Stanmore / Newtown

  The Cambridge Lodge in Stanmore bills itself as a budget hostel, which, to me, immediately begs the question of what a luxury hostel would be. Nevertheless, on the hostelworld.com website, the Lodge rates 86%, a score derived from guest feedback that evaluates cleanliness, value for the dollar, fun, etc. I was a little concerned about the nearly average rating, but was assured by the pair of American women I met who gave me the info about the place that it was clean and well-run.
    When I looked at the price of a single room, it wasn’t much different than the Devere Hotel – and even in a single room, I would be sharing a bathroom. So. I went for the new experience and made it a double. (I couldn’t bring myself to do a four- or six-bed dorm.) First time in a hostel, first time rooming with a random stranger.
    I packed my bags and, in another effort at thrift, rolled down toward the Kings Cross train station. The closer I got, the more I dreaded dragging my things down the escalator, on the train, wondering where to get off the train and, once I disembarked, finding the address of the lodge. I stopped, weighing the options.  While weighing, a cab pulled up and the driver got out and started to load my bags in the trunk. Fate would have me take a cab. But I stopped him before he got both bags in and asked how much he would charge me (the nice boy at the desk, after I berated him and his hotel, told me it was a $30 cab fare). The driver promised a fare of $22 because it wasn't busy right then. Done and done.

The neighborhood reminds me of where I lived in Kansas City.

    The driver, like all taxi drivers, appeared to have a death wish and proved constantly that the brakes did indeed work. While he was endangering both our lives, he managed to provide a run-down of all the Sydney neighborhoods: stay away from Redfern (it’s full of drunks and drug addicts); Newtown has any ethnicity of food you could want plus a cool theater with live music acts; Stanmore is nice, full of cute houses and flats and rents are about $500 - $600 a week; Double Bay is expensive, that’s why people call it “Double Pay”; Elizabeth Bay is where Nicole Kidman and her parents and Russell Crow and just about anybody who is anybody live; Kings Cross is rough, don’t live there. By the time we arrived at the Lodge, I had a comprehensive overview of the Inner West and Inner East suburbs.

Dining area on enclosed patio.

     When I had booked the room, I requested to be paired with a female if possible. The manager, Zorica, brought me ’round to room 4, opened the door and introduced me to … Scott. A very attractive male. American. From Boulder, Colorado. (Everybody sing along: It’s a small world after all …) Scott and I chatted for the better part of an hour. He is a huge fan of hostels (great way to meet people, save money, see the landscape in a different way – and he rated this one about an 8 out of 10.) He had been in Australia for only a couple days, working his way down the east coast from  north of Brisbane, and planned to fly back to Colorado the next day to see his ailing grandmother and check in with his family. He had been on the road for about four months, and I would tell you where he was before he got to Australia, but I lost track. Maybe South America? Antarctica? (Not kidding. He went both places, I’m just not sure when.) Once I settled in and he showered up, we went in search of food. (Sultan’s Table on Enmore Road, the kebab roll for $8. Real food – good food. I highly recommend.) Then we took off for Circular Quay, the Opera House and the Royal Botanical Gardens, where a white cockatoo landed on my head. Once I removed him from what I found an  inconvenient perch, I offered him parts of the yoghurt and strawberry granola bar that Scott had with him. We sat for a good 20 minutes letting the birds use us. Then we found a restroom and washed our hands thoroughly.

After being accosted.

Well, I got through my first night with a male roommate just fine, was informed that I snore (which I still refuse to believe) and Scott and I wished each other luck, safety and success on our travels.*
    Then I had the room to myself for about a week. It’s a simple space, no frills, just bunk beds (my god, bunk beds), a wardrobe with warped doors, a little refrigerator, a sink and a shelf. There’s a little table/desk-type thing, too, two chairs, and an ether net cable for direct online access.
    Once again, I realized that I have a different standard of clean than other people do. The baseboards, windowsill and shades were dirty; the carpet full of lint and stuff; the door smeary with fingerprints; and it smelled like a dorm. For a while, I sat and stewed about some people. Then I noticed a bucket of cleaning supplies across the hall by the bathrooms, flung open the door and the window, and cleaned the room myself. If it’s that important? Do it. The upside of hostel living: Paying $40 a night for a double room, free breakfast and free wi-fi. The bathrooms and kitchens are kept clean, most people tidy up after themselves, and it’s fun to hear Scottish, German, Australian and New Zealand accents and get to know the people who speak them. The downside: I don’t like fluorescent lighting, sharing a bathroom is inconvenient, having random strangers in and out of intimate quarters is a bit disconcerting, and I yearn for my own bed. I like my privacy, and here I have precious little. I’m on my third roommate now – an Asian girl named Tiffany. She’s adorable. Kind of like a toy. (Nothing like a delicate Asian girl to make me get in touch with my inner heifer.)

My god, bunk beds!

Cambridge Road runs in front of the Lodge, all the way down to the train station (only a couple blocks) and up to Enmore Road, the main drag in Newtown. The walk up Cambridge to Enmore is lined with brick houses of a late 19th and early 20th century vintage. In fact, the neighborhood reminds me very much of where I lived in the Brookside/Waldo area of Kansas City, Missouri.  Enmore Road is full of small businesses and restaurants. During lunch at the Blue Fig the other day, while wolfing down a mango chicken salad that was ab fab, I saw from my vantage point Chinese, Thai, Mexican, Mediterranean, Chinese, Indian, organic and seafood cuisines, as well as a Vodaphone store, a convenience store, Traditional Thai Massage, the Cat Protection Society of New South Wales office and thrift store, Happy Idea Boutique, another Thai Massage place, and Do It Yourself Invitations. Each retail space is narrow and deep, and each has a sign out front hanging over the sidewalk. The effect is just about overwhelming. I get to the point where I can’t see anything because I see everything, and walk right by places. But that’s also because I’m directionless, which I will address in the next entry.

Montague Place park.

    Right across the street is a pretty little park with playground equipment and picnic tables. The other direction down Cambridge, toward the Stanmore train station, there are a couple schools –public and college preparatory. Right across the street from the station is a chemist (pharmacy), quick take-away food, an IGA grocery, a liquor store, and a coffee place called The Paper Cup. Since arriving here, I have developed a coffee habit, maybe because these people make really good coffee. Forget Starbucks. Baristas there have started to recognize me and remember my order (decaf flat white, one sugar), and continue to tease me with the spelt banana bread, which is particularly good toasted with butter. Then again, most things are good toasted and soaked with butter. At any rate, it’s a cool little place that the Mums (mothers) like to go after they’ve dropped the older kiddies off at school. The babes, of course, come to the coffee clache with them. While it’s amusing to watch the varmints, it’s not as entertaining to hear them, and the Mums, god bless ‘em, appear oblivious to all but the most shrill cries.  Why is it that mothers are oblivious to kids’ rambunctiousness, but can hear the sound of a cookie jar lid being removed at 50 feet?  I asked one of the employees, who lives here at the Lodge, what the pre- or post-Mum window is. She shook her head. There isn’t one.

Miss Darcy, the hostel cat.

    I keep thinking that I will eventually upgrade my accommodations to a short-term rental where I have my own bathroom and a double bed, but now I feel like part of a little family. I even gave the Lodge’s address to Commonwealth Bank so they can mail my debit card. While it’s not what I envisioned, it’s not half bad.

*Scott and I discussed at length the difference between travelers and tourists, including discussion of Paul Bowles’ 1949 novel, “The Sheltering Sky,” which I will do my best to recreate or summarize for a future entry.

Dietary Restrictions

Today, I ate something green.

So far, I have noticed that there are not a lot of restaurants that serve cheap fruits and veggies around here. There are pubs that offer $10 steaks on Friday nights. And kebabs stands. Pad Thai. More pubs. Fish and chips. Meat pies. Tandoori take-out. Pizza places (none of which sell by the slice.) A most excellent German bakery where I got a divine apple bake in a pastry that really did honestly melt in my mouth. But little fresh food.

My first night here I did find a Thai place that served up a delicious chicken and vegetable stir fry and cost $20. (Compare to $12 for the same dish at Thai Smile, three blocks from where I lived in Rancho Mirage.) At that point, I had been up for 36 hours or so and didn’t much care. I needed green things. But the cheap food is, as usual, the food that’s bad for you.

       I looked in vain for a grocery store. Finally, I stopped in a convenience store and asked if there was a place to find a greater variety of grocery items. I understood one word that the young man with a heavy Asian/Australian accent said: “Woolworths.” I sighed. Where I grew up, Woolworths was a drugstore lunch counter kind of place. I didn’t want more diner food – I wanted an apple.

For four days I subsisted on a variety of food guaranteed to hurt me: fish and chips down at Circular Quay, right on Sydney Harbor. An egg and bacon roll on Darlinghurst Road. Latte (not even decaff – yikes) with sugar paired with a blueberry muffin at G’Day Café. And turns out that I’ve developed a six-dollar-a-day chocolate habit. (That’s like smoking a pack a day! Geez.)And my running shoes haven’t yet made an appearance outside my suitcase.

       Tonight on my way back from the Internet café, I noticed a sandwich board sign on the sidewalk pointing down a side street – “Adora Health Foods.” Hallelujah! Maybe they have something that I can eat that isn’t in the “shit that will kill me” food group. The place was barely big enough to turn around in, but had shelves to the ceiling of supplements I recognized.

And fair trade chocolate.

So the only thing I left with was a $5.90 Cocolo dark chocolate bar with almonds. I can recommend this as a complete meal. Almonds are now defined as a superfood, as is dark chocolate. And chocolate is derived from a bean, so it’s a vegetable. Perfect.

       I tucked the bar in my messenger bag, strolled back to MacleayStreet and turned toward the hotel. The late afternoon sun was warm, the breeze was just turning cool, and I could hear faint music from an open terrace door. I was just about to walk into the hotel when shopping carts across the street caught my eye. The store: Woolworth’s.  I crossed the street and looked through the windows of what appeared to be a grocery store. Sure enough, I saw men, women and children of all ages perusing veggies, loading up fruits and canned goods … Woolworth’s is a grocery store.

Well, shit.

Off I went to find something green to flesh out my currently vegetarian repast. I  found a ready-made Caesar salad, complete with child-sized plastic fork.

     Back at the hotel, I peel the container open – chicken and croutons and cheese and bacon bits each in its own little packet. I pick up the chicken packet.  I pull. I tear. I use my teeth. No luck.

Anyone who has traveled (or been alive) since 9/11 knows that it is now impossible to travel with a sharp object. After one long-ass day of travel, my little manicure scissors was finally confiscated by a team of crack security agents at the Brisbane airport (after the security agent at LAX walked me back out because I had forgotten to empty my water bottle, after I had spent an hour getting through Customs in Brisbane, after paying $20 cab fare to go 2 kilometers from the International terminal to the Domestic terminal because my flight was boarding in 15 minutes and I still had to check in and go through security…) I could not open the packets to make my salad. But women’s cosmetic bags usually have more than one implement that can be used to poke someone’s eye out or take hostages. My tweezers was nearly confiscated by the same alert Brisbane security agents until I begged amnesty, vowing I would threaten nothing but my own eyebrows with them.

Yes, tweezers can poke a hole in hermetically sealed chicken packets. And bacon bit/parmesan/crouton packets. And I ate something green today.

Wired, Not Wired

The Inner East suburbs of Sydney are characterized as “leafy.” They are. In fact, Macleay Street in Potts Point is lovely with circa 1900 apartment buildings that have been refurbished, mature trees and lots of young-ish people bustling back and forth.  The Hotel Devere, however, where I’m staying, is a bit bleak. In my Frommer’s guide book, “Sydney Free and Dirt Cheap,” the author mentions this hotel and says that the rooms are “a bit tired.” Online, the rooms look great. In person, they look – well, like a 1970s Holiday Inn. This might explain why the nightly rate is not much higher than a 1970s Holiday Inn rate. Yet, I believed in a great potential for comfort, especially once I got the cleaning staff to remove the mold from the ceiling in the bathroom.

    Additionally, the management of the Hotel Devere have turned out to be masters of manipulating the ambiguity of language. Wi-fi is available. Not free. And not in every room. Only in the lobby because of where the router is positioned. Being connected costs $4 an hour. I have now become aware of how much time I spend online, and have adjusted accordingly. This cost is made doubly troublesome by the fact that using my cell phone is dependent upon access to wi-fi. Great.

    Happily, Macleay Street and adjoining Darlinghurst Road are both dotted with Internet cafes with prices much more competitive. And – wonder of wonders – the Kings Cross public library branch has free wi-fi available. Interesting how I had to ask the desk staff several times if there was a library nearby. Perhaps they don’t frequent libraries.

    Macleay Street and more particularly Darlinghurst Road are dotted with much more than Internet cafes, however. At least three hostel/hotel facilities for backpackers can be found in a three block stretch, along with a dozen kebab stalls, a couple pizza places, a pub, a couple Pad Thai places, MacDonald’s (yes, they’re everywhere) several strip clubs and adult book stores. In fact, the largest club and store is directly across from the library. From the computer carrels on the second floor, one can gaze into Risque Boutique’s clothing showroom to see the latest in hotpants and studded collars. When I walked out, I strolled by a young girl leaning up against the wall just outside one of the clubs, platform heals, skimpy halter top, tiny cut-offs, texting.  And then I realized, hey, there’s a young whore!  I think the guidebooks call the neighborhood “eclectic.”

    The opposite direction from Darlinghurst Road is Elizabeth Bay which, as the name would suggest, is on the water, and is much more flash (as the Aussies would say) than where I’m staying. Elizabeth Bay is where Nicole Kidman’s parents live, where Russell Crow has a place, where all the hip Sydneysiders hangout, being beautiful and floating around, not having to occupy an office anywhere.  Potts Point is next up, and then Kings Cross which has historically been the red light type district. Now it’s been cleaned up a little bit, but on my way to the subway on Saturday morning, there were several revelers from the night before still reveling, the street stinking here of beer, there of urine.

The Bourbon, formerly owned by an expat Texan.

    When I got back on Saturday night, different partiers had taken their place, and many more of them. On the train, I sat in a car with about a dozen girls who looked about 12 years old chattering around me, in clouds of perfume, wearing the sort of heels that put orthopedic surgeons’ children through college. Short skirts, skimpy tops, big earrings and tiny purses. Similar but not the same as the other girl I saw earlier who also looked 12 years old, leaning up against a lamppost outside the library.

    Yes, the library saved me about $12 that day, but the connection eventually slowed to the point that I could not get on my gmail, nor log on to the blog. So. Off I went, past the little prostitute, and to a place across the street, right next to Risque, a flower shop and internet facility that charges $2 per hour. Happily, the flowers have a deodorizing effect on the place. (I had started walking into a different one and the smell of stale sweat and unwashed backpackers started my gag reflex.) The guy at the counter was very pleasant – a young man with German come Australian accent. Friendly, sympathetic about the library’s inferior connection and happy to take my money.

     The final straw with the Hotel Devere came at check- out. The day before, instinct bade me call the front desk before I made a local call to check on what charges would be. I was told $1.Since I was on the phone for about 40 minutes, I thought that was a pretty good deal. Then I was presented with a telephone bill for $47. A dollar a minute. Not a dollar per call. When fate presents me the opportunity to be self-righteous, I have a tough time resisting, so I was able to get half the charges dropped.  Turns out yes, the charge is $1 per call, but I called a cell phone number, so it’s $1 per minute. And how do I tell it’s a cell phone number? Oh, there’s an 04 prefix instead of an 02 prefix.  

    Good to know. It might be time for a cheap Aussie mobile. And it’s certainly time for a cheap Aussie hostel. More to come about the Cambridge Lodge in Stanmore.

This Vacation-Vision Quest-Expedition Thing

This is not a vacation. It is an expedition.  Maybe a vision quest. Or an adventure. I have a tough time hearing the word “adventure” lately. It has just a bit of a condescending edge to it. Like the whole EPL thing. “Oh, you’re going to have such an adventure!”  I suppose. I wonder if President Jefferson said those words to Meriweather Lewis and William Clark. Sounds like I’m off to go tobogganing or something. Or have become a character in a Dr. Seuss book. Yet, despite my hypersensitivity, the word is accurate; its definition “an unusual and exciting, typically hazardous, experience or activity.” Sounds about right.

I contemplated this as I was sitting near Gate 38 at Los Angeles International, waiting to board V-Australia’s flight 008 on 10 Oct, seat 42A, with service to Brisbane and connecting to Sydney for an arrival at my final destination at 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, 12 Oct. (You notice how I’m already using that funny way of writing the date? I’m so down with this whole Commonwealth Country thing.) I look around, and anywhere that there’s an electrical outlet, there’s a person between the age of 12 and 22 with a laptop or cell phone plugged in. And me.  I managed to exhaust my iphone battery by not knowing how to get logged out of Skype, and returning texts and calls to all of my friends who wants to speak with me “one last time” before I go. I love you all, but please, I have a phone number you can call. Free. Almost like I’m not gone at all.  I did that on purpose. So you don’t have to talk to me one last time. That feels a little bit creepy. I’m not going as a convict, for Pete’s sake.

A note to those who bring their own  water with them. TSA agents who are on their game will in fact have you pack up your laptop and quart-sized bag of toiletries and escort you back out to try it again. I had that opportunity in LA. The agent was nice, yet very serious about her instructions. As we exited, I asked her just how she stood the smell of feet every day. She sighed and said, "It's worse when they spray air freshener." Note to self: do not apply for a TSA job.

Oh, and a brief digression:  I found out that I can suspend my cell phone number for up to six months and pay very little-like, $10-during the suspended time. That eliminates the entire issue of accidentally bumping my phone off airplane mode and receiving a cascade of text messages and voice mails, and paying a six-digit telephone bill. For which I would bill each of you individually. Anyway, just a note to those who might want to try this whole expedition/adventure/vision quest thing.

I say expedition because I’m going to be gone for 107 days. And will go to several different places with the intent of discerning whether I consider these places inhabitable. Isn’t that what Lewis and Clark did? Maybe instead of analogies to “Eat, Pray, Love,” we could perhaps look at Ambrose’s “Undaunted Courage” as well. The title is a bit grandiose, but, that aside, I feel more like L&C than Elizabeth Gilbert.  Except I don’t have a crew of men pulling a boat upstream on the Missouri. And I don’t have a Newfoundland dog with me either. And I brought nothing to trade with the natives to keep them from killing me.  Aside from that …it’s exactly the same. 

The flight boarded promptly at 11:20 p.m. (or 23:20 as they track here in casinos).  I was back in steerage, 42A, window seat, making it awkward to climb over the nice couple from Brisbane sitting in 42B and 42C.  The woman had the center seat, and immediately put a neck pillow on, covered up with her blanket, and fell asleep. So much for conversation.  I immediately started watching movies. When was the last time any of you watched three movies at one sitting? (Okay, maybe Tod Goldberg has done it recently …) Anyway, I finally saw “The Hangover” and had to be careful to stifle guffaws to not wake the woman next to me. All I have to say is Bradley Cooper, call me. Soon.

I dozed for a while, noshed on cashew clusters, stayed hydrated, a bit too hydrated, and then didn’t want to wake anybody to go pee. Problematic. But I know now just how strong my bladder is, and it’s information that I’m sure will come in handy at some point. 

*

Staring out the window in the wee hours after some dozing. I assume these are the wee hours. I can’t tell being in this suspended state, floating along between hemispheres in an airplane where the glow of intermittent video screens dot the darkened cabin. A man snores behind me. The clouds float, charcoal over a black sea, and Orion shines over it all. I feel an affinity for Orion. He blazed away early mornings when I lived with my Lugg-dogg in Leawood, Kansas. He hung low in the southern sky, the feel of midnight hanging around him even at 5 a.m.  By the end of my run, he disappeared as the sky turned cobalt, then robin’s egg blue.  He stood over the desert, too, just outside my bedroom patio door, a colossus that the planes from Phoenix flew by to land at Palm Springs International.

Not everything is foreign here, not yet.

Down Under Tour 2011-12

A year ago June, just before I graduated with my MFA in creative writing from UC, Riverside, I had a chat with my friend Michelle. Since she was the person who could make sure I graduated, I had stopped by to make sure of just that. After we cleared up the details, I told her I wasn’t sure what to do next – that there was no fabulous job yet, and staying in the desert did not fill me with unbridled joy. The truth? I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, and, whatever, it was, I didn’t want to do it here.

Now, if you’re a person who is discontent about your situation in life and yearn to change it, do not talk with my friend Michelle. She’ll just ask you questions like, “Well, if you could do anything, what would you do?” And she asks so disingenuously and openly that a person can’t help but tell the truth. She pulled that on me.

“Well, travel. I would travel.”

“So go to work up in Santa Cruz again, make some money, and travel.”

Well, that was easy. So I did go back up to Santa Cruz and work with an academic summer camp program, after which I embarked on my Western States Tour 2010 – 7,000 miles in six weeks. This blog is a product of those weeks on the road.

After I returned, Michelle and I met for dinner. Her daughter had just returned from world travels to points Asian and Pacific, and I listen with envy as she listed the countries and the cool things she had done (including being evacuated from the path of a cyclone in Australia). I, however, had still not secured a job, had not moved to either Santa Cruz or Missoula, Montana. Here I sat, once again, ambivalent about what I wanted to do, where I wanted to go.

I wondered aloud if I could possibly take off for a few weeks. Six weeks, maybe, or a couple months. How could I do that?

“Well, why not?” Michelle says. Or something to that effect.

Months passed. It was nearly a year past graduation and still I had no job and no plan.

In May, I started getting serious about going to New Zealand. A friend of mine told me to make a pro/con list. She looked at it.

“That’s not a con. Neither is that. Those are fears.”

Ok. So I’m fearful of taking off to the other side of the world. But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to.

“Do the thing you’re afraid of.”

This woman has hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, and large parts of other major cross continent trails. She knows of what she speaks.

So I decided. I have another friend who says that we are deciders, not doers, and once we decide, the doing becomes easy. (Why the hell do I listen to these people?)

Before this gets to sound like a Marianne Williamson retreat, let me just say that it finally occurs to me that if I’m serious about doing this, and not just wishing that I could, I had probably do a little research about travelling, how much it would cost, how much hostels cost (could I really room with three 20-something backpackers and share a bathroom?) Turns out a person can travel with little money and impose upon the kindness of strangers. Housesitting. WWOOF-ing (more about that once I get to New Zealand). The bottom line is that you don’t have to do guided tours and stay in really nice hotels in order to travel. That is perhaps the difference between being a tourist or being a traveler. (More about that idea and Paul Bowles’ book later.)

In June I put all my things in storage and left for Santa Cruz once again to work with academically gifted kids. In August, I came back and imposed upon the hospitality of a friend until my departure from Los Angeles on October 10.

Various friends in the know advised me to pack light. One of them who worked in the diamond trade and carried a little pistol in a thigh holster (just in case) said, “One black bra, one nude bra, a few pair of panties, you can rinse things out in the hotel sink. Black clothes, and pick a color to accessorize.”

Okay, well, I packed more than that (a couple more bras and panties, for sure) but I didn’t pack a lot. Note the flatness of the suitcase – expander panel reserved for the way back. Also note all the room in the duffle, allowing me to bring my Dr. Martin boots, a stylin’ choice. All in all, my luggage consists of the duffle, the rolling suitcase and a messenger bag that holds my laptop and some books. If need be, this messenger bag can be packed into the duffle.

Off I go.