Australia

We landed in Perth at about 8pm in a state of slight depression. Leaving Asia was quite traumatic... the idea of being in a developed country again was odd, we already missed rice, Andy had become slightly dependant on having it twice a day and we had become quite accustomed to squat toilets. Not to mention the heat... we stepped of the plane and grabbed our hoodies. Brrr, I dont think flip flops were the best choice of footwear!
We got a taxi to a really nice hostel, we got lucky and got a double room for the price of a dorm bed seeing as it was so late, still 3 times our daily Asia budget just for a nights sleep, luckily we could put off sleeping in a dorm for one more night!
We spent the next three days cold and sad.... exploring Perth, watching our money and going from one hostel to the next to escape the crazies we managed to meet! The best was a Kiwi guy who must of been late 50's who kept asking us quiz questions... he seemed quite harmless at first until we went back to our dorm and he was naked in his bed. This wouldnt of been a problem had he not kept lifting up the quilt, giving us a good old flash. We spent the night listening to him rant and rave about snoring, opening and closing the door and shouting abuse at his bunk buddy! Not a fun night!
Perth was a nice city, we explored a fair bit althought 3 days was a little ambitious in the city with no car! We were certainly ready to leave! We did get a good dose of Western culture, we went to the Maritime Museum and the Art Gallery and we went for a day in Freemantle on the train and scoured the charity (Op) shops for warm clothes!
More importantly it was a stop off on the way to Brisbane to visit Hannah! We flew over to Brisbane on the 10th, my Birthday... the alarm woke us up at 4.30am and we rolled out of our bunk, fully clothed as we only had sheets and it was freezing and headed to the airport! It took Andy 22 minutes to say Happy Birthday but I forgave him when he gave me my homemade card made out of wrapping paper.....
The journey seemed to last forever and I was so excited, we finally touched down and it was incredibly sunny and already seemed considerably warmer than Perth! Thank God! Margaret picked us up as Hannah was working and off we went back to what would be our home for the next 2 weeks. They live in an area called Wynum, a 15 minute walk from the sea in a lovely house, it was such a luxury for us to be in a real house with people we knew (well I knew and Andy came to know very quickly) all our worries about leaving Asia seemed to disappear.
We spent two weeks in Brisbane and they flew by, we mainy chilled out, re-couped, well I did and Andy started jogging! We ate an incredible amount of food... Margaret started cooking up a storm and it was far to good to refuse, that alongside the chocolate brownies and chocolate birthday cake we started filling out a little with Western food! We did some shopping to Andy's dismay, again for warm clothes, preparing ourselves for the perils of NZ's winter!
Bascially it was a really good two weeks, everyone made us so welcome and it was amazing spending time with Hannah, Helen and Margaret and meeting Hannah's Boyfriend for the first time! It all went so well till Andy and I went out and I treated him to one of my incredible hangovers! Whoops!
We also met up with Christian and Vicki, my friends from uni who are living in Brisbane, we had an amazingly messy night out in the Valley which I preceeded by throwing up till 9pm the following evening. Oh dear, I think at 23 its time to realise thats I shouldnt drink!
We did some exploring of the city and the area in which Hannah lived, donned our walking shoes and set off on some costal walks and luckily we had 12 days of incredibly warm sunshine and this is winter (people do actually moan about the cold!) You can see why they live there! We also became slightly addicted to TV, it must have been the amount of time we spent without it... so we spent many happy nights, watching ''so you think you can dance'', ''wipeout'' and ''criminal minds'' whilst enjoying a few too many bottles of vino! Bliss!
And as you can imagine it was pretty hard leaving my bestest friend in the world again!!!!