“Do you know who sings this?” asked our not so Australian balding taxi driver on our last night in Sydney. It was 2:30 AM, we were four Armenian girls with swollen feet and thumping heads from the terrible techno rave music that we had been listening to for the past 3 hours while 15 year old boys shimmied around us.
“Frank Sinatra?” I guessed, knowing I was right. I had heard the jazzy blues song before, before the stupid electronica unts unts unts had been beaten into my head and I couldn’t think as civilly as I would have liked. I was being nice to the poor taxi driver hauling our sad looking selves to our final destination, but all I really wanted was to get to the house and feel the sweet release of taking off the clogs I had been wearing all night, trying to impress God-knows who….or what. It was our last night in Australia and my mind was beginning to fade back to real life.
But then there was a pause.
“No!” He exclaimed, making my head spin for a moment, “It’s ME!” He said this in the excitement as if he had just found that out for the first time too. “It’s me singing. I am a singer. Here is my CD!”
At that instant, my grogginess and soreness disappeared as our vibrant Ukrainian taxi driver began to belt out “New York New York” out the window on that humid Australian summer night. The louder he got, the more awake we became, clapping, singing, and even attempting to cancan in the back seat.
He went on to explain how he was a grand singer back in the Ukraine and how difficult the transition had been to singing in English in Australia. “But I do have a show coming up soon, I am getting bigger. My name is Zachary…”
……
And this is why I travel.
Welcome to my life. The Armenian wanderer’s life.
This is my story. More specifically, this is my story about my travels to Australia and New Zealand. This is my story about falling in love, my story about adrenaline, about adventures that even I could never have made up myself.
Warning: This is a VERY long blog post and if you make it all the way through, BRAVO! If not, take a meander at the pics of my adventures and as always, write me a comment and maybe, just maybe, we can all be friends.
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Sydney, Australia December 26,2009
I arrived in Sydney the day after Christmas and was welcomed warmly by my cousin and three friends who had flown in earlier from LA, equipped with Santa hats, hugs, and of course the stormy weather that we seem to unintentionally pack on every trip we go on. We were welcomed into the home of a loving Armenian mother and daughter and after having been in Taiwan for six months, eating Armenian food and being surrounded by “my people” warmed my little Asian heart.
The five of us, Evelina, Karine, Jackie, Luiza, and I spent a few days in Sydney, exploring, getting lost, enjoying the Australian accent and the constant, “cheers mate” as a reply for pretty much anything. How do you respond to that? “You’re welcome? No problem? Checkmate?” Meh. I just smiled.
The next few days were, for me, a transitional culture shock period as I accustomed to seeing the “whyguo” what the Taiwanese call foreigners or literally translated “white people”. I was not used to seeing so many “foreigners” and hearing so much English and it kind of freaked me out for a while, trying not to stare at every white boy or eavesdrop on every conversation just because I could understand.
So frolicking through Sydney brought its own adventures, as many adventures as six Armenian girls can run into. We danced, we walked, we took jumping photos, and we waited for the sun to come out. It didn’t. So we went to Melbourne where we could test our weather luck again.
Melbourne, Australia December 28,2009....or 27th?...I'm confused
It's 5:00 in the morning. Flight is at 6:30. We arrive at the airport. Say our Goodbyes. Go to the self check-in counter. Hmmm? too early to check-in you say? OK. We will wait.6:00 AM, still to early to check in you say? How is that if our flight leaves in half an hour?....oh, wait what? We are too early? Yes, just a little bit, only 24 hours too early to be exact. At the airport on the wrong day, we contemplated sleeping in the airport, paying twice the amount of the original ticket to fly out at that moment, or getting a room for 3 at the cheap airport hotel next to the Krispy Kreams where our borrowed rainbow umbrella got thrashed and tattered in the storm we got stuck in, only having packed clothes for a sunny summer vacation....
Comprendes?
Either way, one of those days, we finally made it to Melbourne and this time the sun finally made a guest appearance.…but all too quickly. We, and when I say we, I mean, “I”, got crisped by the sun. I got Taiwan red, and immediately started peeling, so attractive I was. I made do with my new look as we ventured through their version of a night market (which is exactly the same as the ones here in Taiwan), ate delicious Greek food (go figure), and as we finally got to spend Christmas the Australian way, basking under the sun in our Santa hats.
Making the metro driver hold the train for us as we ran down the ramp, walking all over the city in high heels looking for a dance club that had been right next to our hotel, sipping champagne on black tattered leather couches at a rave club avoiding talking to a sweaty Latvian boy with his shirt tucked in his back pocket while my cousin twirled around the empty dance floor at 4 AM….well these are just the beginning of my adventures.
Sydney December 31, 2009
Zoo
Real Australian Kangaroo. They don't make em like that anymore.
I think they are being a little over dramatic.
Cutest little guy.
One of the largest crocodiles ever. He killed two of his previous mates and lives all alone now. Sad little guy.
Now on to New Year's Eve
OOOohh, New Year’s Eve 2009, Thank you for all the lifetime full of memories you have provided me with. I am forever indebted. Yours truly, Anna.
Now, there is much I cannot say about that night, but I can give you a glimpse. Picture this. It is my cousin’s birthday, so of course we are going to celebrate her and give her a bit extra to drink and be merry. Somehow when we got to the club that we had reserved months in advance, we were all a bit too merry.
Enjoying ourselves at the empty hub, we did what girls do best when they are together; we took pictures of ourselves, hugged and said, “I really do love you, so much”, and scanned the place for guys to talk to. In the midst of our scanning and mingling, the security at the club got suspicious of our merriness.
With a huge grin on my cousin’s face that spoke of a life thoroughly lived and a night already enjoyed, security escorted her out of the club. Not one to ever miss an adventure like this, Jackie and I went out with her and even at this point, I knew that what I had here was a story to tell her grandchildren. We decided to sober up a little by walking around and dancing in the streets and when the time felt right, we decided to try again at our previous location to rejoin our group of friends.
Security did not buy it. “Take another walk around the block,” he said.
That was enough to cause the sequel to this story, “The Revenge of the Evelina”. Sure we were a little wobbly, and our smiles couldn’t hide our true feelings, but it was her birthday and we were causing no sort of trouble. I thought it was pretty funny, but Eva for some reason did not. With tears over her face and anger over her eyes, I am sure the club will be shut down in a few months. I have always wanted to know what it feels like to be kicked out of a place, you know, maybe check off one of my “100 things to do before I die” list. But her story will have to do.
Finally meeting up with all the girls, we walked to the fireworks show, admired the spectacular spectacular (or what each of us saw), and Eva, Luisa, and Karine spent the rest of the night walking the city looking for a taxi while Jackie and I had our own adventures. All getting home at the same time, around 5 in the morning, we lay on one bed, laughing about our lives, about how somehow we had ended up being all together in Australia on New Year’s Eve 2009.
And that is how we brought in the New Year, uncomfortably sprawled on one bed in our fancy dresses, laughing. Perfect.
Auckland, New Zealand January 1, 2010
If this is love. If this is loooooveeeee.
What did we NOT experience in New Zealand?
So not to be rude, but while you were probably sitting at work counting numbers and the hours until lunch, or unintentionally watching American Idol (or whatever show is popular these days), or just sitting on the toilet contemplating your life….
I was:
Free Falling from 12,000 feet from a tiny airplane, looking like an egg head screaming for dear life;
Repelling down the side of a mountain along a waterfall, lowering myself down by one rope;
Strapping on white plastic shoes to be able to walk in the dark caves 600 ft. underground and inner tube underneath glowworms that appear to be the sweet touches of God’s lights (though it is their poop that glows);
Driving a giant ATV, guided in the jungles and breathtaking countryside by a native Mauri tribesman whose family has lived on the land for 800 years;
And finally, rolling down a hill in a ball with my cousin. No explanation needed there because all I remember is laughing until my throat was sore and my face distorted.
Basically I fell in love with the vast green hills, the peace that comes with the people that live in that kind of simplicity and the beauty of the whole country and everything it stands for. So here is my love letter to NZ, or to our mulleted tour guide in the Waitomo caves where he serenaded us while we drifted on our romantic inner tubes.
Dear country/mullet boy,
I had traveled and seen much of the world, but I never understood true living until I met you. Thank you for making my heart beat faster than anyone ever could, for making my adrenaline force bravery upon me, for allowing me to pee in the wet suites though we were specifically told not to, and for just being the peacefulness that you are.
You are quirky and for that and for all the adventures we had together, I will remember you and will one day come back to you as many lovers promise to one another.
So wait for me, as I will for you. Stay green, uninhabited, beautiful, and foxy. I love you. Yours Truly.
We had not much time to shed tears for departing from our new love because we left our hotel 3 in the morning, awaiting our flight back to Cairns, Australia, where we would get our last fill of adventure.
January 6, 2010 Cairns, Australia
One thing about Cairns before I get deep and lyrical… there are bats! And I don’t mean the cute ones (if there are such) but big juicy scary ones that hang from trees right above the sidewalk, ready to strike down on any defenseless foreigner ignorant enough to walk the streets at night.
Seriously. If you have been brave and patient enough to have read this whole blog post, take away this thing and this thing alone, NEVER walk the streets of Cairns at night because Dracula’s minions will inevitably squawk and attack with their vicious wings and moonless night black bodies.
I mean, we actually never got attacked by them, but one did chase Luiza and me down the street all the way back to our hotel as we ran in the middle of the street waving our hands about and screaming in a mix of English and Armenian, for fear that it might understand one language or the other and call for backup.
But other than the creepy inhabitants of the night, Cairns truly was amazing. We went to a night market which was again, nothing more than a small version of Taiwan, where I got to practice the little Chinese I know and where we sat on black leather recliners, taking swigs from a fruity wine, and getting our feet massaged by gawking Asian boys. That is called living the good life.
What else I did get to see of Cairns was another world completely, literally. We took the day snorkeling tour and saw a world that had a life of its own: spiraling colorful coral, eclectic sea anemones, jumping fish, and of course, the most exciting, a huge homey sea turtle that gently swam around and came up for air. Ahh! Such an amazing experience that made me realize how much this world sustains itself without our meddling, and there it was, right under my floating mass, easily disturbed by one wrong kick of my flipper. Incredible, the whole idea that this world is mostly water, mostly them, not me…not us.
Our bro SCUBA instructor graciously suggested a place for us ladies to go out at night and when later we got to the bar in the Great Barrier Reef capital of Australia, what we found was a country bar called the Woolshed where tables were set up for dancing atop. What a silly thing to find. But it worked for us and apparently it worked for our instructor and his compatriots as they began arriving FOB, literally, still smelling like fish and SCUBA gear. Characters they were and characters they will be, in flower swimming trunks and a black suit jacket. Classy. Needless to say, we enjoyed our night, dancing and laughing and even having a go at the tables, though my clumsiness allotted only a two minute dance before I got back on solid ground.
And that was our adventure in Cairns and almost the end of our adventure in the Great Down Under.
Sydney, Australia January 9, 2010
We went to a rave club, had a meh time. Little did we know our lives would never be the same as we walked out of the club with sore feet and bleeding nerves, as we hailed the first cab we saw, and sat in on the best cab ride ever….
“Do you know who sings this?”
