After the eventful Christmas Day we decided to head into the sales. Drew was kind enough to fully agree, but I think this had more to do with making things up for throwing up on the Hostel room. We headed down the stairs of death, had breakfast and then jumped on the bus. I admitted to Drew that I was hanging out to see Buckingham Palace and we agreed to head there first.
We caught a bus that got us close to it and then realising that there was people all over the place heading there, we got our first inkling that something was up a the palace. Most of the people were running so we ran to catch up. We arrived out of breath and saw an enormous crowd gathered with Police keeping everyone in check.
We wandered through the crowd who were all trying to see into the front area of the Palace. Police on horses repeated over and over "remember to keep a hold of your valuables, pick pockets are operating in this crowd". We weaved through the crowd and I looked down and noticed one of my zips on my bag had become undone. Luckily I'd been keeping everything in the main part, just in case this happened. Drew didn't believe that I hadn't left home with it open, but I maintain someone was a bit disappointed that I didn't have anything to give them.
We couldn't see over the crowd and being vertically challenged I decided to walk further along the front of the Palace and see if there was a spot that had less people trying to see through the fence. To do this we had to wait for marching bands to walk past while Police kept everyone from moving. We waited at the edge of the gates with the Police holding us back until the horse guards passed and we could move again. Grumpy Police kept people from stopping in front of the gates to take pictures without the fences by shouting at people "if you want to be able to see, you should have been here earlier". It was actually a lot of fun.
We headed up to the north side of the front fence and found a spot and after a while of moving and shuffling Drew and I made it to the fence to see guards with guns marching up and down the square while a military band played Christmas carols. The whole thing was an amazingly diverse show from the cheery Christmas music to the straight-backed-gun-toting-guards marching about. It turns out we'd ended up watching the Boxing Day changing of the guards. We had arrived fairly late though and it was over about 10 minutes after we finally got a good spot to watch from.
The crowd dispersed quickly and we headed north towards Oxford St. We had decided to walk as the distance wasn't actually that far. We walked up through Mayfair with all the old London houses that hark back to a bygone era. We found ourselves on Oxford St and decided to have some lunch. We found a little pub and went downstairs into their eating area and had some typical English pub food, Pie and Mash.
After a nice pint (or half pint if you're me) we headed off to brave the shops. It was horrible. I like shopping with female friends who can spur you on if you start getting tired or over it, but it doesn't work that way with husbands. We battled massive crowds like I've never seen before. It's like being at a over crowded music festival, but instead of everyone enjoying the music and having a good time they are practically killing each other trying to get to modestly discounted "bargains" that they probably won't want in a few days.
We walk into Selfridges because everyone said we should, the prices were less than 5% off and that still left things starting at around £150.00 for some makeup or a top. We walked out and past a line of about 100 people waiting to get into the Gucci part of Selfridges for the sale. Not being racist at all, but it was hard not to notice that all except about 4 people in the line were Asian. It was just amazing.
We went in Primark which we'd been loving, but the enjoyment didn't last very long. We couldn't move and the lines for the registers wound around the store. In the end, with my dreams of getting something nice for myself gone, we gave up and grabbed the first bus we could home. I won't ever go to the sales again in the UK, at least not on Oxford St. I've been and had a great time in Australia, but the massive crowds here make it no fun.
We decided to go out to dinner and ended up heading to an Indian restaurant around the corner. It was kind of pricey, but the food was really good and that was all we really wanted at this point. We stumbled home tired and full. After watching the TV for a while and contemplating the stairs we headed up hopefully one last time to pack our bags and get ready to catch the train to Edinburgh, Scotland early in the morning.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Saturday, February 27, 2010
The Curse of Irish Dan
We had planned to spend an Orphan’s Christmas with the rest of the wandering souls at the Hostel. We had an invitation to spend Christmas with people we knew, but logistically and financially it was not possible. The Trains and Buses are given a day off on Christmas day, and the Taxi companies are known to double their already expensive prices. Unfortunately there are no Tuk-Tuks in the UK.
After lavishing each other with inexpensive gifts, we trundled down the stairs of death and greeted them with a feeling of Christmas immunity while we made our way down to breakfast. Normally a Christmas breakfast involves a minimum requirement off eggs and bacon, we forgot to buy any, so we settled for toast and cereal. Some of the more organised Hostel Staff did have eggs and bacon, and they frequently taunted us with their delicious smells.
The dining room in the basement was buzzing with Skype users, so we joined the fold and sent home our Christmas cheers, the replies were slightly more cheerful due to the massive time difference which found the Australian Christmas well into its last drinks. I had been told sternly that it was far too early to start drinking and so I spent most of my time watching the clock as it slowly wound its way around to lunchtime.
We had paid five quid each to have Christmas lunch cooked for us by the Hostel Staff, who were a little frantic cooking for a large number of people and panicking that they didn’t have enough food. Lunch was due to start at 2pm, but apologies were made shortly before this time. While the dining hall filled with hungry backpackers, we made new friends among the people on our tables and therefore decided the time had come to have a drink.
Lunch had been organised by the Hostel Staff, who were mostly Aussie and Kiwi, therefore the spread was pretty much similar to what we were used to. Roast meat and vegetables were in plentiful supply, and by the time everyone had finished eating it was pretty clear that the Hostel Staff had over catered and would be eating leftovers for the next week. I vaguely remember someone discovering a full tray of potatoes still sitting in the oven later in the night.
With lunch done and the drinking underway the party kicked up a gear. The Hostel staff started the drinking games, therefore they are responsible for most of the blame. I started playing a home made team oriented board game, where rolling a dice landed you on a square, giving you an instruction or telling you to take a card. Unfortunately for my team mate and I we kept rolling on the square that said go back to the start, or the square one space after that said go one space backward.
By the time the game ended we were all well lubricated, I had run out of beer and started drinking the punch. My team mate and I were still on the starting blocks of the board game and therefore had the honour of wearing the “looser” stickers. But it didn’t matter because we were all having a great time. It was decided to scrap the board game and just take turns pulling cards. The tables were all pushed together in a giant circle and one by one each person read their card, then either drank or made a fool of themselves in some way.
At about this point I decided to make a run for the shops for more booze. The streets were quiet but there were a few people out walking around. Even on Christmas I failed to get any eye contact or greetings from passer-bys, a little disenchanting considering that even on Christmas day in South Yarra the Stuck-Up-Elitists tend to nod their head and say “Merry Christmas”. Anyway, the guy in the off-licence was friendly enough, still had booze on the shelf, and even said a small festive goodbye even though it apparently wasn’t in line with his religious denomination.
I returned to the basement of the Hostel and walked through the doors to find Prue drinking a shot out of the belly of a half naked man. The crowd looked at me, then looked at Prue, then looked at the guy, then looked at me again. The guy looked at me nervously thinking I was going to go ape shit, but I just shook his hand laughing while the crowd let out a unified sigh of relief, followed by more laughter and revelry as the games continued.
Prue made a close friend out of a girl after they pulled a card telling them to perform simulated sex, which they climbed onto the table and performed with much hilarity. I pulled the card telling me to drink a shot from the belly of my neighbour. I looked over at the guy next to me, and said “come on big fella”. He flinched and we decided that we’d skip the card by sculling our drinks as punishment.
After trying to instill more enthusiasm in the drinking games by writing new cards with an ever increasing level of filth and debauchery, eventually the games were abandoned before anyone had a chance to drink from their neighbours boot. Prue found her lost childhood by playing hand slapping games with her new friend, of whom I think may have had a small crush on Prue…Shhh.
Things were getting pretty messy late into the night. We had moved over to the pool table, and by some act of god, or perhaps an infusion of alcohol I found myself transformed into the Jedi Knight of pool. With the precision of a surgeon I cut up my opponents, wielding my cue like a wand I performed sorcery and trickery upon the table. After sinking five balls in a row to win a match (including one rather brilliant jump shot), Prue broke the glamour I had imposed by calling out “how the fuck did you do that?” to which I replied “Got my drunk game on”.
Indeed I did, as did everyone else, and around midnight the cracks started appearing among the crowds. Irish Dan braved the carnage and challenged me to another game, which seemed only a ruse to get a hold on my can of Beer when I wasn’t looking. This continued for my last two cans and after returning from a cigarette upstairs on the street, Prue forced a nearly full bottle of Red Wine into my hand, pleading with me to hold onto it so that Irish Dan would stop trying to steal it. Thus began the downward spiral.
Prue had gone to bed and I found myself outside talking shit to Joey and Adam (Pronounced Eeeedem) two Kiwi guys that worked at the Astor Hostel. Irish Dan was still lurking around with intent to pilfer the last of the wine. I wasn’t going to let that happen, so continued to swig away on the bottle. At some point I found myself sitting in a shopping trolley spinning around and around and then trying to smuggle a traffic cone into the Hostel. Joey and Eeeedem went downstairs to attack the tray of potatoes we’d discovered earlier. I took up arms and battled the stairs of death all the way to bed after a fun and memorable Orphan's Christmas.
The next day...
I blame Irish Dan. If he hadn’t been so intent on stealing our wine, perhaps I wouldn’t have drank the entire bottle before getting in the shopping trolley. I blame Astor for their drinking games forcing me to mix beer, punch, white wine, red wine and spirits. I blame the stairs of death for being deathly and I blame the off licence for opening. Maybe I even blame Prue a little for handing me the bottle of red. But I suppose, to be truly honest… it was mostly… alright, totally my fault.
I woke in the morning to discover I had made a cock of myself. At the end of the bed a purple stain gave a hint of something more menacing. When I looked at the floor beyond the bed, a giant purple splattering of an unknown liquid stretched out its stench in every direction. Needless to say Prue was not impressed. Luckily our room was next to the linen cupboard. I changed the sheets and hid the evidence, cleaned up the rest of the splatter and tried to diffuse the smell.
Now I just needed to diffuse Prue… Hmm, boxing day sales are on… Maybe we could go to Oxford street and go... err… Shopping?
After lavishing each other with inexpensive gifts, we trundled down the stairs of death and greeted them with a feeling of Christmas immunity while we made our way down to breakfast. Normally a Christmas breakfast involves a minimum requirement off eggs and bacon, we forgot to buy any, so we settled for toast and cereal. Some of the more organised Hostel Staff did have eggs and bacon, and they frequently taunted us with their delicious smells.
The dining room in the basement was buzzing with Skype users, so we joined the fold and sent home our Christmas cheers, the replies were slightly more cheerful due to the massive time difference which found the Australian Christmas well into its last drinks. I had been told sternly that it was far too early to start drinking and so I spent most of my time watching the clock as it slowly wound its way around to lunchtime.
We had paid five quid each to have Christmas lunch cooked for us by the Hostel Staff, who were a little frantic cooking for a large number of people and panicking that they didn’t have enough food. Lunch was due to start at 2pm, but apologies were made shortly before this time. While the dining hall filled with hungry backpackers, we made new friends among the people on our tables and therefore decided the time had come to have a drink.
Lunch had been organised by the Hostel Staff, who were mostly Aussie and Kiwi, therefore the spread was pretty much similar to what we were used to. Roast meat and vegetables were in plentiful supply, and by the time everyone had finished eating it was pretty clear that the Hostel Staff had over catered and would be eating leftovers for the next week. I vaguely remember someone discovering a full tray of potatoes still sitting in the oven later in the night.
With lunch done and the drinking underway the party kicked up a gear. The Hostel staff started the drinking games, therefore they are responsible for most of the blame. I started playing a home made team oriented board game, where rolling a dice landed you on a square, giving you an instruction or telling you to take a card. Unfortunately for my team mate and I we kept rolling on the square that said go back to the start, or the square one space after that said go one space backward.
By the time the game ended we were all well lubricated, I had run out of beer and started drinking the punch. My team mate and I were still on the starting blocks of the board game and therefore had the honour of wearing the “looser” stickers. But it didn’t matter because we were all having a great time. It was decided to scrap the board game and just take turns pulling cards. The tables were all pushed together in a giant circle and one by one each person read their card, then either drank or made a fool of themselves in some way.
At about this point I decided to make a run for the shops for more booze. The streets were quiet but there were a few people out walking around. Even on Christmas I failed to get any eye contact or greetings from passer-bys, a little disenchanting considering that even on Christmas day in South Yarra the Stuck-Up-Elitists tend to nod their head and say “Merry Christmas”. Anyway, the guy in the off-licence was friendly enough, still had booze on the shelf, and even said a small festive goodbye even though it apparently wasn’t in line with his religious denomination.
I returned to the basement of the Hostel and walked through the doors to find Prue drinking a shot out of the belly of a half naked man. The crowd looked at me, then looked at Prue, then looked at the guy, then looked at me again. The guy looked at me nervously thinking I was going to go ape shit, but I just shook his hand laughing while the crowd let out a unified sigh of relief, followed by more laughter and revelry as the games continued.
Prue made a close friend out of a girl after they pulled a card telling them to perform simulated sex, which they climbed onto the table and performed with much hilarity. I pulled the card telling me to drink a shot from the belly of my neighbour. I looked over at the guy next to me, and said “come on big fella”. He flinched and we decided that we’d skip the card by sculling our drinks as punishment.
After trying to instill more enthusiasm in the drinking games by writing new cards with an ever increasing level of filth and debauchery, eventually the games were abandoned before anyone had a chance to drink from their neighbours boot. Prue found her lost childhood by playing hand slapping games with her new friend, of whom I think may have had a small crush on Prue…Shhh.
Things were getting pretty messy late into the night. We had moved over to the pool table, and by some act of god, or perhaps an infusion of alcohol I found myself transformed into the Jedi Knight of pool. With the precision of a surgeon I cut up my opponents, wielding my cue like a wand I performed sorcery and trickery upon the table. After sinking five balls in a row to win a match (including one rather brilliant jump shot), Prue broke the glamour I had imposed by calling out “how the fuck did you do that?” to which I replied “Got my drunk game on”.
Indeed I did, as did everyone else, and around midnight the cracks started appearing among the crowds. Irish Dan braved the carnage and challenged me to another game, which seemed only a ruse to get a hold on my can of Beer when I wasn’t looking. This continued for my last two cans and after returning from a cigarette upstairs on the street, Prue forced a nearly full bottle of Red Wine into my hand, pleading with me to hold onto it so that Irish Dan would stop trying to steal it. Thus began the downward spiral.
Prue had gone to bed and I found myself outside talking shit to Joey and Adam (Pronounced Eeeedem) two Kiwi guys that worked at the Astor Hostel. Irish Dan was still lurking around with intent to pilfer the last of the wine. I wasn’t going to let that happen, so continued to swig away on the bottle. At some point I found myself sitting in a shopping trolley spinning around and around and then trying to smuggle a traffic cone into the Hostel. Joey and Eeeedem went downstairs to attack the tray of potatoes we’d discovered earlier. I took up arms and battled the stairs of death all the way to bed after a fun and memorable Orphan's Christmas.
The next day...
I blame Irish Dan. If he hadn’t been so intent on stealing our wine, perhaps I wouldn’t have drank the entire bottle before getting in the shopping trolley. I blame Astor for their drinking games forcing me to mix beer, punch, white wine, red wine and spirits. I blame the stairs of death for being deathly and I blame the off licence for opening. Maybe I even blame Prue a little for handing me the bottle of red. But I suppose, to be truly honest… it was mostly… alright, totally my fault.
I woke in the morning to discover I had made a cock of myself. At the end of the bed a purple stain gave a hint of something more menacing. When I looked at the floor beyond the bed, a giant purple splattering of an unknown liquid stretched out its stench in every direction. Needless to say Prue was not impressed. Luckily our room was next to the linen cupboard. I changed the sheets and hid the evidence, cleaned up the rest of the splatter and tried to diffuse the smell.
Now I just needed to diffuse Prue… Hmm, boxing day sales are on… Maybe we could go to Oxford street and go... err… Shopping?
Friday, February 26, 2010
Gifted
There are times in my life where being a sneaky bastard has really paid off. During our expedition through South East Asia, Prue and I were plagued by one sad misfortune; the impracticality of purchasing anything. Unfortunately due to the fact we had to carry everything in our backpacks which were becoming progressively fuller and fuller. We could not buy anything, in countries that the regular tourists come to just to shop.
But Christmas was approaching. We had agreed to curb our usual gift spending and imposed a limit on our gift budget. The idea was to come up with a great present which cost very little. The first of the presents I bought for Prue while we were in Luang Prabang. Prue had fallen for a little silver necklace charm that was locally made. After first seeing it she regretted not buying it and set out to find it our last day in Luang Prabang.
However, due to circumstances beyond our control, we were unable to get any money from the ATM machines in town, we had managed to pay our Accommodation and buy tickets for the Boat trip north, but we were left with only enough money to buy dinner. That is until I walked 500 miles to find the only ATM in town that was still working, on the way back to meet Prue I spied the silver charm and purchased it for the same price Prue had negotiated. Then I asked the merchant to do me a favour and not sell anything to my wife if she came back… Sneaky.
Returning to Prue with a small fist full of Laos Kip, she decided we needed to take one more look at the markets. When we reached the stall with the silver charm, Prue immediately tried bartering the price of the silver charm down. Meanwhile I was standing behind Prue, making faces at the merchant and waving my hands around. The merchant obviously had no intention of honouring our agreement. Fortunately Prue’s bartering skills were becoming shrewd and not getting the price she wanted, she walked away.
Prue almost returned to the store a few minutes later, but as she had just purchased something else, I decided to take an accountant’s stance and told Prue not to spend anymore money in case we couldn’t get any more cash out. Turned out that we couldn’t get any more cash and spent the next two days fretting about money. Prue was still disappointed she had missed out on the silver charm, so the surprise was enormous when I drew first blood and gave her the hand made silver necklace from Laos.
The second gift was a leather belt from Thailand, a designer clothes item with vibrantly coloured Mini Coopers around it and a cost increasing signature of a designer. Prue first spotted the belt in MBK Shopping centre in Bangkok. The shop keeper wanted 1500Baht as first price ($50) and Prue could only barter them down to 800Baht. Prue gave up on the buying the belt, but saw it several times and entered into negotiations in different shops only to fail to achieve a reasonable price.
After making a quick exit from the hostile nightclub in Pat Pong, Prue passed the belt on sale in the Pat Pong market, where she managed to barter the price down to 300Baht ($10). She giggled with consumerist excitement as we jumped in a Tuk-Tuk driven by a lead footed 17 year old and were whisked back to Kao San Rd. The excitement was short lived as two minutes later Prue realised that we had left her belt on the back seat of the Tuk-Tuk.
It was our second last day in Bangkok, and returning to Pat-Pong was not an option I was fond of, although Prue suggested it more than once. We spent hours grazing through the markets looking for the belt again, only to find that it wasn’t to be found. There weren’t even any stalls or shops selling belts in the vicinity of Khao San Rd. A placed rumoured to sell everything.
So a sneaky plan was hatched in my brain, Prue had excused herself for an hour to pamper herself with her last cheap Thai massage. I worked both sides of the street of Khao San in a last ditched effort to find the belt as I made my way to the end of the street where there would be a Tuk-Tuk to take me to Pat Pong and back before Prue realised I was gone. The trick would be getting a Tuk-Tuk to Pat-Pong without getting dragged into a sex show or a den of hurt.
But you wouldn’t believe it if you read about it on this very blog. We had searched the street several times for the belt and never saw any belts anywhere. But as if by magic, at the eleventh hour a small stall appeared out of the humidity and there was the Designer branded Mini Cooper belt. I enquired its price and the reply was “1500 Baht”. Shit… I managed to only get him down to 800 before trying the elite bartering technique of walking away. I didn’t work.
My only other option was to make a twenty minute trip to Pat Pong, find the belt, barter the price then get out of Pat Pong and back to Khao San Rd without being accosted by Mr Bang or any other seedy Ping Pong Peddling type. All this in a ever decreasing 45min window.
I ran up the street again, hoping that another magical belt store had appeared, one with more reasonable prices. It hadn’t, I bit the bullet and went back to the only magical belt shop in Khao San, I managed to get it down to 600 Baht, but the price didn’t matter when I saw Prue’s reaction on Christmas morning as she opened her presents on the bed in our little private room at the top of the evil stairs of death in the funky hostel down the steet from Hyde Park somewhere in the centre of ice-cold London, on the other side of the world. Prue was happy, and being a sneaky bastard had really paid off.
But Christmas was approaching. We had agreed to curb our usual gift spending and imposed a limit on our gift budget. The idea was to come up with a great present which cost very little. The first of the presents I bought for Prue while we were in Luang Prabang. Prue had fallen for a little silver necklace charm that was locally made. After first seeing it she regretted not buying it and set out to find it our last day in Luang Prabang.
However, due to circumstances beyond our control, we were unable to get any money from the ATM machines in town, we had managed to pay our Accommodation and buy tickets for the Boat trip north, but we were left with only enough money to buy dinner. That is until I walked 500 miles to find the only ATM in town that was still working, on the way back to meet Prue I spied the silver charm and purchased it for the same price Prue had negotiated. Then I asked the merchant to do me a favour and not sell anything to my wife if she came back… Sneaky.
Returning to Prue with a small fist full of Laos Kip, she decided we needed to take one more look at the markets. When we reached the stall with the silver charm, Prue immediately tried bartering the price of the silver charm down. Meanwhile I was standing behind Prue, making faces at the merchant and waving my hands around. The merchant obviously had no intention of honouring our agreement. Fortunately Prue’s bartering skills were becoming shrewd and not getting the price she wanted, she walked away.
Prue almost returned to the store a few minutes later, but as she had just purchased something else, I decided to take an accountant’s stance and told Prue not to spend anymore money in case we couldn’t get any more cash out. Turned out that we couldn’t get any more cash and spent the next two days fretting about money. Prue was still disappointed she had missed out on the silver charm, so the surprise was enormous when I drew first blood and gave her the hand made silver necklace from Laos.
The second gift was a leather belt from Thailand, a designer clothes item with vibrantly coloured Mini Coopers around it and a cost increasing signature of a designer. Prue first spotted the belt in MBK Shopping centre in Bangkok. The shop keeper wanted 1500Baht as first price ($50) and Prue could only barter them down to 800Baht. Prue gave up on the buying the belt, but saw it several times and entered into negotiations in different shops only to fail to achieve a reasonable price.
After making a quick exit from the hostile nightclub in Pat Pong, Prue passed the belt on sale in the Pat Pong market, where she managed to barter the price down to 300Baht ($10). She giggled with consumerist excitement as we jumped in a Tuk-Tuk driven by a lead footed 17 year old and were whisked back to Kao San Rd. The excitement was short lived as two minutes later Prue realised that we had left her belt on the back seat of the Tuk-Tuk.
It was our second last day in Bangkok, and returning to Pat-Pong was not an option I was fond of, although Prue suggested it more than once. We spent hours grazing through the markets looking for the belt again, only to find that it wasn’t to be found. There weren’t even any stalls or shops selling belts in the vicinity of Khao San Rd. A placed rumoured to sell everything.
So a sneaky plan was hatched in my brain, Prue had excused herself for an hour to pamper herself with her last cheap Thai massage. I worked both sides of the street of Khao San in a last ditched effort to find the belt as I made my way to the end of the street where there would be a Tuk-Tuk to take me to Pat Pong and back before Prue realised I was gone. The trick would be getting a Tuk-Tuk to Pat-Pong without getting dragged into a sex show or a den of hurt.
But you wouldn’t believe it if you read about it on this very blog. We had searched the street several times for the belt and never saw any belts anywhere. But as if by magic, at the eleventh hour a small stall appeared out of the humidity and there was the Designer branded Mini Cooper belt. I enquired its price and the reply was “1500 Baht”. Shit… I managed to only get him down to 800 before trying the elite bartering technique of walking away. I didn’t work.
My only other option was to make a twenty minute trip to Pat Pong, find the belt, barter the price then get out of Pat Pong and back to Khao San Rd without being accosted by Mr Bang or any other seedy Ping Pong Peddling type. All this in a ever decreasing 45min window.
I ran up the street again, hoping that another magical belt store had appeared, one with more reasonable prices. It hadn’t, I bit the bullet and went back to the only magical belt shop in Khao San, I managed to get it down to 600 Baht, but the price didn’t matter when I saw Prue’s reaction on Christmas morning as she opened her presents on the bed in our little private room at the top of the evil stairs of death in the funky hostel down the steet from Hyde Park somewhere in the centre of ice-cold London, on the other side of the world. Prue was happy, and being a sneaky bastard had really paid off.
Monday, February 22, 2010
iSkate
We didn't do much during the day on Christmas eve, maybe we did, but whatever it was has been overshadowed by the evening. I know we missioned out to the supermarket and picked up some food and beverages for the celebrations on Christmas day. I remember asking the guy in the off-licence if he was open for Christmas and being surprised at his glum "yes" reply.
Before leaving the shop we watched as the doorway was cast in shadow and a massive beast of a man waddled through the door who kinda looked like a menacing trucker version of Stephen Fry. I was half expecting some kinda crazy shit about to go down, when all of a sudden the frightful looking man opened his mouth and a soft and gentle posh English accent wafted through the room. Lol, British people.
We had collected enough supplies that we wouldn't need to venture out on Christmas day. I was certain that we didn't have enough alcohol, yet Prue forcefully assured me that we "didn't need anymore alcohol you drunk bastard". Later the next day she was, naturally, proven wrong. So I was glad I'd inquired to the man in the shop about his opening hours. But lets not get ahead.
We bummed around for the most part of the day, needing a bit of a break from the constant go-go of the past days and months. But by mid afternoon the spirit for adventure (and boredom) overtook us so we headed off to Hyde park for a Christmas Eve outing at the fair ground set up in Hyde Park corner.
The Winter Wonderland has a Bavarian theme, you can buy all sorts of Englishised Bavarian treats. There are show rides, side show stalls, music and of course food and alcohol. During the day it is mostly occupied by kids and their parents, but at night, and especially on Christmas Eve the place is packed with young adult revelers, drinking mulled wine and singing "Last Christmas" over and over and over and... Seriously it gets played more often than a Nintendo DS on a School bus.
The main draw card for us was the ice skating rink. What better way to celebrate a winter Christmas than by ice skating outdoors in the middle of London's most famous park, right in the middle of the city itself. Unfortunately, everyone else had the same romanticised idea and there were no tickets available until the last session at 9pm. It was around 6pm so we had a few hours to kill.
We went on a couple of the rides, which were about as expensive as the Melbourne Show. One of the rides was a mini roller coaster that reminded me of the one at Luna Park and which made better use of a small space than a Swiss inventor.
Then we stumbled across an old arcade games area. I'm not talking old like Virtual Cop, Daytona and Sega Rally. I don't mean nostalgic arcade games like Pacman and Space Invaders. These arcade games were made of wood and metal but had no electronic parts, apart from a few with flashing light bulbs, yes bulbs not LEDs.
We traded our show ride tickets for a handful of "old pennies" and proceeded to pump them into the slots of the machines. The arcade was a lot of fun, even though there was no hero levelling or cut-scenes, no quick time events or combo breakers. There was however a classic feeling of fun similar to the one that can be achieved by giving a kid a large empty cardboard box. We got a little hooked trying to bounce the pennies off the shelf into the collection tray and dwindled away our tickets buying more pennies in a vain attempt to win back the lost ones.
We headed to the large Bavarian drinking area. Mainly because it was heated inside and we were very cold. Thus the decision to purchase some Mulled wine was inevitable, and horribly regrettable. We both cupped our hands around the warmth of the mulled wine and took turns pulling faces best described by the word "Byerchk!" The mulled wine tasted like shit, actually it probably tasted better than shit, but was nonetheless disgusting. So we washed down our mulled wine with Steak Sandwiches.
Eventually it was time to head to the Ice Skating rink, so we lined up with the hundred or so others in our session and received our skates. My skates cut into my feet but they were tight around my ankles so we walked over to the edge of the rink as best as anyone who tries walking in skates can and found ourselves among the first people out to brave the ice.
I hadn't skated in a couple of years, last time was at Bendigo's rink where I managed to nearly break my ankle in the last five minutes of the day, and limped around for a fortnight afterward. So with some hesitance I skated out, found my balance, tried a dash of speed and weaved around the first lap to find Prue hugging the boundary ten metres out of the gate. So I grabbed her hand and we skated around hand in hand like a bunch of romantics until she found her balance again.
Then it got chaotic. They only sell a number of tickets so that there aren't too many people on the ice, the problem is there is obviously still a few too many people, a quarter of the people can skate, half of them are terrible skaters and the other quarter never take their hand from the rail as they wind around the loop of the rink for the entire hour session.
The good skaters duck and weave between the masses of terrible skaters, the terrible skaters freak out and fall over, then a good skater weaves to avoid the fallen skater and freaks out another terrible skater who jumps out of the way and into the path of another skater so they both fall over. Then they pick themselves up, wash, rinse and repeat.
Meanwhile on the sidelines the incapable skaters are moving hand over hand along the boundary rail until they reach someone leaning up against the rail taking a break. The incapables freeze and cause a butterfly effect traffic jam through the incapables behind them. The incapable looks pleadingly at the person leaning against the boundary, who then either skates forward to let them pass, or gives them an amused look and watches the incapable skater try to reach around them to get past.
Prue and I manage to skate the hour without any falls, despite being the victim (and occasional perpetrator) of a few collisions. Towards the end of the session the crowd started to leave and ice got choppier. I tried to remember how to do power slides while Prue did pirouettes like a Ballerina. Ice Skating in Hyde Park, London in Winter, a strange and unusual experience, but a hell of a lot of fun.
Before leaving the shop we watched as the doorway was cast in shadow and a massive beast of a man waddled through the door who kinda looked like a menacing trucker version of Stephen Fry. I was half expecting some kinda crazy shit about to go down, when all of a sudden the frightful looking man opened his mouth and a soft and gentle posh English accent wafted through the room. Lol, British people.
We had collected enough supplies that we wouldn't need to venture out on Christmas day. I was certain that we didn't have enough alcohol, yet Prue forcefully assured me that we "didn't need anymore alcohol you drunk bastard". Later the next day she was, naturally, proven wrong. So I was glad I'd inquired to the man in the shop about his opening hours. But lets not get ahead.
We bummed around for the most part of the day, needing a bit of a break from the constant go-go of the past days and months. But by mid afternoon the spirit for adventure (and boredom) overtook us so we headed off to Hyde park for a Christmas Eve outing at the fair ground set up in Hyde Park corner.
The Winter Wonderland has a Bavarian theme, you can buy all sorts of Englishised Bavarian treats. There are show rides, side show stalls, music and of course food and alcohol. During the day it is mostly occupied by kids and their parents, but at night, and especially on Christmas Eve the place is packed with young adult revelers, drinking mulled wine and singing "Last Christmas" over and over and over and... Seriously it gets played more often than a Nintendo DS on a School bus.
The main draw card for us was the ice skating rink. What better way to celebrate a winter Christmas than by ice skating outdoors in the middle of London's most famous park, right in the middle of the city itself. Unfortunately, everyone else had the same romanticised idea and there were no tickets available until the last session at 9pm. It was around 6pm so we had a few hours to kill.
We went on a couple of the rides, which were about as expensive as the Melbourne Show. One of the rides was a mini roller coaster that reminded me of the one at Luna Park and which made better use of a small space than a Swiss inventor.
Then we stumbled across an old arcade games area. I'm not talking old like Virtual Cop, Daytona and Sega Rally. I don't mean nostalgic arcade games like Pacman and Space Invaders. These arcade games were made of wood and metal but had no electronic parts, apart from a few with flashing light bulbs, yes bulbs not LEDs.
We traded our show ride tickets for a handful of "old pennies" and proceeded to pump them into the slots of the machines. The arcade was a lot of fun, even though there was no hero levelling or cut-scenes, no quick time events or combo breakers. There was however a classic feeling of fun similar to the one that can be achieved by giving a kid a large empty cardboard box. We got a little hooked trying to bounce the pennies off the shelf into the collection tray and dwindled away our tickets buying more pennies in a vain attempt to win back the lost ones.
We headed to the large Bavarian drinking area. Mainly because it was heated inside and we were very cold. Thus the decision to purchase some Mulled wine was inevitable, and horribly regrettable. We both cupped our hands around the warmth of the mulled wine and took turns pulling faces best described by the word "Byerchk!" The mulled wine tasted like shit, actually it probably tasted better than shit, but was nonetheless disgusting. So we washed down our mulled wine with Steak Sandwiches.
Eventually it was time to head to the Ice Skating rink, so we lined up with the hundred or so others in our session and received our skates. My skates cut into my feet but they were tight around my ankles so we walked over to the edge of the rink as best as anyone who tries walking in skates can and found ourselves among the first people out to brave the ice.
I hadn't skated in a couple of years, last time was at Bendigo's rink where I managed to nearly break my ankle in the last five minutes of the day, and limped around for a fortnight afterward. So with some hesitance I skated out, found my balance, tried a dash of speed and weaved around the first lap to find Prue hugging the boundary ten metres out of the gate. So I grabbed her hand and we skated around hand in hand like a bunch of romantics until she found her balance again.
Then it got chaotic. They only sell a number of tickets so that there aren't too many people on the ice, the problem is there is obviously still a few too many people, a quarter of the people can skate, half of them are terrible skaters and the other quarter never take their hand from the rail as they wind around the loop of the rink for the entire hour session.
The good skaters duck and weave between the masses of terrible skaters, the terrible skaters freak out and fall over, then a good skater weaves to avoid the fallen skater and freaks out another terrible skater who jumps out of the way and into the path of another skater so they both fall over. Then they pick themselves up, wash, rinse and repeat.
Meanwhile on the sidelines the incapable skaters are moving hand over hand along the boundary rail until they reach someone leaning up against the rail taking a break. The incapables freeze and cause a butterfly effect traffic jam through the incapables behind them. The incapable looks pleadingly at the person leaning against the boundary, who then either skates forward to let them pass, or gives them an amused look and watches the incapable skater try to reach around them to get past.
Prue and I manage to skate the hour without any falls, despite being the victim (and occasional perpetrator) of a few collisions. Towards the end of the session the crowd started to leave and ice got choppier. I tried to remember how to do power slides while Prue did pirouettes like a Ballerina. Ice Skating in Hyde Park, London in Winter, a strange and unusual experience, but a hell of a lot of fun.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Monopoly
My god it is getting hard to remember what happened two months ago. Remembering was the point of this blog in the first place, oh well, fucked that one up...Hopefully at some point we'll catch up to where our ordinary life starts again so I can just glaze over mundane bits weeks at a time.
Our second day in London we did some stuff and looked around and yeah yeah yeah... That's about all I have at the moment. Not really, just need a starting point and things tend to flow together after that, bear with me...
Breakfast... The Hostel we were staying in was pretty fantastic, we had booked a private room for the five nights while we were staying there, this meant we didn't have to climb into bunks in the dark, we had a nice and comfy double bed, and a bit of privacy for Christmas. The draw back to this being the four flights of stairs we had to climb.
Four flights of stairs may not seem like much, especially to us as we had become accustom to the Asian guesthouse style of building narrow buildings that always have the cheaper rooms up near the top. But at our hostel, an unknown ancient evil resided in the stairwell. By the time you reached the first landing your legs felt like lead, at the second landing a miserable plant sat wilting and dying, its life obviously drained by the negative energy inhabiting the stairs. At the third landing the stairs got steeper and narrower. The hike up the last two floors should have come with rock climbing gear.
In the morning we went down to breakfast, and hoped that we wouldn't have a reason to go back to our room for something. Breakfast was basic but very handy. Bread, butter, spreads, cereal, milk, tea, coffee, cheese and ham were all laid out for the taking. They even had Coco-Pops! Some of the people were making sandwiches for lunch from the breakfast spread, we weren't that organised and/or hadn't tired of the novelty of pub meals yet. There was a large well stocked kitchen in the hostel, so we made a mental note to buy some food and at some point start cutting costs.
Watered and fed, we were ready to head out and explore, unfortunately one of us (It was Prue!) found a reason to go back to our room, so with a sigh that resembled a whimper one of us (It was me!) dragged themselves up the dreaded evil stairway of doom and destruction...Then we went out and did some stuff and looked around and yeah yeah yeah... Damn! Need visual cues.
We headed down to Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square and then down to Trafalgar Square taking photos and wandering around with that stupid touristy look on our faces that screamed "fresh from boat" We had arrived on the set of a life size game of Monopoly, unfortunately we didn't have enough available cash to purchase any property, which meant we couldn't build hotels, and we struggled to find the way to pass go to collect our $200.00, or is it £110.00?
Cliches aside it was really amazing walking around the stunning architecture and landmarks. You couldn't help but feel that you had been there before, even though it is probably just from seeing it in a movie or on TV. Being in London really makes you feel like you are in the heart of the world, or at least one of the other main organs. It has a sense of importance about it, that makes you realise how much influence the place has over the rest of the world.
London is full of English people! Believe it or not they are everywhere, at first we were walking around thinking "Jeez there is a lot of English people around", then we realised, "Duh, it is England". Still the accents are hilarious. We find ourselves walking around listening to people talk and snickering about their accents. Especially the school kids, not the ruff looking ones that swear all the time, but the ones that obviously go to Private Schools and have etiquette tutors. They're very formal and civilised and you have to stop yourself repeating their conversation back in their accent, or people in white coats might chase you with nets.
We walked down past the fortress entry of Downing St, where I picked out a few easy roosts for a sniper to have a shot, then we went past Westminster Abbey, but it costs money to go inside so we decided to leave that for another day never. Then we marvelled at the iconic Big Ben, which is reasonably big, but could have been bigger in my opinion.
We half crossed the bridge to get a look at the Thames, which I learnt is pronounce "Tems", thus proving the point that English people have weird English. Worcestershire is "Woostashire", Leicester is Lester, Undies are Pants and Pants are Trousers.
On the way back we passed the Horse Guards who were doing their afternoon parade, which wasn't very parade like. The men lined up and stood very very still until one guy came strutting out, yelled at them and then looked each of them up and down before yelling at them again to march off in a neat line. Then he repeated it with the horses.
We found our way back up to Trafalgar square, where Prue discreetly excused herself to go buy me a Christmas present, so I went on one of the fair ground rides. The ride I went on was one of those spinny round upside down whirly things. But while I waited at the top for the opposite side to be loaded I had a great view of the skyline of London, which I got a photo of before being launched forward and around and around in spew inducing rhythm. Luckily the chili con carne I had at a pub earlier in the day was quite stable by this time.
Prue and I really wanted to go see a movie, especially Avatar. There are several cinemas in the Trafalgar Square area, but one incredibly shit thing about London is the price of Cinema tickets. For Prue and I to see Avatar in Trafalgar Square it would cost us £14.00 each. Twenty eight cussing dollars! Each! We weren't upset to find it was booked out anyway, and as the next show wasn't until after 7pm we decided to head back to the Hostel.
London's Double Decker buses aren't as awesome as I thought they'd be. They're better. Sure the old ones look cool with their rear entry platform and the weird nose, but they're slow and noisy. The modern ones are comfortable and umm... modern. After each stop a display shows the next station and a ladies voice announces the same thing. Strangely she sounds like a more British version of the Eve voice from Command and Conquer ("Our base is under attack!") that we have on Melbourne's modern Met Trains.
We made it back to the hostel and Prue braved the stairs, I couldn't be bothered so I asked reception about nearby cinemas. There was one closer to us that was a bit cheaper so I went into the lounge and used the internet to find out if Avatar was on. it was, and it started in 45mins. This meant I had to run up the stairs of death, grab Prue, and go. We made it to the Cinemas and bought tickets that were still quite expensive and with twenty five minutes to spare we realised we hadn't eaten dinner yet.
We legged it up to the McDonald's and had our first UK Maccas. Despite a few subtle differences it was much the same as home, the numerical value on the prices were almost the same, only here it is in pounds, which makes Maccas a cussing expensive option. At almost ten dollars for a meal each, it blew away any hopes I had of getting popcorn with the movie.
Avatar was pretty awesome, though it has nothing to do with traveling, I feel the need to mention that it was a great film, and I think we'll have to go and see it again in 3D before it finishes, it is still showing about ten times a day over here. We haven't been back to the cinemas since then. Our new local pub is haunted each night by an Asian dude who sells pirated DVDs of all the latest films. Sure it is illegal, but £14.00 cinema tickets should be illegal too!
But consider this; if we do not pass go and do not collect two hundred dollars, the least we ought to do is go directly to jail.
Our second day in London we did some stuff and looked around and yeah yeah yeah... That's about all I have at the moment. Not really, just need a starting point and things tend to flow together after that, bear with me...
Breakfast... The Hostel we were staying in was pretty fantastic, we had booked a private room for the five nights while we were staying there, this meant we didn't have to climb into bunks in the dark, we had a nice and comfy double bed, and a bit of privacy for Christmas. The draw back to this being the four flights of stairs we had to climb.
Four flights of stairs may not seem like much, especially to us as we had become accustom to the Asian guesthouse style of building narrow buildings that always have the cheaper rooms up near the top. But at our hostel, an unknown ancient evil resided in the stairwell. By the time you reached the first landing your legs felt like lead, at the second landing a miserable plant sat wilting and dying, its life obviously drained by the negative energy inhabiting the stairs. At the third landing the stairs got steeper and narrower. The hike up the last two floors should have come with rock climbing gear.
In the morning we went down to breakfast, and hoped that we wouldn't have a reason to go back to our room for something. Breakfast was basic but very handy. Bread, butter, spreads, cereal, milk, tea, coffee, cheese and ham were all laid out for the taking. They even had Coco-Pops! Some of the people were making sandwiches for lunch from the breakfast spread, we weren't that organised and/or hadn't tired of the novelty of pub meals yet. There was a large well stocked kitchen in the hostel, so we made a mental note to buy some food and at some point start cutting costs.
Watered and fed, we were ready to head out and explore, unfortunately one of us (It was Prue!) found a reason to go back to our room, so with a sigh that resembled a whimper one of us (It was me!) dragged themselves up the dreaded evil stairway of doom and destruction...Then we went out and did some stuff and looked around and yeah yeah yeah... Damn! Need visual cues.
We headed down to Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square and then down to Trafalgar Square taking photos and wandering around with that stupid touristy look on our faces that screamed "fresh from boat" We had arrived on the set of a life size game of Monopoly, unfortunately we didn't have enough available cash to purchase any property, which meant we couldn't build hotels, and we struggled to find the way to pass go to collect our $200.00, or is it £110.00?
Cliches aside it was really amazing walking around the stunning architecture and landmarks. You couldn't help but feel that you had been there before, even though it is probably just from seeing it in a movie or on TV. Being in London really makes you feel like you are in the heart of the world, or at least one of the other main organs. It has a sense of importance about it, that makes you realise how much influence the place has over the rest of the world.
London is full of English people! Believe it or not they are everywhere, at first we were walking around thinking "Jeez there is a lot of English people around", then we realised, "Duh, it is England". Still the accents are hilarious. We find ourselves walking around listening to people talk and snickering about their accents. Especially the school kids, not the ruff looking ones that swear all the time, but the ones that obviously go to Private Schools and have etiquette tutors. They're very formal and civilised and you have to stop yourself repeating their conversation back in their accent, or people in white coats might chase you with nets.
We walked down past the fortress entry of Downing St, where I picked out a few easy roosts for a sniper to have a shot, then we went past Westminster Abbey, but it costs money to go inside so we decided to leave that for another day never. Then we marvelled at the iconic Big Ben, which is reasonably big, but could have been bigger in my opinion.
We half crossed the bridge to get a look at the Thames, which I learnt is pronounce "Tems", thus proving the point that English people have weird English. Worcestershire is "Woostashire", Leicester is Lester, Undies are Pants and Pants are Trousers.
On the way back we passed the Horse Guards who were doing their afternoon parade, which wasn't very parade like. The men lined up and stood very very still until one guy came strutting out, yelled at them and then looked each of them up and down before yelling at them again to march off in a neat line. Then he repeated it with the horses.
We found our way back up to Trafalgar square, where Prue discreetly excused herself to go buy me a Christmas present, so I went on one of the fair ground rides. The ride I went on was one of those spinny round upside down whirly things. But while I waited at the top for the opposite side to be loaded I had a great view of the skyline of London, which I got a photo of before being launched forward and around and around in spew inducing rhythm. Luckily the chili con carne I had at a pub earlier in the day was quite stable by this time.
Prue and I really wanted to go see a movie, especially Avatar. There are several cinemas in the Trafalgar Square area, but one incredibly shit thing about London is the price of Cinema tickets. For Prue and I to see Avatar in Trafalgar Square it would cost us £14.00 each. Twenty eight cussing dollars! Each! We weren't upset to find it was booked out anyway, and as the next show wasn't until after 7pm we decided to head back to the Hostel.
London's Double Decker buses aren't as awesome as I thought they'd be. They're better. Sure the old ones look cool with their rear entry platform and the weird nose, but they're slow and noisy. The modern ones are comfortable and umm... modern. After each stop a display shows the next station and a ladies voice announces the same thing. Strangely she sounds like a more British version of the Eve voice from Command and Conquer ("Our base is under attack!") that we have on Melbourne's modern Met Trains.
We made it back to the hostel and Prue braved the stairs, I couldn't be bothered so I asked reception about nearby cinemas. There was one closer to us that was a bit cheaper so I went into the lounge and used the internet to find out if Avatar was on. it was, and it started in 45mins. This meant I had to run up the stairs of death, grab Prue, and go. We made it to the Cinemas and bought tickets that were still quite expensive and with twenty five minutes to spare we realised we hadn't eaten dinner yet.
We legged it up to the McDonald's and had our first UK Maccas. Despite a few subtle differences it was much the same as home, the numerical value on the prices were almost the same, only here it is in pounds, which makes Maccas a cussing expensive option. At almost ten dollars for a meal each, it blew away any hopes I had of getting popcorn with the movie.
Avatar was pretty awesome, though it has nothing to do with traveling, I feel the need to mention that it was a great film, and I think we'll have to go and see it again in 3D before it finishes, it is still showing about ten times a day over here. We haven't been back to the cinemas since then. Our new local pub is haunted each night by an Asian dude who sells pirated DVDs of all the latest films. Sure it is illegal, but £14.00 cinema tickets should be illegal too!
But consider this; if we do not pass go and do not collect two hundred dollars, the least we ought to do is go directly to jail.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
The Long Walk
After leaving our bags at with the hostel we decided not to waste our first day in the city. We headed back through the freezing streets and went back into the train station. We had thought about it, and decided that we would go to BUNAC (the company that we organised our visa’s with) and let them know we were here.
We consulted the huge and confusing tube map and figured out where we needed to go. We climbed on the circle line train and caught it to Edgware station and then changed to another circle line train that went the rest of the way past King Cross St Pancras to Farringdon. We swiped our Oyster Cards in their cute Ikea pouches and walked out of the station. It took us about 2.5 seconds to realise that we were completely turned around.
We’d heard people say that if you want to learn London don’t catch the tube. It turns out they were completely right. Travelling underground on a train plays havoc with your internal compass. We finally figured out where we had to go and turned left and headed up the road to find Bowling Green Lane. When we finally found it we went in and introduced ourselves to the girls in the office.
BUNAC has a great room filled with computers, printers, job boards and housing ad boards and we took it all in as they showed us around. We had decided to do our introduction talk with them after we came back from our holidays in Scotland and Europe. We partook in their free internet and then asked for a nice way to get down to Oxford St. We had been told there was some great shopping and we needed a few cheap basics, like clothes designed for hostile temperatures. The girl pointed out a shop called Primark and took the directions she’d given us as well as some maps of the central area of London. We’d killed an hour or so hanging around and BUNAC and it was even sunny when we headed out.
We walked for a little while and then realised that it was almost 1pm and we still hadn’t had any lunch. We came to a pub that looked fairly local and walked in to try out our first pub meal. In the end I chose the pie with vegies and chips and loved it. Drew didn’t have quite as much luck, but we were both happy to find that drinks were cheaper here (cheaper than Australia, not SE Asia). Drew had a beer while I had a Hot Chocolate hoping it would warm me up from the inside out. The sun might have been out, but you couldn’t even feel its warmth on your face. It was a most disconcerting feeling.
We finished our lunch and continued walking, following the directions till we found New Oxford St. We turned right and headed up a street that had a few office buildings and as we walked gradually more shops. We looked in the Carphone Warehouse (which doesn’t sell carphones, they do however sell mobile phones) and ended up heading to the old faithful Vodafone. We both picked up a sim and some credit and headed off.
The further along Oxford St we got the more crazy it got. There are hundreds of thousands of people all trying to shop there (Ok, it was three days before Christmas). I like shopping, but I’d never seen a crush like it. There are so many chain stores that by the time we found our way at the other end of Oxford St proper we had seen up to 6 of each chain, seriously!
We found the shop Primark that had been recommended to us and walked in to find a whole new world of cheap mass produced clothes. On the plus side compared to Australian stores they hadn’t seemed to have sacrificed quality along with the cheaper prices. We picked up some gloves and some long sleeve tops and after waiting in a line that wound half way around the store we escaped the craziness and made it to the Marble Arch corner of Hyde Park.
At this point we’d be walking for about an two hours and the sun was starting to head to the horizon, that if I’m completely honest it hadn’t gotten far from anyway. We walked across the park watching people walk their dogs, which fell into two categories; normal dogs and dogs wearing clothes that probably cost more than anything I was wearing. We smiled and marvelled at the craziness of finding ourselves walking across a snow covered Hyde Park in the middle of London when we’d been in the heat of Bangkok just 24 hours before.
On the other side of the park there was a winter wonderland that had a whole lot of rides and an ice skating rink. We decided that we’d come back and explore it more when we hadn’t be walking for two and half hours and didn’t have sore feet. We walked back towards Queens Park Gate which is the gate nearest the hostel we were staying in. By the time we made it home we were completely buggered. Our feet hurt and we didn’t want to have to move again.
We checked in and almost cried when we found out that we’d be staying on the 4th floor. The forth floor in a hostel that was in a old building in Kensington! That meant that the last flight of stairs was almost a ladder for servants only! Ah, our poor feet. We headed upstairs and practically fell onto the bed, after our bad nights sleep on the plane the night before and the extreme time zone change we were knackered.
Unfortunately it was still early, we’d promised ourselves to stay up until 9pm to adjust to the time zone. There was also the issue of dinner. We trudged back down the stairs knowing that meant we would have to go back up them later, and inquired at reception for local restaurants. The nearest pub was around the corner, a really nice old typical English pub with a slight air of snobbery given the neighbourhood. We ordered the Sunday Roast, which was dry and disappointing.
We headed back to the hostel and found a comfortable spot on the couches in the common room. Couches are pretty rare in Asia, where they tend to be made out of bamboo rather than big soft cushions. It was so relaxing to veg out in front of a TV and pretty soon we were nodding off. Once it was near enough to 9pm to make excuses to ourselves, we gathered up our spare energy and climbed the stairs to bed.
We consulted the huge and confusing tube map and figured out where we needed to go. We climbed on the circle line train and caught it to Edgware station and then changed to another circle line train that went the rest of the way past King Cross St Pancras to Farringdon. We swiped our Oyster Cards in their cute Ikea pouches and walked out of the station. It took us about 2.5 seconds to realise that we were completely turned around.
We’d heard people say that if you want to learn London don’t catch the tube. It turns out they were completely right. Travelling underground on a train plays havoc with your internal compass. We finally figured out where we had to go and turned left and headed up the road to find Bowling Green Lane. When we finally found it we went in and introduced ourselves to the girls in the office.
BUNAC has a great room filled with computers, printers, job boards and housing ad boards and we took it all in as they showed us around. We had decided to do our introduction talk with them after we came back from our holidays in Scotland and Europe. We partook in their free internet and then asked for a nice way to get down to Oxford St. We had been told there was some great shopping and we needed a few cheap basics, like clothes designed for hostile temperatures. The girl pointed out a shop called Primark and took the directions she’d given us as well as some maps of the central area of London. We’d killed an hour or so hanging around and BUNAC and it was even sunny when we headed out.
We walked for a little while and then realised that it was almost 1pm and we still hadn’t had any lunch. We came to a pub that looked fairly local and walked in to try out our first pub meal. In the end I chose the pie with vegies and chips and loved it. Drew didn’t have quite as much luck, but we were both happy to find that drinks were cheaper here (cheaper than Australia, not SE Asia). Drew had a beer while I had a Hot Chocolate hoping it would warm me up from the inside out. The sun might have been out, but you couldn’t even feel its warmth on your face. It was a most disconcerting feeling.
We finished our lunch and continued walking, following the directions till we found New Oxford St. We turned right and headed up a street that had a few office buildings and as we walked gradually more shops. We looked in the Carphone Warehouse (which doesn’t sell carphones, they do however sell mobile phones) and ended up heading to the old faithful Vodafone. We both picked up a sim and some credit and headed off.
The further along Oxford St we got the more crazy it got. There are hundreds of thousands of people all trying to shop there (Ok, it was three days before Christmas). I like shopping, but I’d never seen a crush like it. There are so many chain stores that by the time we found our way at the other end of Oxford St proper we had seen up to 6 of each chain, seriously!
We found the shop Primark that had been recommended to us and walked in to find a whole new world of cheap mass produced clothes. On the plus side compared to Australian stores they hadn’t seemed to have sacrificed quality along with the cheaper prices. We picked up some gloves and some long sleeve tops and after waiting in a line that wound half way around the store we escaped the craziness and made it to the Marble Arch corner of Hyde Park.
At this point we’d be walking for about an two hours and the sun was starting to head to the horizon, that if I’m completely honest it hadn’t gotten far from anyway. We walked across the park watching people walk their dogs, which fell into two categories; normal dogs and dogs wearing clothes that probably cost more than anything I was wearing. We smiled and marvelled at the craziness of finding ourselves walking across a snow covered Hyde Park in the middle of London when we’d been in the heat of Bangkok just 24 hours before.
On the other side of the park there was a winter wonderland that had a whole lot of rides and an ice skating rink. We decided that we’d come back and explore it more when we hadn’t be walking for two and half hours and didn’t have sore feet. We walked back towards Queens Park Gate which is the gate nearest the hostel we were staying in. By the time we made it home we were completely buggered. Our feet hurt and we didn’t want to have to move again.
We checked in and almost cried when we found out that we’d be staying on the 4th floor. The forth floor in a hostel that was in a old building in Kensington! That meant that the last flight of stairs was almost a ladder for servants only! Ah, our poor feet. We headed upstairs and practically fell onto the bed, after our bad nights sleep on the plane the night before and the extreme time zone change we were knackered.
Unfortunately it was still early, we’d promised ourselves to stay up until 9pm to adjust to the time zone. There was also the issue of dinner. We trudged back down the stairs knowing that meant we would have to go back up them later, and inquired at reception for local restaurants. The nearest pub was around the corner, a really nice old typical English pub with a slight air of snobbery given the neighbourhood. We ordered the Sunday Roast, which was dry and disappointing.
We headed back to the hostel and found a comfortable spot on the couches in the common room. Couches are pretty rare in Asia, where they tend to be made out of bamboo rather than big soft cushions. It was so relaxing to veg out in front of a TV and pretty soon we were nodding off. Once it was near enough to 9pm to make excuses to ourselves, we gathered up our spare energy and climbed the stairs to bed.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Chapter 6: London Calling
After a long and not great flight we flew into London through the clouds and rain. We walked off the plane and made our way to the immigration desks. We lined up and gave our passports to the guy at the desk and he let us into the country, we wanted to stand there and talk to him just to be able to speak English without having to battle language barriers. He obviously didn’t have the same yearning and even though our visas had already been active for about a month we were waved into the country. We walked down into the bag collection, found our bags and made our way to the Customs area.
It was at this point that we knew we’d like the UK. We walked up to a door that led to Customs and were waylaid by airport worker. He asked us where we’d come from and we said “Bangkok”, just assuming he was curious, he then waved us towards the EU arrivals lane. We looked at the sign saying that EU arrivals and Drew turned and asked “is Thailand a part of the EU?” in a laughing voice. The guy topped Drew by blithely saying “oh yeah, we annexed them years ago”. Laughing we headed through the door and again found ourselves on the outside of the airport immigration doors walking straight out into the crowd and into London.
We walked about 15 steps before I asked Drew where he’s put the paperwork about the hostel. He looked and me and said “I thought you printed out the details about where we had to go?” Bugger, after some scrambling we located a help desk, who couldn‘t help, as they couldn‘t locate our Hostel on their system (they didn‘t even have google). So we headed toward the trains where we found an internet café along the way. We had to wait until they were open as it wasn’t even 7am yet, but a short while later we had our Hostel’s address, a map of the tube and updated our face book status to say we’d arrived safely.
We headed down to the tube and bought both of us an oyster card. This is like Melbourne’s new ‘Myki’ except that it really works. You fill it up with pre-paid credit and scan it whenever you get on a bus or enter and exit a station, in most cases it is cheaper than buying a ticket, and much, much easier. We jumped onto the tube and headed into Gloucester Rd tube station.
We have used the word “surreal” quite a lot on our travels, mostly for lack of a better word. But at various points we reach a moment of self awareness that seems fitting to the word surreal, of course the train wasn’t made out of bacon and the scenery wasn’t upside down, but we found ourselves realising that we were in a completely different part of the world experiencing fantastic things foreign to our senses. As the train pulled out of the long tunnel of the tube and headed overground, we were presented with rows and rows of English houses, all identical to the next, but slightly varied from street to street. Vivid memories of every British television show came to us with a single thought of “Oh my god it actually does look like that?”.
We had travelled from Bangkok, 35 degree tropical heat with humidity nearing the full 100 percent. Now the landscape was buried in a thick layer of pure white snow, it covered the rooftops, the gardens, the fences and even covered the pipes running along the walls of the train line. Icicles hung menacingly from gutters and pipes and every single tree was a mere skeleton, devoid of any foliage and dusted with a layer of icing sugar like snow. We pulled in at the first topside station, with a beep the doors opened and we were smashed in the face with an arctic fist of air. It was cold outside.
We arrived at Gloucester Road and headed out of the tube into the cold morning air. We had dressed appropriately for the weather, but our tropical tanned bodies struggled to adjust and we trudged our way to the hostel muttering things about the cold while marvelling at the grand buildings surrounding us. We had arrived in London, no, we had arrived in the expensive part of London. Thankfully our hostel didn’t carry any of the air of snobbery of it neighbours, the building was as grand as any other in the street, but the atmosphere when we stepped through the door was laid back, relaxed and greeted us in an Australian accent.
It was at this point that we knew we’d like the UK. We walked up to a door that led to Customs and were waylaid by airport worker. He asked us where we’d come from and we said “Bangkok”, just assuming he was curious, he then waved us towards the EU arrivals lane. We looked at the sign saying that EU arrivals and Drew turned and asked “is Thailand a part of the EU?” in a laughing voice. The guy topped Drew by blithely saying “oh yeah, we annexed them years ago”. Laughing we headed through the door and again found ourselves on the outside of the airport immigration doors walking straight out into the crowd and into London.
We walked about 15 steps before I asked Drew where he’s put the paperwork about the hostel. He looked and me and said “I thought you printed out the details about where we had to go?” Bugger, after some scrambling we located a help desk, who couldn‘t help, as they couldn‘t locate our Hostel on their system (they didn‘t even have google). So we headed toward the trains where we found an internet café along the way. We had to wait until they were open as it wasn’t even 7am yet, but a short while later we had our Hostel’s address, a map of the tube and updated our face book status to say we’d arrived safely.
We headed down to the tube and bought both of us an oyster card. This is like Melbourne’s new ‘Myki’ except that it really works. You fill it up with pre-paid credit and scan it whenever you get on a bus or enter and exit a station, in most cases it is cheaper than buying a ticket, and much, much easier. We jumped onto the tube and headed into Gloucester Rd tube station.
We have used the word “surreal” quite a lot on our travels, mostly for lack of a better word. But at various points we reach a moment of self awareness that seems fitting to the word surreal, of course the train wasn’t made out of bacon and the scenery wasn’t upside down, but we found ourselves realising that we were in a completely different part of the world experiencing fantastic things foreign to our senses. As the train pulled out of the long tunnel of the tube and headed overground, we were presented with rows and rows of English houses, all identical to the next, but slightly varied from street to street. Vivid memories of every British television show came to us with a single thought of “Oh my god it actually does look like that?”.
We had travelled from Bangkok, 35 degree tropical heat with humidity nearing the full 100 percent. Now the landscape was buried in a thick layer of pure white snow, it covered the rooftops, the gardens, the fences and even covered the pipes running along the walls of the train line. Icicles hung menacingly from gutters and pipes and every single tree was a mere skeleton, devoid of any foliage and dusted with a layer of icing sugar like snow. We pulled in at the first topside station, with a beep the doors opened and we were smashed in the face with an arctic fist of air. It was cold outside.
We arrived at Gloucester Road and headed out of the tube into the cold morning air. We had dressed appropriately for the weather, but our tropical tanned bodies struggled to adjust and we trudged our way to the hostel muttering things about the cold while marvelling at the grand buildings surrounding us. We had arrived in London, no, we had arrived in the expensive part of London. Thankfully our hostel didn’t carry any of the air of snobbery of it neighbours, the building was as grand as any other in the street, but the atmosphere when we stepped through the door was laid back, relaxed and greeted us in an Australian accent.
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