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For the last 4 odd years I’ve enviously watched my younger brother Sam make numerous travel plans where he saves enough to get him to his first destination and then manages to wing his way around the world on exciting adventures. When my 25th birthday loamed, an over reactive quarter life crisis snapped me into finally booking some travel plans of my own. Unlike Sam, I studiously mapped out 3 months of jampacked travel (actually my travel buddy Tamsyn did most of the research but I did agree with everything), saved enough money on top of this to set myself up in Edinburgh afterwards and bought a bunch of travel friendly accesseries. A pathetically text book first time traveller.
Impressively I left NZ with 17kgs of luggage....suprising myself and my Dad who has often commented on the 20kgs I take away for 1 week holiday. Leaving NZ was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done so it’s acceptable to admit that I cried most of my leaving day. Boarding the flight I think the air hostess was impressed with my ability to match my pink tee shirt with puffy pink eyes, complete with mascara streaks that I didn’t
notice until halfway to Australia. I only perked up when the wine arrived and it took about 3 of the small bottles till I felt jolly again. Not so jolly when I stepped off the plane and realised I was boardering on drunk, luckily Kelly was there to sweep me up & take me home. I sat beside two Aussie business men on the plane and chatted away to them (subsequent to wine arrival) about my travels. They thought my accent was a “nice kiwi accent, soft and smooth, nothing like my daughter-in-laws mother from Remurewa”....hahahaha not sure if they still thought so after my few bottles of wine (and no it totally wasn’t a pick up line if anyone is thinking that!).
I had 5 days in Australia starting on the Gold Coast visiting some of my favourite friends. On the Saturday night we had a BYO dinner evening at a Thai restaurant that allowed you to bring beer as well as wine - a practice that NZ should adopt. Getting ready to go out I was horrified to realise that I only had 2 - at a stretch 3 - outfits that I could try on and
Crazy Pukekohe girls
really, you can't take us anywhere discard while getting ready (not to mention only 1 pair of shoes that I deemed inappropriate and wished I hadn’t packed). Thank god for the friends-must-share-clothes rule and Aimee’s wardrobe. At the dinner there were 16 of us in total which was a mixture of uni friends, highschool friends plus boyfriends and girlfriends. The evening began wonderfully civilized and we congratulated ourselves for acting our age. This lasted the length of dinner and after that we raged the casino bar with our fabulous air guitar moves and dancing up a kiwis-rule-the-dance floor storm.
Sunday we missioned out to Byron Bay and it poured with rain the entire time and I feared my transparent skin wouldn’t see the sunshine but when we got there the tan gods allowed a slither of sunshine. Byron Bay is beautiful and if I was a washed up hippy or surf wannabe I’d totally move there! We enjoyed the scenery, did some window shopping (the story of life for the next 3 months) and met a german guy who took us on a tour of the lighthouse. Speaking to him made me realise I need to slow my vocab down a few notches if I
want foreign people to understand anything that I say.
From Goldcoast I went to Brisbane to stay a night with my old flatmates Pots & Kim who scared me with domestication - having their own home, two cute dogs and a fairly well balanced routine. But we could still laugh about the good old days when we were all poor and living under the same roof. Then I jetsetted off to Sydney for a night and a day of catching up with more kiwis and a few cool Aussies from the Bendon office. For a girl who’s only ever ridden public transport in the form of the free Hilly bus that ran into town at University, I thought I did pretty well mastering public transport in Australia. I have found that two things come in very helpful - maps and breasts. The maps help decode misunderstood loud speaker announcements on trains and the breasts (covered of course, Mum don’t fret) or maybe better said as a smile - allow me to ask 20 questions, usually repeating things I’ve already asked. Maybe if their accent didn’t have such a twang I would understand better!
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Dan NZ
Daniel Keys
Is it realy you out there Kate?
Sounds like its all going way to smoothly! Im proud and your travel blogs primo! Belive in the power of boobs and you cant go wrong, good luck out there and remember where your from...Pukey