New month, new country!
Trip Start
Aug 01, 2007
1
59
91
Trip End
Jan 11, 2009
Melbourne,
Australia
Monday, March 31, 2008
As for the transition to Australia... Wow, not the smooth entry into the country I had intended!
Firstly, my seatmates were NOT good ones. We played a game I like to call, "Let´s wait until she FINALLY reaches that elusive state of sleep, and then wake her up to get out of our seats to use the toilet". I think they derived some sort of perverse pleasure from it- not appreciated since I had decided it was a good idea to (try) and pull an all nighter before leaving for the airport at 4:30am. Let me tell you... NOT a good idea.
After landing, I attempted to buy a Vodafone SIM card in the airport so that I could contact Tom, the friend from Europe who is putting me up for a few nights while I get sorted- turns out they were sold out. So hoping that 51c is enough to make a text in another country, I hopped on a shuttle bus to take me close to where I was headed. Well, finding the building wasn´t as issue (except for the fact the number is actually not visible anywhere- I had to ask someone coming out of the building if it was the right one). The issue was in the fact that I couldn´t work a payphone to save my life!!
I´m not even going to tell you how long it took me, but lets say the phone call attempt involved 2 different payphones, asking a waitress in a café what prefix to use (wrong answer... thanks for that by the way, wherever you are), and eventually paging the concierge to let me in and beg him to let me use the phone... and then asking some guy standing near the desk to tell me how to dial. SERIOUSLY. It was the Auckland nightmare all over again, lack of sleep making me an absolute head case.
Eventually I got a hold of Tom, and he came and let me in. I got a few hours sleep before he was back from work, then we went for some dinner and met my other Contiki friend, who had tickets to a comedy show. (There is a month-long comedy festival type thing going on in Melb right now). It was actually the first time I´ve ever been to live comedy and I really enjoyed it. The final "act" if you can call it that, was some guy named Chopper who is apparently a notorious criminal form Melb, there is actually a TV series down here about all that happened with the Melb. Mafia. So that bit was a little over my head...
Anyways, Tom gave me a mini-tour driving home, so in a few moments, I´ll be hopping on a tram into the city to get some stuff done, and explore a little bit!
X
