filthy mcnasty's and badminton
no worries, mates, we arrived safe and sound in townsville, after a well air-conditioned ride down with adrian the married indian food eater.
CURRENT STATUS OF ME:
a little grumpy that we ended up spending our only day in townsville proper out of bounds of the town in a mall, searching for clothes. i am feeling depressed as only clothes shopping can make me. and all i bought was a pair of bright blue board shorts. but na got some cute stuff, anyway. the search for non-travellery, non-dorky, non-daggy ("dag" loosely means dork here) clothes continues. also, i'm hungry. i seem to always be. and slightly uncomfortable with my back against this cheap office chair. why, you ask? well i think the question could be answered by a little game of Good Idea, Bad Idea (you animaniacs fans will get the reference):
Good Idea: relaxing on the beach in the middle of the day in a place called magnetic island, reading, and taking a nap.
Bad Idea: doing the above in the thin-ozone-layer reality of australia without sunblock on. ouch. don't worry. i took a picture. you can see where the tassles of my sarong were on my leg. yikes, indeed.
It's already much better and doesn't hurt too bad. i just feel like complaining. i'll try to stop now.
Aaaaaaaaaaanyway (i wrote that with the intention of readers to hear the ellen degeneres show thing in their heads. if you don't know what i'm talking about, go watch the ellen show.),
THE RIDE TO TOWNSVILLE WITH ADRIAN
We stopped at a nice bay up near cairns and happened to see a wild cassowary (5 points for finding the best picture of a cassowary and coming up with a humorous caption to go with it)!
We also stopped further south, after we got out of sugar cane country (did i mention that nabia stole a stalk at our encouragement? cuz she did. yummy) at "casual cassowary's tea house" up on a hill overlooking the largest island national park in the world: hinchinbrook island. the whole drive down was accompanied by this strange haziness that none of us could figure out - our best guess was humidity. the owner at casual cassie's said it was a dust haze. apparently there are some huge dust storms out in southern australia that have blown a cloud over to cover the entire east coast here. it's clearing up a little, but definitely still apparent. anyway, we sipped our tea and had muffins or scones or a damper (like a scone, but not plain) and looked out at the lovely views of rainforest and rivers. nice. sadly, we didn't have time to go to paluma, which is full of waterfalls and boulders and rain forest, or to frosty mango's, which just sounds delicious in this heat, because adrian had to rush to work - delivery at 4. he dropped us in townsville, by woolies (woolworth's is big here) and told us to call if we got stuck or anything. we took a photo and loaded our packs onto our backs.
we took the long long unexpectedly long walk down to the pier and the ferry to magnetic island. I keep thinking i've learned how much i can sweat, but then i top it. it's amazing. So the ferry was hot and unairconditioned, but we napped the 20 minutes or so to the island and then made our way to the hostel we had booked. Centaur house. cozy enough and a fine location, but no a/c and a barefoot owner missing some teeth. don't get me wrong: very friendly and nice, just a little bit not what i imagined. the room had a fan and it was just us in the 4 bed dorm, and there were mosquito nets so we could keep the window open at night. and keep all the bugs out. there were some beautiful bugs, i have to say. the stickbugs in the hallway were really cool (i'm the one with eyes! - 2 points for the reference). and the moth in the bathroom was pretty too. the cool beetle that died in our room was neat looking as well. you get the picture. and the kitchen had only those standalone burners like back at The Farm in Takaka. we heeded our guide's advice and mostly stayed away from the kitchen. in fact we took a walk shortly after our arrival and chatting with the 2 other guests: mexicans carlos and alex, not so bad looking, i must say, who are students in sydney and were taking a dive course out there on their break. so we strolled over to alma bay, which we had heard good things about. it was pretty, for sure, but small and not altogether TOO impressive. we're just spoiled after hawaii and fiji, i think. for sure. but we also checked out a large hostel right there on the corner: $3 cheaper per room and air conditioned. we decided to stay our second night there. air con is just a necessity sometimes. and this was one of those times. we continued our stroll over to a nighttime market that was happening over at a hall somewhere. as we walked, we noticed it gets dark MUCH earlier here than it has been: by 7:30 it's pitch black. we also noticed that the stars were gorgeous from out there. not too many lights right nearby. and also we listened to all the birds everywhere. there was the sorrowful cry of the curlew (like a high pitched winey awwwwwwww), the occasional laugh of the kookaburra (sounds a little like a monkey actually), and lorikeets and other squeaky birds too. anyway, rather than cook in the narsty kitchen, we bought some rhodesian chicken curry and south african samosas at the three-stall market on the lawn of the hall and ate with a mosquito repellant candle at our feet. so frickin hot. but yummy enough. not sure about the "rhodesian" or "south african" but edible for sure. back at the hostel at about 8:30, i found it too darn hot to do anything but sleep, so i went ahead and passed right out.
next day we checked out of the hostel after breakfast and endured the wrath of the woman of the house. she was just angry and directed it at us. after that unpleasantness, we started down the road - which seemed much shorter while we weren't wearing our packs - to arkie's (the a/c place). halfway there, carlos met us on his way back from checking in out there (na had told him and they were moving over too - sorry centaur house!), and he helped us with the bags we were lugging. very nice of him but i don't think he realized what he was getting into. they were heavy, yo. anyway, we checked in and put our packs down in the grungy looking no-pillow-only-one-sheet-but-still-it's-air-conditioned 6 bed dorm room and spent the rest of the day at alma bay, reading and relaxing and taking a dip and napping (without sunblock)... we saw a little tiny octopus - looked exactly like seaweed, and you wouldn't have known it wasn't except for the suspicious legs and sudden turns.
we went back and put together lunch in the kitchen - pasta with basil and goat cheese from lou's emporium in ingham (another stop courtesy of adrian - nice cheese selection) and tomatoes. yum good hot day food. back to the beach, and the pool and doing not that much until we went out for dinner. at filthy mcnasty's. we had noticed it the day before on our walk and decided to head back. i mean, it's called filthy mcnasty's. how could you not want to eat there?
it was very nice and the canadian owner thought i was from toronto. so i sound like a canadian, it seems. there are worse things to be in the world right now than canadian... we enjoyed our dinner in the lovely atmosphere - i had the bluecheesiest stuffed portobello mushroom that ever existed. i could hardly down half of it, it was so rich. finished up with a mango sorbet split between us, and we were happy.
back at arkie's, we took advantage of the "free pool all night" and managed to eke out two of the longest games in pool history, i think. i suck at pool, by the way. though it goes against all reason, me being good with angles and spatial thinking and all that, it's just pathetic. most of the way through our second game, with nabia just trying to pot the eight ball and me still with four solids on the table, we noticed there was a guy sitting at a table nearby watching our play with some amusement. we struck up conversation and i asked him if he was any good at pool. with his superthick irish accent, he answered that he grew up playing. i asked if he had any tips for me. now don't all go letting your imaginations run away with you - there was none of that standing-behind-me-let-me-show-you-how-to-hold-the-cue-stick, okay? none. so stop thinking that.), but regardless of the new information, i lost. next nabia played a round with one of our roommates, young canadian matthew, while i chatted more with mark the tall irishman. he told me about western australia and how beautiful and friendly it is and i said stop telling me that because now i want to go there and i can't stay in australia for that much longer. his accent was so thick it was hard to understand sometimes, but irish brogue is fun to listen to, so i didn't mind. and he wasn't hard to look at either.
after na's game, she retired to bed and mark asked me to play one. i told him he should beat me fast otherwise it would take forever, and we played. i actually think i did improve my game a little, my form is better and i actually can hit the ball i'm aiming for more often than not now. and i discovered that apparently i play lefty. dan, that must be your fault. back from the days of the pool table in the basement, i guess. anyway, he did win (obviously), but it was fun and i did sink a couple. we chatted outside for a few minutes, surrounded by possums, and then exchanged email addresses and finally went to sleep. nice.
next morning, we attempted (and failed miserably due to intense heat) to hike to another bay we heard was beautiful, but we took the wrong road and that was that - by the time we realized it and turned around, it was way to hot to start on the right road. so back to alma bay for more reading and writing and resting. we took the evening ferry back to the mainland - townsville (isn't that the name of the city in the powerpuff girls?). we got picked up by our fifth servas family here and shuttled back to their lovely home in the suburbs. julie (was a teacher of the Deaf nearby until recently - now doing special ed in a high school) and mark (sales representative - air conditioners, i think) had 6 houseguests last night (we are included in that) - a german exchange student, a friend of mark's from business, and a french couple staying there until they find a house (she's mostly australian - at university here studying zoology, and he's a chef. yes a french chef). we had a barbecue outside in the back and then played several rousing rounds of badminton. i was on a team with cedric and we were the winningest of all. hoorah. so i suck at pool, but i'm decent with a badminton bat. just toss that shuttlecock over my way, but keep the cue stick to yourselves. the evening finished up with mark and his nephew chris strumming away on their guitars, playing alanis morrisette, violent femmes, and anything else that came to mind.
so last night was lovely. nabia slept on the youngest kid (sam)'s waterbed, and i got a mattress on the floor, but airconditioned and comfortable, i slept well and woke up not drenched in sweat. which is good.
today was supposed to be spent seeing townsville, but apparently there isn't TOO much to see here if you're not going to the maritime museum or the aquarium, or if it's too hot to climb Castle Hill, the big mound in the middle of the city that is supposed to give decent views of the surrounding area. so we spent it in a mall. and now here. so it goes.
tomorrow, mark is heading south to mackay and generously offered us a ride down to airlie beach (on the way) which will be the base for a cruise around the whitsunday islands off the coast. we were told by SEVeral people that this was unmissable, so hopefully that will turn out to be true.
so we're making our way down, slowly but surely (and avoiding public transportation so far :) ), but i don't think we're gonna make it to sydney for our flight on the 20th. we'll see when we get a little closer, but we may have to make it just a little later. i'm leaving australia before march though. i decided.
i'm still feeling good about being out here, no doubt, but it does feel like i'm going home when i leave australia. this leg of the trip is ending here - asia's going to be completely and utterly different and so it feels like when we get on the plane, it'll be headed back to new york. but no. it'll be going to singapore. which is apparently very very clean. and that's different from new york.
well, i guess i should finish up here now, because julie's due back at the house around 6:30 with chicken and i don't want to miss that. dono when the next internet cafe will be, but i'll try and write when i can.
i really love all the comments, so keep 'em coming.
to respond to a few:
The Surge: it's not that hoppity is scary... just that it makes me sad that i ate him. and his child.
Emerge: we'll only just be getting to asia in march - i'm so unhappy we won't get to see you and quest and the european deaf festival - that would be amazing. try to get everything on videotape?
nrw - i'll work on it. but everything melts, so i'll see what i can do.
dryspell - evil. i ignore.
ps: 3 points if you can figure out where the name "filthy mcnasty's" comes from.
pps: congratulations Patriots fans. you've done it again.
okiedokie, smokie,
th-th-th-that's all folks.
amy
email me
CURRENT STATUS OF ME:
a little grumpy that we ended up spending our only day in townsville proper out of bounds of the town in a mall, searching for clothes. i am feeling depressed as only clothes shopping can make me. and all i bought was a pair of bright blue board shorts. but na got some cute stuff, anyway. the search for non-travellery, non-dorky, non-daggy ("dag" loosely means dork here) clothes continues. also, i'm hungry. i seem to always be. and slightly uncomfortable with my back against this cheap office chair. why, you ask? well i think the question could be answered by a little game of Good Idea, Bad Idea (you animaniacs fans will get the reference):
Good Idea: relaxing on the beach in the middle of the day in a place called magnetic island, reading, and taking a nap.
Bad Idea: doing the above in the thin-ozone-layer reality of australia without sunblock on. ouch. don't worry. i took a picture. you can see where the tassles of my sarong were on my leg. yikes, indeed.
It's already much better and doesn't hurt too bad. i just feel like complaining. i'll try to stop now.
Aaaaaaaaaaanyway (i wrote that with the intention of readers to hear the ellen degeneres show thing in their heads. if you don't know what i'm talking about, go watch the ellen show.),
THE RIDE TO TOWNSVILLE WITH ADRIAN
We stopped at a nice bay up near cairns and happened to see a wild cassowary (5 points for finding the best picture of a cassowary and coming up with a humorous caption to go with it)!
We also stopped further south, after we got out of sugar cane country (did i mention that nabia stole a stalk at our encouragement? cuz she did. yummy) at "casual cassowary's tea house" up on a hill overlooking the largest island national park in the world: hinchinbrook island. the whole drive down was accompanied by this strange haziness that none of us could figure out - our best guess was humidity. the owner at casual cassie's said it was a dust haze. apparently there are some huge dust storms out in southern australia that have blown a cloud over to cover the entire east coast here. it's clearing up a little, but definitely still apparent. anyway, we sipped our tea and had muffins or scones or a damper (like a scone, but not plain) and looked out at the lovely views of rainforest and rivers. nice. sadly, we didn't have time to go to paluma, which is full of waterfalls and boulders and rain forest, or to frosty mango's, which just sounds delicious in this heat, because adrian had to rush to work - delivery at 4. he dropped us in townsville, by woolies (woolworth's is big here) and told us to call if we got stuck or anything. we took a photo and loaded our packs onto our backs.
we took the long long unexpectedly long walk down to the pier and the ferry to magnetic island. I keep thinking i've learned how much i can sweat, but then i top it. it's amazing. So the ferry was hot and unairconditioned, but we napped the 20 minutes or so to the island and then made our way to the hostel we had booked. Centaur house. cozy enough and a fine location, but no a/c and a barefoot owner missing some teeth. don't get me wrong: very friendly and nice, just a little bit not what i imagined. the room had a fan and it was just us in the 4 bed dorm, and there were mosquito nets so we could keep the window open at night. and keep all the bugs out. there were some beautiful bugs, i have to say. the stickbugs in the hallway were really cool (i'm the one with eyes! - 2 points for the reference). and the moth in the bathroom was pretty too. the cool beetle that died in our room was neat looking as well. you get the picture. and the kitchen had only those standalone burners like back at The Farm in Takaka. we heeded our guide's advice and mostly stayed away from the kitchen. in fact we took a walk shortly after our arrival and chatting with the 2 other guests: mexicans carlos and alex, not so bad looking, i must say, who are students in sydney and were taking a dive course out there on their break. so we strolled over to alma bay, which we had heard good things about. it was pretty, for sure, but small and not altogether TOO impressive. we're just spoiled after hawaii and fiji, i think. for sure. but we also checked out a large hostel right there on the corner: $3 cheaper per room and air conditioned. we decided to stay our second night there. air con is just a necessity sometimes. and this was one of those times. we continued our stroll over to a nighttime market that was happening over at a hall somewhere. as we walked, we noticed it gets dark MUCH earlier here than it has been: by 7:30 it's pitch black. we also noticed that the stars were gorgeous from out there. not too many lights right nearby. and also we listened to all the birds everywhere. there was the sorrowful cry of the curlew (like a high pitched winey awwwwwwww), the occasional laugh of the kookaburra (sounds a little like a monkey actually), and lorikeets and other squeaky birds too. anyway, rather than cook in the narsty kitchen, we bought some rhodesian chicken curry and south african samosas at the three-stall market on the lawn of the hall and ate with a mosquito repellant candle at our feet. so frickin hot. but yummy enough. not sure about the "rhodesian" or "south african" but edible for sure. back at the hostel at about 8:30, i found it too darn hot to do anything but sleep, so i went ahead and passed right out.
next day we checked out of the hostel after breakfast and endured the wrath of the woman of the house. she was just angry and directed it at us. after that unpleasantness, we started down the road - which seemed much shorter while we weren't wearing our packs - to arkie's (the a/c place). halfway there, carlos met us on his way back from checking in out there (na had told him and they were moving over too - sorry centaur house!), and he helped us with the bags we were lugging. very nice of him but i don't think he realized what he was getting into. they were heavy, yo. anyway, we checked in and put our packs down in the grungy looking no-pillow-only-one-sheet-but-still-it's-air-conditioned 6 bed dorm room and spent the rest of the day at alma bay, reading and relaxing and taking a dip and napping (without sunblock)... we saw a little tiny octopus - looked exactly like seaweed, and you wouldn't have known it wasn't except for the suspicious legs and sudden turns.
we went back and put together lunch in the kitchen - pasta with basil and goat cheese from lou's emporium in ingham (another stop courtesy of adrian - nice cheese selection) and tomatoes. yum good hot day food. back to the beach, and the pool and doing not that much until we went out for dinner. at filthy mcnasty's. we had noticed it the day before on our walk and decided to head back. i mean, it's called filthy mcnasty's. how could you not want to eat there?
it was very nice and the canadian owner thought i was from toronto. so i sound like a canadian, it seems. there are worse things to be in the world right now than canadian... we enjoyed our dinner in the lovely atmosphere - i had the bluecheesiest stuffed portobello mushroom that ever existed. i could hardly down half of it, it was so rich. finished up with a mango sorbet split between us, and we were happy.
back at arkie's, we took advantage of the "free pool all night" and managed to eke out two of the longest games in pool history, i think. i suck at pool, by the way. though it goes against all reason, me being good with angles and spatial thinking and all that, it's just pathetic. most of the way through our second game, with nabia just trying to pot the eight ball and me still with four solids on the table, we noticed there was a guy sitting at a table nearby watching our play with some amusement. we struck up conversation and i asked him if he was any good at pool. with his superthick irish accent, he answered that he grew up playing. i asked if he had any tips for me. now don't all go letting your imaginations run away with you - there was none of that standing-behind-me-let-me-show-you-how-to-hold-the-cue-stick, okay? none. so stop thinking that.), but regardless of the new information, i lost. next nabia played a round with one of our roommates, young canadian matthew, while i chatted more with mark the tall irishman. he told me about western australia and how beautiful and friendly it is and i said stop telling me that because now i want to go there and i can't stay in australia for that much longer. his accent was so thick it was hard to understand sometimes, but irish brogue is fun to listen to, so i didn't mind. and he wasn't hard to look at either.
after na's game, she retired to bed and mark asked me to play one. i told him he should beat me fast otherwise it would take forever, and we played. i actually think i did improve my game a little, my form is better and i actually can hit the ball i'm aiming for more often than not now. and i discovered that apparently i play lefty. dan, that must be your fault. back from the days of the pool table in the basement, i guess. anyway, he did win (obviously), but it was fun and i did sink a couple. we chatted outside for a few minutes, surrounded by possums, and then exchanged email addresses and finally went to sleep. nice.
next morning, we attempted (and failed miserably due to intense heat) to hike to another bay we heard was beautiful, but we took the wrong road and that was that - by the time we realized it and turned around, it was way to hot to start on the right road. so back to alma bay for more reading and writing and resting. we took the evening ferry back to the mainland - townsville (isn't that the name of the city in the powerpuff girls?). we got picked up by our fifth servas family here and shuttled back to their lovely home in the suburbs. julie (was a teacher of the Deaf nearby until recently - now doing special ed in a high school) and mark (sales representative - air conditioners, i think) had 6 houseguests last night (we are included in that) - a german exchange student, a friend of mark's from business, and a french couple staying there until they find a house (she's mostly australian - at university here studying zoology, and he's a chef. yes a french chef). we had a barbecue outside in the back and then played several rousing rounds of badminton. i was on a team with cedric and we were the winningest of all. hoorah. so i suck at pool, but i'm decent with a badminton bat. just toss that shuttlecock over my way, but keep the cue stick to yourselves. the evening finished up with mark and his nephew chris strumming away on their guitars, playing alanis morrisette, violent femmes, and anything else that came to mind.
so last night was lovely. nabia slept on the youngest kid (sam)'s waterbed, and i got a mattress on the floor, but airconditioned and comfortable, i slept well and woke up not drenched in sweat. which is good.
today was supposed to be spent seeing townsville, but apparently there isn't TOO much to see here if you're not going to the maritime museum or the aquarium, or if it's too hot to climb Castle Hill, the big mound in the middle of the city that is supposed to give decent views of the surrounding area. so we spent it in a mall. and now here. so it goes.
tomorrow, mark is heading south to mackay and generously offered us a ride down to airlie beach (on the way) which will be the base for a cruise around the whitsunday islands off the coast. we were told by SEVeral people that this was unmissable, so hopefully that will turn out to be true.
so we're making our way down, slowly but surely (and avoiding public transportation so far :) ), but i don't think we're gonna make it to sydney for our flight on the 20th. we'll see when we get a little closer, but we may have to make it just a little later. i'm leaving australia before march though. i decided.
i'm still feeling good about being out here, no doubt, but it does feel like i'm going home when i leave australia. this leg of the trip is ending here - asia's going to be completely and utterly different and so it feels like when we get on the plane, it'll be headed back to new york. but no. it'll be going to singapore. which is apparently very very clean. and that's different from new york.
well, i guess i should finish up here now, because julie's due back at the house around 6:30 with chicken and i don't want to miss that. dono when the next internet cafe will be, but i'll try and write when i can.
i really love all the comments, so keep 'em coming.
to respond to a few:
The Surge: it's not that hoppity is scary... just that it makes me sad that i ate him. and his child.
Emerge: we'll only just be getting to asia in march - i'm so unhappy we won't get to see you and quest and the european deaf festival - that would be amazing. try to get everything on videotape?
nrw - i'll work on it. but everything melts, so i'll see what i can do.
dryspell - evil. i ignore.
ps: 3 points if you can figure out where the name "filthy mcnasty's" comes from.
pps: congratulations Patriots fans. you've done it again.
okiedokie, smokie,
th-th-th-that's all folks.
amy
email me
posted by theonetheycallamy at 2/07/2005 01:31:00 AM
2 Comments:
Dang, signing in as The Surge doesn't seem to be working now, but this is indeed Matt.
Touche, Frushtiki: http://www.badstar.net/yzma.html
Anyway, blah blah blah coral blah blah blah culture blah blah blah traveling blah blah blah shockingly beautiful landscapes etc etc GO FOR THE RIDE WITH THE IRISH GUY!
That is all.
Vicarious,
M
I'm with Heidi. If you are going to be away leaving us bored and lonely, we should at least be able to live vicariously through your wildly exciting experiences. Also...Hot, pool playing Irish men...nice.
-Em
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