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Published: November 28th 2007
606km The Long Way Round: Eight Flights, 21000km, Nine Days, and One Wedding Later
Hi Matthew,
you are cordially not invited to the wedding of your mum and dad.
Saturday 27th October.
Well, I certainly wasn't expecting that email from my dad, and it certainly made things complicated given that I received the news on the 18th. That gave me exactly nine days to. . . well, what can you do in nine days?
After five minutes Marjie noticed that I was blankly staring at my computer screen with an expression of dumbfounded stupidity gracing my face and she promptly pulled me out of my trance. After explaining the email to her I tried to make a decision: should I fly home for the occasion. Of course I wanted to be there for my dad, but two things were getting in the way. One was the logistical nightmare of trying to get out of Tibet and across to Australia at such short notice, not to mention being able to get back to Nepal in time for the trekking that I was going to be doing with my dad and brother the week after that (we'll get to that story in good time). The other issue was my big idea of traveling from Bangkok to London
There's No Place Like Home
My mate Lindsay relaxing in his backyard. This is the life that I've given up. . .
Also, thanks for the beers Lindsay.without flying, as this was certain to destroy that once and for all. Furthermore, I had been planning for years to travel by bus along the Friendship Highway from Lhasa to Kathmandu, it was one of the biggest things that I had been looking forward to and going home would rule it out for me. I had a lot of thinking to do.
All of this was of course forgetting one thing. The email had been pretty well definite that I was not even invited! What cheek! What kind of dad wouldn't invite his son, let alone specifically
not invite him. This required investigation. I hurriedly rang home and asked "am I really not invited?" until eventually I found out that I was invited, but just not expected. From that point on it was clear to me that I had to go home; I just had to figure out how to do it.
So, how exactly do you traverse a quarter of the globe twice in a week at short notice? The method I ended up with was flights from Lhasa to Chengdu, then on to Hong Kong and Brisbane before a fourth flight got me back home
Townsville's Strand
What a place to live! in Townsville a meager 34 hours after leaving my hotel in Lhasa. Going the other way was another 30 odd hours of transit which saw me passing through Brisbane, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok before I eventually made it to Kathmandu. If I had been intending on doing a tour of the world’s greatest airports then I was off to a good start, but to be honest, all I wanted to do was lie down and go to sleep. 21,000km of travel within a week, one taxi, one bus, two trains and eight planes was all it took. There was no question as to whether or not it was worth the effort; I got to go home for a holiday from my travels!
The exact moment when I realised that I was home came earlier than expected. As I snuggled into my seat on the plane to Brisbane the captain came over the intercom with the thick drawl of a Queenslander, “G’day there passengers, I’m your captain, Brian. Tonight we’re flying directly to Brisvegas.”
The Wedding
Immediately after touching down in Townsville (with its lovely 30 degree weather) I was whisked off to the buck’s party by
Pa
He was happy that day. my Dad. It was great to see him, and the thought of a proper Aussie meal and beer helped sway my mind, but at the time I was a little bit buggered from all the flying to properly party it up. Thankfully the party turned out to just be a collection of his mates from work having a Friday afternoon beer at the pub and everything sorted itself out. We did the obligatory “last night as a single man” activities: looking at pretty girls, leering at pretty girls, leering a little too intently at pretty girls, and all that junk before we finally headed home for bed.
It was at this point that I was faced with the realisation that I was expected to be driving home. Ordinarily this would not have been a problem, but after spending 10 months without a car in countries that drive on the opposite side of the road I was well and truly freaking out. It was like being in an alien environment again with unexpected dangers jumping out at you from random hiding spots as if they were deliberately trying to get you. However, once I actually got behind the wheel everything
The Happy Couple
Bride and groom at the pre-reception garden party. came flooding back to me and I drove home on auto-pilot like I had so many times before.
The next day dawned about an hour later than it should have thanks to an alarm which was still on Chinese time (and may still be for that matter) when my brother barged into the room and forced me up. I had wanted to be up early because there was no guarantee that any of my formal-ish clothes still existed or, if they did, that they were in any decent state of array. Thankfully I managed to pull out a neat shirt and pants which were in that semi-ironed throw away state where you only have to iron out two folds before they’re wearable and I was off and ready to go. It was going to be a fun day. For starters it was my Dad’s wedding, but then on top of that was the fact that most people didn’t know that I was going to be there.
Surprises are funny things; they always seem to surprise me more than those I’m pulling the trick on because people react to them in ways that I can never predict. Before Andrew
Peter and Karen
Good friends of mum and dad, as well as being one of my old uni lecturers. (my brother) and I arrived at our grandparent’s house to pick them I we laid bets on what their reactions would be. I was certain that my Nana would respond in the way that politicians do when you catch them off guard and would pretend as though she had seen it coming from a mile off. My Pa, on the other hand, was tipped to provide a goldfish-wall response of complete shock and confusion. Knocking on their front door, I stood a little to the side and out of view so that the shock wouldn’t be too great, but when Nana opened the door she didn’t notice me at all. After about four seconds of complete non comprehension I said my hellos which seemed to register with her, and then, she turned towards me and said “oh, hello Matthew, you’re home”. Well, she couldn’t have been much less surprised than that could she? My Pa on the other hand nearly had a heart attack when I knocked on his door and I don’t think he managed to say a great number of comprehensible words for the first minute.
The wedding was to be a small affair on the viewing
platform atop Castle Hill, Townsville’s iconic lump of red-rock which sticks up near the ocean. By a small affair I mean something in the order of fifty people as the invitation list seemed to have grown exponentially in the weeks leading up to the ceremony. Being Townsville, and Queensland, the weather could not have been more perfect with cloudless blue skies, azure waters and a comfortable breeze breaking up the heat. It would have been a great day to be at the beach and as we looked down on the city and the bay it reminded me of everything that I love about my childhood home. To put it bluntly, the weather is so good in Townsville that you get bored of it and stop appreciating it. All of the reasons why I left home were forgotten as I looked across at our perfect tropical island and our perfect tropical beaches (the fact that I hadn’t seen a beach since April may have been playing with my feelings a little).
The ceremony itself could not have been better as my Dad bravely quoted Van Morrisson while wearing a pink shirt and pink tie and Christine induced jealousy in all
present women. And then the party started!
Home for Three Days: A List to be Fulfilled
Ten months away from home, all of which was spent in Asia. After such a time I was most definitely craving a number of home delicacies. The meat pie and cappuccino in Brisbane airport were a good start, the rare eye-fillet at the reception got things going well, but after the wedding things got even better.
I headed directly from the reception to my mate’s house (a taxi fare of 30 kuai in China transferred to a $30 one in Australia, ouch) and found out that he was heading out to see a band play that night. It turned out that on the one weekend that I was home a band that I’ve wanted to see for years finally made it up the coast to Townsville! Within in a couple of hours I was drinking Aussie beers, jumping up and down being stupid with two of my oldest mates, listening to Regurgitator live, and generally living it up like I used to.
The following night was set to be my “enjoy home comfort evening” which translates to “pints of
Guinness and a steak at my local pub”. Surprisingly I managed to get about 15 friends turn up, including my mate’s new baby, for an evening of catching up and general shenanigans. It took approximately seven minutes before I got bored of telling my future travel plans, they got bored of telling me about work, and we all degenerated into the old conversations which revolve around making jokes at each other’s expense. I was caught completely off-guard as I had lost the ability to think of comebacks after having been spared from Australian conversations for so many months. It essentially turned into one big “pay out on Matty” evening which was nice; I’d missed that.
Steaks, fish and chips, beers, sunny weather, friends and family. I enjoyed three days of luxury at home. I even managed to find time to stroll along the beachfront breathing in the clean, salty air wafting across the bay. I enjoyed home so much that I was forced to ponder the big question “do I want to live there again?” Thankfully though my mind was set: as great as Townsville is to visit, and as jealous I am of my friends simple and organized
lives, I don’t think I could ever live there again. It would soon get boring and I would stop appreciating all the things which make it a beautiful city to visit.
Brisvegas Reverse Surprise Party
On the way out of Australia, as I headed on to Nepal, I stopped in Brisbane for two days so that I could see my friends that lived there. Paul (featured in some Hong Kong journals a while ago and soon to be seen in India) organised a party under the pretense of his “going away” and despite the oddity of it being held mid-week, the date being changed with only two days notice, and the fact that Paul wasn’t leaving till a month afterwards, he managed to attract all of my mates along for a Vietnamese dinner.
I met Paul at his office and was waiting in the reception area (reading English language newspapers for the oddity value) when Jeff (my best mate that featured in several horrible beard photos in my January journals) arrived. Jeff thought that he was just going to wait for Paul to finish work and Paul directed him to the seats where I was enjoying
an article on Pakistan (I didn’t know that Jeff was coming to the office). As Jeff approached I looked up from my reading and broke into one of those uncontrollably embarrassing smiles which stopped Jeff in his tracks. Nearly shouting a word which definitely should not be shouted in an office, Jeff practically fell apart then and there. It was a good start to an evening which very quickly spiraled out of control.
The reverse surprise party (a party where I jumped out from behind things and yelled surprise as everyone arrived) went off perfectly, even though Australian Vietnamese restaurants are more Chinese than anything, and we all stayed up well past our bedtimes catching up on everything from this year. I guess I’m lucky being able to get the “home fix” halfway through my trip. Being in Brisbane was wonderful because I got to enjoy hundreds of little things that I haven’t been able to get overseas. Things like proper coffee, clean streets, Italian food, proper beer, the Theater (I saw a play when I surprised Jeff’s sister) all combined to remind me of why Australia rocks. The only catch was that it was expensive.
I spent
my last day with Jeff and Paul, trying to make the most of being around friends (Jeff even introduced me to the girls at his office) before I headed back out into the unknown. I wasn’t sad to leave Australia again, I was happy to have been there as long as I was.
Twenty-four hours later, while I was waiting for my last plane to take-off, the only thought in my head was along the lines of “I hate planes, I want to be in a backpacker hostel drinking a beer with a random Swedish/British/Mauritian traveler hearing stories of far flung places.
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annika
non-member comment
nostalgia
Ah, Matty, I'm so glad to see you getting nostalgic over Townsville... and finally admit that there are multiple things there that are worth living there for!