Made it to Oz - Melbourne

We made it - Australia!!

After removing the upsettingly friendly woman from my shoulder we left our 4th plane behind and headed towards the dreaded quaratine! Dreaded because we had half the thai jungle hiding in asorted areas of our baggage. Sure enough they took a number of leaves out of our books and gave us a kick up the ass but the tea and chopsticks made it through and our real backpacking adventure began.

We made our way to St Kilda after the recommendation of a friend we met on our first day on koh san road who lived there. We stayed in the Barkley Hotel, our first hostel, in an 8 bed dorm room. Upon our arrival to the room after a killer day of travelling and our first experience of the ridiculous system of checking in times and what not we met Ben and Stuart who were to be our room mates. We checked out Acland street and went for a pint in the bar and I love Australia!!! There was apparently a quiz which never happened but we did met 2 seamingly nice ladies who convinced us to take a short walk to another hostel nearbye. Unfortunately they turned out to be money grabbing whores and while standing at the bar staring at a much finer specimen we totally mugged them off in favour of a cheaper night. Despite this the party was on and it turned into an open mic night in which I took part with a rendition on Newton Fawlkners 'People should Smile More'! Epic! Then while practising 'Sexual Healing' in the bathroom a familiar face was staring at me, it was Chris the barman from Ashridge - what a small world!!! The open mic turned out to be not so open and we were entertained by a single, talented, irish man while chatting to Chris and his friends, one of which was a girl called Carly who we somehow managed to adopt. First night in Melbourne was destined to be a good one and so on the advice of the barmaid we made our way to Tongue and Groove (a late night club) - awesome! Unfortunately she obviously wasn't that impressed with us as it was gay night, perfect! We got as much enjoyment out of the cheap booze and enormous trannies as possible before hitting the sack.

The next day we had some how managed to arrange to meet up with Carly for a tour of the city centre. We eventually unravelled the tram system, validated our tickets and caught the 96 in to the Melbourne. We wondered around the Milton Keynes like grid of streets in search of a replacement for my broken flip flops with very specific criteria in mind. Throwing caution to the wind I purchase a pair of massively reduced designer flip flops from Energie - they looked pretty. We stopped for a BK and found ourselves in the middle of Hitchcocks 'The Birds' with a swarm of feathered aviators circeling our Whoppers inside the 'restaurant'! After traversing all the streets of Melbournes city centre in some magestic random fashion without even a thought for ther CHinese Postman we made our way to the tourist information centre to see what other delights this city had to offer. My God! There was a lot of information there! Like some posessed travelling Golem I snaffled as many of the booklets as possible ending up with a comprehensive guide to about a hundred places we would never have time to visit! Books books books! Luckily one of the books was about the precincts of Melbourne and gave us a focus for the rest of the afternoon.

After narrowly missing death by angry tram conductors - seriously I know it took us a while to work it out but did they really need 3 grumpy old men shouting at us to get us on the right tram. No. - we made our way to Chapel Street Precinct were I gave a running commentry from my newly acquired 'precious' book. We were enjoying the so called village vibe and the funky shops when we stumbled acros 'The Jam Factory' - how exciting! Upon entry it seams I may have pushed and already suicidal securicor man over the edge by asking him where the jam was before realising that the Jam Factory was not actually a premisis for the creation of jellified sugar and fruit but, was in fact an amusement arcade with cinema, cafes and a like - oops. We amused our simple minds for some time with a bent mirror before drinking some smashed up fruit and veg before finishing our tour with the market, which was closed. Upon enquiring about the closed nature of the market we were told that it was 'only open on tuesdays and thursdays' - thats wonderful and all, but is bloody tuesday! She forgot to mention that everything in this sodding country seems to close down at 4pm so they can work on twanging up their accent so they all sound like they've swallowed a dogs chew toy! - not happy. Apres this catasrophy Ed's tour took a turn for the worse on the way back to the hostel when 'the map' decided that 500m was infact a few k's! Despite assuring my clients the walk would do them good they were not happy with me when we returned to the Barkley.

Upon re-entry to the dorm room we met with Cam, Sam, Tam (one of those), an australian!! from Perth!? Stuart, the extremely camp, 6 foot blond, tanned, definately gay guy assured us that Tongue n Groove was not a gay bar and that it was $2 pints and $4 basic spirits - you don't need to tell us twice! He had done us proud and when you take into account the quality of the company he keeps he's got to be my favourite maybe gay almost complete stranger. The booze was flowing and we had a great night despite ruining my new shirt attempting to rival some pro dancer with my one dangerous dance move - do not roll on the floor in that club! As if boogying to the early hours and mistaking purchasing shit loads of vodka and orange at the fictional end of happy hour was not enough the walk home was far from uneventful.

Although fairly hazy the pictures don't lie and that night Adrian, Carly and I managed to aquire not only a pram but a trolley as well and somehow managed to avoid encarseration using them as chariots of booze fuelled glory down the middle of the road at 5am! Once the novelty and deminissed I carefully selected some crisps from the garage and we sat under a tree. Adrian did his best monkey impression before we were approach by a vagrant. He wanted some money but I offered him a crisp instead. F*ing fraud had a packet already so I negotiated a crisp exchanged, pleased to find my choice superior to that of the hobo's, sadly the same can't be said for Stu's brunette friend's choice.

It was time for some hardcore sleep and I must have been very tired to sleep through a 6 foot blond bimbo standing legs a kimbo on my top bunk bed bashing on the room above's window scream a wailing drunken jib-a-jabber. You may think I'd have been a little upset about missing out on this through unconsciousness until you learn that said bimbo was infact Stuart who under the cloak of too much alcohol turns into a raving lunatic! - praise my self induced coma!