Ex-Trip Day 6+7

Day 6 - Saturday 25th

Getting up way too early on a Saturday morning, the four of us made a mad dash for the Roma St Station again, to meet up with our tour group to Fraser Island. We get there, it's almost seven, and the only place open is this dodgy-looking place which I later regretted buying a breakfast quiche from.

Meeting the rest of the tour group, it later turns out that we four are the only Australians in the group - we have some English tourists and backpackers, a French backpacker named Sandra (quickly nicknamed by yours truly to Sandy), some Koreans, and a Canadian. We bundle into different 4WDs, and make a long, long trip down to Rainbow Beach. We also met our tourguide, an incredibly colourful Aussie guy named Paul. He even threw boomerangs and hand-crafted them.
Most of the trip, particularly the first half or so, I was wracked with the worst stomachache from that damn greasy quiche, making me feel so sick I wanted to vomit. However, it quickly faded after we stopped off at a stopover mall-village where we got some travel sickness tablets, and I enjoyed an ice-cream and a can of Sprite.

Fast forward to about 12pm in the afternoon, we're safely arrived at Fraser Island, and have got ourselves set up. It turns out that most of our group are camping, and that only five people are going to the resort - our group and anEnglish backpacker named Emma. Yes, somehow I made a link to Baby Spice (Emma Bunton - but hey, I was much younger then), and thought she was cute.
We take a ride down the beach to see this shipwreck that was originally a ship intended for the Japanese to scrap early in the 20th Century, but instead was stolen by nature and planted on Fraser Island to make it look like the British had stolen the ship back and try to swindle the Japanese. We take some photos, and apparently there are some entertaining photos of myself chasing Jeff along the beach.
'Very romantic.' as Henry later put it.

We then go on to hike towards this really nice creek/lagoon called Elly Creek, which the four of us have a lot of fun splashing around in, running through and swimming upstream in, before we took off to Lake Wobbie - a beautiful, secluded, pristine lake with catfish in them where we swam for a while, having fun with splashing in the pool and sneaking up on others with hands full of sand. We had races down the steep sand slope above the lake, and even a rolling one.
After caking myself in sand at one point, one of the other guys, an Asian-British tourist named Dave pushed me into the water, resulting in a two minute chase along the water before I gave up and went on to plotting and scheming an insidious plot for revenge. I ended up sneaking up behind him, shouting "BOO!!"
It scared the wits out of him. Excellent.

We headed back to the resort, getting together for dinner, where Paul and the other group's tourguide egged us on to eat more food. Afterwards, we went out onto the beach, armed with alcohol, to watch the stars from the beach. We were very surprised when we saw a dingo pass by. Emma had been going on before about how scared she'd be if a dingo came, and how she'd freak out. She didn't even do a tenth the amount of freaking she did.

We later retired back to our room for a night of sweet sleep.

Day 7 - Sunday 26th
On our second day on Fraser Island, we got all our gear packed up and loaded onto the 4WDs that we had spent most of the last couple of days in, cruising through Fraser Island to a rainforested area, beginning a long, scenic trek through the rainforest, to meet Paul playing a didgeridoo at the other end of the path, with the 4WD waiting.

We take another nice drive to Lake Mackenzie. If Lake Wobbie was scenic, then Lake Alexandria was spectacular. A shining lake, golden-white sand, a warm sun, it seemed like a secluded tropical paradise. We spent a good hour or so there learning to throw boomerangs and splash around in the water before we headed off to have lunch.

After enjoying a nice, healthy lunch, we went bushwhacking in the 4WD, Paul deciding to try some "new routes." We almost got lost, and the only thing that stopped him reversing into a tree getting back on track was Jeff shouting "STOP!!"
Fun times.

We get to the beach, and wait for the ferry by having a boomerang throwing competition. Sandy won by the skin of her teeth. I came in second. I let her win, because I thought she should have a memorable memento of her time here.
Our group even came up with a team name - the Boomerangs! We even adopted Queen's "We Are The Champions" to be our theme song.

We left Fraser Island with nothing but good memories, having a commemorative dinner with Jeff and Emma at the Roma St station, and I even gave a little speech ^_^. We parted at there, Jeff going back to Bond, and the rest of us going back to the YHA hostel.

Day 8 - Monday 27th
We left for the airport quite early, splitting there - Henry going back to Melbourne, and Bob and myself back to Adelaide.

Photos and "golden quotes" to follow

The Customer Is Not Always Right

The final leg of the Ex-Trip is coming.

I just found an article that I absolutely had to post up. It reflects my views about consumer culture quite greatly. Of course, I haven't had to deal with too many self-important assholes (but I usually get a few on post-megadraw Sundays), but the worship of the mantra "the customer is always right" like it was an important phrase in the Bible drives me mad. Customers benefit from the services WE provide. If they don't like it, then they can bloody well bugger off.

http://www.violentacres.com/archives/59/two-phrases-that-destroyed-american-culture

Ex-Trip Day 4.9+5

An explanation for the 4.9 - we end up arriving in Brisbane on Thursday night, and we take the shuttle bus from the airport to Roma St transit station, which I swear is like Brisbane Central or something.

Anyways, after arriving, we get directions to the nearby YHA Brisbane hostel, to which we walk in the muggy evening. At this time, I hadn't realised that the first test of the Ashes were being held in Brisbane, and we pass this English guy who tells us that the place is all booked out - good thing we booked in advance ^_^ We get there, and it seems that they're having renovations being done, what with the construction fences forcing us to maneuver around to the door to reception. After checking in and paying for our time there, we get into our room, to find, surprise surprise, another guy sleeping in there. We freeze at the door, and I'm wondering "WTF why is there some random guy sleeping in our room?"
Snap back to reality, ohp there goes gravity - we realise that it's a hostel, and that we have to share rooms. A quick trip back to reception later we are armed with a padlock for keeping our valuables safe from thieves.

Anyways, after settliing into the (decidedly second-class) accomodation, we make a quick exploration before getting to sleep.

Day 5 - Friday 24th
The following day, after a sleepless night due to the humidity, we make for the train station, making a mad dash in the early morning for the train, taking a long trip down from Brisbane to Robina train station, where we took a bus to Bond University, the home campus of my good friend Jeff.

We get the bus, I take one look at the campus, and then utter a single word.
"Bastards."
The campus is an absolute beauty of a place - big water features, modern buildings, modern architecture ... I suddenly realise how much UniSA lags behind (it's still nice and cozy though, but then so is Bond) compared to this place.
We meet up with Jeff and spend an hour cruising around the campus and surrounding town before returning to Jeff's room so he could finish packing and an essay that he had to hand in before we left.

We take the bus back to Robina station in the afternoon, going back to the YHA so Jeff can check in, and stash his stuff before we hit Brisbane city to check out the nightlife. Being a Friday night, Queen St mall (I swear, it's like Rundle Mall in Adelaide, only Brisbane-ised) is thrumming with people, including rather disappointed Barmy Army members drinking away the horrendous mauling that Australia had been administering to England during the first Ashes test.
We go to see Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstatn (that's a real mouthful - and to think that I have it memorised) at the Greater Union cinema in the Queen St mall, which somehow seemed familiar. It turns out that it was the same cinema that my brother and I had visited almost two and a half years ago when we went to Brisbane as a family.
The movie itself is enjoyable, hilarious, and strongly recommended to all, particularly the scene where ... I'll stop here, so as not to spoil it for those who haven't seen the movie.

Afterwards, we ended up wandering the mall looking for a good place to eat (we ended up having Nando's - Jitz's favourite), and saw some interesting things. It's really weird, every 10m or so you walk around in Brisbane city, you'll see a 7-11. It's almost amazing how they can somehow manage to work despite being virtually next to each other.
After a nice conversation at Starbucks over frappucinoes (mine was), interspersed with watching the amusing antics of the nearby mall cleaner cleaning the escalators, we wandered back towards the hostel and our room, stopping to chat up a pair of nice Finnish backpacker girls on the way. I swear, Jeff is a natural conversationalist - we were there for an hour talking to them before we exchanged contact details (with much difficulty), and turning in for an early night.

Soon - our trip to Fraser Island, the best part of the trip in my opinion.

Ex-Trip Day 3+4

DAY 3 - Wednesday 22nd
The night before there was a big thunderstorm, so now it's actually nice and cool in Melbourne. Unfortunately, we're leaving cool Melbourne for steaming hot 36 degree heat in Sydney.
The amusing thing here is that, on the way to Sydney, I manage to lose my boarding pass twice - the first time I think was going through airport security, and the second time I'm not sure. So I end up with some sort of weird docket instead of an actual boarding pass now.

Anyhoo, no other crises came about, and we got into Sydney CBD and head for the hotel. We hit the hotel, Bob, as the "Sydney friend," waits outside while Henry and I go inside the hotel to check in. On asking for our reservation, we find out GASP! it's the wrong hotel! The thing here is that we were staying at a Metro hotel, and there are three in the Sydney CBD. So we get directions, and being the stingy no-money students we are, we decide to leg it across city central to the hotel, lugging all our luggage there in 36 degree heat for about half an hour across so many streets that all seemed to blend together and look the same.
As we get there, we meet Henry's friend and our tourguide Julia, as Henry stated before, who was a "nice girl." I joked about him sounding like he was trying to be a matchmaker. I really got that vibe from the way he wanted to introduce me to the anime girls at JCH - sadly there was only Amy, and this girl named Roxy who somehow reminded me of the female lead from the Korean romantic comedy My Scary Girl.

We all walk into this hotel, lugging our luggage up some steps, and find out that this second hotel too is shock horror the WRONG HOTEL! We end up taking a taxi and somehow navigating our way to the right hotel, down near Chinatown.
We settle into our hotel room, somehow managing to get away with sneaking a third person into a room that was charged for only two people ^_^ hence Bob had to pretend he was the "Sydney friend."

We left the hotel in search of lunch. As we hit Chinatown, I was hit by a desperate craving. I hadn't had yum cha in a while, and so demanded it, and since noone else was offering much resistance, we went with yum cha. And it was delicious! All my favourite dishes got served to us (barring the fried radish cakes, but that's okay), and afterwards, we went down to this museum/exhibition house place called the Powerhouse. We went through this big Chinese history exhibition, and then through this exhibit on television. They even had a Big Brother section, complete with diary/confession room. I took a seat in the chair in time for Big Brother to hear my confession.
"I hate Big Brother." I immediately say, thinking Nineteen Eighty Four as I say this.
Big Brother immediately responds.
"It is futile to try to deceive Big Brother."
At this everyone, myself included, burst out laughing.

After we finish having our fun at the Powerhouse, we leave and cruise along the Darling in sizzling hot weather, and I manage to land a large-sized $5 Boost juice from the stand nearby. Ni~ce ^_^
We return to the hotel room for the evening, before heading out again after getting changed in search of dinner. At this point, Bob has expressed a desire not to have Asian cuisine again, which seemed to rule out about 80% of the restaurants that we passed while we searched for a place that was to Bob's liking. We wander around the city in circles for about an hour before we end up deciding to just go for McDonalds. Yes, it's real haute cuisine ;)
The upside, though, is that we go for Starbucks afterwards. Now, here in Adelaide, there is only one Starbucks cafe, and that's in Rundle Mall, meaning it's always packed with people from interstate and such because there are so many in other cities. So this is a big thing for me - I come in and discover why Starbucks is famous - the frappucino.
We end up walking into Hyde Park afterwards and taking photos in front of something resembling the Washington Monument, and then sitting on steps, which supposedly was against some ANZAC law or something.
We walk into Central Station and try to puzzle out where to go the next day before walking back to our hotel.

DAY 4 - Thursday 23rd
We get up, and make a run for Central Station to catch the next train out to Wynyard, where we were going to see a tour of the Sydney Opera House. We meet Julia, and another of Henry's Sydney friends, a nice girl named Jocelyn, on the way there.
Of course, on the way there, I'm stressing about missing breakfast, which somehow surprised me in a way, because I didn't realise what kind of a health nut I had become. I sate myself grabbing some nuts from a bag of almonds that I had (wisely) packed, as we walk towards the Opera House. The tour itself is pretty interesting, and then afterwards we go on a cruise of Darling Harbour, seeing the sites all around - the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, Kiribilli House (where our esteemed Prime Minister lives when not in Parliament in Canberra), and then afterwards, we wander over towards the Rocks, an old historical part of town, for lunch munchies. While we're there, we get ambushed by a local SBS radio crew, and I graciously grant an interview. I thought it was pretty cool some of the stuff I thought up on the spot when they asked me, until I made a total ass of myself:
"What do you like about the Rocks?"
"I like how all the old stuff has been turned into shopping centres."
Again my big mouth provided plenty of laughs.

We walk down the Harbour Bridge, to see some weird lingerie ad or something being filmed on top of a hotel, and then we end up bumming around Sydney for about 3-4 hours afterwards, visiting parks, chocolate stores, malls, and going in search of "magic toilets," as Jocelyn so eloquently described them, at the QVB mall.

That evening, we head for the airport, to travel to Brisbane after a hearty dinner of fast pizza and Krispy Kreme - to see our good friend Jeff.