Longest Plane Ride of my Life

Sunday Sept. 23 2007 10:25am

We have been in this country roughly 24 hours now. Our flight was incredibly long and uncomfortable. We sat on the tarmac for close to three hours because of some technical difficulty with the plane. Because there were over 300 ,we could not deplane and it was very hot in there. When we finally landed and got to the customs check, the guy said in his Aussie accent “How was your flight?” and I replied “Long.” And he said, “well we’re not exactly next door are we? No worries, you’re here now and we hope you spend lots of money on your holiday.” That will not be a problem. The average cocktail runs $14.00.

I cannot help but make comparisons to that which I know well, the US and the other major trip I took a few years ago to London. For being as incredibly FAR AWAY we are from home, this place really isn’t too much different than home. All the same food is available plus the nasty vegemite which I actually ate this morning. To get the idea of what vegemite is like try to imagine this: an English muffin or bread with a thin coating of butter and then on top drop soy sauce. That is similar to what it tastes like. But other than the Vegemite, the food is pretty much comparable to whatever you could find the US. Lots of fish and chicken (more so than beef). In the neighborhood where we are staying we found a little lunch sort of place called Charcoal Charlie’s they have about 6 different varieties of chicken as well as these absolutely delicious scalloped potatoes. They do have supermarkets here, but they are not super in the American sense. They don’t sell everything all in one place. There are pharmacies, real butcher shops, bakeries and wine shops ect…but they seem co located, so you could get everything you need all at once but you’d have to go to maybe 4 or 5 stores. We hit a shopping mall yesterday, the stores are pretty much the same as what you’d see in the US or Europe, but the food court is another matter. You don’t find “fast food” and junk here in the mall food court (at least not in the mall we were in). We found a cool little Japanese place where Charlie got some sushi and I got some awesome shimp tempura thing and shrimp wrapped in rice paper that was so good.

The people all look the same as at home. The language of course is the same except for all the local accent things like “g’day” and “no worries.” The clothes are depressingly, the exact same crap you see in the US. No shortage of slightly overweight 40 year old women with jeans cut so low, that you have see nasty plumber situations every time they sit down. Just like home.

Our hotel is situated right on Bondi Beach. Our room overlooks the beach. The water is a gorgeous azure blue. One imagines that when it is calm it might look like the Caribbean water. But calm water is something I think Bondi Beach sees little of. This is a world renown surfing beach, and the swells can be huge. We were watching some surfers this morning who got tossed so high in the air by the waves we wondered if they would survive. It was incredible and unfortunately there was no way to get a picture of it.

Things here, for as similar as they are to home, as a bit off, but just slightly. Take the sports. We are sharing out hotel with a rugby team, called the Cowboys. They apparently lost their game yesterday and there was an epic “let’s drink our sorrows away” party that was going full swing at 7:30 this morning when we left our room to go get breakfast. And another thing that is just slightly off, on the beach we saw a bird eating a fish that washed up. Yes you read that correctly: A bird, one individual bird. In CA or NJ there would be 50 flying rats vying for the same fish, but here this one lucky little seagull got to enjoy a quiet breakfast until some obnoxious tourist disturbed him. (The picture above was taken from the balcony in our room.)