travel diary — day 260

In australia, travel on 16 December 2009 tagged australia, bali, beer, book, breakfast, coffee, couchsurfing, darwin, didgeridoo, drunk, email, girl, guitar, hippies, hong kong, indonesian embassy, internet, kennis, lessons, marijuana, murray, noodle, pot, remembrance day, shopping, sleep, store, ticket, tourists, travel, walkter, yha with no comments

day 256 — remem­brance day — i had break­fast and cof­fee with a black fella called mur­ray, did some wash­ing and read my book. then i got the bus into town to sort out some travel arrange­ments. i was going to buy a ticket to bali, but was told that i needed an out­bound flight (which was a require­ment for entry into indone­sia). so i went to the indone­sian embassy down the road and they told me i don’t need any out­bound tick­ets. sat­is­fied, i bought a flight, had lunch, checked email and looked through some stores.

i found a good didgeri­doo store. the guy who ran it was called wal­ter and he was one of the local tribe. some of the north­ern tribes don’t play the didgeri­doo much, but he was good at teach­ing tour­ists how to play. i got a couple of free les­sons and looked at dif­fer­ent instru­ments. after­wards i went to the yha and booked myself in for the next day (i wanted to stay in town for a few days and didn’t want to stay too long with the couch­surf­ing hip­pies lol). then i went shop­ping, bought some cheese­cakes for dessert (my share of din­ner duties) and returned to noodle’s house.

in the even­ing, we talked and played gui­tar, sang a little, smoked a little, i read my book and got some sleep.

day 257 — i had break­fast, said farewell to my hosts and headed into town. i checked email and had a cof­fee, then went to the didj shop for some more les­sons. wal­ter told me i was wel­come to sit and play the didgeri­doos as much as i wanted … i wandered off for some lunch and it star­ted rain­ing. i had a beer and waited for the rain to abate, spent a little more time at the didj shop, did some shop­ping at coles and headed back to my hotel for the evening.

on the way back i ran into a girl from hong kong who i’d spoken to (briefly) dur­ing the trip to kath­er­ine. she’d been con­fused by the bus driver’s dir­ec­tions and asked me to repeat what he’d said. when i was walk­ing to the yha, i recog­nised her and we talked for a few minutes. her name was ken­nis and we made plans to have lunch together the next day. after say­ing good­bye, i returned to the hostel and spent the even­ing there.

day 258 — my days in dar­win were becom­ing a routine. i had a cof­fee and checked my email, then went to the didj shop to prac­tice. i’d usu­ally prac­tice a little, chat with wal­ter a little, then prac­tice some more. since wal­ter had been so good (free les­sons and not pres­sur­ing me to buy a didj) i offered to buy him a beer after work. so we headed to a nearby bar and star­ted drink­ing some beer. we got into a con­ver­sa­tion with a dutch couple who were driv­ing around aus­tralia. wal­ter was keen to find some tour­ist girls to hit on, so i fired off a few drunken emails and headed home to sleep.

day 259 — today was mar­ket day and i con­sidered walk­ing around the mar­kets, but i was try­ing not to spend too much money, so i went to the didj store one last time. i got a didj and a cd of didgeri­doo music for inspir­a­tion. i said good­bye to wal­ter and headed back to the hostel. i decided to spend the night online and stayed in my room, surf­ing, chat­ting and play­ing chess.

day 260 — i used up the last of my inter­net time, had a shower and shave, did some wash­ing, read my book, had din­ner at hogs breath (gotta love those curly fries), read my book some more and got some sleep.

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