The saga begins...

Welcome to the further adventures of the Wandering Gaijin. It’s time for another trip. For those of you that have spoken to me, you will know that the last 2 weeks have been a super crazy time, with packing up the house, moving house, cleaning the house, then trying to find time to pack my bags before leaving. But I’m not going to dwell on first world problems. It’s third world all the way from here, baby. So – the initial brief. I will be spending a month over in Europe, starting with 2 weeks in Turkey with Fran “Sparkles” Hynes and Jess “Shakira” Donaldson, who have been touring Europe for the past couple of months. After this, we will be heading to Scotland, where we will tour the highlands with Jenny McDonald, who is heading back home to celebrate her birthday. Once we have done that, we will be splitting up – I will be heading down into northern England and hopefully catching up with a few peeps that I have met along the way, then I will jet over to Paris for 2 days and catch up with Tommy K and Kate for a picnic at the base of the Eiffel Tower and other similar Parisian things. So, the epicness of this trip did start epically. As I have mentioned, moving house the weekend before you go overseas isn’t the best of ideas, so I only ended up getting about 4 hours the night before I left and then my flight didn’t end up leaving until 2.40 am. I opted to try to save a bit of money initially so I caught the train into the city and then the red bus out to the airport. It was the last flight of the evening, so the airport was deserted, and I was able to walk straight up to the counter and get booked in. Sweet! Once I was booked in and ready to head through to the departure gate, I had about a 2 hour wait. I was so bored that I even tried to charge my phone at a wall socket. Yay! The highlight of the wait… kind of… was a screaming kid that sounded like a dingo had got it. Fortunately the kid wasn’t screaming on the plane. The flight wasn’t really worth writing home about, as there is only so much that you can do when you’re stuck on a plane for 8 hours, but I did have the whole row of seats to myself which I thought would aid me in sleeping… although sleeping on planes is never easy. The plane took me to Kuala Lumpur where I had a one hour stop over before reboarding and flying to Dubai. For those of you that have read my last blog, you may remember that on my flight from KL to London I had a big fellow sit next to me, and I woke up with my shoulder in his arm pit. FORTUNATELY, this didn’t happen again, but I swear that the same guy was on the flight. And I think a bit of karma was calling, as he kept on being hit by the trolley that the hosties were pushing around. He he he. This time the plane was much more crowded, and I ended up sitting next to a large French lady and an English lady that seemed a bit nutty and far too energetic. I decided that I was going to make a financial new year resolution, and will watch 100 movies I haven’t seen before by the middle of next year. I have started off with John Carter and Haywire. I have never heard of Haywire before, it’s a Steven Soderberg film, and it is pretty bloody good. Check it out. So, this flight took us to Dubai, where it was 40 degrees… a big step up from the rather average weather that we’ve been having in Melbourne. I was hanging for a cigarette when I got off the plane, so managed to find a smoking bar, where I had a massive Heineken. Mmmmm. Went down so well. Although, the Heineken cost me the same amount as a 1 litre bottle of vodka from duty free. Still, it was worth it. There was a delay with the plane taking off, but once it was ready to go Captain Jimmy (I can’t remember his real name) said over the loud speaker “I apologise for the delay. We will get underway soon, but don’t worry folks, sit back and relax – we’ve got it from here.” We left about 20 minutes late, and still managed to get in 15 minutes early. You certainly did have it in hand, Captain Jimmy. On this flight I got to watch Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows. Another good one to add to the list of new movies. The flight itself was uneventful, except for a big fat guy that was talking on his mobile phone as the plane was about to take off. A lady sitting in the same row as him got up and was yelling at the hosties that the guy was on his phone, and even Captain Jimmy must have heard, because he made a special to turn off your mobile phone, you fuck wit. Well, I have paraphrased him a little bit there, but the other passengers on the plane stood up and told him to get off his phone. In several languages. Obviously fuck-wittedness has no language barriers. Despite the knob on his phone, the plane landed safely in Istanbul, where it was a balmy 30 degrees at 6pm. I met up with the guy that was scheduled to give me a lift to my accommodation, got there safely despite the crazy Turkish drivers and a stop off to pick up his brother. I was feeling a little bit crook at this point after spending 23 hours traveling on planes, so I had a quick shower, and remembered the “toilet paper goes where???” situation of Turkey. I grabbed a bite to eat at the little restaurant next to the hostel, and watched the street spruker constantly get distracted by girls walking past. At least he gave me an apple tea at the end. I’d forgotten how good Turkish apple tea was. I went for a little wander after dinner to the bank-o-mat (Turkish equivalent of ATMs), and since it is Ramadan at the moment there were big crowds out the front of the Blue Mosque. After the wander I headed up to the rooftop balcony to write this blog, while I wait for Jess and Fran to arrive, and try to think up some traveling names for them.** Ok, on day two, their names have come been created, as you will have seen earlier. I headed up and down from the balcony to the room to out the front of the hostel for the next hour, waiting for the girls to arrive. I got to a point where I was bored waiting for the girls, so I opted to have a tactical snooze. Murphy’s law kicked in there, as the girls arrived about 5 minutes after I lay down. There was much laughter and joviality, and I’m sure that the people in the adjoining room hated us. We adjourned to the rooftop for a couple of duty-free vodka drinks, had a good catch up chat, and called it a night at 2am. I will sign off here for my first day of traveling, and will keep you updated with the shit that happens when you’re overseas tomorrow. Hope you enjoy the rest of the blog!