bangkok

i arrived at 4am after a long and boring flight without much sleep. my backpack wasn't on the luggage belt and after talking to the luggage claim office people i figured out it had been flown back to amsterdam with the kiev flight. at first i thought oh shit, this cannot be happening, i just want to get to my hostel and sleep!! and then i thought oh shit, what if they can't find it! the girl at the office asked for my luggage tag (note to everyone, NEVER lose your luggage tag) and told me the backpack was in amsterdam. damnit. i asked her what the plan was now and she said it would be coming back with another flight to bangkok. a colleague came over and they started talking in thai and all i heard was august 16th (it was august 5th that day) so i said WHAT, AUGUST 16TH!?!?! but i misheard and he actually said august 6th. relief. and they also sent it to the hostel, so i didn't have to come back and pick it up myself.

all was good again. the hostel i booked was in the silom area, close to a BRT station (which is a skytrain). all international flights arrive at Suvarnabhumi Airport and to get into the city you either get a taxi or take the train. the train costs 45 baht (1,15 euro) and takes about 30 minutes. but when i arrived the trains weren't going yet so i found a bench and slept for a bit. i arrived in the city a few hours later, but couldn't check into the hostel until 2 pm. i went in around 10am anyway and the sweet lady let me into my room already. probably because i looked like a mess, was coughing and my voice had pretty much vanished. i wanted to sleep for just an hour and stay awake until 10pm, so i'd not get a jetlag. however, i completely passed out and woke up around 7pm. hello jetlag.

i booked 4 nights in bangkok and i was happy i didn't book more! the famous patpong market was a 5 minute walk from my hostel. it's basically your typical asian night market, but a bit further down is the gay area (and i do mean men) and 'adult entertainment' section of this lively city. the market itself sells everything from watches to dildo's and while wandering around you will be asked if you're interested in seeing a ping pong show. for all the innocent souls reading this, they do not  mean the sport, but the adult entertainment version if you know what i mean (if not, check google). 

other known places in bangkok include the grand national palace, sleeping buddha and the backpacker haven koh san road. the palace is only open until 3pm and after that you can't get in and will have to see it peeking out of the wall surrounding it (see photo). i haven't seen sleeping buddha but did manage to check out koh san road and it was alright, not spectacular or anything. 

it's basically a big road with bars, cheap shops, hostels, food vendors, massage places and tourists on every inch of the street. i actually preferred the roads surrounding it, which have a lot of the same things, but are a lot less crowded and therefore have a more relaxed vibe. i did get a footmassage and it was AMAZING, especially after walking around the city for three days. 

other things you can do in bangkok is shop shop shop and eat eat eat. as i'm going to be a teacher here i'll have to dress like a teacher when i'm in class. here that means no visible tattoos or piercings, no flip flops tank tops or shorts and no low cut shirts. since i usually don't wear smart outfits at work or in my personal life i had to get some teacher outfits here and shopped at a massive mall called MBK center. it was nice to escape the pressing heat and busy traffic outside. 

i also went to the cinema (was dying to see the new batman movie) and they play the national anthem before each film and you MUST stand up when it does. in thailand the kingdom is highly respected and people tend to have pictures of the king everywhere. another place where i went to escape the hustle and bustle of the city was lumphini park, which is in the middle of bangkok and the only public park in bangkok. it was created in the royal occasion of the King's 15th anniversary of accession to the throne in 1925.

when i arrived at my hostel i didn't have any nice people in my room, but the second day a girl from the uk arrived and the day after we went to the zoo. she asked me if i wanted to go with her and of course said yes. on the way there we saw gok wan walking past us at the brt station! i also booked a train ticket to surat thani for the next day and after finding a tuktuk that wasn't ripping us off we finally arrived at the zoo. it looked abit run down, but i got to hold a penguin so i was happy. btw, if you want to plan things in bangkok and have to go by taxi, tuk tuk or motorcycle taxi, always add about an hour to your arrival time, because the traffic is always insanely busy.

so bangkok was basically your typical big noisy dirty smelly asian city. i had a cold, sore throat, jet lag and a hostel room that smelled like mold. i still had fun times, but i was really happy to get out.

 

my course is on koh samui, which is an island in the south and next to koh phangan, famous for the monthly full moon party. koh samui is more of a family island with plenty of resorts and fancy restaurants for all the holiday goers, but also a lot of gorgeous empty tropical beaches and cheap street food. you can fly in from bangkok, but i wanted to take the train, because that way you can actually see the country and spend less money and yes it does take about 12 hours, but hey, i'm not in any rush. 

the train ride was really relaxed. i had a seat instead of a sleeper cabin, because they were all sold out. the window was wide open and i spent most of the ride reading and staring out the window. the seat was acually a lot better than what i'd expected for only 10 euros. i thought it would be a wooden bench with 30 people on it all smooshed together, but it was just a normal train seat. i arrived in surat thani and after that a bus takes you to the ferry which takes you to the island. 

and 3 hours later there i was on koh samui, surrounded by blue skies and a white sandy beach :)

organizing thailand

going to thailand was a bit of an impulsive decision. i hadn't saved heaps, but i wanted to get away and have a new adventure so i thought ok, what country is cheap to live, might have work for me and will be a place i'll like....? the answer was thailand! i've heard from many people that thailand is amazing, good to travel, cheap etc etc. i've never been before but part of having an adventure is drowning yourself in the unknown. for the work part, i literally just went to google and typed in 'thailand work'. the first thing that popped up was TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and i'd already looked into that so i figured that's what i'm gonna do! english is something i'm actually rather good at, so now let's hope that teaching is something i'm good at too.

i quit my job, booked a flight and prepared my TEFL course. it turned out to be a bit of a hassle. i wanted to start my course aug 27th, but only had about 3 weeks left until my flight. not only did my debit card not work, i also needed a record check in order to be able to work in thailand and had to translate the dutch form, so that the TEFL organization (based in the UK) could fill it in and send it back. i also still had to get my visa and fix my debit card. the last week everything was done and sorted, but looking back i should have probably started out a bit sooner. i was also audited by the tax office, and am still waiting for my tax return, which i'd planned into my budget. right now i'm still managing ok, but i can't really do tours or any other big things until i have my tax money back.

the weekend of my flight to bangkok was gay pride in amsterdam. even though i wasn't gonna be here for the big canal parade, i wanted to have a little taste and went to a girl party in amsterdam. my flight left early in the morning, so my plan was to party, go to the airport and sleep in the airplane: dumb plan. i already had a sore throat and was feeling a bit ill, but i danced laughed drank and had a great night anyway. when we got to the airport i was dying hahaha. i was getting hungover and was so tired, but for some reason i cannot sleep normally on an airplane. i had a stopover in kiev where i found a dutch couple who were also heading to bangkok. the girl asked the lady at the transfer desk if we needed to collect our luggage, but she said it would be placed in the airplane to bangkok, so we went to the gate and got on board. i flew with ukrainian airlines and i had the feeling that the plane was older than me! my table had rust on it, there was no entertainment and not much leg space...and like i said earlier, i can't sleep on planes. 9 hours later and even more exhausted i arrived in bangkok only to find that my backpack wasn't there and had somehow made it's way back to amsterdam...

back home again

what a trip. i was amazed how fast time flew by. it's hard to describe what happens when you leave home for such a long time. i felt a bit nervous, because when i left i was in a bad place, lifewise, so i was scared that all the things that were breaking me down before i left would still be there. it felt odly familiar but in a completely different way. i mean i went back home where i grew up and where everything was still the same. i saw the friends i'd known for so long and it felt like i'd never left, which was really nice. after all the excitement of seeing the people i love again, it started to sink in that i'd changed so much. before i left i was scared of life, i was insecure about myself and most of all i really didn't like myself. i'm not saying that all of that has just 'poof' vanished, but after experiencing so much like you would during a trip like this, i definitely felt how it was to truly be happy and have a moment where you just look around some place you've never been before and actually FEEL that your soul is alive. of course the minute you recognise that moment it will actually 'poof' vanish, but just the thought of it right now makes me smile. it's easy to forget about that, to forget to take the time and remember the moments that count and which will last a lifetime. good thing i can blog about them :)


so right now at this moment it's about one year and seven months after my arrival back home. a lot has happened and i've again changed so much. when i arrived i had absolutely no more money left, so i immediately started looking for a job. i applied for loads of things and ended up working as a logistical planner for a big supermarket. it seemed like the best thing at the time and even though i told my supervisor i was only staying for two years i was hired. after that i fell in love and got into a relationship with the girl i had always dreamed of being with. i was absolutely insanely passionately head over heels in love and could not have been happier. i also spent more time with my brother who bought a house while i was away and had started a relationship with an awesome girl who had two daughters. so all was going pretty good. until it all fell apart...


i think one of the most important things that happened was going off my medication. i started taking anti depressents when my first therapist diagnosed me with a depression. i kept taking them when i was backpacking, but felt secure and stabile enough to get rid of them after finding a good job and falling in love with the woman of my dreams. my doctor advised me to find a therapist in order to have some sort of back up. so i did and that's when i realised that all the shit i had left behind was still there, waiting to attack and it did. hard. that's when i fell apart and i had my heart broken. i couldn't believe it and i think i was really in shock for quite some time. somehow i kept hoping that things would work out again and that we were strong enough to handle anything, but she couldn't do it. she couldn't see me unhappy and not being able to help and she figured the best thing was to let me go.


just when you think you can hande anything and everything is totally fine, it all falls apart. i went through hell and i don't think i've ever felt that alone. ever. i started breaking down at work and after dragging myself there day after day and feeling totally empty i quit. all i could do was cry and go to therapy. it was like that for weeks and i was just going crazy. i started reading a lot of books about consciousness, spirituality and mindfullness. i somehow picked myself up and started meditating and exercising (just a little bit) and i just opened up and talked to people about what was making me feel so sad and why i was SO heartbroken. i figured out it had a lot to do with my childhood (doesn't it always!) and so i confronted myself with my behaviour and tried to figure out why i am who i am and why i do what i do. i basically just took the time to finally heal a bit, after numbing myself for 26 years. it was a big struggle, but i made it. i can't say that at this point i'm totally happy, complete and living the life i want, but for the first time in my life i've faced my issues and problems and chose to do something about them instead of running away and supressing them. i can truly say that i'm proud of myself and for what i've accomplished so far. i've gotten to know my true self a bit more and although i still have moments where i think ''why the hell am i like this?!?!" there's a lot i've got going on and i just hope that what i'm doing next will bring me further somehow...


so what is next?


THAILAND!!!!

lots and lots of broccoli and newyears in brisbane

my very last job in australia was cutting and packing broccoli at a farm where i was actually paid per hour!!! the hostel we stayed at was really nice and the people who worked there were so helpful and sweet and it was a very nice change from lillie's backpackers. every saturday night was 'bar night' and the kitchen/dining area was transformed into a bar. alcohol wasn't allowed at the hostel, except for these nights. we would also go on trips every now and again and the staff also brought us to the supermarket every week.
the work was a lot harder and we also worked when it rained. most people staying at the hostel also worked at this farm and every morning we were all dropped off and we would wrap ourselves in garbage bags because no one had a proper rain suit. the weather was really bad, but because it was christmas time and for some reason people like broccoli a lot, the orders were huge and we had to work over 11 hours a day sometimes. i was still in a bad mood from all the shit that happened at the other hostel and it took me a while to get my mojo back. i was just so tired of working so hard, but this time i was finally paid a normal, decent wage. my visa was almost running out and i think that looking back at my year in australia, i was a bit dissapointed and i wished i'd been able to do more cool stuff you dream about doing when you get to australia. of course i worked enough to be able to get my 2nd year visa, but i decided it was better to go back home and save and then come back and do all the things i wanted to the first time around.
after i finished working enough days to get my 2nd visa, i decided to spend my last week in brisbane. i'd saved a little bit to be able to go out and have fun and that's pretty much all i did. i also spent newyears there and i went to a lesbian party in the city. there i entered a karaoke competition where i came in second!! i had a blast and brisbane is such a beautiful city. people are very outdoorsy and friendly and i'm happy i was able to still spend a week there.
after australia i visited my family in the philippines again. there i met my little cute baby brother sean and saw the house for the first time! it was finished for the most part, but there were still a few things that had to be done, for example moving in a huge steal spiral staircase, fixing the roof which was leaking and finishing the outside. the house looked absolutely amazing and i think it was everything my dad and jade dreamed of. it was also so cool to meet my little brother who was only a few months old at the time. i changed a diaper for the first time in my life and experienced the noise that a tiny person like that can produce, my god!!
then three weeks later i arrived home afer 2 years and 8 months, even though i initially planned to be gone for three months...

wallangarra farming horror

wallangarra is a hugely boring town on the edge of queensland and new south wales. here i stayed for ten weeks in a hostel called lillie's backpackers. DO NOT EVER GO HERE (see picture left). you have been warned.
the only thing that made me survive this hell hole, were the amazing girls i've met there. why was this place so horrendous? i'll try to be brief about it....
first of all the woman running the place. i've never met anyone as inhumane and horrible as her. she lived in the hostel and was a total pain in the ass. she treated us like we were 'the enemy' and talked about us behind our backs to the farmer. so not a very welcoming place. the work itself was actually not so bad. i really enjoy working outdoors, so i don't mind farming, unless i get treated badly, which was the case at this place. the farmer is a dirty racist scumbag who while talking to the supervisors referred to us as 'bitches', and who would lower the payrates whenever he felt like it (which was usually whenever we'd made enough to cover the rent) and he made the supervisors fire anyone who would say something about that. and get this, when you do get fired, you get one hour to pack up and leave and you even have to pay money for the woman from the hostel to pick you up!! i'm normally the type of person who cannot stand unfair treatment, but i had no money to go anywhere else and i was scared to lose my job, so i stayed quiet for ten weeks until i exploded of anger....almost literally! it also didn't help that it was raining a lot while i was there, it was in the area that got flooded during the heavy rainfall in the summer of 2010 (prior to the brisbane flood in 2011).
the farm itself was about 30 minutes from the hostel and we had to thin different types of fruit trees. like i said the work itself was really ok, but there was no toilet on most of the farms we worked at. there was one portable toilet, but from the looks of it, it hadn't been used or cleaned in a very long time. we started out with three really nice and friendly supervisors but they ended up leaving, because they also thought the owner was an asshole. after that we got stuck with a disgusting, chauvinistic, alcoholic macho loser who used to ride around on his quad, stopping near some of the girls and just sit there and stare. he really made my skin crawl, and i ended up getting into a fight with him. he of course had someone else fire me (i got fired the day before my last day there which he knew about, such a pathetic thing to do if you ask me) and when i went up to him to comfront him about this, i just went totally insane and all the rage from the past ten weeks just came out!! it's really not my style to do something like that, but when i was finished everyone was so happy that i just yelled in his face what everyone else was thinking!
so there i was, in the middle of nowhere with no money and no work. again. luckily for me my mates backed me up, but it also meant that they were fired too...we ended up hitching back to the hostel, because there was no way we were gonna pay to be picked up!! but they already called the woman from the hostel and we actually ran into her. she stopped and asked where we were going. i explained to her that there was no way we were paying to get home because we had no money and instead of giving us a free ride, she just slammed the door shut and drove off. we first stopped in town at a jobagency where the lady who worked there arranged for us to stay at a different working hostel nearby. she was so incredibly sweet and had so many girls coming in from lillie's backpackers and felt really bad for us. we ended up baking her a cake later on :)
when we finally arrived back at the hostel after that, the woman from the hostel was incredibly rude and yelled at us that we had an hour to leave. even though i had always been really nice to her and never had any conflicts, she treated me like i was scum. it really sucked and it definitely ruined my australia experience a little bit. even looking back now after two years i still get a bit sad, it was like a total kick in the face. (here to the left a picture of us waiting to get picked up by the other hostel).
i remember sitting on the road after working really hard that day, with a paycheck in my hand that said AUD18. i just sat there and i was so disillusioned and realised that no matter how hard i worked, i was never gonna be able to do all the cool stuff i wanted to do in australia, due to the greedy farmers that use backpackers and just don't give a shit. to them we're all easily replaceable workers who can be fired whenever and the worst part is that as a backpacker you have absolutely no rights. there is not one organization that stands up for backpackers and there is no place you can go when something like this happens!! of course not every farm is like this and luckily for me i was able to actually experience that a few days later.

and now for the stuff that got me through all this: the girls, new dawn magazines, my camera, cooking, so you think you can dance, the veggie lady down the road, going on adventures in the rain, junior masterchef and my psp! when you're stuck in a situation like this, knowing you have to stay for a few weeks (for the 2nd visa) you try to make the best of it and i was lucky to have such awesome people around me who felt the same way. i had my ups and downs like everyone else, but what made me really happy was cooking. i started baking, because even though the hostel was shit, the kitchen was amazing! plus flour, sugar and butter were so cheap that baking wasn't too expensive to do. and there's nothing better than cheering up bored backpackers stuck in the middle of nowhere with a nice banana cake or tiny cheese croissants. it's also the place where i perfected my veggie soup, it's the cheapest dish you can make and if you just make a huge pot, you can save small portions in the freezer: food for a week, BOOM!

so we entertained ourselves and of coursed bitched and moaned a lot. there was suprisingly not a lot of girl drama going on, or maybe i just blocked it in my memory haha. but seriously, i think that because of the shit situation we were all in, we had such a good time together. i'll never forget me and cristina singing songs at the farm all day long; sophie making me laugh and putting catpoop on my arm (that's a long story); getting dressed like a zombie and having a halloween barbecue; making eight homemade pizza's for pizza night; buying cheap and fresh veggies at the veggie lady down the street; chilling out in our pyjama's and watching so you think you can dance; trying to fish; trying to slap a cow on its ass; watching natalie portman rap on my psp and laughing a lot.
the next working hostel we stayed at was called the summit which was a short drive away. the people owning it were so incredibly nice and decent and they arranged a new job for us quite quickly.

melbourne drama and surfer's paradise

i arrived in the evening one night and phil picked me up at the tram stop. i met daisy and connor, a couple hannah and phil met in new zealand, before meeting me. we had a few beers and stayed at phil's place. he was living there with gifton, a canadian guy who worked as a chef.
unfortunately melbourne turned out to be a bit filled with drama. i mean obviously there were some good times, but it all started with my first night out in a gay bar after being so gay deprived for so long. we went to some all girl party in the city and i had been looking forward to partying my ass off in a gay bar ever since i left sydney!! but of course i ran into my ex girlfriend (the one i met during my first mardi gras) with her girlfriend. even though we had broken up for a while i was still a bit heartbroken about it. i can't help it, i'm very sensitive when it comes to girls haha.
then there was the impossible task of finding work. after spending hours online applying for stuff, wandering around the city and giving out numerous cv's all i could find was a dumbass callcentre job which ended up being a total scam and i think i only lasted about two weeks. 
on top of that things at the house turned a bit shaky after while. zara and hannah had already been staying in the living room for a while, waiting for the apartment underneath to be available. there were some issues with the landlord apparently, so it took a bit longer than planned, which led to some tension. i think we moved in downstairs after my first night or so, which made things a bit better. me, zara and hannah all stayed in one bedroom and there was another room where a guy from tasmania moved into a few weeks later.
i spent most of my time wandering around melbourne, looking for work, partying and hanging out with everyone at the house. we celebrated my birthday there and daisy cooked us all a lovely meal which turned into a sausage and peanut butter fest...(i could tell you the story, but you just had to be there). there was always music playing, since gifton and phil are both walking music encyclopedias and we rented a lot of movies and tv shows. our favourite one was definitely flight of the conchords. if you don't know it you absolutely should: http://flightoftheconchords.co.nz/.
i wasn't really happy in melbourne, although i tried. it was really hard not being able to find work and it was raining a lot. it sucked knowing my ex would be hanging out in the gay area and i wanted to do a million things but couldn't afford them and i remember thinking what the hell am i doing here?! zara and hannah were fighting, gifton and hannah had some issues, the landlord was a total pain so i figured i needed to move on again. i decided to find another farm job and also finish my 3 months of farm work, because i had only done a few weeks in kyabram and the factory work in mildura obviously didn't count as farm work. online i found an ad that sounded really good. it was an all girl working hostel and there was work all year round. the rent was not super cheap but no too pricy either and the had a pick up from surfer's paradise so that's where i stayed for three days. 
it was really nice to be by myself again and away from all the drama. although i had nothing to spend i had a good time. the hostel i stayed at had a pool and the beach was only a ten minute walk away. surfer's paradise is really touristy but i totally get that. it's a small town next to the beach with plenty of tall buildings, restaurants, clubs, hotels and shops. plenty of hostels and backpackers too. it's only an hour away from brisbane and at the heart of the gold coast. many of australian visitors drop by during weekends for a quick beach drop and like i said plenty of backpackers stop over on their gold coast trip. i wouldn't stay here for longer than a long weekend, because that's all the time you need to explore it. 
i was picked up along with a few other girls who were staying at different hostels and a few hours later i arrived in the tiniest town ever called wallangarra....

mildura's murray river and other fun times

the working hostel we found in mildura turned out to be so much better than the other one. me, hannah and zara took a bus there and i think kay met up with us later on. maria, the girl who worked at the hostel already told us on the phone that there was no work for at least a week or so, due to the bad weather. luckily for me, i found work after a week or two, working in a styrofoam factory. there were a japanese and korean girl already at the hostel waiting for work and the factory needed 3 people. so maria put our names in a hat and pulled mine out, woop woop!! i was so done with farming, so working in a factory was a nice change. of course i was bored to death after i got the hang of it, but the good pay and loud music all day got me through it. i think i worked about 2,5 months in total. the job was really easy, we had to sort out different styrofoam boxes and pack them up in stacks. we worked in two shifts and had to take breaks seperately, but our supervisors were really cool and friendly.

i just remembered our arrival at the hostel. we gave maria our passports and we were allowed to stay without paying and pay back the rent whenever there was work. this way maria knew we wouldn't go anywhere and we knew we were definitely getting work. (i heard somewhere that it's actually illegal for a hostel or any other accommodation to keep your passport, but i actually think it's a good arrangement). we had just sat on our asses in the bus for i don't know how many hours and i remember being in the mood for pizza. we dumped our bags in the room and looked around the place.

it was a small hostel with a living room, tiny kitchen, dining area and two chill areas outside. there was this guy who used to live there and kept an eye on things, but we were pretty much allowed to do whatever we wanted. there were a bunch of other people already living there and we ended up partying together a lot and i had a really good time there, especially when a met a super hot girl in a bar we used to go to almost every weekend, gheghe. anyway....that first evening we walked outside for a smoke and everyone was chilling out there. after about 30 minutes we realized why they were al there. the supervisor guy walked outside with about ten domino's pizzas and layed them out on the ping pong table for us to just grab and eat!!! i was exstatic and couldn't believe it!! apparently friday night was pizza night and i'll never forget the atmosphere at those moments. it was like being part of some national geographic documentary about hungry hyenas fighting over some chunk of meat hahaha. just imagine 10 or so backpackers going absolutely bananas over free pizza. anyone who has backpacked knows exactly what i mean!
in the weekends the hostel would organize trips sometimes. we went to the murray river, a place called orange world and had a bbq at one of the famer's homes. (kay walked into a glass door with a stack of dishes after dinner. it was hilarious and i'm still laughing about it now (she didn't hurt herself btw)). 
mildura is definitily not a bad place to work and save up for a while. it's a small town, yet there's plenty to do and if you have a good bunch of people around, it will be awesome. obviously working sucks, but having the weekends to look forward to makes it go faster. i think we stayed for about 10 weeks or so. there was drama, laughter, drunken nights, movie nights, pizza nights, boobies on the wall (me and hannah were so lesbian deprived that we cut out cleavages out of fashion magazines and made a collage on our wall) endless music videos (it's where my love for lady gaga and rihanna videos grew), partying, stoned conversations and a crazy ass hostel cat who would sneak into our room and pooped in the kitchen sink once.
i spent my last week with the girl i met at the bar and after a midnight roadtrip to adelaide and a bustrip to melbourne, i met up with zara and hannah and their mates in beautiful melbourne where shit was really going to hit the fan.

farming in kyabram

our friends zara and kay were already on a farm and told us we could come too. so after spending most of our money on a bus ticket we arrived in kyabram, most boring town on earth (little did we know that australia has even more boring towns). we called the farmer and he said he had no work for us. WTF!!! hannah and i found a shopping trolley where we dumped our stuff in and wandered around kyabram hoping to find work or a place to stay, pushing the trolley around like a bunch of bums. i think we only had about 5 dollars on us hahaha. what a day. we went to a working hostel and offered our passports as a deposit but the guy said no. we called the salvation army to help us, but they weren't allowed to help foreigners. we bought a can of beans and a can of pears with our last money in a supermarket where i also charged my psp, so we'd have a movie to watch if we had to sleep in some field. in front of that same supermarket a dog bit my hand. this day could not get any worse and we were laughing most of the time at ourselves and how fucked up our lives were at that moment.
later in the afternoon we tried to call the farmer once more and explain our situation. he understood how desperate we were and after much hesitation he had someone pick us up and 30 minutes later we were reunited with kay and zara and had a place to stay and a job!!! i was so happy at that moment, it was unbelievable. the 'place to stay' ended up being a complete insect fest and the 'job' was total shit, but at that moment, i was really happy to not sleep in a field somewhere.
the job was picking apples. what you have to do is choose a row of trees, strap on a bag, fill it up with apples and carefully empty the full bag in a big bin (which was about 1 squared meter). we were paid per bin (which is the norm at most farms) and most of us did about 2-3 bins a day. i think our salary was 17 dollars per bin, so we didn't make a lot of money. at all. and of course with our luck it rained pretty much every week and we weren't allowed to work in the rain, because it was to dangerous to climb the ladder. so we had to keep ourselves entertained most of the time, because we were literally in the middle of nowhere. the nearest little shopping area was a 40 minute walk away and all we had was a tiny tv with three channels. at one point i created a 'cinema' in our room with sheets and beds and we watched movies on my psp haha. luckily i was able to download movies in the library were we would hang out in weekends.

we weren't allowed to have any alcohol on the premises (as you can see on the sign on the left here), but we'd drink anyway. the farmer never really came over or anything, so we could do whatever we wanted. i think we stayed about 10 weeks in total. the picking season was over so at one point we had to leave. we got a weeks notice or so and looked for jobs online in the library. it's always really tricky finding good farm work, because jobs are always very well portrayed, otherwise no one will be interested. so what i used to do was look for reviews from other backpackers to see what the place is really like. most jobs that seem very nice with good pay turn out to be a total rip off. i even heard this story about a girl who found a job online somewhere, showed up at the hostel and was told to wait for a week, because the fruit wasn't ripe enough yet. she was paying rent of course but when another week passed she decided to do some research and it turned out that the hostel she was staying at, didn't even have any connections with any farms!! so she was promised work, but they didn't have anything!! and sometimes they guarantee you to be paid really well, but you end up getting paid horribly. and the problem is that as a backpacker you don't count. if you open your mouth and demand to be treated like a normal worker, they can just fire you, because you never get a proper contract. so basically you either get lucky and find decent work for decent pay or you just work your ass of for a little bit of money and swallow it...my advice for anyone going to oz and expecting to find jobs everywhere: make sure you have saved plenty of money. this way if you want to experience the farming life you can go wwoofing. wwoof means Willing Workers On Organic Farms, so it's volunteering at a farm and you'll usually get free meals and accommodation for your efforts. read all about it here.
the main reason i actually took up farm work is my visa. if you work for three months at a farm you will be able to extend you visa with another 12 months. this is mostly why backpackers go farming and why a lot of farms take advantage of them, because they know backpackers need to work there and will have to take their shit. i'm really sad about this and it's one of the reasons i had to go home. i worked my ass off and wasn't able to save any money, so i was basically just surviving instead of working and saving money to travel oz.

i actually really enjoyed the work, but it was really demotivating knowing you will not get paid a lot and won't be able to save anything. the rainy weather also didn't help much. the good thing was being surrounded with good mates and having people there who are going through the same thing and also not happy with the situation. we really had to entertain ourselves and try to motivate each other. when we actually did have some money we'd go into town on the weekends or have a little party in on of the empty rooms. have dinners together or watch the tiny tv haha. i was really lucky to have good people around :)
we ended up finding a working hostel in a town called mildura. but more about that next time.

sydney

in january i took a flight to sydney and stayed at the YHA near the harbour. it was a new hostel, very clean and way too expensive, but i was way too cool to arange any accommodation (stupid!) and after walking around the city for hours with my backpack looking for the cheapest place to stay i thought fuck it, i'm not moving anymore!

i was already low on cash and spent my first couple of days wandering around the city trying to find work at a hostel. luckily westend backpackers needed cleaning staff, so i moved in and stayed for a few months cleaning the hostel for free accommodation and trying to find paid work, but the jobhunt contained more hunt then job....i did manage to get some promo work here and there, but not enough to actually save anything.

at the hostel i met the coolest and weirdest people and partied A LOT. backpackers mostly from the UK, but also a few americans and canadians and even a few dutchies working at the reception. a lot of people stuck around for a while and there was a big group i used to hang out with. the hostel itself was a total party place and i got bedbugs about 3 times, punched a guy in the balls for touching my boobs, walked in on people having sex a bunch of times (someone walked in on me and a girl once hahaha), met a guy with five nipples and had my ipod stolen!!!

however, i also got to experience mardi gras for a second time and this time as a volunteer. i had to walk around with a tv crew filming the entire parade for some gay network and even though i wasn't allowed to bring my camera i brought it with me anyway (duh) and took pictures in front of the fence!!
i also did the coolest thing i've ever done in my life during this time: i posed naked for spencer tunick at the opera house!! it was one of the best experiences of my life, i cannot believe i was naked in front of the sydney opera house with 5200 other naked people!!! so much fun and the next day i was in the newspaper too.

my mate hannah and kim were staying at the hostel too, but after having no more money and also not being able to find work, they had to leave the hostel. which of course they didn't. the place was so unorganized, that they were able to stay there for a few nights without anyone noticing!! unfortunately some twat that was always minding everyone elses business told the manager and they were kicked out. the manager wasn't always around and i arranged for them to sleep in my bed, but of course that twat girl found out and then all three of us were kicked out!! luckily i got my deposit back, but i was still really poor and stayed the next two weeks with my mate sophie, who lives in the city. after that me and hannah decided to look for farmwork together.

malaysia - penang

i spent about 3 months in singapore before heading to australia. my dad and jade took me on a long weekend to malaysia. we decided to go to penang, which is an island northwest of peninsular malaysia and connected to the mainland by the penang bridge. other ways to get to the rest of malaysia is by ferry or airplane. we arrived at the capital of the island, georgetown, somewhere in the morning and spent the first day walking around exploring the city. armed with an incredibly touristy map, sunglasses and our camera's, we visited many temples, famous buildings, crowdy markets and tasted true penang food. the population is very varied with the majority being ethnic chinese, making penang the only state in malaysia where ethnic chinese forms a plurality. the official religion in malaysia is islam, but in penang the mosques are definitely outnumbered by temples.

buddhist temple, mosque and city hall

campbell street which is mostly chinese, the blue mansion, clanjetties

traditional penang laksa, the outside of popiah, springrolls guy

tossing noodles, guy cooking food and who was too busy to even notice me taking photos, chendol a sort of lemonade with gooey thingies in it

guy filleting fish, sunday market, veggies

pickled fruit, dried fish, goat heads, you gotta love asian markets

guys plaing checkers with beer caps, nightshot, outside food court

there are two places on penang you must absolutely visit: the butterfly farm and the tropical spice garden. of course we couldn't explore the entire island, since we only had 5 days, but these were really worth going to. after trying to get a bus we just took a cab to these places, since they were both on the other side of the island.

penang butterfly farm is the world's first tropical butterfly sanctuary and inside are about 4000 butterflies from 120 species. signs explain the life cycle and there are also some other interesting creatures crawling around:

lifecycle: egg, caterpillar, butterfly

butterflies on a pineapple slice, giant millipedes (that's their actual name), fluorescent scorpions

bunch of walking leaves, two iguanas

little alligator snapper, pignosed turtle, horseshoe crab

at the spice garden we took a tour with a guide who explained everything we had around us and after that we had a cooking class with nazlina, using spices from the garden itself and learning how to use them. we made spicy chicken with a salad and tomato rice which was absolutely yummy (the recipe can be found on her website). Underneath some pictures of the tools and ingredients we used and some pretty areas in the garden. The only bad thing about the garden though is the never ending clouds of mosquitoes!! The staff is so nice to give everybody free anti mosquito stuff at the entrance.


A couple more places we saw were the snake temple (with actual poisonous snakes), kek lok si temple (which means temple of supreme bliss) and one with a massive statue of a sleeping buddha.