travel

Same Shit, Different Day

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To start the week I didn’t have a job. Bearing in mind that I am within the first ten people on the priority list and all the new people are working, I had a moan to the owner of this hostel, and luckily I am very good at having an answer to absolutely everything. I landed myself a job, two days a week. To be honest, I’d rather repeat the day where I thought I might cry because I planted so much five times over than be stuck in the hostel for five days, but at least it’s something.

Monday, I worked at a farm that I was on last week and weeded for six hours. At first I thought that it’d be easier to crawl to ease the back and knee ache, though I ended up giving myself a dead leg after three hours of crawling and couldn’t feel my foot properly for the rest of the work day.

Wednesday was my first shift on another watermelon farm. It was quite amusing to hear people talking tactics in the van about how fast to go and a couple of others and me went at least twice as fast as the ten others without too much effort. Planting can actually get quite tactical and competitive; my tactic is to get a good playlist on and to go near the other quick people and keep up – with that said, I usually finish a row in at least third place anyway. There are days where you know that you’re just going to be working for a couple of hours so a lot of people will go slower as more time spent on the farm = more money. Having worked with quite a few half jobs in the hospitality industry, I’ll end up just annoying myself if I’m too slow.

Thursday, I was off again and was back to work on Friday. The people I was working with seemed to only be able to talk about goon, how drunk they were, how they were still drunk or about how they were going to get drunk after work. I was bored of it after two minutes of being in the van, and it carried on for the whole of the shift.

It got to the point on Friday where it was so hot (surprise!) that the farmer drove me to another part of the field and we just sat having a chat in the ute for five minutes with the air con on full blast. It was one of the days where sweat just drips off your face onto the plastic sheets that we plant onto. He asked me what I’ve done with myself before the farm work so I said about working in France, living in London and travelling pretty much the whole of last year, and he thought that I was a lot older than the people that I work with. I’m actually one of the young ones.

Friday was St Patricks Day. I wasn’t in the mood to go out so I hired a few movies and had watched a couple. Saturday night I actually didn’t go out and opted for a movie marathon, but only managed one and a half. Today, I’m two and a half movies in, about to watch the third and perhaps a fourth which I probably won’t manage.

I can’t remember if I mentioned it in another post but Sunday is the day to get a Domino’s for $5, nearing the $10 mark if you want a cheese stuffed crust (obviously I do), as the supermarkets are shut. Just an excuse to have pizza. It’s going to get to the point when I would’ve had pizza every Sunday for around 20 weeks in a row, and that might be one of my personal favourite achievements of my past 22 years. Today, I had one of the best pizzas I’ve ever had; not as good as the one I had when I accidentally booked a flight to Milan instead of Venice last year but definitely in the top ten.

Another Day, Another Field of Watermelons

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It’s supposed to be autumn here now – I’m not too sure how much I believe it as I was sat drafting out this post at 9.15pm, dripping with sweat.

Our week started off with a 32 degree-90% humidity day. To be honest I don’t know how I didn’t pass out on the watermelon field; it seemed as though whatever we drank sweated straight out, although at least we knew for sure that the alcohol from the weekend had left our systems by then. On the way to work we put the watermelon emoji sponge on the rear-view mirror which the farmer apparently wasn’t terribly amused by, but it is now hanging from my shelf in the room, much to the despair of my roommates.

Tuesday turned out to be the last day of planting watermelons… on this farm, anyway. One of the nearby farms had a thermometer that measured the temperature as 37 degrees, and I’m surprised that there was any sweat left in me after Monday. I was seriously struggling with it, and on other farms quite a few people passed out. Luckily, it was only a half day where we were supposed to be joining the farmers for a BBQ at the end of the day. As we finished so early, the farmer gave us some money to go out for dinner which was much appreciated, so I rather enjoyed a steak dinner.

Planted five weeks ago
Last weeks chilli picking efforts

We’ve got a pretty good analogy for planting: it’s like being on I’m a Celeb – only that we don’t have Ant and Dec to warn us that there may be something out to poison us whenever we stick our hands in the holes in the ground.

As the jobs on the watermelon field had ended, Wednesday and Thursday were days off. There is more or less nothing to do here – there’s a swimming pool, bowling alley and a cinema so Wednesday I was trying to kill the day. Thursday, we went down the pub and Friday I did a shift for just one hour, though it secured me work for Saturday too. Today has been another day off after a night out last night.

Planting Watermelons Like There’s No Tomorrow

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Work this week started off with chilli picking; the first job that I’ve had so far that isn’t on a watermelon field. It’s work that no one really wants to do as it pays $2.50 per kilo and most people pick 25-30kg which means that I’ll get paid around $100 for 16 hours work. I got paid a bit less than four and a half times this for the same amount of work in Melbourne.

Our first day on the farm, the farmer met us at a petrol station to take us to his farm and the next day we got pretty lost on the way there. It took 45 minutes, half hour on the phone to the farmer and two phonecalls to the hostel to get there, almost running over a dog in the process. One of the things that no one really warns you about for farm work is that there aren’t really any toilets on the farms – this time a year ago I was tasting port in Portugal, and at the start of the week I’m advising a friend on where the best place to pee on a field is. Still living the dream.

After two days of having my head in chilli plants and my hayfever going wild, I was so, so happy to be back planting watermelons. The happiness did not last long, though. As there have been a lot of people leaving over the past couple of weeks, a small group of us are working double as we are having to do our work, then helping the fifteen  or so new people. Thursday, I would say was either the joint worst or second worst shift of my life (going out on the piss three nights in a row and the fourth day was a menu change at work and I am never ever doing that again). It got to the point where I had been working for nine hours and had done so much work that I could have cried if I had to plant another watermelon for someone else. Luckily, someone else was on hand to help me help someone and to listen to me chat shit about watermelons. It turned out that I planted somewhere around 6km of watermelons all day Thursday. On Friday morning someone forgot to wear their shoes to work. When I had a day as shit as it was on Thursday, having something like that to laugh about was well needed.

During the week it was one of my roomates’ birthday so I cooked seven of us a lasagne, not going to lie it was pretty bloody good. It was also pancake day so three of us had pancakes for dinner – first course chorizo and cheese, followed by chocolate and salted caramel.

I found a mascot for our work van; an air freshener probably wouldn’t help whatsoever when you consider how bad we smell by 8am most days. In the supermarket, I saw a sponge in the shape of the watermelon emoji for $2 with a string around it. We’re going to hang it from the rear-view mirror in the car as though it is an air freshener and see if the farmers humour us.

Today I am definitely feeling as though I went out last night. As per usual, most people staying at this hostel went out and got absolutely twatted.

After almost three years, my tablet has finally broken. I decided to opt for a small laptop instead of a tablet as I find that it’s just easier to use a laptop. For a while I have wanted to change the layout of the blog to something a bit more professional looking which is pretty hard to do on a touchscreen, so over the next coming weeks I’ll be giving onewomanonebackpack a makeover.

Chinese New Year: Hong Kong

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The flight to Hong Kong was almost ten hours long from the Gold Coast. It wasn’t too interesting, though I spent the best part of half hour wandering where in Asia Equator is on the flight map, only to realise it is the Equator. Once the plane had landed and after grabbing my backpack I cashed some money and ended up having quite a good laugh at the cash machine – the reference on the receipt was ‘P00000.’

There’s a couple of reasons why I came here: firstly, I’ll be going on another big trip (yes, big trip #3) when I leave Australia which will be to Asia, and I also wanted to experience Chinese New Year. The parade in Hong Kong has been compared to the likes of the parades in Rio, but I really did not feel as though it was great – it seemed like a big advertisement for a few companies. The fireworks were pretty good though.

One of the things that is important for me when I go away is food, and if my third year in college had prepared me for anything, it is having a bloody good go at a Chinese buffet. This trip started and ended with visits to Michelin Star restaurants – Tim Ho Wan at the start and One Dim Sum at the end. The only experience I have with Michelin Star food is working and not eating; I’ve worked a four week placement at an incredibly famous three star restaurant in England and I worked at another restaurant that I’m pretty sure was trying for one.

Dining out was awkward at first as I had to share a table with three Chinese people who I didn’t know and had people shouting Chinese around/at/to me, but as the days progressed I realised that it is just the norm. At Tim Ho Wan I ate BBQ pork buns, beef balls with bean curd and vermicelli rolls stuffed with beef which was all amazing, and at One I ate fried dumplings, pork dim sum, steamed chicken and rice and mango custard filled rolls. After eating at One to say that I felt as though I was expecting at least twins would be an understatement. I had also tried chicken feet and whilst there were far, far too many bones, they were surprisingly alright.

On the first day I went to Tai-O, a small fishing village which was definitely worth a visit – the only day with a blue sky too. Later on in the week I visited the Big Buddha and walked up to the top of the Peak, both of which were incredibly foggy. I also visited some temples: Temple of a Thousand Buddhas, Fung Yin Seen Koon,  Wong Tai Sin and Chi Lin Nunnery. Chi Lin was the one I preferred as it was nice and quiet.

My fortune was read a couple of times at Wong Tai Sin – the first one w88as read by a lady who had a thick accent so it was hard to understand though she told me that instead of going home from work and going to bed, I need to go out instead. I found it quite amusing that I was pretty much told to go out on the piss, which is advice that I am definitely taking. The second one I was told that I have problems with my heart because of a mark on my hand – it’s actually ink from when I put a lid on a pen without looking nine years ago and got the pen stuck in my hand.

There’s also quite a few night markets: Temple Street and Ladies Markets were alright but just filled with shit that no one needs. I did manage to haggle $50 (£5/AU$8) off a scarf to replace the one that went MIA in Sydney, and I also saw a man with a stack of stainless steel bowls on his head, adding to the stack by using his feet to flip them up. The goldfish market I felt was incredibly cruel – fish were in bags that had less space than your average studio flat in London, and there were heaps of just-hatched turtles crammed into washing up bowls for sale, in the street. I’m not claiming to be a marine life activist just because I’ve snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef, but these animals should be out in the wild and worth more than just a price tag.

During the rest of the trip I saw the light show at Kowloon Harbour which wasn’t great and besides that, I didn’t do much else. I definitely spent a couple of days too many here, but with a lot of places shut it made up for it. It’s confirmed that I am comfortable by myself in an Asian city so I’m looking forward to planning next year’s trip: not going to go into too much detail, but I expect that I’ll be starting from Taipei or Seoul, into China and working my way down towards the south east.

I just went to duty free in the airport, was really, really looking forward to stocking up with whiskey again. It’s just over two litres of spirits that you can bring into Australia. With a huge bottle of Jameson, I walked towards the till and got stopped on my way there. Apparently, it’s illegal to bring alcohol into Australia from Hong Kong which in my opinion is bollocks. I’m just hoping that the three packs of Percy Pigs that I bought in M&s over here will be allowed.

This will probably be my last (interesting) post for a bit. After an eleven hour flight tonight I have a 24+ hour bus ride into Queensland, where I will be completing 88 days of work on a farm in order to obtain my second year visa in Australia. After that I will be going to Bali as I expect I’ll be needing a holiday, then moving back to Melbourne where at some point I’ll be squeezing a trip to Japan in.

Melbourne & The Australian Open

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The main reason I came back to Melbourne was the Australian Open – I’d booked tickets whilst in Sydney, and have since been looking forward to the Melbourne climate. What should’ve been a five or six hour travel day from Cairns turned out to be around the 13 hour mark, but bearing in mind that I have a 30+ hour travel day next week it’s not too bad.

Unfortunately, my first day was eventful: a change of plans on the tram into the city made me miss Bourke Street on the day a car got driven down there, had they not changed I would’ve been either down Bourke Street or very close. The first couple of days I spent in Fed Square watching the tennis on the big screen there, as well as a visit to Hosier Lane.

On Monday I went to see the games. My ticket covered four matches,  but after three my brains were pretty fried. I saw the mens doubles where Bryan/Bryan won; the only remaining Brit Johanna Konta beat the Russian Makarova and Brady from the US pay against Lucic-Baroni. I missed the last game, a mens singles, but enjoyed my day and caught the Nadal game back in the hostel.

For me, time spent in Melbourne isn’t complete without a trip to the pub so I made sure that happened. Last time I was in the city I wasn’t too fussed by it, but now I’ve been gone and the weather is heaps nicer, I realise that it is actually bloody good.

If all goes to plan between now and the end of the year, I should be able to take some time off work in Januay and I intend to re-visit the Australian Open. I hope to splash out a bit and see a few matches and maybe even a final.

East-Coast Australia: My Final Thoughts

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Today is my last day of travelling the East Coast. Whilst it has been nice not being employed, compared to Europe it has been underwhelming. Parts of it I really enjoyed (Great Barrier Reef, Magnetic Island, Noosa), parts were a bit meh (Sydney, Brisbane) and some bits went so badly that I have a good story to tell (Whitsundays aka the Alright Barrier Reef).

I think one of the parts that let me down were the hostels; in Europe there’s a lot more getting to know each other, whereas over here I feel that it’s a lot more getting to know people by competitively drinking something that vaguely resembles boxed wine, also known as goon – something that I do not do.

With all of that said, I can now plan for my travels in Australia during my second year accordingly. There will be three trips abroad this year, one of them being next week. I can have fun for the next couple of weeks, then I need to sort out my second year visa. This might include a 30+ hour travel day.

Overall, I am glad that I went with it and have completed this trip but I’m glad to be going back to Melbourne in the morning.

Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef

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There is not a lot to do in Cairns besides chilling out near the lagoon and finding places to eat sushi. I came here to see the Great Barrier Reef and have it live up to the name, as it was the Alright Barrier Reef  at the Whitsundays. I booked up a trip on the boat Silverswift and whilst expensive at AU $200+, it’s completely worth it.

As I’m not a decent swimmer, I did think about getting a see-through bottom (probably has a proper name)  boat tour as I’d be more comfortable, but like most other things within reason it’s more worthwhile to push the boat out and do the more daunting things.

With an early start, I made my way to the pier and caffeinated myself up on board. It took just over an hour and a half to reach the reef then once suited up, this time with a buoyancy jacket, we were let loose into the sea. I don’t have pictures, but what I saw was amazing; the fish were were so brightly coloured and was incredible to swim/float over the coral, watching the fish. One thing that I have to say is that if your internal sarcastic monologue, like mine, is hilarious, don’t laugh because it loosens the seal on the goggles. I also saw some fish that looked like someone I used to work with, as well as someone from school so I had to sort the goggles out a few times.

The second snorkel was the best; there were so many more fish and I was more trusting of the buoyancy vest. I saw a few fish that I recognised from Finding Nemo, though no clown fish, but a similar anemone fish which is close enough. I also saw a jellyfish and some patterned like a giraffe, there were also a lot more fish in the coral, but no turtles this time which I was eager to see.

There was a snorkel tour done by one of the guides on the third and final swim, and there were too many people. I opted to hang at the back then go my own way which paid off – there was a turtle that the group missed so I stayed to watch it for a few minutes, and went behind it as it swam up to get some air. I didn’t expect to get so close to the turtles because of the vest, so this was awesome. The fish were impressive during this snorkel, though not as much as the other two. One of the most noteable things I saw was a ray digging around in the sand.

Once the third swim had finished, we returned to Cairns. This was by far one of the best experiences I’ve had in the past year of travelling, the highlight being getting so close to the turtle. I’m going to have a Google of snorkel spots in Australia, get an attachment for my gopro and snorkel again during my second year in this country. I may not be the biggest fan of Australia, but this is one of the things that has made coming over here worth it.

Magnetic Island

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It was a bit of an ordeal to get out of Airlie Beach and I was glad to see the back of it; it’s a place to go to the Whitsundays so there is not a lot to do.

Magnetic Island is a few hours away on the bus to Townsville, then a 20 minute ferry to the island. On the day I arrived I tackled some of a bushwalk without changing from my flip flops which wasn’t ideal.

The first full day I chose to do the Forts walk, through an Australian World War II base, which was quite interesting to see. I have no idea how the Australians got everything up the hill as I was struggling with just a backpack. On the way up I saw a few koalas as well as where the soldiers were based during the war.

The next couple of days were more of the same: a lot of walking. The second day I did the longest trail on the island, part of it through a rainforest which was difficult in the humid conditions. Once I found where the end of the trail was, I made a plan to start there and walk to the hostel through three or four other trails for my last day. It was bloody difficult, around 14km on a hot, humid day taking a good four hours, though starting in the rainforest was the worst of it, and was pretty rewarding once I’d completed it and had a lay down after. I’m pretty sure I saw walked past a death adder judging by the tail, but I wasn’t exactly going to hang back and make sure when the name suggests that it, like half the wildlife in Australia, wants to kill me.

The Whitsundays

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Last week I went to Airlie Beach to do a tour of the Whitsundays. I try to watch my language writing on here, but there is no other way to describe it than a complete fuck up from start to finish.

To start with, I had a 14 or so hour bus ride from Hervey Bay, which broke down at 4/5am, and we had to wait a couple of hours for the bus behind us to come and pick us up. I did manage to watch Inception on the bus, which I’ve been meaning to do for a couple of years which I think was one of the highlights of the trip.

I had a day in Airlie Beach to waste, then the next day I had to check in at the Ozsail office to get information for the trip. I saw a couple of people there who were at Fraser Island so we spent the morning together.

The first day on the boat wasn’t too bad, it rained a bit but the crew and other people were a good crowd. The next day, however, I woke up to the boat being thrown around. I was going to get changed then get onto the deck, though it took me a couple of seconds to realise that I had to get onto the deck asap, otherwise I’d be redecorating the boat.

The sea was rough and it was absolutely pissing it down so I got soaked. I witnessed a member of staff fall over and nearly fall off the edge. We were going to go to Whitehaven Beach, but it was not really do-able due to the weather.

We decided that we were better off doing one night instead of two, so a couple of snorkel stops were scheduled. As I’m not a strong swimmer, I had been assured that there would be a floatation device so that I wouldn’t drown, which was engraved with “warning: this is a toy,” which, obviously was incredibly reassuring.

I saw some of the reef which was cool and a turtle, but it wasnt really a prime spot to see it, so after 20 minutes having my life depend on a child’s swimming pool toy, we got back onto the boat and went back to the land.

The next day, I checked out of my hostel then got a phonecall from the bus company telling me that all the buses were cancelled for the next couple of days as the roads were flooded. It wasn’t all bad; I went to a better hostel then ended up having a room trip to domino’s then we went on a night out. I have never been on a night out in flip flops, but this was a first.

I don’t think I need to summarise what I think from this part of the trip. Anyone who’s Facebook friends with me would have seen my Karl Pilkington – inspired “it’s not the great barrier reef, it’s the alright barrier reef” post, which more or less sums it up. I’m hoping to come back whilst there is better weather for a daytrip, rather than an overnight one and snorkel properly at some point between now and when I travel to Melbourne.

Fraser Island

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I have wifi again, although it isn’t great, so excuse the lack of pictures.

I chose to do a trip to Fraser Island over New Years, a UNESCO heritage site. We had a pep talk the night before where the tour company squeezed in the fact that we were in tents and had no showers, which was marvellous of them.

We had to leave the hostel on the first day at 6am, and headed off to the ferry port in the four wheel drive cars. Once on the island, we were soon fearing for our lives due to the off-road driving. First, we headed down to a rainforest with a fresh water river running through, where we also stopped for lunch. After, there was a bit more off – road driving until we got to Lake Wabbi – a bit of a walk from a beach through a forest,  then onto a sand dune, and finally into the lake. The lake contains fish that eat the dead skin off of your body.

After the walk back to the beach we drove to the camp where we cooked dinner, seperated into groups. Because of the fact that I’m a chef I opted to cook, not going to lie but I didn’t want someone to give me a rare or cooked to shit burger, and of course I had a backseat driver. All of the suggestions I responded that I’d just do it to their food and they could clean up the mess. It worked.

We had a few drinks, half the group were playing ring of fire. It’s a game where everyone has their own rules and everyone is convinced that their rules are right, kind of annoying so I sat out of it and chatted to some people. After a while we left the campsite where the night sky was the clearest I’ve ever seen it, and I doubt I will see anything like it until I see the Northern Lights someday. Of course, as we are in a country where half the wildlife wants to kill you, we had to take jagged plastic poles in case a dingo came after us.

The second day the weather wasn’t so great, I started off couting at least 50 mosquito bites. It was a lot of driving and the novelty of having your life flash before your eyes had worn off. The first stop was the Champagne Pools; a lot of people didn’t really partake just because it was a miserable day. On the way back, we stopped off at the famous shipwreck, then Eli Creek, which is a lazy river.

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The last day we went to Lake McKenzie, probably the highlight of the trip. The lake is clear, and the sand you can use as a body scrub as well as shampoo. We stayed there for a couple of hours and true to form, I got sunburnt. A couple of hours later,  we were waiting for the ferry.

Overall, the trip had its good and bad; I wish we were treated like people on holiday and not backpackers as it bought the Reading and Leeds Festival experience to what should have been a fantastic few days. I joke that I am a one man wolfpack like the guy in the Hangover films, but after the second night with 22 other people I needed some peace and quiet. I wouldn’t go again just because I’ve done it, but if I were to go again, I’d definitely pick a different company.