Molly, Dollies and a Great Deal of Folly

The only noteworthy occurrence to report on the build up and actual flight to Auckland was that we got ripped off by a seemingly sweet old lady whilst buying the biggest Toblerone I have ever clapped hands on. Plus we had a few more of those interesting Chai Lattes.

Mind you they are (now writing this in Bolivia after a hundred gutfuls of mate and the sweet waft of real chai still tingling my ridiculously long nasal hairs) nothing special.

Helen and I crash-landed (not literally, God, could you imagine?) into Auckland, we hopped into a carriage to take us to our overpriced hostel that was run by a nice Indian lady who probably earned more in a week from the place than India's entire GDP. Once settled, we had a walk around the downtown area of Auckland that we had landed in, and, as is customary whilst in a capital city, went and had a pizza. It were alreet.

When we got home we realised just how tired we were and tucked ourselves into our nice double bed, the luxury! Revenge of the Nerds was on too. Bonus.

The next day we lugged our gear to the slightly-further-than-imagined bus station to get our sweet asses up north to the Bay of Islands. I made the mistake of buying a two litre bottle of strawberry milkshake that I then had to down before getting on the somewhat confectionerily-militant bus.

This was just the start of a General Bastard of a journey including snoring old people, screaming babies and annoying teenagers listening to pop through the tinny speakers of their mobile cellular phone piece systems.

But, we got to the Bay of Islands in a few annoying hours. The small holiday resort for old people, nature lovers and pie eaters. Seriously; ten-on-ten pies.

After a walk around trying to find the maritime-themed hostel we had chosen, we got in touch with none other than Simon 'Brother of Jon' White.

Si had moved out there some months previously, after having travelled around Australia and New Zealand. He had also landed the rather enviable job of being a photographer on one of the many dolphin watching tour boats. 

He also had a mad cat called Molly with whom Helen was most impressed with. Here she is looking utterly disgusted. 'You'd play Barry over Gerrard? Tosser.'


After a short conversation on the blower, Hel and I went around to his house to meet his buddies and have a bit of a barbecue. This was a great laugh, up until Simon introduced me to his new favourite drinking 'game'. 

'THE GAUNTLET.'

The rules are not complicated, you have to get from one end of the set of cards to the other without pulling a picture card or an ace. If you fail to do so, you drink and return to the beginning. Pictures will probably be a better testament to just how horrible this game can be if you´re unlucky.


In the beginning God made beer...


Beginning to feel the pain...


Nothing like a bit of non-productive retching...


That's a lot beer...


Simon relishes it.


At last! Forty five minutes later, and look at how happy I am to finish! Pure ecstasy.


However, I did then have to do my dares.


I personally think I could make it as a stripper.


One dare that I didn't have to do was to pull down my trousers and sing 'I found Osama! I found Osama!'. Except when Simon's housemate explained the dare to me she told me I had to say that I had found 'Obama'. Interesting, and reasonably worrying, stuff.

So, nine or so tins of beer down (drink responsibly kids) and Helen suitably unimpressed, we made our way out. The plan was to go to the bar that Si's housemate - who, incidentally, had missed the first hour of work to watch me die out of my arse - managed and to have a boogie. 

This we did. We also got an invite to boat-sit the following day whilst Simon and his buddy went diving, which gave us a chance to see some of the scenery from the sea.

The real excitement began when Hel and I got a space on Simon's boat to go out and watch the dolphins piss around. Apart from the fact our camera ran out of battery three minutes into the ride.

Luckily we were with the band. 

The photographer. 

Simon.

Simon got some great shots of the dolphins (which I hope he doesn´t mind me reproducing here), and some good ones of us whilst a young Maori lad explained a brief outline of the Maori culture and belief structure, a short foray into its history and then finishing by swinging some lethal-looking weapons around and poking his tongue out. Massive.

After a couple of days here it was time to move on, and so after an embarrassingly drawn out goodbye to the good lad Simon (hate it when you say bye to someone and then realise you're going to be in the same place for the next twenty minutes), we got back on the bus to Auckland.

Melbourne: 4 Tyres, 8 Fires, 1 Dire & No Pliers.

The next few days were spent trying not to spend any money whatsoever, as we had about one hundred dollars to our name because the money had not been transferred properly from one account to the other.

This couldn't have happened at a worse time.

The deposit we had to put down on Tropic Thunder (as we weren't members of the video club) was, count 'em, $100.

One Hundred Dollars. I did ask if the lady thought this was slightly over the top, and that for that amount I could go out and buy nine copies of the film, but the response I received was a stew of emotions, ranging from mild derision to sincere hatred, with a healthy dollop of malevolence gravy.

She was of course working in a shitty little video shop at nine o´clock on new year’s day, I shouldn't have been so forward.

After a tearful farewell with Dan, and arranging to meet him in New Zealand at some point, we eventually flew to Melbourne. Once there we checked into super mega huge hostel 'Urban Central' and did next to nothing apart from eat lots of free pasta and drink lots of free tea. That pretty much counts as nothing, I think.

Oh yeah. How could I forget. We went to see Australia. This was, to my mind, as close as I ever want to get to absolute nothingness.

We also hung around a lot to watch the pillars along the walkway blow up. That was pretty cool. If nothing else, Melbourne could definitely waste fire.




On our second day there we went down to one of the harbours and watched leather-skinned men feed swans and shout at seagulls.


Unfortunately only the birds are pictured here, but believe me when I say that these blokes’ hides were stab proof.

The next day we rented a car and drove down the Great Ocean Road. This was really good fun, and good practice for renting a minivan thing in New Zealand. I think it's probably easiest to let the pictures do the talking.

Apart from to say that I received two of five wasp stings I would endure in the next four weeks. I fucking hate wasps. Complete cunts.





Speaking of cunts (actually really harsh on the bloke but I needed a link), we also had a brief friendship with a guy from the States that played online poker for a living. He was pretty interesting - until he got a couple of beers down him.

He was 'studying' (read: had read a couple of books on) Taoism. Every other sentence he'd segue it into a conversation... 'But are you really... [here, alive, thinking, existing etc etc]...'.

No matter how much I tried to argue with him that it didn't matter if we were really here, drawing on all of my AS-Level Philosophy, he wouldn't budge an inch. There would be more chance of having a beer with the Pope and him admitting that condoms are handy and that Jews write good sitcoms.

Yes, I really was getting annoyed. I could not convince him that despite what he believes about whether or not he's really here, his brain would sense pain if I stabbed him up the nose with some free pasta. Action, reaction. Oh well.

There was also the fact, that I didn't bring up at the time, how ´Taoist´ is it to make a living taking other people's money? Ah, but is he really taking other people´s money...? Yes, I saw him do it.

This wasn't to be the last infuriating discussion about beliefs that we would have with some Randomer.

After getting a taste of the road down the coast, (well, Helen did, I got a taste for map reading and Cornettos - yep, back on the hard shit) we were looking forward to getting to New Zealand to clock up some serious miles.

Or rather, kilometres.

That we did, after a brief stop off to see an old friend with a new job, and Helen finally got to fucking see her favourite thing in the sea up close...

The Lost Week

It has come to my attention that when I previously wrote that Mary and Emma departed, it appeared that they did so from Brisbane. This is ein hundert perzent absolute baldershit. There were in fact almost five full days in between us being in Noosa and when they left. These days were spent in 'The Big Apple', Sydney.

Time for another small recap. When we first met up with Lisa back in early December we also had the pleasure of meeting another Coventrian going by the name of Jonny Owen. He proved to be a thoroughly nice lad indeed, and after just one evening in the boozer with him he had offered us his house during the Christmas period, when he would be back in Blighty.

Helen would like me to highlight at this point, that: '...this is the Coventry way. The experience of the Blitz has led to a sense of togetherness and sharing which no other city in the UK could ever even hope to aspire to. Especially not Bournemouth.'

That may be so, but half the people that survived the Blitz now live in Bournemouth, so there are holes in your argument, Mouth.

Therefore, we flew in an aeroplane down the coast to Sydney where we disembarked, mounted a taxi and got dropped off outside Jonny's house. The plan had been that Jonny was to give the key to his mate Max (my heart skipped a beat at first - could it be Gogarty? Stranger things have happened at sea with a bird in your hand whilst the Pope is shitting in the woods...) who lived but across the road.

The plan hadn't been that Max wouldn't be in. A-knocking and a-ringing we did a-go on his door, but to no avail. I even tried a bit of a-climbing but that only resulted in more time wasted and a sweaty bum cleft.

Eventually, we received a call from Max and the welcome news that he would be back from the beach very shortly. What went wrong in the non-miscommunications that had occurred prior we have no idea, but Helen is almost certain that it was entirely my fault.

Max was another lovely chap, with a strange Oz-Deutsche accent reminiscent of many a bad war movie, and we offered him a brew as we wandered inside and dumped our stuff. A few stiff cups of tea later we braved it out into the big wide and, in the particular area of town that we now resided, almost entirely homosexual world.

The next couple of days were spent doing generic Sydney tourist things. Bridge - check. Harbour - check. Opera House - check. (Mary agreed it's smaller than on tele.)

About two days into our tour we met with Lisa and her boyfriend Ben, and she said that we could also use her flat if we so wished. So, never ones to turn down an invitation, we bloody well did.

Other things that happened of marginal note include the ingestion of the best cake what I have ever eaten, purchased and scoffed on the harbour side with a cup of chai latte. Wanky but stupendous.

We also went for a luscious piscine dinner in a restaurant called Blue Fish (or something of that ilk) which was very appetizing indeed. This was swiftly followed by Mary having her first experience of Shisha in a Turkish bar. She didn´t particularly like it, probably due to the lack of nicotine. Nor hallucinogenic qualities. This was a most enjoyable evening and was probably my favourite that I had in Sydney.

Soon the time came that we did actually have to say goodbye to the two Dagleys. But you already know all about that. Tears and beers. Not necessarily in that order.

Lisa and Ben went up north to spend New Year’s Eve with some of Ben's family, and Lisa very kindly let us use her flat for the whole period. We are FOREVER indebted to her, as it wasn't just an amazing thing to do, but it allowed us to do so much more than if we were hosteling. 

Plus, trying to find accommodation at that time of year would be like trying to find an amusing simile.

On the 28th of December we had the joy of meeting up with the Irish girls, Sarah, Caroline and Martina for the twins' birthday. It was a good night full of horrible Guinness which also gave us the chance to get in touch with none other than Jon Howe, who after the Hoi An debacle had continued his syphilitic quest around South East Asia and eventually landed on Antipodean shores.

That night we made plans to meet for NYE (as it shall unfortunately and lazily be dubbed from now on).

This night was also most amusing for the fact that Gil, the Israeli feller that we had met in Cambodia, was also to be present. Knowing Helen was going to be there, and as the meeting also coincided with Israel's illegal and murderous bombing of Gaza, Gil had spent the week before revising his propaganda. As it happens, Helen deliberately didn't mention it. Just as well really.

NYE was a funny affair that is probably best left forgotten, but here is the outline of our day, from start to finish - massively fucking edited to make me sound slightly less at fault for a ruined evening.

• Meet Jon and Dan (of Hoi An battering fame) around midday
• Buy lots of beer and head down to Rushcutters’s Bay
• Along the way meet Dan's real dad

(If you can't read the chap's T-shirt, it says 'Sorry son, I'm not your dad.')

• Incredibly, bump into both all of the Irish girls and guys who we had been out with a few nights before, and Jay who we had met in Laos
• Play some football and get slightly sunburned
• Jon gets wind that we might be able to get into ´The best spot in town´ to watch the fireworks, namely a proper posh hotel right on the banks of the harbour
• Rush back to Lisa's and grab a shower
• Meet up with Jon and Dan again and go to the hotel
• Turns out unfortunately only Jon can get in
• He goes in
• Dan, Helen and I mooch about Sydney before settling down on the North side of the river, in a nice spot on a slope very near the bridge
• Watch the fireworks
• Walk home in silence

As you can see, some points are suspiciously absent.

New Year's Day was much more fun. We got a pizza and rented Tropic Thunder. I wish I´d seen it before the night before.

Never go full retard man.