My first paid work in Australia

"Jobs are for losers" has been my motto ever since I decided that I wasn’t ready to look for work in Brisbane. But if you’re getting paid in free beer and free food then I would say that a little work still fits in with my job-avoidance philosophy.

The hotel in Tully had one computer that staff and guests could use to access the internet, but for some time it hadn’t been able to access secure sites – things like online banking, hotmail, amazon etc. I was talking to the barmaid, Sinead, the previous evening and I happened to mention my formidable IT experience and enviable skillset, so she said she’d sort me out with a load of beers if I took a look at it.

My private thoughts were that I’d have it working within 5 minutes by tweaking some settings in Internet Explorer, so I was rather keen to get my hands on a few bottles of Cascade, particularly after the 8 hour mountain climb earlier on in the day. But things didn’t prove that easy, and three hours later, after tweaking, downloading, registry hacking and finally banging the case of the computer, I’d got it from the stage where they couldn’t access secure sites to the stage where they couldn’t access the internet at all. It was at this point that I returned (now very drunk) to the room where the girls were in bed, turned on the light and said "pack your bags, we’re leaving!"

But we didn’t leave, and after a few deep breaths I went back to the problem and, from a backup I’d taken in a more sober moment, restored 95% the registry keys I’d deleted. Miraculously the internet was back in all it’s glory, including the secure sites. (It was some old VPN software that hadn’t been removed entirely and left some dodgy IPSEC settings if anyone’s interested…). I went back to the bar, declared it fixed, and then blinded them with some techno-babble as to the nature of the problem. Naturally everyone was thrilled and thought I was a god, so they wrote off our accommodation, food and bar tabs and I left with the warm glowing feeling that you can always compensate for a lack of ability if you’re a lucky son of a bitch.

Tully and Cradle Mountain

Tully is perfectly placed to explore the mountains in the West of Tassie, and we stopped for 2 nights at the Tully Motel where they gave us a motel room for a hostel price. Sitting on the shores of Lake Rosebery it has great mountain views and a friendly atmosphere with a cosy bar area with a roaring log fire. Good thing too as it was freezing.

We got up early and sat down to breakfast at 7am. The manager came up to us and asked us what we were doing that day.
"We’re going to climb up Cradle Mountain" we answered.
"And what are you going to do with the rest of the day?" he said oddly. The climb was in the guide book as an 8 hour walk - I was pretty much planning on lying down with a few cold beers for the rest of the day. We told him that that we reckoned it was going to take us all day.
"What do you want to go to the top for?" he asked.
Cradle Mountain is the region’s most famous landmark. Climbing Cradle Mountain is a must-do activity. The guy clearly hadn’t heard of the Tasmanian Tourist Board’s official policy of being enthusiastic towards people coming to admire the beauty of their island. We told him that we’d heard the views were spectacular.
"You won’t see anything from up there, not today."
"Really?"
"It’s cloudy and you won’t see anything. You want to do a nice walk round Dove Lake instead."
I was dismayed. The Dove Lake walk takes about two hours and is totally flat. It’s the one that the tour groups and fat people do. Besides, it was sunny outside and looked like a pretty good day for a climb.
"Well, we’ll go up there anyway and check it out, and if it’s really cloudy we might do another walk." We said, not wanting to change our plans.
"And you’ve got up far too early, it’ll be cold and cloudy. You want to take a few hours, then go up there."
"Well, thanks for the advice." We said
He shrugged.
"You’re on your own." And with that he moved off to clear some plates from another table.

Yes, we were on our own. I certainly wouldn’t have invited him to come with us even if we had wanted company. I doubt he’d be a barrel of laughs on an 8 hour hike. Plus, had he not seen my choice of footwear? Walking boots! Clearly I was an experienced rambling-hiker! I also had chocolate bars and a compass, and you don’t get much more prepared for a mountain than that. Before he could come back and give us any more surly advice we got in the car and went to see it for ourselves.

The man at the parks information looked at his real time webcam that was pointing at Cradle Mountain. He could have looked out the window, but either he had neck mobility problems or he thought a webcam was more impressive.
"It’s cloudy." He told us. We looked over at the monitor and there was indeed a thin layer of cloud on the summit.
"Will it clear?" we asked. He rubbed his chin with his hand.
"Might do. It’s very changeable."
"So can we go up?"
"You can go and have a look. But if it starts raining come straight down."

With that we started the walk. Two and a bit hours later we reached the base from which you start the climb and the cloud had cleared and the sun was out, so we started the ascent.
Now Cradle Mountain is pretty steep. On the walking map they have marked the paths at the bottom of the mountain as "Narrow and Steep" where applicable, but they didn’t bother to do it with the climb to the summit which surprised Aimee and Marie. I was rather of the opinion that marking it was a bit unnecessary.

1. it’s called Cradle Mountain which should give a fairly good indication of the sort of terrain you’re going to encounter, and
2. When you look up to the summit from the base, you’re looking up at an angle of 45+ degrees so there’s definitely going to be a large proportion of "up" in the climb.
   

It’s made of loads of large dolomite boulders that you clamber over, and there’s no path, no steps and no handrails, and if you do fall you’re going to fall an awfully long way (because it’s so steep you see!). So really it is a climb and not just a walk like you get on most sanitised-for-tourists mountains. We all agreed that it’s probably the most dangerous thing we’ve done since we’ve been travelling.
But we made good progress and with a few minor hiccups we were at the summit in about 2 hours. The views were indeed spectacular. I made sure to take lots of photos to show the manager of the hostel when we returned that evening. It was also very warm and we had lost our hats, gloves and layers of clothing and were down to t-shirts. We hung around on the top for a bit then climbed down, which proved equally scary as climbing up. When back at the base we decided to go back a different way around the top of the hills surrounding the lakes (another 3 and a half hours). Great views, but by then we just wanted to get back to the car and get the hell out of there. What did we do with the rest of the day? I did some work in the hostel.

The Nut

Right at the end of the tarmaced roads on the North West corner of Tassie is the town of Stanley, which is home to an unusual geological phenomenon called "The Nut". Ages ago a sticky lava flow oozed from the ground and filled up a crater in a volcano. As time passed, the surrounding volcano eroded away and left the solidified magma standing as an isolated plateau jutting out into the sea.
And it's great for climbing up!

We arrived in Stanley at around 7:30pm. It quickly became apparent that all the accommodation was booked up and we had nowhere to sleep. I would have been quite happy to sleep in the car, but for some strange reason Aimee and Marie didn’t relish the prospect of sleeping in a small vehicle with me and were keen to find proper beds. As there was no phone reception that far out in Tasmania (or indeed pretty much anywhere outside of Hobart) we looked around for a coin phone. At the main campsite I saw an old Scandanavian couple sitting outside their big trailer tent and asked them if they knew where a payphone was. They both looked confused as English wasn’t their first language. I made the international hand signal for telephone and the man looked worried. He gestured that he didn’t have one. I smiled and left him alone as it crossed my mind that he might have thought he was being the victim of a mugging attempt and that I was demanding he hand over his mobile. It was then that I saw the big red phonebox sitting right in front of him, and we moved off to place some calls. We were there for about an hour phoning round and it became clear that we’d have to drive to another town. During this time the Scandanavian couple had disappeared off to bed – either to call the police on their hidden satellite phone to report the failed robbery, or because they sensed that we were looking for a place to stay and had seen us eyeing up their nice cosy trailer tent.

Finally we found a caravan site down in Crayfish Creek – a 40km drive back the way we’d come – and the very nice owner said she’d hook us up with a nice little caravan at a very reasonable cost. We arrived at about 9:30 and cooked dinner on the gas burner, drank some cheap wine and went to bed. Sleeping there reminded me of the caravan holidays that we used to go on when I was a kid, only as a child, sleeping on a 5 foot bunk bed was a lot of fun. As an adult, you find that half of you is sleeping on the bed, and half of you is hanging over the end, which kind of sucks the fun out of it.

The next day we got up early to go back to Stanley and climb The Nut in daylight.

the view from the top

Penguin!

We'd hired the car for 8 days and were planning to do a similar itinerary to the backpacker tours in Tasmania, only we were going to do it better, more thoroughly and with more style. I think we had the style thing covered purely because of our sublime 1986 Nissan Pintara - already the Tasmanian babes were eyeing me up at we cruised through Launceston. They don't get out much in Tasmania...

We got up early drove to Cataract Gorge which is pretty much in the centre of Launceston. This is something the tour groups also do, so just to beat their experience we walked a little further and a little faster and on average took 23% more photos.

Then we drove up towards the North Coast, stopping off at a lake for a picnic lunch. Due to an unfortunate misinterpretation of the scale of the map (my bad) we didnt get there until 3pm, but the lake was pretty nice and because only a fool would drive into the middle of nowhere we had it to ourselves. Then it was back on the road towards our destination for the evening - Stanley - but first a stop off at a small town called Penguin.

You'd think that with a name like Penguin you could see some penguins there wouldn't you? And you'd be right - they're everywhere, but they're all made out of plastic. The litter bins are penguins, the shop signs are penguins, even the old lady in the post office looked (and smelled) a bit like a penguin. But if you came to see real penguins you'd be disappointed and would have to drive 20km West to Burnie, where there is a smallish penguin colony that you can view from behind protective wooden fencing.
My theory is that there used to be a colony in Penguin but they got scared away by the 20 foot fibreglass model that the residents put on the beach to liven up the place. It's not really what you want to see when you're waddling home after a hard days swimming. You probably just want to flop down on the rocks and put your flippers up, regurgitate some fish fingers for the kids, maybe watch a documentary on killer whales or something. You don't want to be stared at by some outsized plastic relative as you come up the beach. The penguins probably thought the whole town had got a bit tacky and moved down their colony down to Burnie where the property prices were more competitive and the locals were less obsessive.

We were a bit penguined-out by the time we got to Burnie, so we couldnt be bothered to wait for the sun to go down in the hope of seeing them, so we pushed on to Table Cape Lookout to watch the sun go down, then drove to our overnight stop at Stanley.

Tassie

After an alcoholic last night in Sydney I flew out to Hobart in Tasmania to check out the bits of Australia “down under down under”. In an area bigger than Ireland, Tasmania has a population of only 400,000, which makes it marginally less populous than a Sydney commuter train on a Monday morning. Hobart is the biggest “city” but in reality is just a small town. Everything’s closed on a Sunday (the day I arrived) including shops, cafes, restaurants and probably hospitals and fire stations too.
I’d met a girl called Aimee on the shuttle bus from the airport and we went down to the Tourist Information centre together to see what there was to do in Tasmania. There we met a girl from Manchester (Marie) and we wandered around Hobart for a bit trying to sort ourselves out. We all had similar travelling plans and timescales, so after a few background police checks for criminal convictions and mental instabilities we decided to rent a car and travel round together. I didn’t mention my sleep talking episode or my brief spell in the psychiatric dorm at the Big Hostel in Sydney, but evidently news of this hadn’t filtered down to the Tasmanian police.

The next day we hired “Marina” from a backstreet garage – a 1986 Nissan Pintara estate – a fine vehicle, hewn from a solid lump of iron back in the days where “airbags” were people who talked a lot and “crash protection” meant assuming the brace position just before impact. She was no-frills motoring at it’s best – 4 wheels, an engine and a steering wheel, all loosely held together with light welding and strong prayers. That day we drove her up to Launceston testing out her mighty engine on the open roads of the main highway, with a vague plan of a touring route scratched out on a piece of paper and in our heads.

We stopped at “Historic Ross” on the way up. Good toilets – I’d give them 8 out of 10. Town was a bit shite though.

The Blue Mountains

“They aren’t blue, and they aren’t mountains”. That’s not what you want to hear when you’ve just paid good money for a day trip into the wilderness, but there was nothing in the terms and conditions that allowed for refunds in the event of inappropriately named geographical features. The “blue” refers to a hazy effect that can be generated by the oils released from the eucalyptus trees at certain times of year and under certain atmospheric conditions. This occurs roughly (and I quote) “once in a blue moon”. In our tour guide’s experience he’d seen the effect once in ten years. As for the “mountains” bit, they’re actually a couple of plateaus and a canyon. By that time my attention had wandered onto the subject of compensation and brutal litigation directed at the tour operator, so I’m afraid I missed the bit where he told us what formed them, but usually in these situations it’s a safe bet to assume that glaciers or rivers had something to do with it.

We walked down into the canyon in the drizzle and past the eucalyptus into a temperate rainforest area. I wore my walking boots, partly because it seemed like the right choice of footwear, but mainly because I was eager to make myself feel better about having lugged them round with me the last 3 months. At the bottom there was a shallow sluggish river that wound it’s way through the canyon and we walked beside it through the trees for a while. We saw loads of “yabbies” at the bottom, which are bright orange relatives of the crayfish that hang around in shallow waters looking for morsels of food. I don’t know what evolution was playing at when it came to designing the yabby, but if you’re made of delicious lobster meat, being luminous orange and hanging around in 2 inches of open water probably isn’t the best survival mechanism.

After about 4 hours of walking we emerged back at the top of the canyon and went off to do some sightseeing at the popular tourist viewpoints. The most famous sight is the “Three Sisters” which are a series of rock towers that remain standing at the side of the canyon. Unfortunately our view was obscured by low-lying cloud, and as I hadn’t purchased the “Cloud Penetrating Radar” option on my brand new digital camera all we could see was mist and fog. I took the shots anyway and resolved to buy a postcard and scan it onto my blog and pretend the views I saw were wonderful.
On the way back we stopped off to watch some kangaroos in their natural habitat – i.e. in a car park being chased by kids intent on feeding them sticks.

Bondi Beach

A trip to Sydney wouldn’t be complete without taking in the beach at Bondi, the glamorous home of surfing. Every time I’ve attempted surfing I’ve ended up swallowing more waves than I’ve caught, then regurgitating them a few minutes later, so this time I was content to just take a swim. I’m sure the lifeguards appreciated not having to put their resuscitation skills into practice that afternoon. As you’d expect the beach has some pretty big waves which makes it ideal for all the bronzed surf dudes who hang out there religiously. It also makes it hazardous for the pasty land-loving backpackers who go there to say they’ve done it. Looking at the warning signs overlooking the beach, it’s got them all – danger: big waves; undertow; rips; discarded hypodermic needles – it also had a new one on me which was “shore dumps”. I deduced that this wasn’t a warning that people sometimes use the beach as a toilet (although who knows what people do when the sun goes down) but rather that when you surf a wave right into the shore you’re likely to get dumped head first on the beach as the sea ends and the sand begins. And if you do get on the wrong end of a “shore dump”, you’ll probably land on top of one of the hundreds of bluebottles – stinging jellyfish – that constantly get washed up on the shoreline. I got stung on my foot, not as I was gracefully guiding my surfboard back onto dry land, but when I trod on one trying to get it to pose for this photograph.

Manly Beach

At the hostel I met up with Tasha (a friend who I’d met in New Zealand who was passing through on her way to the decadent East Coast) and we got the ferry over across Sydney harbour to Manly. The thought of a place called “Manly Beach” really cracked me up so I had to go there and flex my muscles on the golden sands. The locals showed their appreciation by not batting an eyelid. It’s quite a pretty little town and there’s a walk you can do up to some headland in a conservation area so we took a trip up there. We saw a big spider, and as the walk really wasn’t that exciting I’m going to pretend it’s really poisonous just to spice things up a little, but in all honesty it could be perfectly harmless, but I certainly wasn’t going to play with it! We timed our ferry trip so as the sun went down we’d be just going past the harbour bridge and the skyline. I got a couple of good photos, but was doing so under pressure as I was trying to avoid giving money to a very poor Elvis impersonator who was harassing the good people on the ferry.

Scary Hostellers

Shortly after the sleep-talking incident I had to move rooms in the hostel. If I was a paranoid person I might have assumed I was being moved because of my unusual nocturnal conversations, but the two girls in the room also had to move in order to make way for a group of 4 who had booked the dorm in advance. But when I did move out, the girls went their separate way into a cosy twin room and it became apparent I had been moved into the psychiatric ward of the hostel.

Alarm bells started ringing when I arrived in the new room to find one of the occupants switching dorms. He was all too ready to explain to me that the reason he was moving was not a reallocation due to a prior booking, but he was trying escape from one rather scary inmate who was staying in the room. Clearly the guy moving out had been certified “sane” by the hostel authorities and now had permission to move to a lower security wing - and in his place I was being moved in after having recently identified myself as someone who required “further observation”. The room was on the lowest level of the hostel so if one of us crazies decided to throw ourselves out of the window (or throw someone else out the window) we weren’t too high up so we’d probably survive the fall. Just to make absolutely certain against messy defenestrations they’d also painted the windows shut. I think there may even have been toughened glass, but I didn’t test that out because being wrong would have meant paying a hefty glazier’s bill.

So when this guy moved out – looking pretty shabby and dishevelled – he recounted a chilling tale of what had happened the previous day. Wild eyed, he told me that the other guy had locked himself in the bathroom for 4 hours and hadn’t responded to efforts to rouse him (we had a separate bathroom in the room to keep us isolated from the other prisoners, and presumably so we could be “locked down” in the event of any trouble). Drug use was suspected. He described the scary guy to me and instantly I knew who he was – an unsavoury looking character I’d seen lurking in the shadows in the common room who had been wearing the same “Suicidal Tendencies” T-shirt since he arrived. Lets call him Jack Nicholson, as I never did learn his real name. Looking around his bed I noted several Marvel comic books, “The Lost Boys” on video and a pair of enormous black boots with a skull and cross bones on each toe-cap. I photographed the boots so that in the event of my bloodied corpse being found on the pavement, the police might be able to get clues to the identity of my murderer from my digital camera. The situation was not looking good. The person that was moving out hastily departed, leaving me with one final piece of advice: “You’re alright as long as there are other people in the room with you, just don’t get left alone with him”. The warning reminded me of a bad Hollywood horror movie. I was pretty sure I would see this guy again later, probably crumpled up at the foot of the stairwell after a mysterious unexplained fall.

Once he had left I was on my own in the room. Remembering the warning, I didn’t want to hang around, so threw my stuff under my bed, chucked all my valuables in a locker and secured them with a large padlock. Just when I was about to leave I heard a key scratching at the door and I felt a presence entering the room. I didn’t want to turn round but I was compelled to. Don’t show fear I thought to myself and I greeted Jack Nicholson who was making his way towards me.
“So there’s four of us in the room now.” he said, to no-one in particular.
“Yes, the other guy had to switch rooms.... I think some people had made a booking…” I replied lamely, figuring Jack Nicholson probably already had issues with abandonment and I didn’t wish to drop the other guy in it.
“Oh.” he grunted, before disappearing into the toilet to do some early morning spitting and loud urination. I took this as my cue to finish grabbing my stuff for the day and make a hasty exit, but he was back in the room before I could finish.
“I’m off to get me some brekky-jugs. Breakfast. Burgers for breakfast. I loves me burgers!” he jabbered.
I’ll bet you do, I thought. Burgers made with human flesh probably.
“OK, I’ll see you later” I said, hoping to God that I wouldn’t.
With that and a bit more spitting he left the room leaving me alone again.

That day I did the Sydney Opera House, walked across the Harbour Bridge, went to the aquarium, went up the Sydney Tower and did just about every tourist attraction the city had to offer. I didn’t return to my room until 11pm, and then I went straight to bed.

About midnight Jack Nicholson returned and turned on the light in the room. By this time the other 2 people in the dorm were also in bed, and Jack had a bit of a conversation with himself, repeated his spitting/loud urination routine and then turned in for the night without further incident. Sometime in the night he started talking in his sleep, which presumably was one of the many reasons that he had found himself moved into the isolation ward.

This is a genuine transcript of the conversation he had with the guy in the bed below me (we’ll call him Bob as I don’t know his name). Bob was unaware that Jack was asleep at the time and bless him was probably half asleep himself.

JACK (loudly): Excuse me!
BOB: Yes?
JACK (louder): Excuse me!
BOB (trying to sound cool): What’s going down?
JACK: What are them green things?
A pause
BOB (confused): What??
Another pause
JACK (singing): Puff the ma-gic dra-gon!
Silence

At this point I was rather hoping Jack would carry on with the singing and Bob would continue trying to make sense of it, but I think Bob twigged he didn’t need to participate in the conversation any longer. Sadly Jack turned over and fell silent so I never got to hear the second verse (which is my favourite and talks about Puff’s friend, Jackie Paper, who loved his dragon and would bring him gifts of strings and sealing wax and lots of fancy stuff). I think the sleep talking conclusively settled the drugs question though, as someone had clearly been “puffing the magic dragon” earlier on in the day…

My Name Is Davros...

Last Friday I left Brisbane with a bulging backpack and flew down to Sydney. I checked into a hostel near the train station, into a 4-share room with ensuite, TV + video and aircon - pretty plush for a hostel, and at about $30 a night it's not too expensive. For some reason though I haven't been sleeping too well and have been waking up quite a lot in the night. Last night however, I was responsible for waking everyone else up.

I went to bed at about 11:30 after a few classes of cheap white wine. I wouldn't say I was drunk by any standard but I don't think I would have passed a breathalyzer test either. When I got into the room I had two new roommates, who were fashion students on a work placement from Canberra. We chatted for a few minutes before all going to bed and I dozed off pretty quickly. True to form I slept fitfully, and several times I woke up from some very odd dreams finding myself sighing in my sleep. Then about 4am I was having a dream - the details of which are a little sketchy in my mind, but I assure you it was bizarre - and I awoke, aware as I awoke that I was just finishing off announcing out loud: "My name is Davros!...".

What's worse, I was saying it at a pretty high volume and in the voice of a Dalek from Dr Who!

The last few syllables were still echoing coldly around the room when I realised what I was doing and was shocked back into consciousness. My first reaction was to cringe, then blush, then hide my head under the covers. I listened intently to find out whether the girls were still sleeping, but I couldn't hear any signs of deepened breathing that would indicate that my outburst had passed unnoticed.

How much of my dream had been broadcast in this way? I have no idea. Hopefully not too much because just before my Davros impression I was pretending to be Homer Simpson, and I can remember giggling and saying "I control all of the spheres!".

Don't ask me why, but for the five minutes of that dream I, Homer, did indeed control all of the spheres (and it was GREAT! I can highly recommend that you too control all the spheres should you ever get the chance).

So what must those two girls have thought? Here are my best theories:

1. That I am Greek, and Davros is my real name. In my dreams I reveal my true identity because I can't stand the deceit.
2. That I am a geek, who regularly dreams about Daleks, Cybermen and time travelling adventures.
3. That I am in fact the real Davros. My presence in Sydney is some evil scheme to take over the world by gaining control over all of the spheres. My wheelchair has been left amongst the luggage trolleys at the airport to avoid drawing attention to my presence here on earth.
4. That they are sharing a dorm with someone from "The Exorcist" - not having done the Davros impression it in the last 20 years, I'm the first to admit it's a little rusty and sounds more like someone from a horror movie than the leader of the Dalek race.

Anyway, I can't be certain what they think because they got up early and I skulked in bed till they'd left. I'm open to suggestions - answers on a postcard. And if anyone wants to hazard a guess about what the hell my dream meant I'd also like to know!

(Steve will be performing his Davros impression at the Big Hostel, Sydney from March 20th-24th. Showtimes from 2am-6am. No flash photography is permitted at this event).

Goodbye to NZ - things wot i learned.

I've now left New Zealand and travelled back to Brisbane for some serious R+R and to get the rucksack creases out of my clothes. I feel I've learned a great deal on the trip and believe it is my duty to share that knowledge with you.

1. Clean clothes find their way to the bottom of your rucksack and dirty ones form a sedimentary layer on the top. There is therefore a 94% probability that any item you wish to find in your bag requires extensive archaeological excavation before it can be discovered and removed.
2. The most useless object in my backpack (other than my backpack itself for Point 2 above) was my walking boots. Unless you're Rannulph Fiennes, a good pair of trainers or walking shoes will do you proud and won't take up half the space in your bag and make it so heavy you get a permanent curvature of the spine. For most of the time your feet will be so swollen and distended from insect bites that you will be unable to wear boots anyway.
3. Always have 2 bottles of shower gel with you because you will leave one behind just as you leave civilisation. Left unattended in a shower cubicle your shower gel will have disappeared within 15 minutes. Having a bottle for long enough to finish it is cause for celebration.
4. Do not steal plain white towels from hostels. If you do, you'll feel like you're stealing it again every time you stay at a place that has similar towels. Even worse, another backpacker might steal it from you thinking it belongs to the hostel. Instead try to steal towels that have a distinctive pattern and that are preferably not white.
5. Following on from Point 5, your blue ultra-compact "trek-towel" is identical to the blue trek towels owned by everyone else in your hostel. There is a good chance that the one you are currently using it is not the same little blue trek towel that you started your journey with. Consequently you should take care to wash this towel regularly if you wish to avoid more intimate contact with your fellow travellers (or steal a proper one from a hostel).
6. You will from time to time encounter people who are travelling off daddy's credit card - Under no circumstances should you alienate them for this fact. Instead, if you get to know them you can look beneath the wealth and privilege and you will get to see their inner beauty. Then you can fleece the little fuckers for every cent they've got.
7. "So how long have you been travelling for?" is the most common question asked when meeting new people and therefore is also the most dull. Try to come up with something a bit more engaging than this as an opening topic. Personally I find bitching about people who are travelling off daddy's credit card both interesting and rewarding.
8. If you cook anything in a hostel kitchen where the primary ingredient is not "super-noodles" everyone will treat you with all the reverence and admiration normally reserved for celebrity chefs.
9. Jokes about broken limbs and cracked ribs are not not appropriate humour when rock climbing or trekking on a glacier.
10. When arriving at a new location, never admit you got off the bright green tour bus in the coach park. When on the bright green tour bus, if you're over 30 don't tell people your real age unless you are prepared to live with the nickname "grandad".