clo_again

I am in Dubai! After a long, long bumpy flight that I mostly tried to sleep through because turbulence? Least comforting thing ever. We got over it in time for a pretty pink and gold and blue sunrise but I'm hoping it's used up the turbulence quota for my next flight (half the length hurrah!).

I didn't cry in the airport. Well, I sniffled through customs and during takeoff because they turned the lights off and I felt a little less of a crazy person when no one could see me. I miss Australia and I only left like fifteen hours ago; for the last four weeks I've been all "home! home! yay!" and now I'm all "Australia..." *sadface* Most. Indecisive. Person. Ever. Had a lovely last day with chickybee32 and irradiatedsoup in Melbourne though. <3

I'm so glad I had the flights the other way around this time though, with 14hr first and 7 last, because I so don't think I could face fourteen hours on a plane right now. Seven's enough and I'm hoping I can sleep at least a few of those because I'm in that zone of overtired blankness which is oh-so-not fun and may lead to me walking the wrong way when I get back to Manchester. I hope my mother's there waiting and I'm not left to wander aimlessly. Ngh.

I am looking forward to my own shower though. And my room. And Casper. And Harry II with Photoshop. In like, nineish hours! It's awesome, except it would be more awesome if it was now and not all that time away.

Oh look, the Good News Week site won't load the episodes for me anymore. Kind of what I expected but it still sucks. :( I hope they upload the podcasts faster than they have been doing or I'll be constantly bugging mayakitten for my Paul McDermott fix.

Okay, they're boarding. See you in like nine hours.

I'm going home tomorrow (but I don't get home until the day after! Fun times!). *sadface* It's close enough for me to check the weather for when I land on Friday (it's barely 15 degrees over the next few days; I was expecting at least up to the twenties from what I've been hearing about crazy weather back there wtf?) and my 'rentals want my flight details and you know, I have less than no money left so it's good I'm going, and yes I know I've been complaining about hostels and repacking my backpack for the forty millionth time but... that was when I wasn't two days from going home. There's still stuff I haven't bought! There's still stuff I haven't done! Except the Rod Lave arena tour which we're planning to do Thursday as one of my Last Day Things so I can giggle at the locker rooms and spend too much in the little shop (I don't know if they have a little shop but I'm guessing they do. If backpacking has taught me anything, it's that everywhere will have a little shop).

irradiatedsoup we're planning on heading in for the tennis centre tour at 1pm, then do the acquarium after (the tennis tour should finish around 2:15-2:30pm) so you can come do the tennis tour with us or just the acquarium or whatever. :) I have my phone but don't have any credit left, so let me know on the interwebs tonight or just text me where you are tomorrow and we'll come find you.

And that'll be it.Which is weird but you know, home will be nice. And I'm only there a week before I head to Newcastle & London anyway, so it's not like I'll have time to get bored. It's just oh, Australia. Why do you have to be so far away?

But anyway right now I have some time to kill so have That Icon Meme, gacked from kindoftrouble:
( icon meme! )


If you want me to pick some of your icons, you might be waiting until Saturday because tomorrow night I'm spending almost twenty-four hours travelling and then at least eight sleeping that off. I won't have forgotten! It's taken me five days to finish this post though. Um. Maybe make that Sunday.

Later I have to pack for the last time. Mmmm, that cannot be over soon enough.

Oh Paul McDermott, I wish you'd never left the UK. We would've loved you! Except uh, maybe not some of the girls in that video. But the rest of us!

Alice Springs quickly gets dull. I'm back exactly where I was for three hours this morning, sitting in a corner of the computer room where there's a plug socket, downloading Primeval and watching Paul McDermott on Youtube. You'd be surprised at how much of my trip that describes.

...Or, looking back at my LJ entries, maybe not.

Oh holy crap, THEY UNDRESS A GUY IN THE FRONT ROW. That's both hilarious and terrifying. Suddenly being in the front row for a Derren Brown show seems pretty tame. Oh my god.

IN THINGS THAT ARE NOT PAUL MCDERMOTT-RELATED:

The only hoodie I could find in any of the many souvenir shops here (pretty much the only shops open on Sundays; JayJays was closed, dammit) was a Bondi Lifeguard one, which is pretty cool because I wanted one in Sydney but I was still being careful with money back then (hah hah did that not last). The only minor, tiny, infintesimal problem was that I want it to wear on the next three days hiking in the outback, which is mostly some shade of orange... and the hoodie is white.

You can see how this might end in the terrible destruction of a new hoodie, right?

I still bought it. It's bloody freezing and it was the only thing I even remotely liked in about seven shops. Still cost me too much (I actually think the ones in Sydney might've been cheaper -_-) but it's cold dammit. Of course, I like it so much that now I'm thinking of keeping it safely in my bag and being cold rather than coming back Thursday with it tie-dyed orange but I rather suspect that resolution will only last until tomorrow when I have to get up in the freezingness of 5:30am.

I say again: this bloody great rock? So better be worth it.

I am in Christchurch Airport. It's 4:32am. Kind of proud of myself for actually getting out of bed, making my shuttle and getting here in plenty of time. There's a queue a mile long that I have to join in a minute but it's going down pretty quick so I'm watching everyone else stand there for a bit until it's shorter.

I don't know if it's my laptop or the crappy airport internet (first fifteen minutes free only, wtf) but this is slow and freezing and I keep having to stop to wait for the cursor to catch up. Hm.

This is my last post from New Zealand. *sadness* Not ever-ever because I will come back but for the forseeable future. Not that I can afford to be here any longer with all their souvenirs...

Okay my queue has gone. Off to catch a plane. BE READY AUSTRALIA (again)! ;)

Oh good grief self, ENGAGE BRAIN BEFORE READING FLIST so that when something has obviously been hacked, you do not click the link.

Thankfully my brain did in fact engage about a milisecond after I opened the tab and I closed it before it even loaded but jesus, this is the second time. I need Norton AntiInternetStupidity installed in my brain.

By the way sarahtales appears to have been hacked. Don't click anything, just to be safe. Or you know, YOU PROBABLY ALREADY KNEW THAT.

I'm amazed I can be even let out alone sometimes, I really am. McDoofus.

~

My Chinese food was excellent and also huge, so I'm thinking I'll take the leftovers with me for dinner tomorrow. More money to spend on souvenirs in Christchurch (except I really shouldn't. Eh)!

Good News Week is so good that I have four minutes of it left and I've stopped watching it to do other things so it doesn't have to be over. There should be another podcast uploaded by tomorrow, assuming there's an episode on tonight but I have no idea what kind of internet I'll have in Christchurch so I may have to wait. Somehow this translates to me withholding the last four minutes from myself.

...I don't know either.

My hostel is really cold. I do like it but there is no heating. I think tonight is a thermal-underwear to bed night, which I thought we'd moved past by now. So much so that I sent my thermal leggings home in the box I posted last week. Yeah, regretting that.

Tomorrow is my last day on Magic bus. That makes me kinda sad, because it has been an awesome way to get around New Zealand. I liked it so much that I went there, did that, BOUGHT THE T-SHIRT :D (in an ideal world that would have a picture of me wearing my Magic t-shirt which I amn, in fact, wearing now. I don't care enough to actually take the picture and upload it right now. It's not a perfect world.)

I've now put off exhausting my supply of Good News Week for as long as possible. Back to my last four minutes! (How can you tell I have good internet here? Because I'M SPAMMING YOUR FLIST WITH POSTS, mwahahahaha!

:D)

My hostel here in Dunedin does not have crap wireless internet. It, in fact, does not have wireless internet at all. When I asked at reception I was directed "go out, down to the lights, turn right and the common room is twenty metres/minutes on your left". I didn't catch whether she said metres or minutes and, on reaching what I assumed to be the correct set of lights (I arrived here at 1pm this afternoon; at 1:10pm I got on a minibus to do a wildlife tour and only just arrived back), I couldn't see anything that looked promising to my right. I could however, see a McDonalds to my left. In Sydney definitely, the McDonalds had free wireless and I thought in other places too.

So I'm in McDonalds. Wireless yes, free not so much. Still cheaper than my Queenstown hostel though, I think. I rather suspect I'll be back here tomorrow morning for a coffee and then again in the evening because I have nothing to do tomorrow and I was kind of hoping to spend it hanging around the internet and the rest of it in a cafe somewhere as the weather is appalling. I was going to head to the cinema across from my hostel tonight to see Star Trek again but now I'm thinking I should head back and watch Skellig, which I downloaded at Easter and still haven't watched, and save the cinema to kill some time tomorrow. Dunedin so far is prettyish but just driving around here in the bus has left me with the distinct impression that I'll get lost if I just wander. Also doesn't help that my hostel doesn't have maps. Why my hostels seem to be degrading in helpfulness and facilities the further south I get, I don't know (Dunedin has like 120,000 residents so it's not like I'm in a backwater) but there you go. I'm staying in the YHA in Lake Tekapo on Monday though and they've yet to let me down on internet so hopefully I'll be able to download Good News Week then. And then I'm back in Oz, and then Alice Springs and you know, I just might be able to watch one damn episode on an actual television before I go home. BUT PROBABLY NOT. Not with the way my GNW luck is going. I'm just glad they have the podcasts up for free at all though, since the website doesn't seem to load the episodes properly outside of Oz. *mourns*

I watched my last unwatched episode last night though and I'm so, so glad I saved it until last because it was the one where Amanda Palmer (I was like HAI NEIL GAIMAN'S FRIEND YOU ARE AWESOME :DDD) did a table dance on Paul's desk and he couldn't speak for a minute or so after. I now heart on Amanda Palmer so much. Remind me to look for Who Killed Amanda Palmer while I am in Melbourne because it looks like Amazon doesn't stock it personally so I may as well try to pick up a copy firsthand. They advertised it on GNW so I'm thinking it's probably around.

Money? MONEY I HEAR YOU SAY?! Yeah. I had McDonalds for dinner tonight. I can afford a damn CD after that. (But only one. >_< Yeah.)


~

My other thing while I have internet, since that seems to be becoming a problem down here in the unpopulated wilds of 120,000-people-cities, is irradiatedsoup, I'm still good to be coming to yours on May 28th right? I promise to not talk about Paul McDermott too much and flail over everything and you can taunt me with your BSG knowledge beyond the end of season two. And also, do you have a printer I can steal borrow to print out my flight confirmation for Alice Springs? If not I can do it at the YHA in Tekapo I think.

I'm just waiting for George singing chocolate pudding to finish downloading before I can head back to chill with coffee and downloaded TV for the rest of the night. I am definitely ready to go home now, or at least back to Australia where I will have TV and fun people to talk to and buying milk for coffee will not be an epic adventure every two days when I move somewhere new. How people live in hostels for a year is beyond me. Even though this one actually seems nice (muuuuch better than the Queenstown one, even though you still have to go outside to get to the showers) despite the lack of internet and staff who seem to have better things to be doing than giving directions.

I do miss my Sydney hostel where staff were nice, I liked my room and my view and the showers and the lounge and the wireless. Or maybe I just miss Sydney, where I was learning my way around and was happy to be there and it was beginning to feel a little bit like home after seven days. I do miss Sydney. I want to save money for other trips, like America and Canada and Peru but I rather think I may be heading back to Sydney sooner rather than later. What's the point of travelling if not to find the places you like and go back to them?

C'mon George. I want to get out of McDonalds and away from the irritating over-junk-fed kids now.

If this hostel's internet got any stupider, I'd actually be scratching this post into the wall. With a blunt stick.

Every time it signs me off - which it does, frequently - any sites I've signed into, including LJ, Nationwide banking, Googlemail etc., get flagged by Norton as suspicious because they're trying to take me back to the login page. It is the only hostel wireless that has done this to me and I've stayed in something like fifteen hostels, maybe more at this point. In addition to this I'm only up, dressed and sitting in the hostel lounge at 9:05am because my sleep-in day got cancelled when I was woken at 8am by the guy in the bunk underneath mine doing Darth Vader breathing. I would be less annoyed - everyone gets a cold; I probably sounded none too pretty in Whitianga - if he hadn't GONE OUT FOR A CIGARETTE AT 730AM. Real clever there Darth Lungs of Death.

Then after I got up and got dressed, I walked back along the balcony - yes, going outside to get to the bathrooms is still irritating, especially since it's actually cold enough to snow here right now. Fun times! - opened our dorm door... and the smell literally made me take a step back. Guys, I'm sorry. I don't know what it is. It's probably not all guys. Maybe. But a group of five of you sleeping together in a room really stink in the morning.

I resisted the temptation to leave the door wide open to air the room with the freezing breeze (three of them were still asleep, snoring away, fuckers) but I'm waiting for them to wake up and piss off so I can do just that. I need to repack my backpack and all my stuff to send home into a box, and I can't do that right now without a. a gas mask and b. turning on the light which, since guys apparently sleep in even in hostels (having shared rooms with girls pretty much the whole time? We do not do this. Ever. Even when I wanted to sleep in I was getting up by 8am because everyone else was already up), I cannot do right now. So I'm stuck here in the lounge for the forseeable future.

So, so glad I'm leaving first thing in the morning. I still have four more hostels to stay in but only for a couple of days at the most. I'm thinking my one in Alice Springs might be the suckiest, just on a hunch, but that's my very last hostel before I head home so hey, whatever.

Do kind of want to go home now. The last two days reminded me why New Zealand is unspeakably awesome which I'd kind of been forgetting up until then in the overload of scenery and activities, but I'm definitely ready to get out of hostels, to stop carrying food around with me, to stop having cute American guys somehow get me to spend $40+ in one night on food and drink, which when my bank account is looking distinctly battered is stupid (I'm only £380ish into my overdraft and I said before I left I'd come back around £500 into it, so I'm pretty *much* on track moneywise with three weeks left. It's just, I won't stay on that track if I keep spending).

And in saying that I've just realised that I do in fact get home three weeks today. Maybe a day extra given the day I gain in travelling but datewise. Wow. I don't know how I'm cramming as much stuff as I am into the next three weeks though. o_O Three more places in NZ, Alice Springs/Uluru for five nights, hanging out with irradiatedsoup and chickybee32. Four flights.

I'm going to get home and not know what to do with myself. Except sleep. Yeah.

And now, because this hostel's dumb wireless takes me straight to Google when I log in so I don't even know how much credit I have left, I CAN'T EVEN LOG OFF. So I'm wasting my money even though I've finished everything online because I can't actually log out. Christ on a cracker. This hostel's faults just keep on stacking. Take a failcard hostel (and a failworthy review on Hostel World).

So my glacier hike was cancelled today. We had so much rain and wind and thunder last night that, in addition to the entire town (which to be honest is so not that big) not having power for about six hours, the track up the glacier was washed away. They were running a half-day hike instead (weather dependent) but I'd heard so many bad things about the half-day (not to mention one of the *plus* points someome told me was that the guides on the full day cut the steps into the ice, so on the half-day they're already there and you're not waiting around. But since there wasn't a full day hike...) I thought about it for about twenty minutes while we waited around for an update and decided it just wasn't worth the hundred dollars.

I'm kind of alternating between gutted and oddly relieved. Gutted because one girl showed me her pictures from the full day hike last night and it looked unfuckingbelievably awesome, but relieved too because the weather last night was so utterly terrible that I'd sort of accepted there was very little chance of us getting up there, though I'd dutifully gone out and bought sandwiches for lunch etc. because I'd have looked pretty damn stupid if I'd waved it off as "Of course we're not going!" and then we did. But I was just so tired. I was cranky yesterday with all the bus-hopping and out hostel is nice but the slightly funky kind where you wonder if they actually do change the sheets for every new person which is something I mostly don't think about (most hostels are good! YHAs, for example, are lovely and comfortable on the whole and for all its other failings, Base does at least seem to have clean sheets) but isn't exactly conducive to a restful night's sleep. I think the moving around every other day or so finally caught up with me and my subconscious was metaphorically digging in its heels and going if you climb a river of ice today, you will fall asleep while walking and die.

Which is probably only a slight exaggeration.

So instead I went back to the hostel, sat on the sofas in the lounge and did... nothing. I faffed around on iTunes, I charged my phone, I arranged my escape from Franz Josef a day early because the weather is apparently bad tomorrow too so no more chance of glacier hiking and I'll be damned if I spend another day sitting aimlessly (don't get me wrong, one day of fairly aimless sitting has done me a world of good but I'm fast heading into my last week here and there's a limit to how much time I'm willing to waste) because there is simply nothing else to do here when the weather is bad. Example: a little earlier, I walked a short way up the nearest trail to town which is about an hour round trip and apparently gives you a view of the glacier. Just before I stepped onto it, I admired the view of the mountains with the first little bit of snow I'd seen so far and little puffy wisps of cloud drifting between them.

Ten minutes down the track, after being throughly spooked by the gloom, the moss-encrusted woods, a dark and shadowy overhang that (UNHELPFULLY FOR THE FREAKING-OUT-NESS BY THE WAY SUBCONSCIOUS) made me think of the wolflike critter from The Neverending Story, I hit a bridge that was blocked off with a solid wooden gate and a sign declaring the track beyond was irretreviably DAMAGED BY FLOODING. After a brief reaction of "Thank you random trail blocker", I hightailed it back to the town thinking of a bar and possibly letting myself indulge in a Tui (my new favourite drink ever).

As I came out of the woods into actual daylight again, I happened to glance back at the mountains which I'd admired on the way in. It's a good thing I did then because now, fifteen minutes later, they were totally out of sight in dark grey clouds. Even the closest hill which really, not that far away in this town, was just an indistinct blur. On my way down to the bar with unsecured wireless (what I'm leeching right now), the weather chased me with rain and wind and finally hail. If some lovely person hadn't closed my trail off, I would've walked right into it.

In short, I'm not all that disappointed that I chose to avoid the half-day hike today. There're much better things to spend the hundred dollars (like Tui and the pretty paua shell necklace I just bought as my mother's present, unless I decide to steal it for myself before I get home) than being lost in a cloud for three hours. Next time I'm here (which will happen. I swear on Casper that it will) I'll try again.

So now I'm sitting in my favourite bar here, drinking my second (and last considering they're six dollars apiece :( ) Tui, full of delicious pizza and watching Good News Week download faster than I dared hope. Hey I'm a backpacker; if I downloaded it in the YHA tomorrow it'd cost me probably thirteen dollars or more; here it's free except for the price of the Tui which to be honest, I would've bought anyway. If my battery runs out before it finishes then I've chosen a table near a plug point and I will sit here with it plugged in. This is what backpacking does; if something can be had for free? NO SHAME IN TAKING IT.

Then I need to head back and repack my backpack. Again. At least I'm in Queenstown for four days; sure I'm moving hostels once but only just up the road which so doesn't count. I haven't spent four days anywhere since... since Australia. I'm so looking forward to it. Tomorrow I get a pretty long day just sitting on the bus too so I can sleep. That's mostly what I'm looking forward to when I get home; just lying in bed and not having roommates wake you up at 6am, or random French people yelling in the hallway for an hour when you're trying to nap or knowing you have to haul yourself out of your potentially-unclean bed at some godawful hour of the morning to fling yourself up mountains and take pictures of sea. I miss sleep. And Casper. But mostly sleep.

Now I'm yawning but I have another thirty-eight minutes to sit here surreptitiously before I can leave with GNW safely on my laptop. Maybe I'll order a coffee. I saved myself $150 by being a lazy ass today; I can afford a little caffiene in my life.

edit: Bwahahahah, I just caught one of the bar staff as he went past, to ask for a coffee, and he was like "Yeah, of course love." Except his voice is exactly the same as the voice Peter Serafinowicz puts on to play that guy whose voice "does things" to Fran in Black Books. EXACTLY.

I did not crack up but it was close. :D

I DID NOT FALL OFF. Even when my horse (who, for hill2k and dukedee, was called The Fonz) decided there were gremlins living in the hill and tried to dump me and take off.

Have rewarded self with a Moro Gold (my favourite NZ chocolate bar; I'm planning on sending a biiiiiiig box full of all this stuff home next week) and now I'm going to reward myself with a hot shower and then maybe an episode of GNW before I actually do some washing.

Also, I bought thermals today. Feel ridiculous because it's really insanely warm here in Nelson but everyone makes the rest of the south island sound like the Artic. All I can say after buying bloody thermals is IT BETTER BE.

I hope my internet in Greymouth tomorrow is better, hopefully the same one the YHA hostels were using which I have an account with, so I can download this week's GNW. No more of this by-megabyte crap which means I can't even watch stuff on Youtube. -_- Fail!

Now, shower. Mmmmmm. Yes.


edit: Also I just checked out my bank account which, thanks to the funsies with my card and my parents paying my credit card off until I get back and empty my savings to pay them back, is tricky. But adding and subtracting everything up means I've worked out that not only am I, technically, already in my overdraft but I really should stamp down on how much money I'm taking out.

All of which has left me looking at the flights to Alice Springs I paid for a few days ago, going "..." because the whole Ayer's Rock trip is costing me upward of £340 and... and really? The closer I get to it, the more I'm getting less and less enthusiastic. It's a big rock. I really don't know if I care that much. Not to mention having to get more flights with all the ensuing hassle and... I could've just hung around in Melbourne for an extra five days. But no. I'm only going because everyone was telling me "you cannot go to Australia and not see Ayer's Rock'! So I was all "Okay!" and booked stuff.

...Bleh. Maybe I've just hit that point where I've seen the amazing scenery, I've stayed in the different hostels, I've been doing stuff you have to do pretty much every day for the last seven weeks, and I've done about as much of it as I can without my brain taking a holiday. It's not even the money, because I'm totally working on a policy of "If I want to do it and can only do it while I'm here, stop worrying about the freaking money. That's why you have an overdraft."

I wish I hadn't already booked my stupid flights. I don't think I could get a refund now which pretty much means I'm going. Sigh. I suppose once I've done it, it just means I won't have to do it next time.

Which YES I KNOW is totally the wrong attitude and yes, how often am I going to be in Australia yadda yadda... heard it. Got over it. A girl in Wellington told me everyone hits this point of backpacking overload and you do get over it and all is shiny again but I'm thinking maybe when I've hit the point of hating people in my dorm room simply for being in the room with me, and for little things like opening a pack of biscuits and rustling the plastic, there's a reason for that. When I look at Ayer's Rock and go *handwave* whatfuckingever, that maybe I should just quit before I reach the point of sitting in a corner and refusing to move because I hate everything.

Suspect I am a two-months-a-time backpacker. Six months would, I think, be a bad idea. Possibly involving a hostile takeover of the nearest Starbucks around the third month and refusing to come out until I run out of espresso brownies.