Things I miss about Canada

After a while of travelling in Australia and seeing/hearing the difference between the Canadian and Australian every day life I have gathered a few things that I truly miss about Canada.

#1 - Looking left

At the beginning of my travels I spent the first few days standing on the edge of sidewalks with my head on a swivel making sure I wasn't going to get hit by a car when I attempted to cross the road. For those of you who don't know, Aussies drive on the "wrong" side of the road. I'm beginning to adopt their ways so when I have to cross the street there is always a mini battle going on in my head. It starts with me looking right (which is the direction you are supposed to look). I then begin to cross the road because I feel like I've done the right thing, but then something happens in my mind and I am forced to look left because I subconsciously think that I am going to get steamrolled by a monster truck. This causes a chain reaction of me thinking that I'm right, then I'm wrong, then I'm right again which in turn makes me look like a fool as I turn my head from side to side while crossing the street.

#2 - Ketchup

They call it tomato sauce and you have to pay extra for it 80% of the time. 'Nuff said.

#3 - Taking the bus and still having enough money left over for lunch

I made the mistake the other day to take the bus to the shopping center so I could kill some time before I could check into my next hostel. What I didn't realize was that it would literally cost me my lunch. If you search around it's pretty easy to find a place that has $10 lunches which is pretty cheap for Australia. Like everything else here something that you think should be cheap (like a bag of chips) is crazy expensive. To take the bus to the mall (which was a 10 minute ride) it cost me $5.60 just to go one way. It has been a long time since I had to pay for a bus because of the bus passes I used to get from school so this experience was quite awful for me. I refused to pay the $5.60 back so I walked the 45 minutes instead in the blazing heat.

#4 - Swimming in the ocean

I know that the ocean back home is just at the temperature where you can hop in and hop out with only a slight chance of hypothermia. In Australia the majority of places with water are "no swim zones" because of all the deadly things that live in the water. There are sharks (of course) but those aren't very bothersome. The worst are the jellyfish. There are so many types of jellyfish that can kill you and the worst part is that they don't even try! They're just floatin around in their little jelly way and then WHOOPS touched something! and BAM you're dead. There's also some jellyfish that are the size of your thumbnail and transparent so you don't even know what's going on but when they sting you it feels like you're going to die for 3 days but then you eventually recover. That one isn't as bad. Oh, and you can't forget about the crocodiles...they just eat people sometimes.

#5 - The love of my life

#6 - Drawers

I've been living out of a backpack and it's impossible to not make a mess! I tried so hard but it doesn't matter because no matter how organized you try to be everything will eventually explode when you have to dig out that one specific top you need to wear because everything else smells.

#7 - Football

I have watched 10 minutes of one football game since I've been over here and for any of you who are in the same football pool as me you can see that I am seriously struggling because of that.

#8 - Friends that make fools of themselves with me (sorry guys)

 

#9 - McChicken burgers

They're just not the same. It's more like a giant chicken mcnugget on a bun here. Nuggets are good, but not on a burger. Clearly the McChickens are having identity issues here in Australia.

#10 - Eh?

There are many different ways to use the word eh but sometimes this simple word confuses Australians and they think you're asking them a question when really you're just pointing something out and seeing if they agree because you're a polite Canadian.



Just to be clear, Australia is great and maybe later I'll write a post that gloats about all of the amazing things that are here, but for now you Canadians get to read what I'm missing and you get to enjoy. So go for that polar bear swim and think to yourself "man, good thing I'm not gonna die from an invisible jellyfish".

Cruising through Canberra and Traumatizing Train Rides

The capital of Australia is a great place for a day visit in my mind. We were there for 2 days. It has some nice touristy sites and the parliament buildings. It started off well with Mark and I finding out that our hostel room was empty so we had it all to ourselves! Naturally we both opened our bags and let everything avalanche out of our stuffed packs onto the floor, home sweet home. We arrived fairly late at night and just had enough time to watch a movie before passing out for a well-deserved slumber.

Morning came around and it was time to get up and start exploring the wondrous town of Canberra. We took a little walk to head out to the Botanical Gardens which turned out to be quite a ways but we’re used to walking a lot so it was actually quite pleasant. The gardens were nice but unfortunately we had just missed the flowers that bloomed in the winter and were a bit too early to see the flowers that bloomed in the summer. Great timing eh? We walked around the gardens for an hour and then decided to head back. I (being the smart one…) decided to take a more direct route back to the hostel instead of the winding road by the lake. So off we went in a direction that was straightish and started heading back to the hostel. About 45 minutes through the walk back I decided to check the map because it seemed like we had been walking for a long time and didn’t recognize anything. Of course we were going somewhere, but that somewhere was nowhere near our hostel! About half way through while trying to avoid a construction site we somehow turned slightly left, kept walking, and walked about 3km past our hostel. It ended up taking us twice the amount of time to get back as it did to get there. I take full credit for us getting lost that time.



After we recovered from the disastrous adventure we built up the courage to go check out the parliament buildings which turned out to be a bit more “epic” (as mark would put it) than I anticipated. Essentially it’s in the middle of a giant ring road and built into the ground like a hobbit hole. I liked that you could walk on top of the building and stand on top of parliament. There were other cool things but I have to admit that I didn’t pay enough attention to anything else to comment on it. However, one thing I did see from the top of the parliament building was the war memorial that lines up perfectly with the new and old parliament buildings. It’s just one giant line! Anyways…that was my excitement about the whole ordeal. Life got better when dinner time came around and I got to eat a giant burger. It was amazing. What’s weird here though is that ketchup here isn’t normal. People don’t eat it with fries and you always have to ask for it and sometimes pay for it. They call it tomato sauce and it tastes different than at home.

 

n our last day in Canberra there was a massive wind storm! They seem to follow us wherever we go. We stayed inside most of the morning while Mark attempted to watch the last episode of Breaking Bad until he got frustrated enough to leave it be so we could go see the War Memorial. There is a massive walk up the memorial that has statues alongside the road remembering certain battles fought through the ages. The actual memorial building was a lot bigger than anticipated. The inside was a huge museum that showed many war heroes and told their stories. We had an early night that day because we had to wake up early for our ridiculously long travel day that started at 5:30am.


As a pre-warning, the next portion of this blog may be a little depressing for those who actually care about my sanity. I’m willing to share this with everyone because I feel like when most people write about their trips they tell everyone how amazing everything is in hopes to make them jealous and then leave out all the awful horrific encounters. I say that’s selfish so I’m going to at least try to entertain people with my misfortunes so here it is…

Our first long journey started on October 2^nd at 5:30am and ended at 3:30pm on October 3^rd. Granted, some of the time was layover time in Sydney, but that part wasn’t the issue. Problems began to occur at around 4:30pm when we boarded our 14 hour train to Brisbane. We found our seats and began to get settled in when we heard some overly obnoxious man come stumbling down the pathway and plump his drunk ass into the seat right next to ours. Immediately we both knew it was going to be a bit of a painful train ride. It was fine for the first hour or so because he wasn’t bothering us directly so we put on a movie in hopes that he would realize we were not in the mood to socialize. This was actually the biggest mistake we made. The flashing of the movie must have attracted his attention because within 5 minutes of turning the movie on he had his full attention on the computer screen trying to turn it so he could watch. He continuously tried to make “jokes” and tell us about his farm. It came to a point where we had to stop the movie and just listen to his rambling because he wouldn’t stop and we couldn’t hear the movie. He spent about 30 minutes repeating the same things about his farm and how his dogs are great and if you’re not good enough to work there you’re on the next bus ride into town. He then attempted to hire Mark and me to work on his farm which we politely declined but he took as a “we’ll think about it” answer so he continued to talk again telling us about his dogs and if they don’t like you then you’ll be back on the first bus into town. Am I repeating myself? Oh well…Thankfully we started to bore him with our sarcastic answers so he moved on to talk to the girl sitting behind him. We were so thankful that we could go back to watching our movie but that wasn’t the end of him…

We had time to finish our movie which was a magnificent break from the crazy on the train. The endless annoyance started again when it was time to attempt to sleep. It takes a while to get comfy because you’re sitting in a chair and it’s not the easiest thing to fall asleep just sitting there. What makes it even harder is when the drunk guy beside you gives you his best rendition of Roxanne while chugging down a mini bottle of red wine. That was at about 1am. Thankfully he was removed from our cart shortly after and put into another one. We later found out that not only was he drunk, but also high from shooting up in the bathroom! You really meet some great people on the trains here.

 You’re probably thinking now “oh good, he’s gone, now Jane can sleep”…WRONG! How dare you assume the rest of the train ride would be just peachy from that point on, oh no…After the drunk/high obnoxious guy left the cart someone obviously had to step in and keep everyone awake. For the remainder of the train ride someone (we’re not sure if it was a man or a women) was dying in the back of the cart. Ok, they weren’t actually dying, but it sure as hell sounded like it! You know when you have a bad chest cold and you cough and there’s that awful phlegmy wet cough you get? Now imagine that, mix in some gurgling and gasps of air that sounds like someone’s choking on their own tongue while puking up the 5 star train meal they just ate. That was the majestic sounds of the rest of the train ride that occurred about every 10 minutes or so until we finally arrived in Brisbane.

Only a 3 hour layover then 3 hours on the train to get to…HERVEY BAY

Mulling through Melbourne

It was just a short bus ride from Phillip Island to Melbourne full of scenic views that looked like the hills from the opening scene of the Sound of Music. Mark disagrees with this statement but we seem to have many different opinions when it comes to what things look like. From the bus station we walked 20 minutes to get to hotel discovery more commonly known as “the party hostel”. This place was recommended to us by a German we met in Sydney who told us that it was one of the best hostels he had ever stayed at because of the party atmosphere. We weren’t really sure what to expect but quickly figured out why he loved this place so much. When you check in you get an itinerary that lays out all of the activities that go on that week. Luckily the first night we arrived there was a FREE wine & cheese party followed by the game minute to win it. For those of you who know me you know that I love wine and I really love cheese, but most of all I love to compete and that night I got a taste of all three! It all started around 8:30pm. Mark and I walked down to the bar with some Canadians we met, grabbed an empty wine glass and took a seat. Within 1 minute a very energetic girl came around with a bottle of wine and topped everyone up which was just the start of endless rounds of red and white wine top ups.

 The wine and cheese lasted for about 30 minutes so we had a little while to wait before the minute to win it game started. I was determined to participate and thankfully the other Canadians we met (Will and Danielle) were as well! Essentially it was an epic competition of making fools of ourselves round after round by building card houses, trying to blow cups over with balloons, passing a balloon from person to person using your knees, and ending with the most dominating rounds of flip cup I’ve ever played! To put it lightly, the Canadians dominated that night and were rewarded with a $50 bar tab. That night couldn’t have gone any better!

 

The next day we woke up to go exploring but clearly didn’t research Melbourne enough and ended up wondering around for the majority of the day. We did however get to see the AFL parade that went through the main streets. They had all the players in the back of little car/truck things (that by the way are everywhere and are the ugliest cars in the world) and marching bands, mascots, and a huge line of bagpipers.

 

After the parade we went to a film museum to explore around there for a couple of hours then headed back to the hostel to find Will and Danielle so we could go to the Eureka Skydeck. The Skydeck is the tallest building in Melbourne and you can see the entire city and beyond from up there. They have little screens on the floor that tell you interesting facts about buildings and events that had happened there and an area where you could walk outside and feel like you’re being blown away by the high winds which was actually quite refreshing. The Friday was a pretty low and slow day because we were saving our energy for the next day when the AFL final was on.

 

 

The AFL final was on Sept 28^th and it was played between Fremantle Dockers and the Hawthorn Hawks. As I stated before I was cheering for Fremantle because I had met someone from Perth and Mark was cheering for Hawthorn for no real reason. The morning of the match we walked around trying to find a pub that we could eat and drink at with no luck. As expected people had lined up and gotten to the pubs hours before the game started so there was no chance of us getting a seat inside anywhere. We decided to go to Federation Square where the game was being played on a big screen outside. We found our seats and got ready to watch the game and I must say, I’ve heard about how they play this game and that it’s pretty rough but I never expected to see what I did…For those of you who don’t know what Aussie Rules football is it’s essentially a mix between rugby, football, soccer and basketball. The players jump, dive, leap, sprint, kick, throw, pull, punch, strangle and of course face gouge! There seem to be no rules to this game other than kick the ball between the posts and get some points before you’re pummeled into the ground. If I were to describe what I saw on that giant screen I would say that it looked like 30 men running around trying to hold onto a tiny rugby ball that is covered in Vaseline while sprinting around the field kicking and punching the ball to their team mates who can barely catch the ball because of the 10 other men scratching, pulling and kicking them ensuring that they don’t catch the ball.  Unfortunately Fremantle lost in this savage sporting event, but I was alright with it after Mark finished gloating.

That night I had my first taste of what Australians call “goon” which is a big ol’ bag of wine. There is a goon bag challenge where you drink an entire bag and then blow up the bag once you’re done and use it as a pillow to sleep on. I didn’t try that because it’s 4L of wine and I would probably die, but people have attempted and completed this challenge and I am very impressed by those people. We hung out with our Canadian friends for the night drinking the goon wine and then heading down to the bar for some darts and beer pong (beer pong was rigged because the other team kept on making up rules on the go…not cool).

 The next morning we had to wake up quite early and head back to the train station where we boarded the train to head to…CANBERRA!!!

 

 

 

 

Prancing Around Phillip

Although the Australian trains aren’t the prettiest they do the job quite well of transporting you from one place to another. That’s about all I will say about the trains because nothing else is really that great about them.

After a long train and bus ride we were greeted on Phillip Island by the most gorgeous hostel you could imagine for $35. Everything was new and felt/looked clean (which is more than you can say for the other hostel). Although we were pretty tired from spending the night on a train we decided we should try and see some of the island because it was supposed to rain the next day. Mark and I headed to a small beach where every day the local fishery feeds the pelicans. Now, for me the only pelican I’ve ever “seen” was Nigel in Finding Nemo and he looked like a decent sized bird, but in reality these birds are much larger than Pixar made me believe. When they stand up straight they’re about 4’ tall with webbed feet that could probably cover your face if they decided to step on you. In conclusion, pelicans are huge and they walk where they want so don’t get in the way or they’ll probably poop on you because that’s just what they do.

 

The rest of the afternoon Mark and I went on a short walk to see some of the amazing views of Philip Island and then went back to the hostel to rest before the “magnificent” penguin show. I put quotations around magnificent because there was quite a bit of hype over this show where the penguins come out from the sea and waddle their way up the grassy hill to their burrows. From the descriptions Mark and I heard we were expecting hundreds of penguins to pop out of the ocean and run for the hills as hawks and seagulls attacked from above creating an epic war scene. What actually happened was about 5 or 6 penguins every few minutes would pop out of the water, waddle up the beach about 2 feet, then get scared and run back in the ocean falling several times on the way back. The point is for the penguins to reach their burrows without being seen, so most of them diverged around the giant crowd of people that were watching and slipped through the shadows. Although penguins are very cute it wasn’t worth it to see tiny black and white dots appear and disappear multiple times but hey, you win some and you lose some right?

 

That night we went back to the hostel and got to know our new French and Australian roommates over some wine and pasta. The Australian was from Perth and he was on the east to watch the AFL (Australian Football League) final which was being played in Melbourne on the 28^th. He was cheering for Fremantle and I decided that I would cheer for them too because now I knew someone from there.

The next morning Mark and I were gearing up for a long hike around the island that was apparently supposed to have the most gorgeous views of the ocean and island. Unfortunately a wind and rain storm decided to roll in overnight and despite the efforts made by myself, Mark and our two French roommates we couldn’t even make it to the starting point of the hike. So instead of the hike we decided to go tour the chocolate factory which smelt amazing but cost too much to take the tour (at least it was too expensive for the cheep travelers like Mark and I) so we ended up heading back to the hostel after 2 hours of walking through the rain and wind. We had a quick bite to eat and seeing that the weather wasn’t going to change anytime soon decided it was time to leave Phillip Island and head off to our next destination…MELBOURNE!!!

 

 

Sluggin' Through Sydney

Our first hostel was called Sydney Central Backpackers hostel. Stepping into the lobby for this hostel and coming off of that flight was quite the change. Keep in mind that we felt like royalty at that point but quickly had that ripped away when we stumbled up 2 flights of stairs trying to find our 6 bedroom dorm which was filled with 4 guys and 2 empty top bunks for Mark and I. We quickly ditched our stuff and decided to go for a short walk around Sydney to try and beat the jetlag. This was around 8am so we had to occupy ourselves for an entire day before going to bed. We saw the Opera House and the bridge from afar and then continued to walk and figure out our train passes.

We ended up wandering around the city for 6 hours and stumbled upon the Sydney Powerhouse Museum. We went in to go see if it was free (because we’re cheap) and found out that of course it cost money. However, we started chatting with the ticket guy and he gave us a list of things to see for free in Sydney which was great. Just as we were leaving he spotted the Canadian flag tag on Marks bag and told us that we could just go in the museum for free! He told us that he loves maple syrup and was excited when he found out it came from a tree. It was the first time I’d ever gotten anything for simply being Canadian and it was a great feeling. Turns out this museum was actually huge and full of amazing exhibits. We spent around 3 hours exploring and I don’t think we even saw the entire museum. Over the next couple of days we essentially made our own walking tour. We walked from our hostel to Bondi Beach where we did the Bondi to Coogee beach walk.

 

We also did all the typical touristy stuff and went to a couple of markets, the Zoo and some parks. We had to go to Darling Harbor (because it's Mark's last name and because it's kinda a big thing)where there was a rowing regatta! They were doing 250m sprints in 8’s and just seeing it again made me miss it.

 

The first night trying to find food in Sydney was probably the most frustrated I have ever been in a city searching for food. Usually I would be annoyed because everything is so expensive but this time I was annoyed because Mark and I couldn’t find a single place to eat! By 6pm everything had turned into “drinks only” places. We walked around for an hour getting more and more hungry and frustrated as time went by until we both broke down and settled for the 24 hour Subway that we thankfully stumbled across. From that point on we were smart and never went to dt Sydney to find food, instead we stayed near our hostel which was in a place called Wooloomooloo (best name ever) and essentially lived off Thai food for the remainder of our stay in Sydney.

 On our last night in Sydney we decided it was time to get a taste of the nightlife and head out to one of the local pubs. With our French roommate Michel from the hostel as our tour guide we went to go get a traditional meat pie to start off the night which was absolutely delicious! I’ve heard people talk about the meat pies in Australia but they are truly amazing and probably the best late night food you could possibly eat (even better than McDonalds which is a pretty big statement for me to make). After pies we headed to a place called O’Malley’s which had a karaoke night and drink specials for people who are staying in hostels. They were $2.50 for a pint so you can only imagine what happened with that…

The next morning we had to check out of our hostel by 10am and make our way to the train station which was a 30 minute walk with all of our gear. We checked our bags and then went to the park for a quick nap while we waited for the train. We boarded the train at 8pm and settled in for a long 11 hour trip.

 

 

 

 

 

Next stop…Phillip Island!

Ballas in Business

I’d never experienced the feeling of absolute disbelief and excitement before the time when I received a phone call from Quantas. It was the day before I was going to depart on my adventure with mark. I was scrambling around trying to organize and pack up my life for the next 8 months when I received a phone call telling me that my flight was cancelled so they would have to re-route our trip and bump us up to business calls because of the inconvenience. While they were being apologetic I was blankly staring at my parents trying to figure out if this was a scam or not. I just didn’t understand how this could happen to me. It was too good to be true, but none the less, I accepted that it could be a possibility and although it felt like a gamble Mark and I got the tickets changed. From that point on it seemed that everything was real and it was actually happening. The weeks prior to leaving people kept on asking me if I were nervous or excited or scared or anything and I never had an answer because I didn’t believe that I was actually leaving. The trip was so different from anything that I’ve ever planned that I guess my brain just decided it was another silly idea that I wanted to do but would never actually follow through. Reality struck when I was trying to squeeze the last pair of shoes into my already stuffed backpack while my mom was running around trying to find ziplock bags to stuff more clothes into.

 I had a nervous excited feeling in the pitt of my stomach that stayed there until I boarded the first flight to LA. After some tears were shed and goodbyes were said I shifted my thoughts to what was to come over the next 24 hours. I think I was partially nervous because I thought the tickets might still be fake but we made it on the flight and landed in LAX which was when the adventure really started…

 

The Quantas Business Class Lounge is probably the most luxurious place you can find in an airport, if you can find it that is. See Mark and I are commoners. We’re not used to the extravagant life that Business Class has to offer so naturally it took us about 45mins to find the place. Hidden away in the corner of the airport is a tiny room with an elevator in it (we assumed it was so out of the way because they don’t want common folk to come barging along and try to get into this executive area for special executive like people). In the lounge there was a buffet where you could get some snacks and a fully stocked bar where you could simply walk up and make your own drinks. There were also showers to use, free wifi, and any type of chair you could possibly want to sit on. The best part was that we didn’t have to pay for a single thing in there! And if the lounge its self wasn’t enough, the Business class seats on the Quantas A380 we were on were more than enough. I never really understood why people would pay such ridiculous amounts to sit at the front of the plane until I experienced that flight. It was a 15 hour flight from LA to Sydney and we both got a sleeping pod, a mattress, blanket, pillow, a Kate Spade toiletry bag (with a toothbrush, toothpaste, ear plugs, hand lotion and eye covers), Quantas brand pj’s, 2 full meals, and of course…free booze!! We were very clearly “those people” on the flight that were too excited for their own good.


I have never had a more comfortable flight, but the time came when we landed and had to get off the plane to find our “luxurious” hostel.

 

 

First stop....SYDNEY!!