I Left My Heart in San Francisco

If you must know, I did write a blog about John. That's his name. He is a nameless mystery man no longer, he's John. Anyhow I wrote a blog telling how me met, how we felt about each other blah blah blah, but as I was about to hit 'Publish', out popped a little angel on my shoulder and started yelling at me; "That stuff is special dufus! Just between you and John. You want to make it public and ruin it then go ahead but you're an idiot." Consequentially the blog got saved to drafts.

But I suppose, now that I've drastically changed my plans for him, I can reveal a little bit about what's going on. Oh and maybe throw in some stuff about my five days in Brisbane too.
So last time you were with me I was finishing up my Fiji time. What I failed to mention was that any spare second I had there I was thinking about John.
'Daaawwww' I hear you say, 'how cute, she had a holiday roamance.' But it wasn't like that, not just some passing romance. It was different. But have no fear, I'm not going to go into details because
a) this isn't some soppy 'dear diary' type thing
b) it's between me and him anyway thanks
and c) you're probably bored of it already.
Just know that we missed each other a ridiculous amount and by my second day in Brisbane I knew it would only be a matter of time before I was back on U.S soil. So I made it happen; booking my flight took two hours in the Flight Centre shop because when I told the woman helping me why I was going back she almost fainted with delight and told the whole office. There was much 'aww'ing, tea and bsicuits were suddenly procured from somewhere and they demanded to hear the entire story.
That didn't take too long. What took ages was trying to figure out how to put payment through on an Aussie card machine using a UK debit card. Soon I was on the phone to Lloyds while every member of staff tried to make it work and a forgotten customer sat in the corner quietly suggesting we put it through as an online transaction.
[In the end this was the correct thing to do and when we all turned to thank the tiny Asian man he was gone. I saw him later in STA Travel.]
At this point I feel it appropriate to discuss the other difficulties I had to deal with in Australia and how well I handled it all *cough cough threw tantrums cough cough*.
My debit card didn't work at all. Not in stores, not at the ATMs, despite my bank assuring me it would. The travel card I purchased in England didn't work so I had a bunch of Aussie dollars on it that I couldn't use. So as far as cash goes, everything was a nightmare. I had to borrow $50 from my couchsurfing host, bless her heart. Actually, if it weren't for my hosts being such wonderful people my time in Brisbane would have been decidedly more miserable.
Brisbane as a city is lovely; it's small and there's a few great museums and galleries, the people were nice and the scenery is pretty. But between dashing to the public library computers, hanging around King George's Sqaure to get free Wi-fi and visiting every money exchange place to try and get US Dollars, it meant my days were nearly always half over by the time I got to actual sightseeing.
My hosts managed to get my mind off that though. We went for dinner, brunch, a party at their friend's house and on nights in we'd chat and laugh for hours.

You know, this is a good time to plug Couchsurfing. It is fantastic. You meet locals who really know the area and if they don't have time to show you round themsleves they'll give you great useful tips like how to get around cheaply, where to shop for food, what areas not to bother with, good bars etc. And they aren't trying to sell anything so you don't get any of that hotel BS like "Oh this place is great, yes it's a little pricey but it's worth it" or "Downtown? No i'm not sure which bus you'd take, let me just call you a taxi." Fake smile, fake enthusiasm, take tourists' money, clock out at 6.
None of that with Couchsurfing. All my hosts have been funny, genuine, caring people- usually travellers themselves who know what it's like and are trying to help you out as best they can.
That's it. I'm done. No more Couchsurfing advertising.

Where was I? Ah yes, so Brisbane is a good city, perhaps just a few too many gyms for my liking because it made for an over-abundance of arrogant berks flashing their bodies in almost no clothing, getting protein-enhanced smoothies from Boost Juice Bar and looking down their noses at the people standing in line at the Pie Face Bakery next door.
But that was then and this is now and now I'm in San Fran again. I actually flew into LA which was just as I remembered it from four years ago except the people seemed nicer this time. A man carried my backpack onto a bus for me at 5am (I had to pretend the reason I clutched the bag so tightly when he leaned in to help was because it's a delicate bag, not because I thought he was stealing it).
[Side note: standard bus fare in LA is $1.50. That's 90p! For a one-way ticket anywhere in LA. My bus ride was fifty minutes long and I paid 90p for it. Take notes Cambridge.]
My couchsurf host was great too, he picked me up from the airport and we went straight to the beach for the day. A nice normal beach. Sorry did I say normal? I meant nudist. Which I failed to notice until I had to dodge a giant pair of breasts attached to a tiny seventy-something year old woman. Then I began to realise the inordinate amount of genitalia everywhere. My host turned and asked me if I minded being on a nudist beach. I replied not at all, as long as participation was not mandatory. He laughed and promptly stripped.
The next day was a whirlwind of sorting out how and when to get to San Fran and where I'd stay etc but I did find an hour of spare time to dedicate to watching the huge dudes on Muscle beach. Time well spent.

But again, I deviate. The fact is I did get to SF. I'm there now. And, thanks to John putting in a good word for me, I have recently been employed by the Adelaide and Dakota hostels (owned by the same man) and so far it's been great. It's taking me back to university really; living with lots of people my age, from all walks of life, all tight on money yet all agreeing booze is the best investment. John and I are working on our plans for traveling the U.S while I'm here and to be honest, I could not be happier to be back.

Oh, and the weather is gorgeous too.

  

No, my resort didn't have Bed Bugs

I'm not going to dilly-dally with an introduction. It'll be far more fun if we plunge straight into the madness.
So I arrive on the mainland cranky as hell because I've been travelling for 26 hours  straight [note- a plague on anyone who thinks taking a young toddler and a year old baby on an 11 hour night flight is a good idea, you crappy crappy human beings] and now I'm at the hotel and they're telling me my room won't be ready for 5 hours.
This was what started the receptionist's list of check-in information about the hotel that, I admit, I had embarrassingly first world middle class reactions to ($8 for an hour of internet?! Isn't there a Starbucks with free Wi-fi around here? What is this, the eighties?!) But after I'd had a solid 14 hours sleep I began to see the beautiful simplicity of the place, and cruising the ocean to my first tiny island the scenery was so stunning that I oohed and aahed with the other passengers, but I couldn't help noticing the number of couples on board, which left me wishing I had a certain someone (if he's reading this, he knows who he is) who I could also nauseatingly cuddle up to. Because Fiji is undoubtably place to bring your other half. The clear ocean waves are begging for a romantic midnight swim. The white sands want you to stroll along them holding hands. The superaize hammocks need to be slowly rocked while you sit in them together and talk about the silly things in life.
But wherever you go as a traveller you'll meet people, and lo and behold my first night I befriended an Irish banker called Chris, a hospital receptionist from London named Jack and Marius, a hilarious German with a random passion for Spring Rolls.
The next day was akin to a British Spring day: pissing it down with rain. Oh except it was still 30°C+ and was accompanied by the forecast for a cylone. It's a testament to the determination of tourists that everyone was still refusing to move from their sun loungers. I actually witnessed one woman have her hat, towel and beer blown away as she was holding them only to cry "You'll have to do better than that Zeus!" to which I replied "Amen!" as my sarong flew into a Coconut tree.
But altogether it meant that the real fun came that evening when everyone made an unspoken agreement to get completely wasted, and after we'd played every drinking game known to man- myself and the other ladies took ourselves to bed, leaving the boys singing 'No Woman No Cry' with far more soul than was expected from a group of German, Australian and British lads.
The next morning began with three little words: get. over. hangover. By the time we arrived at the next island, however, Jack and I had expanded our mantra. It now went: 'spend day ___ ___ getting over food poisoning'. (I leave two spaces blank because it was the only variable between me and Jack, he chose to fill the gap with 'in bed' whereas I thought 'by pool' was a better option. Sure it was a longer dash to the toilets but hey, I got my pool time. [Note: we later realised it wasn't food poisoning- it was the water on the first island. It was filtered sea water the staff said was safe to drink. Turns out several peoples' stomachs disagreed].
But anyway we powered through and as a reward the powers that be decided my last few days should be blessed with glorious weather, allowing me to snorkel on some fantastic reef sites, kayak along the shoreline and swim through a network of beautiful underwater caves. Our little knot of friends was also joined by an awesome Galswegian girl called Ashley and a happy-go-lucky German named Daniel (sooo many German travellers in Fiji, who knew?) who made my last island stop a sheer joy; we actually managed to laugh about how uncomfortable the beds were- imagine a brillo pad mattress on a crowbar bedframe.

All in all I did have a few days of what I consider the typical Fijian holiday, doing the things that everyone does when they visit. But it was the unexpected things, good and bad, that made my Fijian experience quite different to what I thought it'd be. Geckos falling in our dinner, husking, cracking and scraping out our own coconuts to make fresh coconut milk, challenging the resort staff to volleyball matches in the tempestuous rain, a Fijian cooking lesson, playing with the pet goat, traditional Fijian dance shows, and avoiding the people who'd caught bed bugs from the Beachcomber resort, all added up to make my time in Fiji. . . interesting. Exceptional. And downright bizarre.
P.S. A quick something has to be said about the Fijian people themsleves. I wasn't really sure what they would be like, having never met a Fijian before, but they were wonderful. They kind of put our definition of the word 'friendly' to shame. They know your name within two seconds and never forget it. They run on 'Fiji Time' which basically means doing everything whenever you feel like it, and they will always say 'Bula' to you (Google will tell you it means 'hello' or 'welcome' but it's actually more like 'hiya!' and 'woop!').
However what I would see every time I met a Fijian, was a look of confusion pass over their ace. I quickly discovered this was because apparently, as each one of them told me, I look like a Fijian girl. In fact this was said to me so many times that when I got back to the mainland and the woman showing me to my room turned and said "You know you look. . " I threw my head back and shouted "Like a Fijian girl, I knoooow!" while shaking my fists in the air, which quite terrified her. So if I randomly burst out a loud 'Bula!' when I'm next around you, don't be alarmed- it's Fijian alter ego Salote (which is Charlotte in Fijian).