Well, I'm in my new home...for the next seven weeks, at least. Yes, I won't have to deal with boarding airplanes until sometime in February (at which point I'll have a 41-hour flight). Hurray! Instead, I'll just be getting on bus after bus after bus. But I haven't noted where I am yet, have I? ...I'm in New Zealand. There. No major adventures yet, but I should have the opportunities to see some cool things while I'm here. It's funny, my mom sent me a email saying how it's been my dream to visit New Zealand. At this point, I'm not sure if I really have any dreams or aspirations; not the way other people do, at least. I just do things. But brief psychological musings aside, I have always had an real interest in visiting New Zealand, even before it was Middle Earth. Now, allow me to take off my hipster glasses and let's talk about the last couple days.
So, I woke up early again on Sunday morning, feeling quite
tired (mainly because I stayed up so late the night before to post my blog
entry - yeah, I'm blaming you), and
finished what I had left of my packing. I then had a breakfast of champions:
toast and watermelon. Not joking; if I could eat watermelon for breakfast all
the time, I would. Hell, if I could eat watermelon for every meal, forever, I would. Shortly afterward, Ursula drove me to
the airport. I got there really early - about 8:30 for a noon flight - but she
had elsewhere to be, and hey, I'm not gonna complain when she's providing free
of charge. I said my goodbyes to her, and then headed inside.
I got through everything smoothly (and, thankfully, had
printed out some boarding passes the night before, so didn't have to check in
at any of the desks), and was inside, near my gate with three hours to go. I
searched around, and happily found an "Internet Station", which in
this case was just an empty desk with a couple of outlets at it. Perfect. I sat
down and plugged in my computer. It turns out that you had to pay for the WiFi
in the Cairns airport, so I didn't even bother with it, choosing instead to
simply filter through my Cairns photos (and, before narrowing any out, I had a
good thousand). I actually managed to
weed it down to a quarter, and also did fine-tuning for some of them before it
was time to board.
I got on the plane, feeling pretty content at my
near-the-back seat, which was almost completely by itself. Nobody in my row,
nobody in the row in front, and nobody in the row in back. Or so I thought. As
it turned out, right before we took
off, a group of people filled up the back rows behind me. Little people. Kids. Mistakes were made, I mused to myself. I
did chuckle a bit at the interactions between the flight attendant and the kids
- she wanting to give them activity books, them wanting to simply play with
their iPads - but I was worried that they were going to be an issue.
Thankfully, in this case, I was wrong. The kids were generally pretty
tolerable, mainly because they were preoccupied with their iPads. See?
Technology addiction has its benefits! As for my part, I spent the flight
touching up the remainder of my Cairns photos (meaning that, at that point, I
was completely caught up on filtering through pictures), and watched some
videos.
Shortly before landing in Sydney, though, I also came to the
realization that on this entire trip, I had not seen one koala. Awwww......
Upon arriving in Sydney, I grabbed my bag and made my way to
the international terminal transfer bus. Along the way, I checked my pockets
and saw that I still had $5.50 in Australian currency. Too little to exchange,
so I just spent $5 getting a somewhat big bag of M&M's from a vending
machine (interestingly, not much more expensive than they were elsewhere in the
country), and put the fifty-cent piece in a charity bucket. (As a tangent,
UNICEF was advertising this program where you could donate loose change of any currency to one of their bins.
Considering all the small notes and coins I've ended up with going from country
to country, that seemed a brilliant idea.) I took a short bus ride to the international
terminal, and went to the immigration checkpoint. Having been disappointed at
not getting a stamp on the way in, I asked for a departing one. To my dismay,
the officer had no stamps of any kind. So my passport is without any evidence
of having been to Australia; sad. I then went through another security
checkpoint, which went smoothly, but I found it interesting how I was told that
the explosive screening (where they lightly swab you and your bag with a cloth
and then scan it for explosive material) was random. No joke, I have literally
gotten that screening on every single
flight I've gotten in Australia. Either I'm beating the odds (regardless of
what they are), or I look like a mad bomber.
I still had a little time, so I tried to get some maintenance
done on my phone and computer (no rest for the wicked). Then, my flight was
moved to another gate, which worried me. I dunno, whenever a flight changes
gates, it seems that's never the only thing that goes wrong. And as it turns
out, I was right about this one. Once I got to the new gate, the flight was
delayed, as the arriving plane was late. So I waited. Then it was delayed
again. So I waited some more, this time trying to practice some Spanish on a
new app I downloaded called Duolingo (which I only just heard of because it won
some award). All in all, the flight was delayed for an hour and 45 minutes. I
was terribly exhausted, even though I hadn't done anything all day. I boarded
onto the flight, which was absolutely packed. I spent the time watching some
videos that I had the foresight to put on my phone whilst waiting, because I
figured I wouldn't want to read, would have no interest in the movies they were
showing, and wouldn't want to take out my laptop in such a crowded environment.
I guess it was just a bit weird for the folks around me to see me staring at my
phone and laughing.
When the plane landed, I got out as fast as possible. I knew
I wasn't going to check into the hostel until after midnight, but even that was
laughably quaint at this point. I really didn't want to spend any longer than
possible here. So, I quickly walked to the immigration and customs desks, and
gave them my passport and arrival card. And man, the officer there was the most
humorless man I'd met in such a position. He never smiled, gave me a number of
suspicious stares, and clearly asked me more questions than he had asked any of
the other foreigners in front of me. He squinted his eyes when I confirmed that
my two bags were all I had, and forced me to not only show him my itinerary out
of New Zealand (thankfully there was WiFi for me to access it on my phone, and
even then he scrutinized it very
thoroughly), but also my itineraries proving that I was going to be going to
all the cities I said I was. Again, it's a good thing all my bus trips and accommodations
were already planned. Once he seemed as close to "satisfied" as he
could possibly be, he wrote a big "E" on my arrival card, stamped my
passport, and let me through. I went forward, but when I got further along to
customs, the officer took my card, looked at the "E", and then told
me to go behind the wall.
Yep, I was getting the thorough
examination.
Another officer told me to sit down and place my bags on her
desk. I did so, taking off the locks. "Are you sure these are your only
bags?" "Very," I replied. I genuinely don't know why that was
such a sticking point with everybody. But still, this lady seemed much more
sympathetic than the other guy, most likely because I was the last person who'd
be going through before they'd be closing shop for the night, so they had every
reason to keep it simple and go home. Even so, every single item in my bags was
taken out and laid on the table, to prove that it was kosher. My favorite exchange
came when I was starting to pack everything back up:
"Wait a minute; it says on your arrival card that you
have equipment, that you have shoes that have been in a forest in another
country."
"Yes, I was walking through a rainforest in the last
week."
"I didn't see any shoes in your bag."
"Yeah, that-"
"Where are your shoes, sir?"
"I'm, uh, wearing them."
"....Oh. Right."
Truth be told, I was a little concerned about my shoes, as
they actually were a tad muddy from when I stepped out onto the Cairns mud
flats. Happily, the customs boss came over and determined that they weren't
muddy enough to be considered a
quarantine issue. I was finally allowed to go. I made it out into the arrivals
lounge, got some cash in an ATM, and looked for something to drive me to the
hostel. I didn't want to take a taxi, as according to my calculations, that
would have cost me about $50. I wanted to use a shuttle instead, as that would
cost half as much. Thank goodness this place had free WiFi, as I was able to
use Skype to call the shuttle company and have it come pick me up. While I
waited, I grabbed pretty much every brochure and info packet I could find;
hopefully some of them would prove
worthwhile. Before long, the shuttle came and picked me up. The driver was
quite nice and helpful, but I could only return his kindness by half-dozing.
When we finally got to the hostel, he walked me to the front door to make sure
I wasn't locked out, and let me to my own devices. I grabbed the envelope
posted next to the door, petted one of the cats walking by, and then went
inside. I got up to my room, quietly and carefully, and - only taking the time
to put my bags in a safe place and taking my shirt off - went immediately to
sleep.
Again, I was supposed to have gotten in shortly after
midnight. It was now past 3am.
I didn't get nearly as much sleep as I was hoping for, as
the windows here were positioned in a direct beeline towards the tenants' heads,
and there seemed to be no semblance of a shade on them, so once the sun came up
(which was pretty early), I had a harsh light beckoning me awake. I looked
around, and it seemed as though everyone else in the dorm I was staying in had
already left to go to their respective destinations. A shame, I felt we were
all just starting to really have a rapport going. In any case, I tried to use
the opportunity to get my stuff together, to organize my bags, to put stuff
away in a locker, to see if I could afford any of the things offered in the
brochures I had grabbed. (And...I could,
I really just don't want to.) At one point, the cleaning girl came in and said
I shouldn't be complaining about being tired because I'm on holiday; I was too
tired to either argue the point or to be nice to her, so I went downstairs, had
some breakfast (which just ended up being some of my leftover cereal, because
they don't serve breakfast here), and officially checked in for my stay here.
"Four nights," the lady in the office said, "You're in here for
the long haul." Apparently, Christchurch is considered a bit of a stopping
point where people spend a day and nothing more. But whatever, even if there's
nothing to do, I could manage on my own.
I went out to see the town, and also to see if I could find
a SIM card for my phone, as there had only been a single mobile provider kiosk
at the airport, and I didn't like their prices (and, confusingly, all their
literature was in Chinese). The first shopping center I went to, called Eastgate,
wasn't terribly big; in fact, it was compact enough that I felt I must have
missed something. But no, it was just a small place. Happily, though, it had a
public library, which offered free WiFi with no visible limitations (the hostel
offered free WiFi, but only 100mb per night spent, which, as I'll talk about
shortly, has its issues). So I spent a little bit of time there trying to
orient myself and get an idea of what I could do. That's the thing...back
before I started getting country-specific SIM card (that is, South Africa), I
was reliant on hotel WiFi for all my phone information needs, but in places
like this, I don't even have that luxury. Anyway, once I felt like I had
drained my phone battery to a point where it would just survive the day, I
left. I looked and saw that I could have my photo taken with Santa Claus, but I
would have to spend $10 in the shopping center for such a privilege, so I let
it go. (Hold up; that Santa Claus had a New Zealander accent. Hmm, something's
fishy here...) I continued on, got a small bite to eat for lunch, and continued
my search for a phone store as I walked to the city center.
I'll just put some musings here. Christchurch is an
interesting city. Not necessarily interesting in the same kind of way an old
European city or exotic Asian or Middle Eastern city is. In fact, in certain
places, you'd be forgiven for thinking you're in Southern California. The
weather's fairly similar, and the architecture doesn't seem too out there.
Really, all that gives it away is the fact that people are driving on the wrong
sides of the road. But the whole place seems to have been redefined by the
earthquakes that happened back in 2010/2011. I guess I would have imagined that
two years would have been enough time to rebuild, but the reality is, there are
places that are still abandoned. Like, legit abandoned. I saw a sign for a
happy looking place called "Friendz Backpackers". However, as I
actually walked past the entrance, I saw that the gate across the door had a
lock on it rusted tight, some of the glass of the door was broken underneath
their hours-of-operation sign, and there was trash and debris sitting on the
threshold, including a dead pigeon. Later, I saw a Starbucks, and thought to
get my drink on. But no, that too had spray paint on the windows, and dust
collecting on coffee bags still sitting on the counter inside. Other places
were a bit more obvious, either with construction crews rebuilding places, or
simply buildings missing parts of their structure.
In the city center, there's a completely different aspect
that you see. Apparently, one of the main tools of reconstruction here has been
the shipping container. These have been used for numerous things, but the most
notable has been that businesses have moved into them. I'm not joking. In the
city center, they have built a new set of buildings within the open courtyard,
all composed of reconstituted shipping containers. There are clothes stores,
coffee shops, restaurants, and even banks. And when you go inside one of these
places (which can be composed anywhere from one to four containers), they feel
like real places, if a bit cozy. There's also a place called the
"Cardboard Cathedral", which I haven't had the chance to visit yet,
but assume is built off a similar philosophy. I'd guess that all these places,
being as unique as they are, will stay in Christchurch for years after
reconstruction has finished (whenever that will be). There's even an attraction
in this city center called "Quake City." As I said, it seems like the
earthquakes have redefined what the city (officially nicknamed "The Garden
City") is about. I kind of wish I had the chance to visit this place
about, maybe, five years ago, and compare it in all aspects to how it is now.
Whatever the case, I can guarantee it would be quite different.
While out, I decided to go to the central bus station to see
if I could get a bus card, since this would save me money whenever I wanted to
take public transportation (and since the hostel was a fair distance from the
city center, public transportation seemed a wise decision for future travel).
All that was required, according to their website, was an initial investment of
$10, which was worth four trips. No sweat, I could easily do four trips while
I'm...oh, wait, what's that, lady behind the counter? It's $10 in addition to whatever money I put on
there. Meaning I'd have to take ten
trips before the thing paid for itself? Yeah...not worth it. So, having wasted
a good 45 minutes on this side venture, I continued looking for a SIM card, and
finally, finally found a place that
sold them, and it was a stationary store of all places. (To be fair, it was
bigger than just a simple stationary shop; it was more like a Staples.) I went
inside and saw the section where the four providers were offering their
services. And even though I had previously researched all this, multiple times,
I still spent a half-hour here, comparing plans.
So, one discovery I've had (which I kind of knew before
coming here but it really hit me upon arrival). Internet is expensive in New Zealand. It makes sense
when you think about it - it's a small, sparsely-inhabited island nation a fair
distance away from any major source of Internet connection. Undersea cables
need to be maintained, and that cost needs to be divided up amongst the low
number of people who use it. Remember how I noted the phone plan in Australia
being one which cost $2 a day for 500mb? And that I could pay that twice a day,
getting 1gb a day for $4 a day, plus talk and text messages. Maaaaannnnn, how I wish I could have
that here. Here, it's on a monthly basis, and the cheap plan, the cheap plan, is $16 for a month, with 180
minutes of phone time, unlimited texts (yippee...), and 1gb of data...again,
for the month. Want a second gig? That will cost $20, unless you want to cancel
your old plan and start a new one for $16 (which I might do). And this is with
a holiday promotion; all of those amounts are usually cut in half. But yeah, at
the cheapest, you're paying quadruple the price per gig, and you get a small
amount per month. So, I won't be able to lean upon my mobile plan as a backup
WiFi provider for my computer while I'm here. I'm mostly going to have to rely
on local WiFi hotspots, which will cost an additional
$10 a month for an account, but provide an additional gig a day, should I need
it. So yeah, I hope Netflix and streaming sites start making it over here, so
the higher bandwidth needs will force some kind of downward price pressure.
Anyway, Internet rambling over.
I finally went with a Skinny Mobile SIM card (that's the
cheap, youth-marketed brand here), and continued walking. I made my way back to
the city center, mostly by accident, and spent a little more time there. I
decided to go into the Quake Center. I was a little cautious about paying for
my entrance into there, as I didn't want this just to be an exploitation of the
events. But I was hopeful that the money would help go into reconstruction
efforts, at least in part. The exhibit, while not huge, was quite informative,
and I felt I had a much better feeling about what it was like. What actually
surprised me was how badly the city was affected, because it wasn't the first
time there's been an earthquake in the area. In fact, for the last century-and-a-half,
it's been a relatively common phenomenon, so I'd have thought the place would
have been built to withstand it. I'd imagine anywhere in California being able
to reasonably survive a 7.1 quake at this stage, but maybe I'm just being
overly optimistic...
As I continued along, I happened upon the old cathedral,
which was formerly the center of town. Now, it was surrounded on all sides by
fences, and was only half a church at this point. Walls were crumbling, large
portions were exposed...and this is a full two years (coming in on three) after
the last big earthquake. Apparently, the cathedral was still considered so
unstable that they didn't want to start reconstruction on it (at least not
yet), and nobody had the heart to order its destruction. As I was looking at
it, an old man came up and started looking at it, basically saying that he felt
it would never be reconstructed, and that people were thinking with nostalgia
instead of logic. He then drifted into his own nostalgia, telling me about what
the place was like when he was a boy (trams came in directly in front of the
cathedral, and a number of "moving picture houses" surrounded the
area). Then, another fellow came to look at it, and told us that he was in the
cathedral, taking pictures for some assignment, literally 20 minutes before the
earthquake. He then went to a nearby KFC and paid for his food, but never received
it. "Scariest day of my life," he said, as the old man silently
nodded his head. The second man then left, and the first one stayed barely
longer, asking where I was from. I told him that I was from California, and
traveling the world. "It's a good world to travel," he said
pleasantly, and walked off. A second later, I turned to look at him again, but
he was gone. Whether he was some kind of spirit, or had just turned the corner,
I guess I'll never know. But again, I felt that exchange kind of illustrated
how the earthquake has been a major player here. People will just gather around
old scenes of destruction and briefly talk about it, even now.
Afterward, I decided to walk back to the hostel (amazingly,
I'd been out and about for nearly five hours, despite having accomplished
almost nothing). Along the long walk back, I felt that I should stop to get
some groceries. I initially stopped at a small supermarket, but was suspicious
of their claims of having the lowest prices, so I took note of all the things I
wanted to get, and continued until I got to a larger grocery store. As it turns
out, this was a marginally sound decision, as the prices were marginally less.
Actually, that meant it was a pretty sound decision, because it also saved me
from walking an extra mile or more with bags of groceries. I got myself a
chicken, some bread and sandwich meats, yogurt, and some snacks (but stupidly
forgot salad or spinach until I was already at the register), which I then took
back to the hostel, another mile away. Once getting in, I moved my chicken meat
from bone to container, marked everything with the weakest permanent marker
ever, and then went to my room. Inside, I saw that there were new tenants...one
of them in my bed. I broached the situation in the most polite way I could
think of, but the people were completely nice about it, being mellow Hawaiians.
Once they went into the other part of the dormitory, I say down, and decided to
log online. And within a half-hour, I had used up all 100mb that was offered. I
had no rational explanation for it; I had done nothing especially
bandwidth-intensive; I felt like I should have only used up half the bandwidth that
I did. So I downloaded a program which measures what programs use what
bandwidth, and oddly enough, Avast antivirus seemed to be taking the lion's
share. Whether this is because all my web activity is filtering through it, or
because some manner of worm is causing me to drain bandwidth, I'm not sure;
I'll have to do some tests. This would help explain how I used up so much of
Ursula's bandwidth while I was there, as I was again not doing anything
particularly intensive.
Ah, bandwidth woes, the most thrilling of travel blog topics.
Anyway, after some time, I had a lovely, exquisite dinner of
chicken and toast. I suppose I could have made a sandwich out of it, but didn't
really want to. I looked in the fridge to see what freebies were available, and
saw a jar of English mustard, so I took out a spoonful to dip my chicken in. Man, that stuff is hot. I don't think
I've had such hot mustard before. But it did the trick. Later still (nothing of
value happened in the interim), I took a shower, and then did some nightly
stuff: writing, reading, watching videos, etc. I didn't have too much interest
in going to the bar scene, especially alone, especially on a Monday, and
especially when it would mean having to take a bus or taxi. So I just did my
thing until the girl sharing my portion of the dorm (who I was, to my own
amazement, successfully identify as having a Colombian accent) went to bed. I
decided to join her. By which I meant I also went to sleep. In my own bed.
The sun woke me up, again earlier than I would have liked,
but the Colombian girl, who was just about to head out to catch her bus,
discovered that the strange, strange window in our room had a built-in shade.
She pulled it down, and our room was blanketed in beautiful darkness. As such,
I was able to sleep in a little longer; not sure how long exactly, maybe an
hour, maybe two. When I eventually did
get up, I went down to have some cereal and yogurt for breakfast. As I did so,
one of the house cats came around, clearly looking for a snack. I wanted to
heed the directive to not feed the cats, but he was so darn cute, so I struck a halfway deal by dipping my finger into
my cereal bowl and letting the cat lick off the milk. It was nonfat (or
"trim", as they call it here), so I didn't feel too guilty about it.
As I was eating, though, I realized I could hear the pitter-patter of
raindrops. I looked outside, and sure enough, it was raining outside. That put
both a literal and figurative damper on the day. Looking at the weather forecast,
I saw that it should be finished by noon, so in the interim, I went back to my
room and did some writing. I also switched beds, because honestly, I liked
where the other bed was better; more privacy.
Shortly before noon, I got my backpack, put in a jacket just
in case, and went down to the kitchen, where I made myself a couple sandwiches.
To my great pleasure, the hostel's free "from the garden" bowl had
some kind of lettuce plant in it (romaine, maybe), so I was able to add that
for some necessary crunch and greenery. I also noticed that, as I was spreading
the ketchup and mustard, I started thinking, of all places, of Arby's. I
realized it was the smell of ketchup combining with the horseradish-like spice
of the mustard. That's not actually important in any way, but I thought it
interesting nonetheless.
I left the hostel and went to the nearby bus station. I did
this for two reasons. First, I wanted to save some time, rather than just
walking the near-four miles to the Botanic Gardens (which was one of my
destinations for the day). Second, I wanted to see how long it would take me to
get to the central station and then walk to the nearby museum, to see when I
would have to leave on Thursday. My bus ride out to the next town would be at
7am, and I'd probably want to be there are 6:45, so I wanted to make sure I
left in a reasonable fashion. I waited for a bit, and a bus came. I got on,
paid, and sat down. The bus drove all the way to the Eastgate shopping center,
waited there a bit, and then turned around and went the other way. Wait, huh?
That wasn't supposed to happen. I looked at my bus ticket. The number on there
was not the one I thought it would be; I had gotten on the wrong bus. I got off
at the next available stop, and then crossed the street to wait for the correct
bus. Thankfully, these tickets offer a free transfer within a two-hour period,
so I wouldn't have to pay again. I waited for a good while until the bus came,
and after hopping on, eventually got to the central bus station. Looking at my
watch, this had taken a long time, too long to seem practical for my Thursday
needs. In fact, it wouldn't work at all, because the earliest bus of the day
wouldn't arrive until after my intercity bus was supposed to leave. So, I'm
either going to have to walk 4 miles, with my backpack, at 5:30 in the morning
(fat chance), or get a taxi or shuttle. Good to know!
I walked to the Botanic Gardens and, upon arriving at 1:30,
decided to sit down on a bench and have some lunch. The sandwich couldn't
compare to the amazing sandwiches I made back in the Blue Mountains, but hey,
it was considerably cheaper. I then walked around the gardens for a while.
You'd expect them to be pretty impressive, considering that Christchurch is the
Garden City and all, and you'd be right. There are all sorts of plants, all
sorts of flowers, all sorts of trees. Interestingly, in most of the botanical
gardens I've been too, the range of flowers was the most impressive parts, but
here, it was the trees. These were seriously trees out of Lord of the Rings. Two in particular stood out - one of them looked
more like two trees which had been braided together. The other one was
completely Middle Earth-y. It stood straight and tall, with branches coming out
everywhere like wriggling tentacles, with what seemed like a woody ivy growing
out from the base, covering the trunk of the tree with a multitude of leaves
starting maybe ten feet up. If that description was confusing, just rest
assured that it looked awesome.
I continued walking around for a couple hours, and then went
to the nearby Canterbury Museum. To my surprise and pleasure, there was no
entry fee. It was a pretty nice museum too, covering all your bases: local
anthropology, geography, history, animals, dinosaurs, mummies, Antarctic
exploration, the works. One particular funny note about it was the fact that
they had placed small Santa dolls in a number of the exhibits. It seemed like
there was some greater meaning to them, like some sort of "count-the-Santa’s"
game, but I didn't see any information about it. Out of place, yes, but fun
nonetheless. What wasn't fun, though,
were all the kids making a ruckus inside there (one of the disadvantages of
having free admittance, no doubt). Now, I am a full proponent of kids going to
places of learning, and interacting with everything. But Christ(church), do
they have to be so obnoxious about
it. Like, stamping your feet when walking. There's no need to do that. Parents,
teach your kids to have imagination and freedom while still having respect for
their fellow human beings. Now, where's my arthritis medicine?
After going through all the exhibits in the museum, I
decided to walk back to the central bus station. This was actually more
difficult than anticipated. For some reason, I've had a more difficult time
getting my bearings here than in almost any other place I've been to. I'm not
sure if the destroyed buildings are the cause of that, or just the fact it's
really spread out with no really clear landmarks, but I was finding it difficult
to know where I was or where I was going without looking at a map. This added
another, maybe, ten minutes to my way to the bus station, which may have cost
me more time in the long run. I sat down at the station, and saw that the next
21 bus, which would take me back to the hostel, would arrive in 4 minutes.
Perfect! Except...it didn't. It didn't arrive in four minutes, it didn't arrive
in fourteen, it didn't arrive in twenty-four. The 83, the 17, the 5; they all
passed by multiple times. But my bus, my
bus was taking its sweet time, which I passed by listening to another Bill
Bryson audiobook (At Home, in case
you were wondering) and watching a building next to the bus station be
dismantled by a backhoe tractor, which again punctuated how this place is still
in a state of reconstruction.
After an hour - an hour!
- New Zealand's least reliable bus showed up. Honestly, I might have made
better time by simply walking, but I was struck by classic bus waiting syndrome
(that feeling of not wanting to abandon the stop when you've waited so long,
depite it being a sunk cost). I got on, and took it to the Eastgate shopping
center, where I got off and headed to the outside of their public library,
which was closed at this point. Just as I had suspected, they didn't turn off
their WiFi when they closed their doors, so I suddenly had access to free,
unlimited Internet. The only matter to resolve was speed and...oh, it turned
out to be among the fastest speeds I've seen outside of Singapore. No wonder I
saw so many people inside the library; it wasn't to read or learn at all. Oh ho
ho! In any case, I had brought my laptop with me just in case this was the
situation, and did all my potentially bandwidth-heavy browsing there. (It's
amazing how many megabytes a single page can use up.) When the center itself
was closing shop, I went outside and tried to go into the hair salon (as my
hair has already gotten back to a state that needs constant upkeep), but found
that they too were shutting down. I went inside the grocery store to get some
spinach, but bags either cost $3.50 or two for $5. One option was too
expensive, and the other was too much spinach for a three meals, even for me. I
decided to say nuts to it all, and walked down to the nearby bus stop. I could
have just walked back to the hostel, but I still had 20 minutes left on my
ticket, and I wanted my money's worth. Also, I guess I could argue that it was
starting to rain again, but that would be a particularly weak argument, as it
was really just spitting. Thankfully, I "only" had to wait 10 minutes
before the more reliable 535 (the bus I had accidentally got onto in the
morning) arrived. I got on, went the short distance to the hostel, and got off.
Overall, I'm not too enamored with the bus system here. I
know that's a hardline stance, but I'm takin' it.
I went inside the hostel, put my stuff down, had a quick
dinner, and then got to my room, where I started doing some writing. I was
pleased to see that the other bed in the room was unoccupied, but alas, it
couldn't last. I had noticed an envelope next to the front door, and, just as I
suspected, the new guy was in the bed next to mine. But he seems to be a nice
English guy, and he's only here until he gets an intercity bus tomorrow morning
(regarding which I brought him to the same conclusion I had come to myself -
take a taxi to get to the meeting point). He then left, most likely to get some
dinner, and I continued writing and doing my other nightly stuff.
And I know what you're wondering...no, I haven't seen any
hobbits yet. I did see one dwarf woman, but that was about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment