It was my birthday the next day so we had another drinking sesh (yannick took it slow) and went back to the beach!

My actual birthday consisted on a 14 hour bus ride to bangkok, very little to commment on. The next day i met hannah's dad and i finally got my card back!! wooohoo!!! Her family took us for an expensive meal and me and H then met some danes and a kinda odd british guy who took us to a very expensive club in sikhumvit district in bangkok, we were covered in marker (!?!) and pissed off many hookers by getting on the poles, which i can't do by the way.

The NEXT day, i woke up and discovered my previously mildly hurting wound was spurting pus and blood, and then whenever i put my leg below my waist i was in agony. My visa had also run out by two days by this point, (and i still havn't renewed it so i wonder what will happen at the airport...) so it wasn't going to be a good day. I tried to get to the immigration office but couldn't walk so i hobbled to the clinic on koh san, where the doccy put an injection in my bottom (this thing actually wont let me say b*m, how rididculous is that) told me that the enfection had made a blot clot hence my swelling veins, and then put a cast on it?! which i thought was a little extreme...He said full moon party was a no go, mega mega mega bummed about that, and no booze until antibiotics are finished. He also said i couldn't fly, which i did, to phuket 3 hours later because i now hate bangkok with extreme passion, so he was wrong HA! Unless i die later from a blot-clot-induced-heart-attack, in which case he would have been right. But so far i am ok, so im going to fly to australia tomorow, because phuket is a fat man fat wallet sex tourist hell hole, and there's no point me hanging around when i can't do anything! Although i am in the poshest hotel in the world, my bed is bigger than my room, i have a balcony and a/c and a tv and a BATH!? And i look onto a brothel so i have great entertainment and get to guess which women have penis'.

So bye bye asia, hello ozzie!!

Need to make some friends, so gonna exagerate my leg story...im thinking saving a small child from a burning building...

xxxx