It’s a Goa!

This is a little out of date now, as I wrote it many months ago back in Perth and never had the chance to put it on the blog! So apologies for the delay and hopefully we’ll be able to bring you up to date with all our more recent travel adventures shortly!

 

I sit writing this in a quiet, calm and peaceful office in my lunch hour, whilst looking through our travel photo’s on our blog site. I am now arm chair travelling like all you avid readers have been for the last 8 months! Thanks for the commitment by the way, we realise that quite a lot of the blog may be boring for some of you but at least you can laugh at the photos!? And boy have I realised how many really bad photo’s there are, some really should have been edited out before uploading them to the blog. I am also reminded how beautiful the places we’ve been are, I can’t help smiling from ear to ear as I look through at the places we’ve seen and the gorgeous people we’ve met along the way. Also how much I miss walking/riding/running down the road and being amazed at what I’d see whether it be beautiful or shocking. The extreme of emotions shown in people’s faces, whether it be happiness or extreme sadness and desperation, which you just don’t see in the westernised world. And I feel like shouting “I want to go back!!”

 

Which brings me to our (then!) current position on the globe -

Perth Western Australia…..?

We’ve been here nearly three months now and not really seen too much of it! Due to the immediate need for cash we have stayed in

Perth and have been working since our arrival (as most of you already know.) It has been a bit of a battle, getting used to Western society again e.g. using a knife and fork, not having to do everything with our right hand and having toilets and toilet paper!!! They are all the good points! The harder things to get used to are the opulence, selfishness and greed of the western world, when we first arrived I served my time as a waitress/barista in a dirty Italian Café, where I had to constantly sweep the cockroaches from the surfaces whilst serving people and the sizes of the portions were enough to feed a family for a week. It was awful and most plates came back looking as if they hadn’t been touched there was so much food. This along with the “alternative” staff member who would shake his long hair at me all shift long and make death/growling noises at me & there was squiffy eye man who when I asked if he was talking to me on one occasion, informed me that he always looks at the person he’s talking to!! This left me none the wiser!! He also was the Aussie equivalent of David Brent from the office?! Not fun when doing double shifts everyday, including weekends!!

So my opinion of WA was somewhat negative when we first arrived we did manage to have a fantastic long weekend down south a whole lot of wineries, cheeseries and my favourite the cidery, with our friends Lou & Glenn, fantastic company as always guys! The scenery was absolutely amazing, forests of the tallest trees growing for miles and miles. We pulled in at the tallest of all the trees that was used as a forest fire look out post and has a hut up on top of it for the look out men to stay in!! H and Glenn very bravely climbed all the way to the top. We caught our dinner in the sea at Margaret River, H catching his first ever fish!! And a ray swam right past our feet in the shallow water which was really beautiful to see.

There are trees in Kings Park that are amazing with enormous roots that spill across the ground like molten lava. The sky is so blue and the stars at night are beautiful!

I got to see the crescent moon with the single star above it, that symbolises the end of Ramadan, a week or so ago. It was so stunning!

When I worked at the Italian Café, my favourite part of the day (other than when I left) was on my drive there when I would come over the crest of a hill and see an amazing view of the Ocean. Slightly distorted by ugly grey, kit homes but if I squinted my eyes so I had a kind of tunnel vision that excluded the grey glow! I could see enormous waves breaking right out in the distance, which must have been immense if they still looked enormous from where I was about 10kms away!

We lived in Glen’s mum Roses house on first arrival (Thanks again Rose!!) And then moved to Hillarys Harbour with our friends Sarah, Jes & Bella, who we met in India, it was really lovely as we’d not seen them for a while we all had lots to catch up on. And lots of onion and garlic to gas poor pregnant Sarah out with (apologies again for our Viet Hoa nights!)

 

When they left for further exciting adventures we moved into a shed! A very nice shed, may I add! In Anne and Darcy’s back garden, near to H’s work, where H could bike to work and in the process I gained a new boyfriend who was at least 4 stone slimmer?! I managed eventually to find a lovely job, with thanks to Anne & Soph, in the office I write this from! (I never got around to putting this on the website while I was there so I am putting it on now a few months later!!)

Perth greatly improved for me at this point, once the 7am, Sunday morning, 9hour shift at the cockroach infested cafe was dropped everything about Perth seemed a lot sunnier!

 

Especially once we bought Bessie! Our beautiful turquoise VW kombi! Who was just made for lazy Sundays tootling to Subiaco and listening to Ben Lee and has now proved herself to be perfect for Dolly Parton and all sorts of other Country Classics and long meandering drives through Australian terrain! Although not entirely convinced she’ll start every morning I hold on to one crucial mantra from years in education- “fashion not function!!”