TravelStream™ news feed for member djbenharvey on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/djbenharvey en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Thu, 08 Jun 2006 15:37:27 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1138856760/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1138856760/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1138856760/tpod.html Thu, 08 Jun 2006 15:37:27 -0400 Escape from New york: leaving behind the Manhattan radio dj life and taking on the traveller's life, from London to Southeast Asia to Australia and back....

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Pattaya, Thailand

Well it's the next morning, after hanging out with Ripley: my mouth tastes like last night.... even though I brushed twice, once with my toothpaste, once with his, all before I crept out of his 'villa' at 6am. The toothpaste didn't work: my mouth tastes like booze, pot, his nicotine mouth, regret, relief. He didn't kill me. He didn't rape me. I nearly threw away my ticket to Bali to stay with him - Dave was right, he is/was persuasive and manipulative and quite talented at it - but in a moment of clarity at 5am I decided I should pack while he was still asleep and leave him. To think I almost took him up on his offer - in a drunken, high haze I almost believed he would be my traveling partner for the rest of the trip. He was so desperate at one point he offered $10,000 (cash) and his laptop as payment to join him in Bali and Australia. But something (perhaps everything) seemed off. So I just left. Luckily he was too drunk/passed out to even notice.

"Poooooof, and he's gone," I got from him as a subject line in an otherwise empty e-mail in the Singapore airport the next day, on the way to Bali. I guess he's not used to guys/girls running out on him, but Dave's advice helped, plus I've got my own wits about me. I loved hanging out with this kid, but spending the rest of my travels with him? Not so sure. One night and the worst hangover of my trip was enough.

It all started out decently. I arrived at the Marriott in Pattaya, where we had agreed to meet. I was looking around for a pay phone to call him when I heard from behind me, "Hey sexy man." This was certainly out of character for him, but not a shock to me given he was somewhat of an unpredictable one... plus I didn't mind the flirtatious greeting. We hopped on his motobike and I went for the most dangerous, perilous, shit-inducing ride of my life. I had no choice but to hang on to the back of him like a scared little kid, and when we arrived at his villa I was breathing like 200rpm per minute. (A week later I realized I had big puffy burns on each inner ankle from the damn bike; I used up my entire medical kit treating the burns for two weeks afterwards.)

"Oh fuck," he said, "I forgot you're not used to riding motobikes," he said. "I guess I took those turns a little too quickly." To say the least. But I was trying to play it cool; after all this was Mr. Ripley who may or may not have killed someone, and he had a fucking amazing villa, so I tried to keep myself on my best behavior.

At first it was great to see a familiar face after spending a few lonely days at my guest house in Bangkok, where the world goes round but it's impossible to meet anyone because it's like a seedy, impersonal part of NYC transplanted into the middle of Thailand.

Brian/Ripley later told me that 34 people die in Pattaya every day due to motobike accidents. This didn't help the whole situation, especially since he seemed oh-so-proud of his motobike's 1200 ccs, whatever that means, and this was one of the many facts over the next 18 hours I believed, but then later came to question, especially as he started drinking and smoking pot...and the facts started to coagulate with the lies.

"What do you want to do? Girl's town? Boy's town? Gay town?" he asked me. I was floored. "I'm up for a little bit of everything," I told him. Big mistake. Because we explored all, every part of Pattaya, with at least 3-5 drinks at each stop over 12 hours. I'm truly thankful I'm alive today after driving on that godawfully out-of-control Motobike after the amount of alcohol he consumed... but what else was I to do?

Let's go with this. The night is a blur, but I've managed to compile a list of facts/half-facts/and-utterly-un-true-non-facts/lies. So let's start with the truths:

1. He legitimately lives in the nicest house of any 26-year-old I know. Gated, alarmed, garaged, with a yard, granite and steel kitchen, lap-pool with adjusting current to control your workouts, patio, 2 bedrooms, whirlpool tub, king bed, MTV-Cribs-worthy walk-in closet with ten mirrors.

2. He is definitely affiliated with some sort of diving school. I saw a PADI book. Not sure I'd ever want him as my dive instructor, but I do believe he was a certified instructor in Pattaya from what I surmised.

3. His email/AIM name is along the lines of "bpLOADED" - as if to show off the fact that he has family money.

4. The girls at the strip clubs generally like him - the Hooty's bar (or "pussy club" as the picture shows) we went to had Thai girls coming up to him with notes, one of them reading "I have met you many time before. I think tonight is the night. Let's do it." But that night was not her night, sorry.

That's about it for the sure truths.

As for the maybe-truths/half-truths/un-sure-about-truths:

1. He's been in multiple bar fights, he claims, including one on New Year's Eve which one of the strippers corroborated with me (although she mentioned he was also passed out on the floor of the strip club from drunkenness).

2. The Princess of Pattaya supposedly lives across the street from him and came to a party he had at his villa accompanied by two police escorts. I asked him if they hooked up and he said "No way; I'd go to jail for that."

3. He dated the police chief's daughter, though, he claims.

4. A prostitute from Hooty's once bailed him out of jail, supposedly. But they've been good friends ever since.

5. He got asked to be in porn when he was back in Minneapolis; apparently he had the goods to deliver.

6. I was the first person whom he had told he liked men as well as women, as in he's "bi-sexual."

Full-on Lies:

1. He owned 10% of Hooty's, the female strip club he took me to, although at one point during the night he asked me to pay for a round of drinks because the owner told him he had surpassed his bar tab, even though he said he could afford to pay for everything in 'this town' for that night, no questions asked. If you own 10% of a bar I would expect you don't have a bar tab, especially one that you cannot pay, at least that would be my guess.

2. "Everyone in town knows/likes me," he kept saying. He'd make us stop at the randomest restaurants and bars to say hi to his friends...and yet they'd either not be there or not act happy to see him.

3. He is 100% straight he told his compadres and his stripper friends. Even though he claimed he was bi to me an hour later. Not straight.

4. He's lived in Honduras, Barbuda, Austria, Brazil, etc. etc. etc. Dave e-mailed me recently to say he's back in Minneapolis (I guess the $ ran out and he couldn't afford the villa or the bar tab or a trip to Australia to come meet me). I'm tempted to e-mail him to find out what "exotic country" he's in now. See what he makes up.

5. He speaks five languages. Right.

6. He made all his $ himself in life, never depended on his parents or friends.

7. He could get any drug within five minutes if he wanted it...and he kept claiming he had gotten pot from the bouncer at Hooty's the minute we walked in, although two hours later the bouncer finally came up and gave it to him. Liar.

8. Every girl in town wants him. Maybe the prostitutes.

9. He spent '10 mill' on coke during one year of his life; that figure later changed to '10 thousand' when he was drunk; and I seem to remember he and I bonding over not doing cocaine and hating cokeheads when we were in Koh Phangan.

After heading home with him and smoking a bit around 4am, I got the spins, tried to throw up the misery of the night, but couldn't, realized he had passed out after such a long night of breathing out lies (must be exhausting), so I packed my bags at 5am. Complete with loud air compressor bags and even louder zippers. He didn't even flinch. Left him a note: "Thanks for a good night. Maybe see you in Australia." Maybe being the operative word. On the way out I stopped by his laptop and checked my email, only to find an e-mail from Dave which made me want to get the hell out of there more quickly than ever, although it somewhat relieved my fears that he wasn't necessarily a murderer.

During our big discussion (night after I arrived), Brian [Ripley] said something to me about someone dying in front of him and it didn't affect him at all. He said he doesn't know what's wrong with him and his lack of feelings/conscience, but he said he has felt that way ever since he can remember. I don't know his family very well, but they are quite affluent members of the Milwaukee community and he has always felt disattached from them. I have met his dad and he seems to be a GREAT person, I admire him a lot. Brian said it wouldn't affect him one bit if anyone in his life died tomorrow, and I said "even me?" and he just shrugged his shoulders. He told me he'd be better off dead since he said there was nothing anyone, including himself, could do to solve his problems. He said there was a shooting range where a lot of people go for target practice (there are no guns allowed in Thailand so people make an appt to do target practice and some shoot themselves). He said that's what he was considering doing, either that or driving his motorcycle very fast into a wall. I was like bawling my eyes out as he was telling me all this stuff, and it didn't affect him one bit.

I packed up my stuff as quickly and quietly as possible, then walked out onto the barren street in Pattaya, having no idea where I was. Luckily it was almost 7am by this point, and I ran across a Thai woman in her bathrobe on the corner, and we negotiated that her husband would bring me to the bus station in Pattaya for 1000 baht, where I could catch the bus to the Bangkok airport, and continue my travels to Bali. We drove past the driving range, and it gave me chills. I'm not a very religious/spiritual person, but I thanked some sort of God that I was still alive after 24 hours with the talented/tragic Mr. Ripley. And that was that.

Poooof, then I was gone.

And the worst part, which I can hardly get over, is that Dave sent me this in a later e-mail. To think that if I had stayed perhaps this guy Brian would have tried to sucker me into his schemes? Thank god I'm smarter than that. And too bad this poor kid Dave fell in love with a guy and couldn't accept that he was gay...and instead spent his life savings proving that they were 'just friends.' It's such a sad ending, but that's where this story ends, unfortunately:

Brian owes me more $$ than you can ever imagine . . . what I realized through my experiences with him (and near bankruptcy) 3 years ago is that money is not important in life -- it's who you are as a person and what you do with your life and who you meet along the journey of life that is important. I enjoy meeting all types of people -- good and bad -- because the bad ones allow you to learn lessons on how NOT to be, as well as make you very thankful for what you have and who you are as a person. I spent a long time being bitter at him for what he did, but then I realized I let it happen to me, so I was just as much at fault. After being miserable for a year or so since I could barely afford anything, I was finally able to get over it with lots of prayer, and eventually accept Brian for who he is -- a fun-loving asshole who makes me laugh (and cry sometimes too).
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1141437780/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1141437780/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1141437780/tpod.html Sun, 23 Apr 2006 21:01:16 -0400 Escape from New york: leaving behind the Manhattan radio dj life and taking on the traveller's life, from London to Southeast Asia to Australia and back....

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

It's been a nicer welcome home than I imagined it would be (well, besides the unwelcome weather, sleet yesterday, and inhumanely cold winds today). The minute I woke up today (at 2:45; clearly haven't adjusted to east coast time yet) I drew up the blinds and the big black ladies who work on the 17th floor of the office building across the way started waving at me; we used to wave every day, way back when waking up after working late, and they'd always be laughing, not sure why, probably because it was obvious I was a slacker waking up so late, probably because half the time I was in my boxers and I didn't care about drawing closed the blinds (god knows what else they saw when I wasn't looking). I guess they thought I had moved out after these two months away - and my subletter had kept the blinds closed - I guess she didn't like big black ladies staring at her all day. So it was nice to be greeted by that morning tradition again.

(On a random yet thematically repeating note, the name of my apartment complex changed while I was gone, just like the hotel I had booked in Sydney changed its name from 'W' to 'Blue.' When I got home I found that my building was now called 'Archstone Chelsea' as opposed to the 'Aston,' its former name. I guess someone made some cash off the deal. It feels a little less like home now, though, knowing the place changed hands without even letting me know. Luckily the address is the same.)

I also went in to "work" today - I guess I can't really call it that - I went into what used to be my work, in to the building that used to be K-Rock (and is now called "Free FM"). I felt like it was a little bit wrong going there, since I was 'let go' from there, but when it comes down to it I was just laid off, not fired, so it was basically just like saying hi to a few old friends. And what an experience it was. Ratings just came out this week and the station did terribly (no surprise there), with David Lee Roth garnering 1/13 of the ratings that Howard Stern got, and the rest of the station trailing even further behind. I'm still amazed Infinity (CBS Radio; another name change) Broadcasting thought this was a wise decision converting to talk radio; they claimed that Howard was the only one who got them ratings, but K-Rock was a near-institution in this town; even yours truly the lowly evening DJ got a 5-share at my peak, rising from a 3-share when I signed on; now the night show got less than a one-share. This is all industry speak to say just this: it's not working and the station will be in the shitter within six months. Guaranteed. That's not bitterness talking; it's fact.

The greatest part of the day was running into my old General Manager in the hallway, the man who hired me and was forced to let me go. He was incredibly polite, pointed out my tan, asked how many continents I had been to (and when I listed off Australia, SE Asia, and "London," he was very quick to say "I thought you went to Brown; you should know London isn't a continent!" Smartass). I quickly got back at him and said "Well it felt like a whole new world after leaving this place. So how are things here anyway?" (Fully knowing things there were not as he had hoped, that he would probably rather be on ANY other continent than here due to the disastrous state of his radio station.)

"Not great," he said, "I'm not going to lie. Of course we miss the music, we miss you, but this is a better business model. This is what we think will succeed in the end. It will just take time."

Right. And that 13% raise you promised me my third year will just take another month to get approved, and then another, and another. Although you knew I was getting laid off the entire time. Exactly.

It was also terribly fascinating to see the evidence of David Lee Roth's wrath (and I think using the words 'terrible' and 'fascinating' in the same sentence do the whole thing complete justice). He no longer uses the studio they built for him because he claims there's asbestos in the walls; any near-intelligent human would know that it's just insulation that's coming out of the walls, but I can identify with the fact that he was annoyed the studio wasn't finished for him by the time he moved in; the fact that they didn't hire contractors and instead relied on the terribly inept station-employed engineers to redesign Howard's studio is just ludicrous. So David Lee Roth uses the studio I once broadcast from, and JV and Elvis (the mid-day guys) use Howard's old studio (which is now decked out with windows; apparently Howard didn't want windows in his old studio because he was afraid he'd get shot by the paparazzi or the Christian Right from apartment buildings across the way). The 'Radio Chick,' whom I met today, very briefly, also uses this studio. My sources at the station say Booker (the new night show host) wants to use the fancy asbestos-filled studio, but the higher-ups won't let him. Ding ding. Poor him.

I was walking around with my old intern-slash-producer Monk, who still works there as a board-op on Sunday mornings, and, who, ironically, had to let me into the building since he has an access card and I don't (it used to be the other way around). Whenever someone would ask what I'm up to these days or what my goals are he would jump in and say something off-the-wall like "Ben is going back to Thailand to his Thai boxing school; he is in love with the towel boy. Leave him alone." That was nice to hear, because honestly I don't know what's next, and for now, I don't care. I'm just happy to be back in NYC, where I can retire to my apartment, turn the heat up to 80, and walk around in just my boxers and wave to the big black ladies across the way. It feels okay.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1141072200/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1141072200/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1141072200/tpod.html Sun, 23 Apr 2006 21:00:37 -0400 Escape from New york: leaving behind the Manhattan radio dj life and taking on the traveller's life, from London to Southeast Asia to Australia and back....

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Hong Kong, China

Well I suffered a major brain fart this morning, and I was literally embarrassed to be not just a dumb American, but literally self-loathingly embarrassed to be myself. I had no idea which country Hong Kong was in. Well I sort of did, but I had had no sleep (late night and then three hours to fit all my crap in my bag, which is falling apart strap by strap by the way - word to the wise, don't buy a $40 North Face bootleg travellers pack in Bangkok. It will last you exactly 34 days. That's its shelf life. You get what you pay for.) I'm going off on tangents here, probably because I don't want to own up to the fact that I literally BLANKED on where Hong Kong was when I had to fill it out on my customs form at the Sydney airport. In the blank I had to write down "Next destination country" and instead of asking someone which country Hong Kong was in and feeling like even more of a dumbass than I already am, I just wrote "Hong Kong" - which isn't even a country! Luckily the girl at customs laughed at my passport photo because it was taken when I was in high school and I had hair parted down the middle with my golden locks coming down to my ears (not sure which is more embarrassing - the Hong Kong thing or the passport photo). In any event, she didn't seem to think it was a problem that my next destination country was "Hong Kong." Sigh.

So it's in Japan, right? (kidding.)

It's good you weren't traveling with me on this flight because I was pretty ornery after getting zero sleep and after looking at the map and realizing that I was basically flying nine hours NORTH AND WEST to Hong Kong when I needed to be going 12 hours EAST and SOUTH towards LA. So instead of a nice 14-hour trip from Sydney to LA, like my parents did (in first class seats, no less), I had to travel to Hong Kong with a loud Chinese woman sitting next to me who wanted to get up to go to the bathroom or walk around the cabin and do cartwheels every third minute. Then I got to hang out at the Hong Kong airport - which was nice but nothing can compare to Singapore, the best airport in the world, where I purchased my beloved Motorola SLVR phone! - for another two hours before catching a 12-hour flight to LA. So it was like a 27-hour flying day altogether. I got to catch up on some decent movies on the flights - well most people would think these are awful movies, but I haven't seen any movies since early January: Elizabethtown, In Her Shoes, and Shopgirl. They also had 'The Constant Gardener' which I need to see before the Oscars but I watched a little bit of it and realized it was going to take too much brain power to get into it completely.

All-in-all, though, my trip today was better than I expected. I had some extra Australian money to spend at duty free, and there was no way I could fit any alcohol into my bag - so what did I buy? A bottle of OXYGEN that you ingest during the flight to help with your jet lag. For sixty bucks. HAHA. Then I had still more money left over so I bought this nasal spray that is supposed to work like Airborne formula (they don't have Airborne in Australia yet). And finally I had $20 left to spend so I bought a "men's grooming kit" featuring a nose hair and side burn trimmer. The woman at the desk looked at me like, "Oh my you are such a high-maintenance little sucker." Or at least that's what I read from her face expression.

PS It's probably not fair to put this on the map as a 'destination' on my trip, since it was more just like window shopping, but every time I log in it tells me "You've traveled 'x' percentage of the world," and the 'x' has been like 2% the entire time, so I'm hoping this will up it to at least 3%. I have 97% of the world still to see? That's quite daunting. Although now the map is thinking I went from NYC to Hong Kong for some reason. Dammit. I'll have to fix this later.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1140950160/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1140950160/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1140950160/tpod.html Sun, 23 Apr 2006 20:59:47 -0400 Escape from New york: leaving behind the Manhattan radio dj life and taking on the traveller's life, from London to Southeast Asia to Australia and back....

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Sydney, Australia

I just watched an hour of cricket; the sport, if you can call it a sport. I don't watch, like, or play competitive sports. I hate them. I'd rather stare at a blank wall than watch sports. I'd rather talk to Paris Hilton about politics than watch sports. I'd rather get shot by Dick Cheney than have to watch an entire football game. I like to pride myself on being rather straight-acting for a gay guy (although my mom would probably claim that statement just shows my inner latent homophobia), but hating sports and not knowing the rules of how to play and being a complete klutz in gym class really set me apart from the other straight boys growing up. Even now sometimes I feel awkward going to watch sports at a bar with straight friends.... It gives me anxiety. Anyway, I loved watching cricket though. I have no idea what the rules of the game are, but it looked like fun - it was Australia vs. South Africa - and the great part too is that since it's a small field they're playing on they zoom in on the players every 30 seconds or so...and they're all gorgeous. Maybe that's why I liked it so much.

Speaking of gorgeous, last night turned out to be an interesting and fruitful night. A good final hoorah in Sydney, if you will. After ordering room service around 8pm I was trying to think up ways I could run into this hot room service guy (named Andrew, I later learned). So I put my Ivy League brain to work and decided it would be smart to order a bucket of ice around 11:45, since Andrew said he was done his shift at midnight. So just my luck it was he who brought the ice, right as he was finishing his shift. I was showered and all ready to go out, so I asked him if he wanted to have a drink with me (what balls!) and he said he probably shouldn't because of his boss...but he did anyway. Then I asked him where he was going out - and he said Stonewall, a place on Oxford Street, I guess named after the NYC Stonewall riots. So I made my way up to Oxford street and found him there around 12:30 or so. He looked totally different out of his room service uniform - actually even better than in uniform - and he seemed happy to see me so I was relieved since I felt a little bit like a stalker for a while there. He introduced me to his friends and we talked for a while about 'Blue' and how he enjoyed it better when it was the 'W.' He said his manager is gay, so I said something like "Oh, well then I see why he hired you," and he laughed. Then he asked me if I was gay, which I found hilarious. I thought I had made it totally clear when we were talking gay 'sign language' back at the room. Maybe he's a little dense, or maybe I didn't send the signal as strongly as I thought I had. He said I just seemed like a 'straight surfer dude' type of guy, which almost made me fall to the floor laughing. I took it as a compliment though (there's the latent homophobia again).

Last night was an absolute blast; I don't even want to tell you what time I got home, but I slept until 1:30pm so it must have been filthy late (or early, depending on how you look at it). I was supposed to meet Sven and Teva and Heaven in Bondi beach today so I quickly put on my swimsuit without showering, packed a bag, bought a banana for breakfast, and hopped on the bus. I guess I may have gotten readily a little too hastily because I soon learned that a collared shirt flipped up would have been a better option than just a t-shirt today.

"What is that on your neck?" Sven said as I met him at the beach. "What do you mean?" I said, thinking that maybe I had a rash or more zits as a result of going off my fasting. Then he used some word in German and started laughing and I realized I must have had a hickey on my neck. It was pretty embarrassing. "No comment," I said. Honestly I have no idea how it got there. Hahahahaha.

It rained at Bondi beach today. It was a trashy little beach; maybe it's nicer on sunny days, but today it looked like crap, and I couldn't imagine why everyone raves about it and why everyone in Sydney wants to live there; but then again I've been spoiled by some pretty good beaches on this trip so I'm pretty discriminating. The guys just moved into their flat in Bondi which they said was a '17-minute walk' from the beach... so I went with them to have some beers and check it out. Sven's roommates must be as directionally disabled as he is/was when I first met him - because we had to ask for directions 3 times (to THEIR apartment!) and it took about 37 minutes instead of the 17 i was promised. It was neat to see a true Sydney flat, though. I learned that school here isn't really school. Teva (who is only 21) is going for his BA and only has to go to school TWO days a week. Sven is my age and is going for a masters; he only goes 4 days a week. What is wrong with America? We get ten days vacation and the rest of Europe gets like ten weeks... and they don't have to go to school full-time. Maybe that's why I'm such a slacker now? Because I went to school for sixteen years with 40-hour studying weeks? No wonder everyone is on anti-depressants and people commit suicide and there are school shootings in America. We pack it all in. It's too much. We don't have a rational, logical thinking government. I'll get off my soapbox now, but it's true. Productivity would be so much better if everyone got the entire winter off to go travelling.

It's raining and thundering now, which is strange, slightly ominous, especially on my last night here. Haven't heard the sound of such steady rain in months... and the hotel I'm in used to be a wharf at the marina, so it has tin ceilings in the lobby and it makes massive pitter-pattering sounds. I have a 5:30 wakeup call and then a 27-hour flight to LA via Hong Kong. Not looking forward to that.

Heaven and Dave the gay tv guy are coming over in a bit; since I have a bi-level suite I thought it would be good to do some entertaining, especially since I don't have the room to entertain in NYC. Not sure what's in store for the rest of the night, but sleep would be good at some point. If not, there's always the plane flight.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1140838320/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1140838320/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1140838320/tpod.html Sun, 23 Apr 2006 20:57:52 -0400 Escape from New york: leaving behind the Manhattan radio dj life and taking on the traveller's life, from London to Southeast Asia to Australia and back....

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Byron Bay, Australia

I took my first bus ride in Australia yesterday, actually my first bus ride of the whole trip...from Brisbane to Byron Bay. That's how most backpackers get around in Australia; you can buy a $200 open-ended ticket and hop on and off the buses as you please, but most of the places along the east coast of Australia are at least 12 hours apart from each other (even though Australia looks so itty bitty on the globe, it's the size of the States, something I didn't know until mid-way through my trip, so imagine trying to do Boston, NYC, Philly, DC, and Miami in 2.5 weeks - that's basically what I'm doing here - it's tough). That's why I've been flying everywhere, to avoid taking the 12-hour buses, most of them night buses, where you're holed up with a bunch of other stinky backpackers for the night and your stuff could get stolen at any time (although Greyhound is pretty safe). But I did decide to try the bus thing from Brisbane to Byron Bay, since it's only about a four hour bus ride. It was kind of neat because there were only about four of us on the bus, so I had plenty of space, plus you get to check out the entire coast as you drive on down. We drove through Surfer's Paradise and the Gold Coast, where tons of modern high-rises are going up; it kind of reminded me of where I live in Chelsea - the high-rise part, not the weather part, unfortunately - so I felt like I was at home for a quick second.

I've enjoyed Byron Bay. I was told by some people to skip it, others said I haaaaaad to go here. It's a little past its peak, in my opinion, but it's much classier and more laid back than Airley Beach. In S.A.T. verbal exam terms, I would make the following simile - Airley Beach: South Padre Island, TX as Byron Bay: Key West, FL or some other classier beach town in the States. There are definitely young backpackers here, but also a ton of older couples, and real estate here is through the roof.

I've met both some really nice people and some real assholes since I've been here. Let's start with the nice ones:

1. When I checked in at my hostel, there was a really sarcastic chick checking me in...and I like sarcastic chicks so I got a little sarcastic back and we ended up talking for a while. She said she doesn't see many American backpackers, and the only ones she does see are from NYC or California. So that got me saying that much of middle America don't leave their farms to go travel the world, which of course led to a George W. conversation, then that led to her saying that she has to defend Americans all the time since we've gotten such a bad reputation over the past decade, that it's no better here and they want the right-wingers out of power, that we're just people like everyone else, that government in general usually sucks. And this was all before I even got the keys to my room.

2. Today it rained for a brief second and this cute little backpacker came up to me and said "Hey, I just got off the night bus from Sydney - where do I find all the hostels?" so I took him to my place and showed him around. He was really grateful and I ended up talking to him for a while. (Unfortunately, though, I think there are nicer hostels in Byron than mine - called Main Beach Backpackers. I'm starting not to trust the Lonely Planet guide anymore... in Airley Beach it listed this awful, awful hostel named 'Magnums' as 'THE ONLY PLACE' to be in Airley...and after talking to people I heard it was really run down and covered with litter and clogged drains. Then here in Byron it listed my hostel as 'modern, clean, excellent place near the beach.' It is near the beach, I'll give them that, but the place looks like a shack from the 80s.... There's no way I'd call it modern, there are mud and puddles all over the floors of the bathrooms, and the rooms smell like mold. Oh and I spent a good part of an hour last night catching and killing moths in my room. I think Lonely Planet is so popular that maybe these places are getting run down too quickly...since we all use the guide as a sort of travel bible. Either that, or the hostels pay them off to get good listings.)

3. I met up with Kelly and Linda, the two other Americans from my sailing trip in the Whitsundays. Most of the boat had been making their way up the east coast, whereas the three of us were on our way down (so unfortunately I couldn't travel with the Norwegians I loved hanging out with so much). Kelly/Linda had offered to share a rental car down to Byron with me, but I backed out at the last minute deciding I wanted a night alone in Brisbane, telling them I'd meet up with them in Byron. We met for dinner last night at a BYOB restaurant, two bottles of white wine in hand, and we had a blast. I hadn't gotten to know them all that well on the boat so it was nice to meet them and talk to them and be with some Americans, since it's been a while for me! Kelly is a personal trainer and Linda works in IT back in Minnesota, and Kelly owns some real estate on the side, so we talked about these villas I was looking at in the Gilis that are being sold for pretty cheap (brand new villas with their own private lap pools). They're building an international airport on Lombok (near the Gilis) to compete with Bali, so it seemed like it might be a good investment opportunity for the future. We talked about going in on a villa together.... It may have just been traveller talk, but I think we're both pretty serious about it. It would be fun to own a private villa on a private island and have it rented out the majority of the year... then go stay for a few weeks every winter. We'll see. Oh, and Linda scored major points in my book because she's the first non-music-industry person I've found who has the band Cut Copy on her ipod! They're an Australian techno band and my favorite band of the past six months, but even most Australians haven't heard of them.

4. I decided to go get a massage and a Reiki energy healing session to bring back some of the good energy I was feeling after fasting for a week at Ubud Sari. Met a really wonderful woman and her husband who do healing work and who gave me a lot of tips on healing and glyconutrients, which are a new field of non-FDA-approved-yet-medicine being used to cure cancer and MS and even smaller ailments like IBS; I had heard of them from someone in NYC but apparently they started overseas and have become essential to many people's lives. Unfortunately they're really expensive...but I had bought some back home so I'm definitely going to give them a try now.

Ok, and now for the assholes I've met in Byron:

1. Today Kelly, Linda, and I decided to go sea kayaking - we found a kayaking trip that left at 9am and was supposed to take us around the famous Byron Bay lighthouse, where all the dolphins hang out. There were 18 of us all together, and one of the instructors was just a total misogynistic & homophobic jerk. As soon as we all got there he said "Okay girls, this is my favorite time of day...when I get to ask you to take your clothes off, since you won't need any of those clothes in the water." Then, a few seconds later, two guys were lathering each others' backs with sunblock and he goes, "Hey, could you two get a room?!" Then looked around to see who was laughing. Luckily not many people were, and I gave him a dirty look. It was SO difficult to get out into the ocean with these kayaks - after all, this is a surfing beach, not a easy breezy sea kayaking beach - so everyone capsized at least twice trying to get through the pounding of the waves. Luckily the girl I was paired up with and I got out there pretty quickly, and we had to wait for literally an hour while the rest of the pairs got into the water. I think the instructor was a little embarrassed it took so long to get out there, so he started going off about how people needed to feel more confident in the water, that this one guy was freaking out and panicking too much, that he's never seen a group take this long to get out there...blahdy-blahdy-blah. (Little did he know I've been sea kayaking before and even went on a two-week kayak-camping trip in high school... and I've never experienced conditions like this. I don't think it was safe at all to be going in the water with that much surf, especially with 18 people). There was a competing sea kayaking company that was also trying to get through the waves and he went on and on about how they're the copycat company and how they'll never make it through the surf. Finally we got out there after some heavy paddling (my arms are going to KILL tomorrow) and we did see two sets of dolphins jumping into the air near the boats, so it was all worth it. Then at the end the guy starts telling the group he has such an amazing body for a 41-year-old, that he left the states because he got sick of making too much money, so he just put it all in "401ks" (which is just mumble-jumble since that's hardly a sign of heavy investing) and that he has a house in Mexico, blah blah blah. It was so great to get away from him at the end of the kayak trip, but also so embarrassing to know that he was one of the reasons some Australians hate Americans and people like the nice woman at my hostel have to defend us.

2. Tonight I called to set up shuttle service to the airport tomorrow, since I'm flying back to Sydney. The guy on the phone was really hard to understand and speaking in Australian slang, so it took me a few tries to understand what he was saying to me; basically I think he was trying to say that at this time of night he can only set up taxi service for tomorrow, that I'd have to call back tomorrow after 7am to set up shuttle service (don't ask me why). I was confused and didn't see the logic in it all so I kept asking him more about it, to which he responded "Call back tomorrow, idiot, I'm busy," then hung up. I was pissed. One of the things I was told at the cleansing resort in Bali was that I should express my negative emotions more... that maybe the reason I have a bad stomach is that I'm holding onto emotions like fear and anger in my gut, and that I should let them out instead of holding them in. So I decided to call this guy out on what he did - well, to be specific, I decided to call him back on the phone and bitch him out. "Don't hang up on me, you asshole," I said to him. "I'm your customer and that was no way to treat me...." I was still talking and then saw "Call ended" on my cell phone. He had hung up on me again. So now I was livid. I called back a third time. He answered and said "That's it, I'm blocking your phone number from our service." I'm not sure if he did or not, but if he did I'm going to have a difficult time getting to the airport since they're the main transport service. I'm not sure in this instance if it was good I took out my anger on him...especially since it just makes me more angry just thinking about it. I want to punch that bastard.

3. Hippies, again. There's something with me and hippies.... I guess we're just not meant to get along. I went to the beach to take pictures of sunset and surfers - or surfers at sunset, either/or - and there was this group of hippies standing around smoking pot on the sidewalk. I saw one girl standing in the middle of the sidewalk and walked right up next to her, and there was a car in the way on the other side, so there was no way of getting past. She didn't budge. So I said "Excuse me," loudly, and she sort of moved an inch forward. I looked back and rolled my eyes at the group. I guess maybe they deserve a hall pass for being stoned and out of it, but still, have some respect, even if I am a preppy American tourist. I was told I should go to Nimbon on this trip - Nimbon is this super-hippie commune an hour away from Byron Bay, where you can take a day trip, buy pot cookies, then go on this windy road where they play Pink Floyd right as your cookie is settling into your head. I've heard it's neat, but I can't imagine myself on a bus with all of my hippie enemies, plus I'm trying to stay relatively healthy after cleansing myself and was never a big fan of pot to begin with.

I think that about covers it. I'm going to go shower in the dirty-puddled-lame-excuse-of-a-bathroom at the so-called "Modern and Excellent" hostel I'm staying in, then go out for a bit. I'm going hang gliding in the morning! Byron Bay has been beautiful and a lot of fun, but I can't wait to get back to Sydney... and hostel life ends for me TONIGHT! I'm staying at the W in Sydney for a final hoorah my last two nights.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1140661560/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1140661560/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1140661560/tpod.html Sun, 23 Apr 2006 20:55:38 -0400 Escape from New york: leaving behind the Manhattan radio dj life and taking on the traveller's life, from London to Southeast Asia to Australia and back....

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Brisbane, Australia

This is surreal: I'm in my hostel in Brisbane, I was taking a nap, having flown in just a few hours ago, catching up on lost sleep from the sailing trip, when all of a sudden a woman's voice comes out over a loudspeaker through my wall-mounted air conditioner. "Ladies and gents, boys and girls, we're about to start playing bingo downstairs... come one, come all, prizes for everyone, and free pitchers of beer." Who knew they had loudspeakers in a hostel - it sort of reminded me of elementary school when the principal got on the loudspeaker and one of the students read the day's activities, except that in this case the activities were for extremely bored backpackers who need to play bingo in order to afford beer... and we also weren't forced to do the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank God.

So I went to play bingo. I don't know the last time I played bingo... or if I've ever played before. But I gave myself the "you've got to try new things" pep talk in my head before heading downstairs, grabbed myself a Strongbow cider, and started to play. I didn't win.

THEN, two ciders in I started getting bored with the bingo and headed towards the bar, where some typical hostel girls (a little rough around the edges) were hanging out. One was forcing her friend to get a shot of Absinthe.... It had never even occurred to me that they had Absinthe here; I knew you could buy it in England but never thought about it anywhere else. I've only had Absinthe once before and it was a pretty brutal experience; my friend Danni and her (now ex-) boyfriend came over and helped me and my (ex ex) boyfriend polish off a full bottle. We did it the "real" way, the way Hemingway and whomever used to do it, burning sugar cubes on a spoon and what not, then taking the shot. I think I may have called out sick from work the next day - it was not smart to drink a whole bottle amongst the four of us. Looking back on it, I think there was enough poison in that bottle to destroy many a relationship. Strong stuff.

So I started asking the bartender if you can get Absinthe everywhere, and he said, "of course, mate!" with this menacing little grin on his face. So the girls heard me being a dumb American, asking a question like that, and they demanded that I get a shot. So I did. And here I am, about an hour later, with a slight headache, having stolen myself away from the bar - and from the bingo. No more for me (bingo OR absinthe), well at least not for now.

And if things couldn't be any more surreal, they're filming some sort of movie at the hostel tonight. There are these beautiful model-looking girls here and lots of filming equipment but I have no idea what exactly the movie is or what it's for... every few minutes I hear "quiet on the set please...." then "camera rolling..." then "action..." then finally "cut." I'm semi-trapped in this internet area since they asked us not to walk by during the filming.

Tonight was supposed to be my night of rest and relaxation, a sort of pit stop on the way to Byron Bay where I plan on scuba diving one last time and meeting up with some boat friends... yes, so tonight was supposed to be mellow, especially after the celebration last night. And who knows, after this shot it might turn into a Ben-passes-out-at-9pm sort of night. But I purposely chose this hostel because it's a) called the "swankiest hostel in Brisbane (www.bunkbrisbane.com.au)....with a fabuuuuuuuulous bar" in the Lonely planet guide (that's verbatim) and b) because they have singles... and I sure didn't feel like meeting any new people after spending 3 days on a boat with 37 people and c) it's in the northeast borough of town, Fortitude Valley, containing all the hip bars and also the gay area. So we'll see if I have it in me to go exploring later. I still feel like I'm swaying back and forth on a boat, however; can't wait for that feeling to stop. And no, it's not the Absinthe talking - or writing - I've felt like this ever since I stepped off the boat.

Update: Didn't go out last night. It started raining. I think it's only the third time I've seen rain on my trip...knock on wood. So I thought I'd take a nap and maybe go out after the showers ended. Next thing I know it was 9am. Feeling rested and refreshed and ready for my trip down to Byron Bay.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1140559440/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1140559440/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1140559440/tpod.html Sun, 23 Apr 2006 20:54:59 -0400 Escape from New york: leaving behind the Manhattan radio dj life and taking on the traveller's life, from London to Southeast Asia to Australia and back....

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Airley Beach, Australia

Was out of e-mail touch for 3 days (gasp!) as I was sailing/snorkeling through the Whitsunday islands on an over 100-year-old restored pirate ship called the 'Defender.' There were 37 of us on board... it was quite an experience. The last night of the trip we all went out drinking in Airley Beach, and a bunch of us were talking about how the trip was a fascinating social experiment. I was thinking the whole time that it would have made a great reality television show... and believe me I would have loved to have someone kicked off the boat every night. Maybe I'll pitch a stuck-on-a-sailing-boat trip idea to the networks. Don't steal that idea, okay?

Think about it: with just a few exceptions, we were forced to remain on this vessel with 36 other people, and if you didn't like them or if you felt like being alone there was basically nothing you could do, short of jumping overboard. We did get off the boat occasionally to go snorkeling or go for a short (600m) 'bushwalk' or play games on Whitehaven beach. But other than that we were sitting around talking, eating, and drinking for almost 75 hours straight. So, just like elementary school or summer camp or any workplace or any group in life larger than 4 or so people, major social groups emerged, and in this instance - since the boat was so big, groups took on sides of the boat, either starboard or port.

Within minutes of getting on the boat I met Andreas and Rikke (roll the 'r' and the 'k' - I couldn't do it so I just called her 'Ricky'), a mid-twenties couple from Norway... I actually met them on the starboard side of the boat, although we soon migrated to the port side, as I'll explain in a moment. I think they probably thought I was Scandinavian, which I'm used to by now on this trip, so we started talking and I found them to be silly, hilariously funny people. Somehow we were talking about the Singapore airport and they said they had gone to Singapore. They had a running joke going that no one in Singapore can pronounce their 'r's so they told me this story that had me on the floor laughing, in which housekeeping came into their hotel room and said 'Sally, Sally, housekeeping. Oh Sally, sally.' Andreas and Ricce weren't totally confident with their English, so they thought that something serious was happening, that this 'sally' word meant there was a fire or an emergency, so they started packing their bags quickly and panicking... until one of them realized the housekeepers were just trying to say 'Sorry,' 'Sorry.' So one night on the boat we had fried rice (we had an amazing chef, by the way) and the Norwegians started saying 'You order flied lice, yeah?' to me. I almost choked on my food. May have been a had to be there moment... but the take home message is that I loved these guys, and they were so fun and laid back and open and tolerant.

So we soon migrated to the port side of the boat, where, ironically, most of the Scandinavian blonde-ish people were hanging out. There was a group of girls from Holland that were travelling up the Australian coast in a camper van, a young married couple from Denmark who quit their jobs, sold their house, and were working as fruitpickers and in meat factories in Australia to fund their travels. There were also some nice Canadian girls who had just graduated from school. An older Dutch man named Theo who had been a school principal but had taken a year off to travel on his own; he became one of our favorites on the port side, slowly but surely, making quick one liners whenever he could. His humor was impeccable, with perfect timing, it reminded me of how my grandfather used to be - quiet and unassuming but always there with a one-liner to make you chuckle, although I think Theo was a tad funnier (sorry, Grandad). For example, I took a walk out on my own to clear my head when we got to Whitehaven beach; I was trying to make it all the way down to the end but it took me about half an hour to get halfway...it was like an oasis in the desert, this neverending white sand beach. I came across Theo on my way back and he says immediately, "So is there a McDonalds at the other end? Did you get me a big Mac?" and I was dying of laughter immediately. I'd love to hear how funny he is in his own language, if he's this funny in English. Plus by the end of the trip the other American girls joined us on the port side; they were a hoot, and I ended up spending more time with them in Byron Bay.

Yes, that was the port side. Lovely, fun people. The starboard side was quite different. Not bad, but different. There was your requisite group of buff tough guys, three of them British, one a 19-year-old Tasmanian, who pretty much kept to themselves on the trip until the last night, when they tried to get with pretty much any and all girls (some succeeding, some crashing and burning; it was a great spectacle). With them there were some Irish travelers who liked to drink - a lot - one of whom looked like a proper 30-something woman who hadn't done a thing wrong in her life. Yet the first night after a few wines in her she was fawning all over the 19-year-old Tasmanian! Who knew?! The final night they were kissing on the dance floor in front of an entire hostel bar, like kids do at school dances in middle school. We were all stunned.

There were also a few floaters, some groups who didn't really interact with either side, starboard or port. There was a group of German guys, who didn't know English well or at least pretended they didn't so they could hang out with themselves. There was an older couple from France who wanted to have nothing to do with the youngfolk; a few hippie Australian girls; two snotty British girls who stuck to their own corner; and the only really sad casualty of this trip was a woman who all the gossipers thought was a lesbian. I'm the type who likes to reach out to the loners or the ones who aren't fitting in at all, especially since I know what that feels like from my middle school days, so I tried to talk to her, but it was basically futile since her English was so terrible. I didn't like that everyone called her the 'lesbian' but there was nothing I could do about it. As for me, I didn't tell anyone I was gay, and I did have one major cross-examination by one of the Canadian girls all about my "ex-girlfriends," but when talking about my exes I made sure to use impersonal pronouns. It got more and more complicated as the conversation went on, so she must have thought I was really strange by the end of it, or else she figured out the real deal. My biggest regret was not being open with Andreas and Rikke, since I spent so much time with them, but Andreas was flirtatious in the whole European non-gay way, and I enjoyed being silly with him - we even danced together the last night and I apparently unbuttoned his top shirt button because I thought it was buttoned too high, and everyone laughed. I was texting Sven at one point the last night and he goes, "I knew you were gay!" and I nodded, but I think he was kidding. Or maybe he wasn't. I don't know. I guess it doesn't and shouldn't matter, but I'd like to see them again... plus I gave them the address for this travelpod so if they read this then they'll find out more than enough about me.

Besides being an interesting reality-show-social-experiment type trip, it was absolutely beautiful. The Whitsunday islands are stunning, and the beaches are like nothing I've ever seen before. The snorkeling was great - we saw turtles, a big fish that lives off Hayman island named Elvis, and tons of beautiful fish. Unfortunately we had to wear our stinger suits the entire time (even covering our faces) because it was jellyfish season, and these stingers can kill you within twenty minutes if you get stung. We had to all sign waivers agreeing to be helicoptered out if we got stung; basically, the stingers shut down your immune system, you start vomiting, convulsing, and eventually die unless you receive the anti-venom within half an hour. Luckily no one got stung, although we thought someone did since a helicopter arrived on one of the beaches at one point. It could have been Posh Spice or David Beckham, we were told, since they had their honeymoon on Hayman Island, and we were also told that Brad Pitt had swum in the same snorkeling waters we had, pre-Angelina, though.

The ship slept 25 and the rest slept on the beach in tents; at first we felt sorry for them, but by the end we were all wishing we could sleep on the beach in tents. I had a double bed downstairs on the boat, but it was sooooo hot that I could barely sleep a wink the first night. The second night I slept on the deck on a pad under the stars. Much better, although it rained for a brief second during the night.

I'll never forget this sailing trip - it was at times gorgeous, at times hilarious, at times really boring, at times really liberating, at times somewhat lonely. I would do it again in a second, though.

Thanks for all the nice birthday e-mails. I was thinking of extending my trip for a week so I can see Frasier Island, but then I saw this photo PJ posted and it made me homesick... so I'm not quite sure when I'll be going home.

http://comments.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.HomeComments&friendID=47577625&MyToken=bcybkv,bbWnzcAmwRg
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1140612240/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1140612240/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1140612240/tpod.html Sun, 23 Apr 2006 20:45:40 -0400 Escape from New york: leaving behind the Manhattan radio dj life and taking on the traveller's life, from London to Southeast Asia to Australia and back....

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Airley Beach, Australia

It wasn't the best birthday of my life, but wasn't the worst either. Celebrating Australia time was amazing... celebrating American time was depressing... and coming back to a deluge of 'happy birthday' e-mails and updates after my 3-day boat trip was beyond amazing.

Let's start with Sydney. The guys from my hostel - Sven, the German who needed to be led around the Sydney because he was so helpless (in a cute way), Ben, the English kid from some obscure British town with an accent that was completely incomprehensible, and myself all went out to a pub (named 'Pub' - really creative, eh?) for drinks to celebrate my birthday. They bought me a B52 shot at midnight and we took a video of the celebration. I'll upload it at some point... it's kind of amusing.

I wanted to keep partying with them and I could tell Sven wanted to stay out, especially since the more the other Ben drank the more unintelligible he became (at one point Sven asked me if his own English was bad and that's why he couldn't understand him; but I assured him that it was just Ben's dialect that was the problem and that I could only make out every other word myself...so I just told him to 'smile and nod' all the time and he cracked up laughing). So yeah I wanted to stay out with Sven, and maybe I had developed a teeny tiny crush on him (most likely an unattainable/unrequited sort of crush), but maybe it was because he was so clueless and I liked taking care of him and making sure he got his drinks and meals purchased with the right money and got to the correct streets he needed to go to and what not. Maybe that was it. Or maybe he's just a sensitive, good-looking German guy with a Scandinavian name - and that's why I liked him.

But after the midnight celebration I had made plans to meet up with a fellow gay radio/tv personality from Sydney, who had discovered me on myspace.com, so I had to maneuver myself out of the pub by saying I was going to meet a gay friend and adding a 'I'm sure you guys aren't interested in coming along' sort of thing. I think Sven would have come if Ben hadn't been there, but it was okay without him. This guy Dave does the surf reports on the local channels in Sydney - so he was a real down-to-earth surfer dude sort of guy... you'd never really suspect he was gay. Although he did get noticed at a gay bar and people didn't seem too surprised to see him there. He was very flirtatious - I'm not sure how much of it was due to the fact that he liked me... or how much was due to the fact that he wants to move to NYC to get into TV and he knows I'm signed with William Morris, who he says has rejected him in the past. I did tell him I'd take him in to meet my agent, who's younger and hungrier than most agents in the city so I thought he might take on this Dave guy as a pet project, but then soon after realized he might become competition for me. Especially with that hot Aussie accent going for him! Oh well. We shall see about that. I'm supposed to see him again when I get back to Sydney. If he turns out to be a good all-around guy I want to help him, especially since quite a few people have been so generous to me on this trip. I figure what goes around comes around.

That night I got in around 4am - all my hostel mates were well asleep - and I felt a little guilty clumsily climbing up to my bunkbed and clearly waking up the entire room. All of a sudden I had become 'that guy' - the frat guy stumbling in at 4am that we all said we didn't want to stay with - but then again it was my birthday, so I was allowed, right?

Since Sydney is 17 hours ahead of the East coast of the U.S., my real birthday wasn't until the next day at 4pm Australian time. I was on a plane at this time - Virgin Blue - on my way up to the Whitsunday islands. I was hungover and tired after having to check out at 10am of course, plus a little anxious about this boat trip, so come 4pm I probably wasn't in the best mood. Although I did enjoy flying Virgin Blue - Heaven told me they train their employees to be very 'cheeky' and that they certainly were! We played a game mid-way through the flight in which we had to guess how much one of the Boeing doors cost in US dollars. I guessed $300,000. The correct answer was $350,000. I'm not sure what I would have won but another damn woman guessed $340,000 so she got it. They also played music loud throughout the whole plane during the flight, which I liked...and as we were descending they turned up "Speed of Sound" by Coldplay. I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but it sure seemed fitting given the lyrics of that song. It was a nice soft landing.

Arriving in Airley beach was a bit overwhelming. I had a voucher for a hostel as part of my boat trip, and I hadn't done much research on it on my own. Ugh. It was like a dirty old frat house, with bugs (literally) crawling the walls of the bathroom. I was put into a ten-person dorm, and nine were already in there, so of course I got last pick. To make matters worse, I had made plans with an Irish guy I met on the plane to meet for dinner... but there was only one shower in our ten-person room so I had to wait to shower, which made me late for meeting the guy for dinner, and he wasn't there when I arrived. I found him four days later and he said he waited for fifteen minutes, then left. But at the time I felt ditched...on my birthday no less, with no one else I knew or liked in the town. Plus Airley Beach is a party town, so it was like arriving in Miami Beach with raucous people drinking and screaming everywhere but having no friends to share any of it with. This was honestly the only lonely guy night of my trip, and it's too bad it happened on my birthday (well, day after my birthday, depending on how you look at it) but what could I do?

So what did I do? I bought a pizza, two beers, and went back to a picnic bench at my hostel to eat. Happy Birthday to me. I was exhausted from the night before and nervous as hell for this sailing trip - it felt like the night before the first day of school for some reason - so I popped a Sonata, went to bed at 9pm, and got up at 7 to go meet the 36 other people who were hopping on board the boat with me.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1140261900/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1140261900/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1140261900/tpod.html Sun, 23 Apr 2006 20:44:31 -0400 Escape from New york: leaving behind the Manhattan radio dj life and taking on the traveller's life, from London to Southeast Asia to Australia and back....

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Sydney, Australia

This whole 10am hostel checkout thing is ludicrous. Nearly every hotel in the world has a noon checkout time - and real hotels are where old people stay, people who normally check out at 10am because they want to go sightseeing instead of recover from their hangovers. But hostels - homeland of partiers, revelers, non-sleepers - at hostels they make us check out at 10am? Granted we're paying less than a hotel, but come on, couldn't we sleep in an extra hour or two just to make the day a little less painful?

So this morning Teva got up first - he's looking for a 'flat' so he goes to bed early and gets up at 8am to go flat hunting... and once one person starts rustling his bags then another starts, then there's a few moans, then everyone is up within half an hour. Kind of fun since it's like adult summer camp and you're laughing about other guys talking in their sleep and who snored and who didn't and silly stuff like that... but also a bit brutal as the day goes by and you realize you're running on just five or six hours of sleep.

Decided to be a good tourist and visit the Sydney tower on my first solo traveling day in Sydney. It was okay. It cost $25 to get to the top of the tower - 80 stories - but it seemed like it was going to be worth it since they include an IMAX-like movie beforehand about Australia - but turns out the movie was rubbish and a poor imitation of IMAX. The views from the top were great, though, and really helped me orient myself, so by the end of the tour I felt like a true Sydneysider, able to navigate myself pretty much anywhere.

This came in helpful, especially with my other hostel mates, who had just hopped off 27 hour plane flights from Europe and were totally in awe of being in a city and being in a warm climate. Of course I had adjusted to all that already, plus had gotten used to using my Lonely Planet guide to get myself around, so I became the pseudo-leader for the day and night and even the next day - after all it was about to become my birthday Aussie time, and it was nice to have some nice company and felt even better to feel in charge and independent.

By this point Teva was out of the picture - he was off flat hunting the entire time I was there - and Brandan had moved out after finding his sister in Sydney (what luck!). So we had a new guy in the room. And I shit you not his name was Ben - from a small town in England, his accent was nearly indecipherable. So the group for the next two days was Ben, Sven, and Ben. I wish I were making this up, but that's the absolute truth. Every time we met other travellers we'd go "Hi I'm Ben, I'm Sven, and I'm Ben." They'd just start laughing.

I stole myself away from the Ben-Sven-Ben clique for a few hours to explore Oxford street, the gay area, during the day time. It was pretty quiet and not much to explore visually, but there was good shopping. Against my better judgment (since I have no more room in my pack already), I bought two CDs - well three actually - I bought the Bodyrockers CD since I've been hearing the techno song "I like the way you move..." everywhere I've gone and have become obsessed with it... also bought the single with some remixes...and some sort of House music mix, since I think everyone besides America releases and appreciates good vocal house music more than most people I know back home.

I also went to a shop called "Aussie Boys" and bought a really funny t-shirt. I don't usually go for t-shirts with token sayings on them, but this one made me crack up the instant I saw it. It's in handwritten script, all messy and nervous looking, and it goes, "Dear mum and dad - I'm gay - hope that's okay - love me please, that's all." I don't think I'll ever wear it myself but figured I had to buy it since it made me laugh so hard.... maybe it will be a good "coming out" present for one of my friends some day. Or maybe my mom would wear it? She's a proud gay mom, but I'm not sure if she'd feel that comfortable wearing a shirt like that.

If only someone had shown me that shirt when I was in high school... or if only someone had just sat me down and told me everything was going to be okay... that everyone would love me still, in fact they'd love me more and understand me more and appreciate me more - if only someone could have told me all that long ago I think I would have far fewer hangups. But I guess we're all running on our own schedules, and for some reason I didn't feel comfortable to confront it all even in my own head until age 21. Amazing how powerful the mind is like that. But I won't complain - I'm one of the lucky ones. My "mum" and dad have loved me more ever since I've told them, instead of disowning me or refusing to pay for my college tuition like my two former boyfriends. "I'm gay - hope it's okay - love me - that's all." It's perfect. That's all you need to say... and, for me, at least, everything turned out very okay.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1140095280/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1140095280/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/djbenharvey/roundtheworld06/1140095280/tpod.html Sun, 23 Apr 2006 20:42:38 -0400 Escape from New york: leaving behind the Manhattan radio dj life and taking on the traveller's life, from London to Southeast Asia to Australia and back....

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Sydney, Australia

I figured it was time for another installment of anonymous entertaining e-mails/comments/myspace.com messages from home (...now featuring messages from new friends I've made abroad):

From my first-year-doctor-residency sister who's stuck in nyc in the cold and snow:

I must say that i'm soooooooooooooooooooooooooo envious of your
travels. i almost start to cry when i think i could just choose to
quit this thing i'm doing and just go join you on the beach. and
you're so free. you don't have any bosses or responsiblities at all! can't wait to get away from it all in march.

From my new Swedish boy-band friend:

My hunky! How are you? First I learned alot when I talked to you. You speak very "believing," and sound "trustworthy" - People think you are real and telling them the truth! Maybe its because you work with radio and get to speak many different people. I talk like you now, slowly and, I dont now how to explain but very nice and just speak well.

From my favorite hair "stylist" back home in Philly (And yes, I'm sorry I haven't finished the Ripley tale; I promise to get to it before I go home):

i don't like ripley!!!! he looks sinister and abit evil!!! but
it's up to you who your friends are, but as your biiiig sister (i gained
weight)ha! ha! and #1 stylist i figured i can say that. i'm jealous wish i could
be there!! you look awesome. stay well

From my dad; my poor parents just left Australia a few days ago, incidentally, and were stuck in St. Louis for a few days on the way home due to the snowstorm, plus had a few other incidents as my dad described (he's now in the hospital for surgery at home, so I guess it was worse than he originally described):

The big adventure is my hiking injury. Yesterday, we were hiking
along the coast, about 2 miles from the road when I tripped (left
foot) and landed on my right leg. My knee buckled and I went down in
a heap. Something in my right knee blew out. I lay on the ground for
a few minutes to make sure nothing was dislocated and the knee joint
was intact. I had to hobble out, almost on one leg, hanging onto
Mama. Went to a doctor this morning. He drained about 31 cc of blood from
the knee and surrounding areas.

More badmouthing from the 92.3 Free-fm insiders:

ohh special show last nite: on the cockbite [night-time] show its was [a female intern], [a female dj], and [the main dj's girlfriend]. godawful and totally boring. it was fucked up i thought i was gonna kill myself.

From someone who kept accusing me that my whole trip was a ruse, that I was really going away to be filmed for the next Survivor series:

First episode of survivor was ok...you weren't on it...but i guess you
know that.

From my always politically outspoken mom:

Tasmania is a lovely place; much better weather than we've had so far.
At our B and B we ran into a lesbian couple from north of brisbane who
were really terrific; we ended up having dinner with them and they've
invited us to come visit them on a future trip - they were very
adventurous and very funny - one of them was a financier in london and
had a mid life crisis and ended up as a homeopath and orchid and
organic egg supplier; the other was a former midwife. And we talked a
little politics, which felt like balm to my soul - they decried the
worldwide fascism they see, and john howard being in bush's pocket as
they put it. And our wonderful doctor had a picture of Bush with one of those
arabic headdresses and an islamic beard on his bulletin board, so we
got to talk politics with him too.

From one of my listeners back at K-Rock who called in every night and said "Miiiiiiiiister, Harrrrrrvey....." at the beginning of his call:

misssster harvey.....

Hope all is well; you are the best thing on free radio; god help us! last week was [a female radio dj formerly of K-Rock] moving even more into the dark side sitting in on the DLR show. You could hear the bile coming up from her stomach. She hates that asshole as much as the rest of us. Oh, and fuck the [night-time dj]. well i hope all is well with you and remember you were asked to leave the titanic BEFORE it went down. consider your self lucky.

From a "cheeky" (my new favorite British/Aussie word) New Yorker friend:

What you are missing: supposed blizzard like conditions tonight..expecting
26 inches of snow...more bad radio...and more mean people. I loved the blog about the "flow" and the guy loving being under water...can't wait to hear about the sharks..I love sharks and would love to be in the water with them..although would crap my drawers for certain!

Keep 'em coming....
]]>