The Big Adventure

Dear You

Still in some time zone where midnight seems just like a dark midday I’ve tried to take advantage of remaining holidays to act like a local tourist. This saw me taking in sunrise at the domain yesterday followed by full (no make that half) English breakfast at Mona’s followed by a beer at the Criterion next door. Sunrise today saw me at ‘Sculpture by the Sea’ on the Bondi / Bronte Beach walk where I encountered so many of my better heeled peers with so much photographic paraphernalia that I was tempted to hurl my Nikon Coolpix L5 into the ocean and never again take a snap. Then I remembered the times we’ve shared like when I sat on it during this recent trip engaging the start switch and it gamely blossomed in the confined space between my buttock and the seat. When I took it out its extended lens was bent and its screen read ‘lens error’ till I like the team mate of a rugger bugger who comes out of the ruck with his nose on the side rather than in the centre, gave it a rotating twist something like a lumbar roll and it settled again to resume normal function.

So far today, at 2.00 pm I’ve had no naps so if this text begins to descend into even worse drivel, clap or shout to wake me please. I’m just back from lunch at The Duke and one of their bird baths of wine that would see better than I under the table. The Goths are out in force for Halloween just as they were last year and the only difference I noticed is that Simplicity Funerals have cleared their garage of hearses and bodies to make way for market stalls and a ‘sausage sizzle’. Um yes, I guess the sausage sizzle knows no boundaries. It would be interesting to set one up at a Hindu pyre don’t you think?

Travel Tales Part 1

It’s been so long, there is so much to tell and so little memory. I hope you’ll forgive me if I make much of it up. I’ve come to believe that the driving force propelling the unguided tourist is, and I hope you’ll forgive me if it sounds a little crude, the need to drink dine and defecate. I cannot overemphasise how compelling these three are, especially for the EU traveller.

In Bangkok on the bank of the mighty Chao Praya where we dined on our first day out we could have been in some exotic, maybe the Daintree, part of tropical Australia. So blessed are we with an abundance of Thai restaurants that we felt almost at home as we bumbled about drinking familiar imported beers and looking for the convenience which we knew how to find without the service of any Thai language. It’s worth noting here that Thailand as well as Hong Kong Singapore Japan and maybe other South East Asian countries have local English language newspapers and their populations are happy, indeed anxious to speak English. This is not the case throughout the EU of our experience.

Enough to say that the food and hospitality was fine just like the sultry weather and afternoon downpour without which you’d feel cheated of your Thai experience. The Atlanta Hotel was for me a delightful nostalgia even more excentric with it’s thirty odd more years of documented trivia on the walls. I would have liked to inspect room fifty seven to see if the BOOM SHANKAR graffiti was still on the wall but climbing the extra three levels of floor in such sultry conditions seemed prohibitive. I would not hesitate to recommend The Atlanta at the end of Sukhumvit soi sip to anyone.

The flight to London after our Thailand in a day adventure went smoothly aided by drugs that saw me sleep all the way and missing breakfast. Planes all have the same food drink and facilities which vary only in their taste quantity and cleanliness respectively. I’d give this one a seven but perhaps the drugs would disqualify me from judging.

London’s wonderful transport system along with Cat’s excellent directions had us at her curry scented door in the hour where we were treated to Cat’s excellent bread and butter omelette with coffee which more than made up for my missed aero brekkie. Not wishing to waste valuable time we were soon off to South Bank across ‘Tower’ Bridge which we like all who came before us mistook for ‘London’. At Borough Market we met up with Kelly and proceeded along an apparently well, O’Keefe, trodden path past Chris and Sue’s London accommodations, The Anchor and The Globe. We ate at Eat and at some stage or stages were joined by Mart and Froggs. We wandered past landmarks among which I remember Westminster, Trafalgar Square, Downing Street and though I don’t remember, according to Kell’s email, Carnaby Street. We drank in and out of pubs not at all unlike our own in function and form though far more diverse. These featured facilities for the third of my proposed forces, mostly underground and here it was easy to remember that remnants of this town and its plumbing were up to two thousand years old.

I haven’t a factual memory of the end of this night but I do have a clear emotional memory of love and excitement in equal abundant proportions. Awake at five thirty next morning in a soon to be sixty four year old fashion and well aware of how long it might take young girls to be also so I set out in the dark to adventure. This became a habit if three days qualifies as such. I remember encountering a young man, to me quite foreign, perhaps Pakistani, crossing through Cat’s block as I came out and sensing that I was more foreign and possibly threatening to him than he to I as he looked back crossed the street and slowed to allowed me to pass to where he felt more comfortable. This first outing in the dark was hesitant and unaided by the sun which would have been too foreign even had it been shining to provide the instinctual sense of direction I have in the southern hemisphere. The result was a star like pattern of outs and backs to recognised landmarks. I did however stumble onto Rupert’s HQ at Wapping and the Thames. With an growing understanding of the Underground and some obvious landmarks like the big gherkin subsequent tours were much more adventurous.

A major block to the enjoyment of these morning rambles was the difficulty to find anywhere to relieve oneself of the not yet passed morning coffee. Subway toilets, where they had them were usually locked at this hour and the mass of commuters made it very difficult to find a quite spot obscured by parked cars that are common enough in my part of Sydney. The solution to my problem came courtesy of the girls who even more aware of these type of issues advised that McDonalds and Starbucks have excellent, clean facilities open twenty four hours. I’d never considered these two institutions to be of any value before but they now occupy a special place in my heart or somewhere nearby.

London day two was spent from noon onward at Camden Market watching locks open and close for leisurely well shod boaties who prominently displayed their capital C Champagne and cheese plates. The facilities at our chosen venue were probably the worst I who have travelled widely in South East Asia though not India or god forbid Bangladesh, have ever encountered. Well yes it was better than being the four hundredth visitor to the Porta loo at the Big Day Out but I could not help thinking about the varying levels of water in the lock outside every time I visited.

London three and on our own we set out with The National Gallery, St Paul’s, The British Museum and Top Shop as pre lunch ambitions that would give us the afternoon to relax. Unfortunately we paid the entry price to St Paul’s, and got hooked up to a wan’na be fascist badged and sashed tour guide who wasted forty five minutes of our time leaving us short of the projected hour and a half to climb to the top of the cupola. We decided to lunch instead. What we had to accompany the certain bottle of red I can’t remember but whatever it put us in good shape to set out on Oxford St. to find Top Shop which was not to be missed.

Around now serendipity provided a glimpse down a side street of a rather attractive and substantial building. The British Museum was free and alone worth the trip to London from anywhere, even The Antipodes. Of course we saw only a little but the little we saw included the jewellery which put Prouds in the shade. Enervated and inspired we finally found Top Shop which did not disappoint. Imagine three floors of David Jones, crammed with fixtures to the point of claustrophobia, no one repeating another, all pay check priced, a girls own cornucopia of affordable fashion. Well surprisingly we resisted temptation and retired around the corner to another of those pubs the Britts do so well you could be forgiven for thinking they invented them, for some more of our favoured plonk.

A farewell dinner / curry in Brick lane, quite handy to Cat, and in company with Cat Kell and Mart, where drink and food was free if you struck the right deal, was the send off we needed to broach the next days first truly independent travels. Yes I know I’ve neglected mention of fish bowls of Tequila, grazing at markets, finding Fleet Street, Australia house and endorsing Jacks answer to Alices question “where would you most like to be ambassador”. These and many other small and possibly large memories will recur in their own time and at their own discretion I’m sure. It’s enough at this stage to quote Cream and say “I’m So Glad”