First few days in Aussie

It’s been a few days now that I’ve been here. And I can safely say that I am as confused and scared as I’ve ever been. So far I haven’t been sure what to do with myself. Luckily, at the G’day Backpacker’s Hostel, I met enough people to keep my mind occupied for the last three nights I stayed there.

As reported in my last entry, the first day =ed a wash. The traveling punished my ass beyond recognition. Sleeping helped like a fox, and I was up on my feet all the next day (That was two days ago now. So much has happened in the last few days, it’s amazing I’ve only been here three nights. MIND BOGGLING.). Literally. I woke up right early and headed out at about 8:00am. I wandered down around and through Sydney for over 7 hours. My feet hurt like the dickens by the time it was over. I was looking for cell phones and/or bicycles, but found nothing satisfactory of either. I did spot about 3 billion hot chicks, and nearly as many choad boyfriends clinging to their arms. [url=http://jasonemry.com/_img/sydney_walking_map.jpg]Here’s an approximation of my journey.[/url]

A couple other interesting things I noticed were:

1. Sydney is in the process of being built. Like, everywhere. If you’re in construction and you’d like to take a vacation, come the eff to Sydney. Every damn where I looked some kind of building was being built or unbuilt. Someone said it had something to do with Americanization or some such. During that same conversation, we stumbled across a rather startling realization. We all know a lot of the world isn’t too pleased with the US as of late. But if our reign should ever come to an end, our culture will continue on through its global colonies! It’s the perfect empire! Take that, Rome! FAGS!

2. And it’s two words… Faux hawk. Holy hell. These dudes latched onto the faux hawk like Kentucky onto a bewildering lack of common sense and self respect. I saw like 80 the first day I was here. And by “the first day” I mean the one where I was asleep half the time. There are just that many.

3. Something that I only wish was so prevalent is WiFi access. WTF peeps? It’s 2007 and I’ve spotted 2 wireless networks at the most on my list at any time, and those are either secured or aren’t connected to the internet. Apparently there’s no such thing as a cafe with WiFi. You have to go to a literal internet cafe and pay for access in chunks of time (you know, one of those places we used to have in the US back in the 90’s?). To add insult to injury, most of them don’t like you to bring in your own computer, so they charge extra or tell you to fuck off. Perhaps not in those same words. And maybe it was me who said it.

Let me put it to you this way. If you went to Seattle, took every WiFi hotspot and turned it into a faux hawk, and turned every faux hawk you saw into a hotspot, that would exactly equal the shocking divergence between cultures.

So. So so so so so so so. So your face. After I finished walking, I showered off and rapid fire watched Ocean’s 13, Hot Fuzz, and Ratatouille on my computer. Right near the end of Ratatouille, one of the people in my room stumbled in drunk and invited me out on the patio where most of the hostel was socializing and the like. I had a few drinks and found out a bunch of people were headed to Bondi Beach the next morning. Sweet.

Finally and eventually the next morning, everyone woke/geared up (French people sleep a lot) and we headed off a little after noon for the subway. Blah blah blah. BEACH! The ocean was beautiful and made me think of just how insignificant we all really are- TOPLESS CHICKS! Sexy. There was even a girl from England in our group with perfect 10’s and no compunction about bringing them out. About then, any guy nearby who didn’t have sunglasses on put some on and began looking innocently out at the water or at some nearby sand.

That was all yesterday. The fun didn’t end there though. Last night I had my first, and probably last, visit to a strip club. We got the idea when someone pulled out some free entry vouchers for a club nearby. We went there to discover the club is only open on weekend nights. This being Sunday, it was of course closed. But that didn’t keep us from our goal. We eventually found a place that was open and headed on in and, exactly like I would have expected, it’s pretty much just a poorly lit spiral of shame. The dudes in there are all dancing around drunk, slapping money into out-of-shape strippers underwear, and it all comes off so sickeningly perverted. The strangest part of the night for me was when a group of five girls came in to watch the dancers. They were completely hotter than anyone who worked there. So I felt bad for the strippers because they just got served. And I felt bad for the girls because they were most probably being eyed up by every horny creep there. UNCOMFORTABLE.

That was my last night at the G’day hostel. The trip to the beached got me to move to a hostel only a block away. Now I’m in the teeming midst of beach culture. I pretty much got totally tricked into coming here by a poorly-worded special. What does this make you think: “Stay 3 nights and book a 1-day surf trip for only $65!” I read it as “You stay here for three nights and get a 1-day surf trip, all for $65.” Maybe you did too, maybe not. Anyway. What they meant was if you book three nights at the standard price of $22 per, you get a discounted rate for the surf trip of $65. The girl at the counter gave me a little ‘tude about the misunderstanding. But I decided not to slap her back into the kitchen because I’m a gentleman like that. It cost me $72 and all of my dignity.

All I’ve done since then is watch some American TV and root around like mad for a place to get online. This is a bit of an off day, as I’m pretty physically wiped. Tomorrow will be a big-ass day of fun in the sun.