Bangkok, Sydney and the great city of Melbourne

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When I got to Bangkok I had three goals: Do my laundry, go on this supposedly great cycling tour and go to the biggest hangout/party street for backpackers: Khao San Road. Spoiler alert: It didn't work out the way I had planned it :p

So after a short night I set out to achieve my first goal: finding a place to do laundry. I walked around for a couple of hours and even went back to the hostel half way through to google "cheap laundry service Bangkok". When I finally found the cheapest one, they told me that they were gonna be closed the next day. So I would have had to pay extra for same day service and with that added it would have cost me almost 15 euro's to do one load of laundry... So I did not do laundry in Bangkok.

To up my mood a little I went to get a massage, which was really great! It cost less that nine euro's for an hour long massage. She used all these different techniques, including one where she used some kind of wooden stick to apply pressure on some parts on the bottom of my feet. Quite interesting, but it felt nice 😊

That night I went on a cycling tour around Bangkok, which to be honest was a bit disappointing. There was some kind of celebration going on for their president and our guides thought it was a good idea to join in on that. We couldn't really see any of the action and afterwards we just got stuck at this intersection for more than an hour, because of the massive amounts of people attending it. In the end I didn't really feel like I'd seen anything super special and I felt like I could have spend my money way better. So that was goal number two down the drain.

After that I wanted to go to Khao San Road. But for some crazy reason this celebration for the president meant that it was a so called "dry day", which means: No alcohol. NO ALCOHOL? What kind of celebration is that? In Holland we start drinking at twelve in the morning on King's Day, but in Thailand they refrain from it all together. And since Khao San Road without alcohol is just not really the same, I decided to skip it all together. Bye bye goal number three.

As you can imagine I was pretty fed up with Bangkok by now, so i just decided to buy a bunch of beer in the store and get drunk in the hostel on my last night there. Luckily there were two Americans who were happy to join me and we just stayed up drinking until one of them had to go to the airport at five in the morning.

The next morning it was already time to check out. And after breakfast I headed to the airport to fly to the next continent: Oceania! To be more specific: Australia. And to be even more specific: Sydney. On the flight there Thailand decided to give me a last kick in the ass, by not having any veggie option for dinner. But I could get an extra, rock hard bread roll. I'm lovin' it.

Anyways, on to happier things: The land of Oz was waiting for me 😊 I got to my hostel really early and luckily my bed was already available when I got there. We had flown through the night so I really needed a little nap. After that I had breakfast/lunch and did some groceries. Then I decided to just go crazy and take another short nap before dinner. After dinner I drank some wine with a French guy and then we wanted to go to a bar that was right next to the hostel: The Scubar. The French guy tried to smuggle his wine in. But he got caught, so they wouldn't let him in. So I just went in by myself and befriended a local named Reece. I spend the rest of the night dancing and drinking with him and this friends, which was really fun. I told him I really wanted to go to the beach the next day. So he offered to pick me up the next day to take me to one of the better beaches in Sydney.

So the next day we went to this really nice beach, where the water was super clear. We hung out there until it started to get a bit cold, and then went back to his place where we played some games with his housemates. Around six I went back to the hostel, where I made myself some dinner and finally did my laundry. I went to bed quite early, cause the next day it was already time to head to my next and final destination for a while: Melbourne.

That was about two and a half weeks ago now, and so far it's been really great. I'm not gonna describe every day, but I'll try and give you guys a little insight of my life here 😊

So the first night I realized, again, how small this world can be, cause I ran into Andrew! I'd met him about three years ago, when I was living in Lithuania. We knew we'd both be in Melbourne around the same time, but it turned out we stayed in the same hostel! He's from Tennessee and he'd been travelling with another guy from America: Kiev from California. Yes, Kiev, like the capital of Ukraine.

Ever since then we've been hanging out with the three of us a lot. We drink massive bags of cheap wine a lot, better known as goon. By massive I mean four liters, and by cheap I mean eleven Aussie dollars. So yeah, that's cheap. Especially if you take into account that a beer will easily cost you nine or ten Aussie dollars in a bar. We've also had dinner at this really great Indian place a couple of times. They offer all you can eat for 6,50! You can't really chose what to eat, you just get a plate of food :p but it's good food and it's always vegetarian 😊 And a couple of days ago we went on this crazy Christmas even pub crawl, which took us to five bars all through Melbourne. And after the last stop we called two girls from England who we'd met at the hostel. They turned out to be at this really cool rooftop bar nearby, so we joined them there and had such a great time.

Besides going out I spend a lot of time trying to find a job. If you want to work in a cafe or restaurant here, you have to get a certificate called RSA, which is short for Responsible Serving of Alcohol. After taking the most obvious and boring four hour class ever, I got my RSA and could start my job-hunt properly. I printed out a bunch of CVs and went around some fun bars. Because I'm only going to be here for about seven weeks, a lot of places said they couldn't give me a job. But a lot of them said they'd call me if they needed anyone for a couple of nights... So I also started replying to adds on this website called gumtree. Through this I found a job working for a company that organizes lots of events in and around Melbourne! I'll have my first day on new years eve, so I don't really know how great it is, but the guy who called me seemed really cool and we had a nice little talk. So I'm confident this will turn out great.

In the meantime I've also started working in the hostel where I live! I make beds and clean bathrooms 16 hours a week for free accommodation. And since that was the think I spend most of my money on at that moment, I was quite happy with that. And the people that work at the hostel are really fun. Most of the reception peoples are locals and I live in a room with three others who also work for accommodation. One from Canada, one from England and one from Germany. The hostel has a really great location too. It's in the city center, near one of the biggest train stations. And there's a nice park nearby as well, which is along the river that runs through Melbourne. So I sit in the grass along the water sometimes, reading a book and enjoying the sun 😊 And other days I have off, I spend at the beach if the weather is any good. Which is not always easy to tell here. We've had a couple of days of 40 degrees, followed by days with some rain and a high of 17 degrees. Pretty weird.

I also spend some time with Niki and Matt, who I also met when I was working in Lithuania. They are a couple who are original from a different city near Melbourne, but moved here some time ago. So they know all the good places. They took me out to this really cute festival once and I've gone over to their apartment to hang out and watch a movie. And after we went to this great Mexican restaurant. Really nice to be able to spend time with them again after such a long time😊

I've also been hanging out with a friend from back home: Tamor. We spend last summer working at the same beach restaurant in Den Haag (The Hague) and both decided to go to Australia. Turns out we're both in Melbourne for now! He lives with a couple of other Dutchies in this really great house, a bit north of the city center. But the best part is they have a pool! So on Christmas we had a really fun pool party over there. They have a big BBQ, so everyone just brought in food and drinks. It was a cool group of people and we had a great time. And I hope you guys aren't tired yet of this small world thing: Cause in this house there is a girl who works on the same beach as us. Which is how Tamor ended up staying there in the first place. But I'd never met this girl, even though we probably spend loads of time in very close proximity of each other over the last summer. So yeah that was pretty funny.

So that's kind of my life right now. Hope this job turns out to be as great as I think it is 😊 and besides that I have some little trips planned to go down the Great Ocean Road and to go see the Penguin Parade on Philip Island. So stay tuned for more fun adventures 😉

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