Raining

It's raining. The weather is surprisingly like California - not predictable at all. Seasons? Bah, why listen to seasons. Supposedly the weather here is known for constantly changing. No two days are the same practically. They do seem to have an affinity for bowling here, perhaps we'll bowl. A good indoor sport. Plus, something I can beat Kane at (thank you Holiday Bowl).

The first time we went to Holiday Bowl together (Kane and I), we bowled a few games. I beat him the first, then the second and then he said, "we're not leaving until I beat you". after the fourth of fifth game, he gave up and agreed I was better at bowling than he was. Which is funny because I'm not actually very good at all, I usually get around 110 or so. But Kane happens to be worse. I think it's the only thing that I'm better at than he is, so you don't have to feel sorry for him or anything.

Ok, we're going to mope around in the rain today. Sitting in our apartment watching Heroes Season 1 (excellent, by the way). Our laptops come Monday, so, should be able to steal some library internet next week and blog a little more. Until then, have a good weekend.

Comments on Australia

Well, so far I know I have commented mostly on all the crap we've been doing (or lack thereof). I haven't said much about our experience with the country itself, so here we go. Firstly, as I've mentioned before, it's a lot like America here. There are big buildings, the streets are relatively clean, there is graffiti on graffiti-prone surfaces, regular cars, busses, trams, people of all colors, and most stuff is overpriced. It feels very similar to home with a few quirks.

One of the things I like best about it here is they include tax with the price of things. AND the don't use pennies, which is excellent. If something costs $9.99, it's rounded to the closest 5 cents and that's what you pay. So, it would be $10 even in this case. If your sandwich costs $4.50, you pay $4.50. Tax included, no tipping, no pennies - it's great.

I can't seem to get used to the driving on the left side of the road thing. I hadn't realized how ingrained it is in me to expect traffic to be on the right. I approach an intersection and after a moment of arguing in my brain, I look to the left as though the cars would be coming on the right side of the road. Doh! I basically look both ways on every road and tram line always, never really knowing where the cars or trams are supposed to be going. I sat at a tram station on the right side of the road for about 10 minutes before I realized that the one I wanted was on the left side of the road because the trams travel on the left also. I'm surprised how difficult a time my brain is having. It would probably be different if we were driving, because then we'd have to figure it out. But just be-bopping around on the streets makes for slow learing.

I got a tuna sandwich the other day and the girl asked me if I wanted mar-jur-eene on my sandwich. What?, I said. She asked again - mar-jur-eene. I think I asked what one more time before I realized she was asking me if I wanted margerine on my tuna sandwich. No! In fact, get the margerine away from my sandwich! I think they use margerine like mayonaise on sandwiches - gross.

In the bathrooms, they use hand dryers rather than paper towels. In all bathrooms. There are no options for the paper towel, you must use the annoying hand dryer. It actually probably is better, as they don't have quite the abundance of trees that we have, so why waste a precious resource on hand drying. I'm getting used to it, I was just surprised by it.

I have a couple more bones to pick, mostly regarding Australian appliances and ridiculous Australian slang, but I will save that for another rant on another day. Oh and by the way, the conversion is about $1 Australian dollar is $.88 American cents or so, to give you a feel for prices. So, our $2200 AUD a month rent is about $1900 USD a month, still pretty steep!!

Sydney Opera House

Let's go back in time, shall we? We need to visit an important chapter in our Australia visit that I haven't had time to really discuss, but that needs to be told. Our first week in Australia, you might remember, we stayed in Sydney with our friends Kelvin and Yan-Shih. They were gracious hosts and we had a great time. The day before we headed down to Melbourne (Dec. 20) Kane, Yan-Shih and I took a trip to the Sydney Opera House.

This structure has awed me for many years. It is beautiful, creative, and interesting visually, architecturally, and structurally. It sits on the very tip of the city lands, reaching out into the harbor, surrounded by water on three sides. Approaching it looked just like the many pictures I have seen in the past: beautiful white sails projecting gracefully into the air, looming effortlessly over each other like a family gathered together near the bay. Once we got very close, I was striken by how dated the structure looked - it was finished in 1973. The tile work, woodwork on the interior and just the whole feel of the structure was very 1970's-ish, which was suprising. It is a very elegant place, well-kept and still very beautiful, but it does have a decidedly older feel, which I hadn't expected by the timeless exterior (at least from far away).

We took a tour of the place which claimed to be as exciting as the plays and shows that the Opera House holds, but wasn't. The tour was a typical boring tour with a guide that told you interesting factoids in an uninteresting manner. We walked around, children squirming, and sat in the different theater areas (there are 4 seperate theaters there). Some interesting facts (approximate "facts", as I remember them) were: the place took 16 years to build when it was supposed to take like 3 or something; the budget was supposed to be like $7 million, but ended up being over $100 million; the architect (Jorn Utzon) walked off the project before it was finished resulting in the interior spaces of the theaters not being built as he designed them. The architect has also never been to the completed opera house and has never returned to Australia at all since the falling out in 1966. His 90th birthday is this year and there are murmurs of trying to get old Jorn back in town to reunite with his masterpiece.

The only thing I was unhappy about was the cloudy day, which made for substandard pictures of the place. The exterior of the opera house is cloud-colored, so it sort of blended in with the sky - grrr! Anyway, I'm hoping we will return when some fortunate family member comes to visit and stops in Sydney. That day it will be sunny. Until then, my pics will have to do. I'll try to get some uploaded on Snapfish to share.

New Apartment

To summarize the last week: rented DVDs, keys to new apartment, too hot outside, public transport sucks, moving sucks with public transport, we have air conditioning now, new apartment is nice but has some quirks, still don't have internet or computers.

On Friday we got the keys to our new place. We brought the first load of our stuff over from our temp apartment when we came to meet the lady from the property management place, who is named Angela. We don't have a car, nor do we know anyone with a car, so we had to bring all our stuff over in backpacks on public transport. It doesn't sound that bad, but it ended up being a three-day marathon that exhausted us and convinced us that we need a car. So, Friday was the first load. Angela changed the time to meet from 1pm to 12pm at about 10:15am on Friday. We had to rush home, throw some crap in our bags, and get over there. It was proably in the 90's that day (temperature) as we toted our bags to the train station (15 min walk), took the train to the CBD (10 mins), walked about 4 blocks in the CBD from train to tram (15 mins), trammed to the Docklands (15 mins), and walked the last couple blocks to our place (5 mins). All in all, it took about an hour to get to our place that is probably about 10 miles away from where we started. We were rather hot and tired. We read the lease, signed, gave them all our money, and then sat in the aircon for a while.

The new place didn't have sheets for the beds and we didn't feel like trekking to Ikea that day to get them, so we decided to spend one last night at our temp place in St. Kilda. We emptied our packs and made the trip back to St. Kilda. The people who occupy our temp place were scheduled to come back Sunday, so we had to have the place clean and our stuff out by then. Also, we had to wash their sheets at a laundromat. So, Saturday we woke up early, packed our backpacks again, and made the trek to our new place. Fortunately, on the weekend the train runs a slightly different route that circumvented our need to walk a few blocks downtown, which was nice. It did increase the time to get to our place to about 1 hour 20 mins. We unpacked and headed to Ikea in about 100 degree heat by tram. $110 dollars later we had sheets and the basics to live at our place, which we had to carry back to our place (on the tram). At around 6pm we head back to St. Kilda to bake our generous house-loaners cookies, eat dinner, and pack one more load of stuff. We left to come back to the Docklands (new place) around 10 and got home around 11:30pm completely exhausted.

Sunday was a bit nicer though I didn't feel great the whole day, perhaps as a punishment from the day before. We made only one trip there and back to our old place to clean up, wash their sheets, watch a movie, and get the remainder of our crap. Did some bare-bones shopping on the way home and stayed home the rest of the night on Sunday to rest. Whew - we have a new place. We had 1/20th of the stuff that we normally have when we move, but we had 1/20th the carrying capacity, so it was still so much work. Renting a car would have cost around $80, maybe more, but would have alleviated the suffering. We opted for the cheapitude, as usual. Someday we'll grow up. Someday we'll also have jobs.

So, we're safely getting settled in our new home on the 14th floor of a large apartment building in the Docklands suburb of Melbourne. It's about a 10 minute walk from the west end of central Melbourne, and about a 1 minute walk to a tram that will take you into town in 2 minutes. We're paying $2173 (Australian) a month and they made us pay 3 months rent in advance since we don't have jobs. So, we have no rent payment until April. Our lease is until July. We do have a 2nd bedroom but it only has a single bed. But we also have a couch. So, the offer still stands for invitiations to friends and family - we'd be happy to have you. Book early as space is limited.

Email me if you would like our new address, our mobile phone numbers are in a post below, and our home phone is getting hooked up this week. We're almost normal people again. Just waiting for computers and internet.

Hottest New Year Ever

Happy New Year everyone, we beat you here, haha! Kane and I spent most of New Year's Eve day in our apartment trying to avoid the ridiculous heat. I think it was a record high for that day. It was about 107 in the day and our apartment wasn't much cooler. It's a dry heat (to answer your question dad) but it's still too hot to handle, even for me. Our apartment was an oven; the stagnant heat was choking. We watched movies, ate food, and tried to nap, sweating through everything. I know I hate to be cold, but being really hot is perhaps equally as awful. It seems the only way I can relieve either is to shower and that is only temporary relief.

Anyway, we stayed in until about 10:30pm when we ventured to the CBD to see the fireworks. The trains were all free which was nice, and the ride there wasn't even too packed. We had hoped that the heat would subside with the sun out of sight, but alas, no relief. It was easily over 90 up until we came home, maybe even up around 100. Not much of a breeze either. Enough complaining - the fireworks were nice and were different from the ones in the USA. At home, I recall a large fireworks display that is high in the air and everyone crowds around for miles to see. Here, they did probably half a dozen shows (or maybe more) all along the river, spaced maybe half mile apart each. Each show was smaller, closer to the ground, but anywhere you stood you could see shows all around you. The larger high rise buildings had fireworks on their roofs. It was quite a sight. I counted about 8 displays that could be seen from where we were standing. Also, personal fireworks are illegal and virtually do not exist in the hands of evil teen agers (or boys of all ages), so there were no unwelcome explosions on the street or near our house. Except for the ridiculous crowds, it was rather enjoyable. So, happy new year everyone, I hope you had a good time wherever you were.

On a less exciting note, I had an encounter with a bug last night that I found notable. We have been very fortunate so far, having seen so few bugs in this supposedly insect-ridden country. I think it's probably because we have been in the inner city most of the time. Our first night in Sydney at our friends' house a roach decided to make it up the drain pipe into the kitchen to announce his presence to me. I, of course, was the one who saw him and, after I freaked out, he was extinguished by a room mate. Last night after dinner we were sitting on the floor with our backs against the couch. I felt something on my shoulder and brushed at it. As I brushed I felt something. I looked back at the couch to see if it was a broken strand of couch dangling behind me, but there was nothing. In my constant paranoia, I stood up to relocate to the couch just in case there was a bug and I had knocked it to the floor near me. I laid on the couch with my back on a large pillow and immediately saw a giant beetle or roach-type bug beside my left arm. I freaked out, jumped up, and tried to release words that would signal Kane to get the bug. Eventually enough words came out in such a manner as to alert him to my anguish and he retrieved a jar and took the bug outside. I was not happy about it.

I don't know why I'm scared of big bugs, but I am. I guess most people are, but I certainly wish I could talk my brain into reason. It doesn't work; I am perpetually terrified and paranoid about the possible presence of an insect fumbling into my life, and more precisely, onto or near my person. I suppose I should view last night as a milestone - see, a bug actually touched me for a prolonged period of time and I'm fine! But I don't, I'm just more scared. On the brighter side, I doubt any large bugs can make it as far as the 14th floor, so, come Friday, perhaps we will hopefully be above this problem, literally.

House

Well, about 10 minutes after the last post, the guy from the apartment called me. We got the place! We negotiated a 6 month lease but have to pay a deposit and 2 months rent in advance, whew! So, we have to work on transferring money from our US accounts to our Aus bank accounts, which is a tedious task (take out the max amount from the ATM, deposit into bank, repeat each day as needed). We get to move in Friday the 4th, so I'll try to post pics as soon as possible after that (still may have to wait for our computers). And only 2 days overlap with our temporary house, can't get much better than that!

Anyway, this place is in a like 30 story apartment on the harbor. We're on the 14th floor in a 2 bedroom (small rooms) with one bathroom place with a car space in the lot downstairs, security entrance, etc. etc. And a dishwasher! The harbor area around it is a fancy promenade with restaurants and views of the harbor and yachts. It is really nice and only about a 30 second walk from the tram into town. I think it was a little pricey, as in they were asking too much for it, but we're just not going to worry about it. Yeay, we're good at the moving game!

Now to find a job...

Update

Yeah Dad, I think there is a button at the top of the page when you're on my blog that says "next blog" or something. Or if you go to blogger.com I think you can just go to a random blog page. I assume some people just "surf" other people's blogs. I suppose they need to get a life, but I also suppose there are worse things they could be doing. Anyway, I do not know good old Joshua, he probably won't return.

Rhonda - Kane has not bought a suit jacket. I don't know if he will, his upper body is a bit hard to fit into clothing, as you know. Finding shirts was quite an adventure. But he has 2 nice long sleeved collared shirts, dress pants, shoes, and two ties, so he should be good for at least meeting the people at an office. He may splurge for a jacket for an interview, we'll see.

We haven't heard back from the apartment that we looked at. The wife of the guy told us that he would probably call Saturday and he didn't. I am not sure if that is because he needs more time to check up on us or if he just went with someone else. We are assuming he went with someone else and are continuing the house hunt. That place was $500 (Australian Dollars) per week. They do rent weekly here, isn't that strange? And they don't write checks, they do all online bank transfers. Anyway, we're looking at other places in a similar price range because we want a nice place near the CBD here. Might as well live well while we're here, eh?

It was 102 degrees F Saturday, reasonable yesterday, but supposed to be 107 today. Yargh. Too hot for even me. I think I top out at about 90 or 95. We do need to make it downtown to go see some places today, as our temporary housing is running out. So, we have to brave the heat. Bring on the complaining.

Oh yeah, and for New Year's we're going to watch the fireworks that are over the river. They do a show at 9pm and one at midnight. I guess we'll watch both unless it's too hot or too crowded or something. We were going to do something actually fun, but we've been spending so much on clothes, etc., that we decided to take it easy on the wallets this year. Maybe next time. Happy New Year everyone, see you in 2008!

The Search

We've been here in Melbourne one week today. We have been staying at this nice place and feel relatively settled and comfortable here. We're getting the hang of things. The past few days have been nearly filled with shopping. There are all the after Christmas sales going on and we need "professional" clothes for our future jobs. It's like I grew up in the past 2 days - I'm an adult now. I have 3 suits (suits are not cheap, by the way, and I'm not happy about it), lots of collared shirts, sweaters, fancy pants, and I even found some nice shoes that fit my behemoth feet. The shoes are Aldo brand, and a size 10 actually fits, for those of you with equally large feet (no one).

I responded to ads for three sweet apartments in the CBD (central business district) area of town, and we visited one and filled out an application. I really hope we get this place, you will all be stoked to see it if we do. It's pretty nice. Small and expensive, but pretty dang nice. Keep your fingers crossed.

It was 33 degrees Celsius here yesterday (92 F), and I think it's even hotter today. Good old summertime. At least our apartment stays cool and all the buildings are air conditioned. We got library cards and are using our reserved internet time here to save some bucks at the internet cafe. Yeay tax dollars! Other than that, I don't think I have much to report from down under. We may try to rent a laptop while we wait for ours to arrive, since it will probably be 2-3 more weeks until we get them (sad face). Until then, no pics and scarce blogging - sorry. I'll be sure to send out a celebratory email when we return to normalcy with our own computers in hand.

In case I don't talk to you before, happy new year everyone! Stay safe and have fun. And someone invite my mom to do something, she's bored.

Merry Christmas

This is actually my first Christmas where I didn't wake up in my bed at my mom's house and have breakfast with my family. It's the first time I didn't see my extended family (mom's and dad's) and have dinner with them Christmas evening. It was interesting. We didn't do much today. Our friends walked around the deserted city while Kane and I scoured the internet for plush downtown housing. Kane and I went to the CBD (downtown) for a bit to see if anything was going on there, and it was basically a ghost town. Some shops were open (mainly Jewish or Israeli owned), but most were happily closed. So, we came back home to meet our friends and eventually went to the tourist beach area of town for dinner.

Dinner ended up being delicious, but started out crappy. As I have mentioned (complained) before, the restaurants here are really expensive. A normal cafe will cost about $20 a person as compared to $10 or $12 in the U.S. This keeps us frequenting crappier places that border on fast food or have only pre-made stock, which is unfortunate. We usually eat in. Tonight we went to a place for dinner where you order at the counter and they bring the food to your table. We browsed the menu for a few minutes then went up to order. As I ordered, the guy cut me off to tell me that they are only serving chicken and french fries (chips). No burgers, no salads, no nothing else on the menu. Awesome. Why didn't he tell us this as he stared at us while we were deciding from the menu? Jerk. I didn't really want french fries for my Christmas dinner (though I would have happily settled for a salad), so everyone else ate there and Kane and I went down to the Vegetarian Pizza place down the street. It was delicious, I was very happy. And the pizza man didn't even charge us full price for no apparent reason - score. So, Christmas was saved after all.

Christmas is big here, much like the United States. I hadn't realized that we had been missing the relentless and continual assault of holiday-itude while we were in Thailand, and I literally didn't miss it. They have the Christmas music in all stores here, decorations everywhere, children in little foam reindeer antlers, and even the Salvation Army donation collectors (although they didn't have the bell to ring...). It's relatively awful; I'm not a huge fan of the in-your-face mega-capitalist Christmas. I suppose it's nearly over now, so we can enjoy the sales and move on with our lives.

Tomorrow, the day after Christmas, is Boxing Day. This is celebrated throughout Commonwealth countries and has nothing to do with the sport of boxing. See Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxing_day. This isn't a holiday where people really do anything, but there are huge sales at all the stores, probably similar to the day after Thanksgiving. Kane and I need a bunch of clothes, so we're going to take a deep breath and release ourselves to be consumed by the masses tomorrow. It will probably be total madness; I'm a bit frightened. Kane and I both get pretty cranky pretty fast when we shop, so we'll see how we do.

This is also our last night with our visiting friends, which, among other things, means our last night of free internet. So, until our laptops get shipped over from SLO, we will be at the mercy of expensive internet cafes around town. We'll still be online frequently, but I probably won't blog with quite the fervor, so forgive me. Anyway, we both wish everyone a very Happy Christmas and hope everyone has a fun and safe holiday. Hugs all around!

Mobiles

Post from Kane:

Angie and I got cellular phones, our numbers are 04 3376 1254 (Kane) and 04 3376 1264 (Angie) to call from outside Australia just replace the leading 0 with 61 (for example 61 4 3376 1254), but be careful it might be REALLY expensive for you to call Australia cellular phones.

Our phones are also Skype phones so you can contact us for free using Skype to Skype, to do this just sign onto Skype and call our Skype accounts (kaneehrler for Kane or angie.sommer for Angie) this is free to make the call and to receive the call.

Good luck to anyone trying to get in touch with us! Email if you need any help using Skype.

Getting it Together

Ok, it finally stopped raining in Melbourne. We arrived Friday (as previously noted) and it rained all night. We were soaked multiple times having to walk to our motel, to the flat (apartment) we're staying at, and to dinner. Saturday it rained off and on all day, and we only braved the weather to walk to the store twice - about a 15 minute walk each way. We woke up this morning - in our extremely comfortable bed - to sunshine. It's brisk and a bit windy, but no rain.

We're planning on heading downtown (into the CBD) today to do some shopping for work clothes, cell phones, and possible rentable laptops. Kelvin and Yan Shih (the people we stayed with in Sydney) are coming down today to visit Melbourne. We get to host them at our place, which is kind of funny. Anyway, they'll be down tonight and then I'll have a laptop again, thank god. Internet costs $4-$5 an hour at internet cafes here, so we're not frequent visitors.

Melbourne seems nice so far, just another big city. We're hoping to get a taste of downtown today to get a feel for the city. Hopefully we can get the laptop on the internet at our place tonight and I can blog up a storm for Christmas. Hope everyone is having a good weekend!

Rain in Melbourne

We arrived in Melbourne today by plane. It's raining like the dickens, which wasn't nice for our half mile or so walk from the train station to our stupid motel. We met the people whose house we're renting for the next 2 weeks - they're nice and so is their place. We move in tomorrow.

Internet is expensive here, so won't be on quite as much. Laptops are in the works, so hopefully we'll be happily settled with a laptop each in a few weeks (ahem, Thom). Just wanted to check in and let everyone know our progress.

Pics to come of the Sydney opera house, it was pretty cool.

Mooching

So, we've been mooching off of Kane's friends for the past 4 days now. We're staying at their house (in their room, no less), eating their food, and pretty much bothering them all their waking hours (at least when they're home). They are extremely gracious to have us here, and it's been really great. Fortunately for them, there is a light at the end of the tunnel as we have booked our next move.

Kane and I are both eager to get jobs and a place to live; vagrancy hasn't been as welcome in our lives as we might have imagined. We both seem to long for something to work for, which would in fact be just that - work. So, we're moseying on down to Melbourne where we anticipate that we will settle. We have booked a temporary apartment for the next two weeks, which we hope to use as a home base to find permanent housing and jobs. People are going on "holiday" for the holidays and are renting their places out to travelers like us. We were really lucky to find the place we did at the time we did and I hope it all works out ok. We fly down on Friday and move in Saturday.

We explored Sydney downtown a bit yesterday, it rained today. We went to Darling Harbor and walked around. It's relatively comparable to Pier 39 in San Francisco except less tacky, and I would actually readily compare Sydney in general to San Francisco. Except there are not the hordes of homeless people waiting to accost you. Plus, I don't know if they have the crappy areas that SF does; we were more in the area like the financial district - downtown Market Street. It was fun. The weather is supposed to be nice tomorrow and we plan to hit up the other half of downtown with the opera house, etc.

One comment that Kane would like me to mention is the lunch we had while we were downtown, specifically, the lunch he had. We were wary of having lunch downtown; all restaurants appear to be very expensive here. So, it would be fitting that the tourist area on the harbor would be the most expensive. There were a plethora of nice restaurants, packed with savvy white collar folks who work downtown. Typical lunches were over $20 a person. We weren't into that, so we went a block away from the harbor are and found a nice cafe with cheaper sandwiches. I got a veggie burger and Kane got a chicken sandwich costing $9.50 combined. My veggie burger was very mediocre, but Kane's chicken sandwich was quite interesting. To his surprise, in addition to chicken, tomato, and lettuce, this sandwich also included beets, a fried egg, ham, and a slice of pineapple. It looked nasty to me but he seemed to like it, even commenting how he could go for another one today. Weird Australians...

Welcome to Sydney

It is our second day in Sydney, Australia and today we are far more conscious and far less zombie-like. Getting here wasn't really so bad, but we were awake for quite a while. We awoke at 8am on Friday morning to catch our 11:40am flight to Bangkok. Then we had to sit around the airport and consume overpriced things until our flight to Sydney at 5pm, which was delayed 1 hour till 6. The flight was only 8.5 hours which was not too bad but neither of us could sleep. The time difference added 4 hours, so we arrived at 7am. We're staying with Kane's friends (god bless them) and we went around with them yesterday to the mall, grocery store, and hung out around the house. We took a 2 hour nap at 2pm because we couldn't stay awake any longer. The nap was surprisingly helpful and we were able to stay up till midnight.

Today we feel refreshed, though the rain spoiled our plans to go to the beach and downtown Sydney. They don't call downtown "downtown" though, they call it the CBD, I think, for Central Business District or something. Apparently if you call it "downtown" they will laugh at you. Noted. So we went around the mall, which is surprisingly similar to an American mall near Christmas time (extremely crowded, Christmas music playing, Santa in the center of the mall, etc.) except that it has grocery stores in it, which is actually rather nice since we are staying right across the street.

This is a far more ethnically diverse city than I had thought it would be - it is almost exactly like the bay area. It basically feels like home here except for our notable lack of an actual home. Everyone speaks English (sort of), we can read the signs, traffic follows rules (although they drive on the wrong side), nice restaurants and McDonalds' abound, the works. We have noted that: 1. Restaurants are far more expensive - a typical Applebees style dinner for two would probably run you at least $30 or $40 here rather than the $20 in the US; 2) Selected items are ridiculously expensive - groceries are normal while clothing, some electronics, and books are outrageous; and 3) Cell phones don't have the regular monthly plans that provide a certain number of minutes for a certain price. Rather, you buy a cell phone and a sim card and charge up your card with money at the drug store. It's strange, but it may actually end up being cheaper, we'll see. Gotta get a cell phone first, and they are expensive. Also, one American dollar is worth only slightly more than an Australian dollar ($1 US = $1.16 AUS), so they are almost even - boo. This will be good for us when we start working though.

It's nice here (summertime, whoo-hoo!) and we're looking forward to exploring the city more and getting some pics.

Out With A Bangkok

We're officially out of Thailand and in Australia. It's hot and we're tired. I will be back later to comment further.

Hanging Out

We've just been hanging around in Chiang Mai for the past few days, our flight to Sydney is on Friday out of Bangkok. I feel fine, didn't take long to recover. We have been sleeping a lot though, and haven't been doing much around town. I think this is partially because I've been wanting to take it easy, and partially because we sort of felt like we already explored this city in the past 2 weeks. Not that we've seen everything - certainly not - but we're just maybe a bit burnt on wandering the same grounds a million times over, you know?

Anyway, we're excited to get down to Australia. We met an Aussie guy yesterday who said that Sydney is good for four things: cappuccino, caesar salads, a famous bridge, and no right turns. I'm excited about two of those at least, mostly the salad. My mouth waters for a good caesar salad...mmmm. He told us about a tour where you climb up the suspension cables of the bridge and we pretended to be interested. I like bridges, but prefer to stay on the ground. Sean, you can do the damn bridge climb when you come visit.

So, we fly out Friday Chiang Mai to Bangkok at 11am (arrive 12pm) then Bangkok to Sydney at 5pm, arriving at 6am Saturday morning. Kane's friend Kelvin will pick us up from the airport, bless his soul, and has offered his apartment for us to stay for a couple nights. I'll miss how cheap Thailand is, but I think Australia will feel much more like home to us.

Hospital in Thailand

I find it prudent to warn everyone that you are now in too deep to turn back. We're having a really awesome trip, but I keep having these nights that require gruesome descriptions to fully capture the mood, and you're required to come along with me. So, I'll try to tone it down on this one to a reasonable volume, but you're just going to have to clench your teeth and come to a hospital in Thailand with me.

It's Thursday night and we grab some dinner. My stomach isn't feeling too hot, but it rarely is nowadays, so I basically ignore it as usual. Let's just say the river doesn't flow to the ocean, ok?

Anyway, we have some broccoli and brown rice for dinner, to help the flow, but I need to hurry back to the hotel because I need to go potty. I go, but I still don't feel well. Soon after I throw up my nice dinner. Damn. Then this continues. I don't want to get too graphic, but let's just say that the toilet can only be used by one end of my body at once, so I need to employ the little plastic baggies for a while. I can't stop throwing up. There's nothing more in there, but I can't stop. By this time, Kane is concerned and is trying to get me to drink water and take some Immodium. He is aware that this can make a person very dehydrated and is worried. I can't drink. I can't stand. I lay in the shower shivering and dry heaving. Blood is present in both the substances exiting my body.

Kane calls his friend Sean who is local and asks him to come pick us up to take us to the hospital. Not that we couldn't have found a hospital, but it was really nice to have someone guide us to the closest and best one, which was really close to our hotel - thank you Sean! We get to the hospital and Kane carries me in. They do the I.V. thing to give me some fluids. Ask some questions, poke some places, put me in a plush room for the night. The nurse gives me 4 huge syringes of stuff through my I.V., anti-nausea stuff, antibiotics, etc., etc. I feel better already but still not normal. Through the night people come in and make me eat pills and take my blood pressure; Kane sleeps on a couch in the room. And by "sleep" I mean sits there mildly unconscious until I make the slightest movement or someone enters the room at which point he's sitting up and awaiting instruction. He's like a soldier, it's amazing. Anyway, they assess it as a case of food poisoning, though I have no idea what I ate. The doctor said it could be from something as old as 3 days ago, and with my digestive system, I thought maybe even more than that. So, really no idea, just know that my body was not happy.

Couldn't eat or drink all night, but they gave me the go ahead in the morning to drink water. Throughout the night I had to potty a few times, but no more throwing up. I didn't realize it because I felt ok laying down, but standing was a bit too much. On the way back from the bathroom at 3am, I passed out just before I made it to the bed. Kane caught me and pushed me on the bed. I then awoke and proceeded to scold him for not getting my I.V. stand over to the other side of the bed quickly enough. I'm so sweet when I'm semi-conscious.

I hung out at the hospital all day Friday; we missed our flight to Koh Samui. Oh well. I was going to stay another night, but when we found out that the cafeteria had closed I said let's get the hell out of here. We paid our bill (to be taken up with insurance later) and took a tuk-tuk home at about 9pm. It was $540 for the night and 5 more days of meds. And I came out better than when I went in - I suppose that's really all that I ask for from a hospital in Thailand.

Pai and the Road Back

Well, I'm a bit behind for reasons that will be revealed in the next post, so I'll start from where I left off in Pai. Pai is a nice town. Small, quaint, buried in a small valley amongst forested mountains in the very north west of Thailand. And it's full of tourists (and by tourists, I mean dirty hippies), which means countless guest houses, restaurants, internet cafes, and other amenities desirable to us transients. There are about 4 main blocks forming a square at the center of town that comprise the main area of town with aforementioned food vendors, etc. It reminds me of Berkeley actually (the hippies help). I'm glad we went, though I wish we'd spent a bit longer there, as we weren't able to really do much (not that we do much anyway...).

We rented scooters (110 cc Honda Click - booya!) and scooted around town and around the countryside. After realizing that I'm a bit of a spaz on the scooter, I acted like a good girlfriend and let Kane tote me around on the back of his scooter - he's far more confident of a scooter rider. I even got pretty good at taking pictures from the back of the scooter, we'll see how those turned out. Anyway, a nice 2 nights and we're on our way back.

I had been dreading the return trip, which you are probably aware of if you read my post describing the drive up. There were 2 other girls on the bus on the way back who had puked the whole way up, so at least we were all in this together. This time, there were a few factors that I think contributed to a significantly more pleasant drive on the way back: 1) The nice Aussie girl gave Kane and I some Dramamine before we left. Never again will I be without this drug - quite a godsend; 2) We were prepared for what was in store and tried to eat and drink accordingly. We at a light breakfast and some ginger tea before we left to calm the stomach. I hate ginger tea, by the way, and hope I never have to drink it again. It's making me nauseous just to think about it; 3) The minibus this time was significantly older and crappier. This made it impossible to drive up the rather steep hills as the first guy did. This driver drove mercifully normally and Kane and I (along with the rest of the riders) managed to have an almost pleasant trip back.

So, now we're up to Thursday night when we arrived back in Chiang Mai, all food in it's proper place (namely still in my stomach, rather than in the supply of baggies that we brought). Then, for other reasons, those little baggies decided to become very useful.

The Long and Winding Road...

...to Pai. We made the trip to Pai today via minibus with 10 other people. It was a truly epic journey. We fought off countless foes, weaved through mountain and jungle, and escaped deftly from the reaches of evil. Though our bodies were broken, our spirits were not and we prevailed against the journey's numerous and extensive challenges.

Warning: the following story is graphic in nature. Please be advised and only read on if you are prepared to handle the grossness. I am not holding anything back - and that is not a pun.

Ok, the real story. Our tour book warned us of a "windy" road, as in very curvy, not like has lots of wind. And it was right! We drove for about a half hour on straight, regular roads out of Chiang Mai and then began our ascent up this monster mountain that was paved with the most gnarly curved road I have ever been on. Fortunately, our driver has driven this road before, and was extremely practiced - nay an expert - on driving as fast and jerky as possible. This is a 5 speed manual transmission Toyota minivan and he worked it to it's limit driving it like a race car. I start to get carsick just after 11am. We had left at 9:45, so I had been doing well, but we were still not even halfway there. Just before I was going to ask the driver to pull over, we stopped for a break at a rest stop. We rested for about 20 minutes, but I knew I was in trouble. Kane was feeling badly too, but he was doing better that I was - though he sympathizes since he is typically very prone to motion sickness as well.

So we get back in the car and keep going at lightening speeds around countless miles of curved road. The people behind me are actually reading books. It is unfathomable to me how anyone cannot get sick on this road in these conditions, much less read a book. So unfair. Probably 10 minutes later I decide that I need to pull over. What I didn't know (and I wish they had told me), is the procedure for throwing up on the bus. We don't stop. I assume that's because if we did, we would have been an hour or more late to our destination because one other lady and I were not doing well. There are little plastic bags for you to throw up in, similar to the ones on an airplane. I did not know of these little bags and one was only handed to me after I had thrown up in my own two hands - the only container I had available at the time. Kane opens the window and I toss the contents out, spilling a drop on my jeans and a few onto the inside of the door. Yeah, souvenirs. I hang my dripping hands out of the window until we actually do pull over (the driver asked "do you still want to pull over?", I wanted to hit him) at which point I rinse my hands with water. Water does not get barf off your hands, just to let you know. It gets the three dimensional chunks off when your rub your hands together, but there is still a nice film of sick on you and it smells like hell. I told you I was going to be graphic, it makes me feel better about it. And you know, I figure, how often do you barf on yourself in your lifetime, right? Probably once, maybe twice if you're lucky? I see it as having a once in a lifetime experience.

So, we continue on, and I am really hoping that I haven't offended anyone too badly with the display and the smell, etc. I can't decide what's better: to lie back with my eyes closed or try futilely to watch the road ahead from the 2nd row of seats. I try both, neither works. Kane is watching the road intently from the front row, unable to take his eyes off the road lest he get sick. I proceed to throw up 3 more times into little plastic bags, which Kane took from me each time and held onto until his hands cramped and we arrived in Pai. At least the bags held. I can remember one of the times I'm dry heaving into a plastic bag (I'm actually laughing as I write this because it's so ridiculous) as we are passing a big rig on the wrong side of the road around a 180 degree turn at like 35 miles an hour. It was like a goddamn roller coaster. I don't think I've ever felt so motion sick in my life.

Which got me thinking of all the times I've been motion sick. There have been countless mild carsick rides where my stomach hurts and it takes a half hour to shake off. I have yacked up Ramen noodles on Old Priest Grade going up to my Grandpa's cabin. I had to sit with my head down on a table for hours on a fishing boat with Yolanda. Then there's the fair rides: the teacups, the ferris wheel on crack that goes horizontally, and the spaceship. The spaceship is one that is especially close to my heart - this is the ride that places like Great America and Six Flags have too much dignity to offer; you will only find it at the county fair. It's a circular metal saucer that has walls bowed out on the inside that you lean against while the thing spins like a washing machine. The centripetal force squishes you to the exterior of the spaceship to the point where you can't even raise an arm or leg. Fun but requires some serious recovery time. Anyway, those were some of my millions of thoughts during this endeavor.

What actually bothers me most about being carsick is not the sickness itself, which in my case, can't really be avoided. It's not being able to barf on your own terms. When you're sick, you want to take care of it with as much dignity and as little mess as possible. I want to pull over, take some time, get some air, wash our my mouth, then continue on. I was quickly re-prioritizing after I realized that this was not going to happen, like you do when there's an emergency. First you're concerned about normal things like how you don't want to get messy and how you should conceal yourself from others to save them and your own dignity. By the end I was considering wiping my mouth and hands on my sweatshirt and I could basically not care less about the poor guy next to me as I heaved my final round in plain sight. I'm really looking forward to the return trip on Thursday...

We arrive in Pai at 1pm and sit for about a half an hour trying to gather ourselves. I dump the bags of barf in the bathroom and wash my hands with soap - thank god. Kane is shaking and I am exhausted. Welcome to Pai, it better be a goddamn paradise.

Mom

I think this may have gotten lost in translation. Welcome to Thailand. This pair is stationed at the front of a little prayerhouse in this hilltop wat that we visited. A very beautiful and sacred place. Good place for Mom.