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Published: April 5th 2008
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Ba-bye Australia
Leaving Sydney behind Well, I made it safely to LA after a frantic last week in Australia. i didn't get to catch up with the people i wanted to through all the chaos so here's what I've been up to 😊
The flight was good once i finally left and my stretch of aero-god-induced luck continued after being upgraded to business class from Brisbane to Sydney...Out of the three or four spare seats on the plane, one was perfectly placed next to me so I could stretch out a bit.
Customs ran fairly smoothly given the rampant paranoia that is the order of the day here (we were told on the plane that we were not to talk or congregate in groups - fairly difficult given there were 500 of us in the space of a small tennis court!). The long walk from the plane to the terminal was littered with anti-terrorism propaganda and photos of George Bush which were a little offputting (!) and then we had a sniffer dog run through us and fingerprinting and photos were taken for ‘homeland security’.
I arrived at 6am on Sunday after leaving at 10am on the same day...weird. I'm staying about 100
The Chinese Theatre
Obligatory pic no. 1 metres off the Hollywood strip and the touting for business / attention / money is a bit aggressive and people don't smile much (unless they are hoping to become the richer half of a financial transaction). There is lots of star hunting to be done though - it's a bit like bird-spotting around here. Renee Zellwegger and George Clooney had the premiere of their new movie around the corner last night and my roommate came back with pics of herself with them.
LA itself is kind of grey and sparse and I was almost convinced for a large part of our trip from the airport to the city that they had just flown us around the ocean for 13 hours..changed a couple of street signs and plonked us back down where we started in Sydney. The landscape looked *so* similar. When we got to Hollywood I started to believe I’d actually changed countries but it still has that interchangeable ‘big international city’ feel to it - same brands, screeching siren soundtrack and rude people :S
Thankfully, the counterexample to the native rudeness was the local car park attendant who was working across the road from my hostel -
Jay. I came across him asking for directions to the bottle-o (or liquor store as I’ve been told I should call it.) I think he was worried about me walking the streets by myself so he offered a lift. I know traditional wisdom has it that it’s not wise to hop in the car with a stranger - let alone one met in a foreign city - and certainly not one met in a carpark! But somehow I knew I could trust him (especially given that I feared virtually everyone I’ve passed on the streets thus far this evening!) It turns out that he owns the parking lot, along with the nightclub next to it and a fleet of limousines. He built up these companies with his two brothers. Anyways, good to his word, he drove me to get some beer and then drove me back to my hostel. I went to his house yesterday - an amazing mansion with pool and jacuzzi overlooking LA - gorgeous!
I must admit it did make me a bit nervous when he kept driving on the wrong side of the road though! Crazy I tells you - these people are all backward!
Shoes, shoes, shoes
But which shoes should this Dorothy choose? Jay has also offered to take me clubbing as he doesn’t have to pay to get in anywhere but I’m not sure this Dorothy is up for LA nightlife just yet!
Aside from this it has been a fairly uneventful, dazed and jetlagged first two days. I've met some excellent people at the hostel and the beds are comfy. I'm staying at USA hostels in Hollywood and would recommend it to anyone. They are v professional and things seem to work but there's plenty of space for fun with at least 4 or so events and happenings for inmates every day.
I'm here for another week and plan to gorge myself on the worst of western culture until I'm sick so Quito will be a welcome change. I leave for Quito on Monday.
Off to Universal Studios today then I think I'm going to go over to San Diego for the zoo for a few days.
becxxx
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