Tasmania

Ah drunken promises, sure we're all guilty of them, but be warned sometimes they actually come true and you find yourself on a plane to Tasmania on Christmas eve! Like all good fairytales our story began once upon a time many months ago in Laos. While floating down a river in a tube we came across a bunch of boys, we mean men, from Tasmania. Roll on three days, many more trips down the river, buckets of rum, shots of tequila, and alot of drunken talk and we were fully convinced to book flights to Tassie for Christmas and New Years!  In all fairness to us, how could we not take them up on the offer, they sold it so well. Tassie was apparently the most wonderful place in the world, the real capitol of Australia, home to the legend  MaxiTaxi (Brads mum)  who had been endlessly described as the best woman in the world, pure quality. We had pinky promised that we wouldn’t back out so there was no doubt in our mind whether we were going or not. The guys must be a bit shakey on the rules of pinky promsing though because they were surprised when we had actually booked things. We say surprised but poor Brad nearly had heart failure when he had to tell his mother he had promised two Irish girls that they could come to their house for Christmas dinner!  First stop on arrival was chez Doran's where we got a great reception, finally meeting the legend MaxiTaxi. Brad then gave us the grand tour of Launie, i.e the gorge and the rugby club! 

  That evening we went to the rugby club for a quite Christmas eve drink, and well ended up literally swinging from the rafters. Suddenly it was four in the morning. Better get home or Santa won't come...

Waking up on Christmas day ( jingle bells, jingle bells) to the sunshine  in Tasmania was surreal.  If anybody had told us a year ago we’d be there, we would have said your crazy sista! But thats the joys of traveling. Maxi Taxi and Mike could not have done more for us. We were like children when she surprised us with presents.  It was almost as good as the time Annie got a sindey 4x4 from Santa (almost :p). Nothing can describe the food we had that day, bare in mind we’ve been in Asia up until this point. Suddenly we had not just a regular supply of food in a house but a christmas supply! The fridge and presses were bursting with food and oh dear lord they had dairy products- cheese how we’ve missed you. Before dinner had even been served we had devoured, and we mean DEVOURED a platter of cheese, crackers and dip. At the start we politely took some and went back for more, but by the end we had no shame and ate until they were gone. Maxi Taxi out did herself for the mains, those potatoes will go down in history and then the desert- at least a cheesecake and a half between us. We were stuffed! But somehow had room for toasted sandwiches an hour later.

It seemed every relative of the Dorans had showed up for dinner that day, nanny Pat and nanny Peg,uncles,aunts, cousins, there were so many of us that we had the first Shed Christmas dinner to accommodate a table big enough for us all. And the big question on everyones mind was which one of us was Brad going out with?? Well neither of us. He explained this to them, we explained this to them, the other guys explained this but no one believed it. At one point when Annie and Brad were in the garden setting up the table, they looked around to find every female member of the family peering out the window at them..subtle! Being our first Christmas away from home, especially so far away you would expect us to be a little upset, but we actually had possible one the best Christmas we’ve ever had (aside from Christmas 97 when Annie got a sindey 4X4).


The Dorans made us feel so welcome, we couldn’t have asked for more! Just when we thought the day couldn’t get any better, the Doran Christmas shed party started to rock. Reunion time with the Tassie boys from Laos and we did what we all do best, drank the heads of ourselves. If only we had had tubes it would have been like Laos all over again!!

Before we got to Tassie we had asked Brad would he be able to get his hands on a tent for us for our trip down the coast and the music festival, his response was that he might be able to get his hands on something. Eh slight under exaggeration. Tassie folks take camping seriously!! We were expecting a patched up two man tent that would hopefully withstand a gust of wind. But oh no, Brad was equipped- we had a four man tent, complete with gazebo , full cooking supplies, a solar panel fridge, tables and chairs. All that was missing was a wide screen TV. Oh and the most important thing of all, the Yute. Thats a pickup to most people. Brad was up early the next morning and had it packed to the brim with everything one would need for a camping trip. And so we were ready to go on our camping adventure.


Our first stop was Bridspoint, where the Dorans camp every year. If we thought Brad was prepared for camping it was nothing compared to Maxi-taxi.  He obviously learnt from the best, she had everything you could ever need including a microwave.  We went full Tassie that night donning our new Aussie hats (thanks brad), cooking up the left overs of xmas dinner on the BBQ. Sherry got to fulfill another life long dream and "put some shrimp on the barbie" just like a true Aussie and Alf Stewart. We were treated to damper made in the camp fire that night. What's damper you say? We didn't know either! It's  kind of like scones but made out of just flour and soda. Maxi taxi is known as the Damper queen and we could tell why, it was sooooo good. We continued our food binge and devoured it...Swearing the diet would start in the morning! Unfortunately the next day we had to say goodbye to Maxi-taxi and mike (probably a good thing for our waistlines!) to make our way to Hobart. We took the scenic route there. Tassie is as small as Ireland, we could have made it in a few hours but we went to all the hot spots along the coast. We put scouts to shame at our stop in Coles bay, setting up and unreal camp in the wilderness. Altough Annie struggled with cutting the firewood. In hindsight, seeing as there were huge bush fires in the area only a few days later, our camp fire probably wasn't the best idea, but we had it under control we swear. Maria island was our next stop, a national park with no shops, restaurants etc There was a museum though, that gave the history of the island..through song no less, our favourite was the 'Maria island has a king' we can remember two lines but that doesnt stop us belting them out.

The most shocking thing we learnt about Tasmania was that Tasmanian devils are real, not just a cartoon character 'Taz'. Nope they're real. But not only are the real, they are really diseased and dying out. A healthy stock were put on Maria island a few months ago to try and increase their population. Equipped with binoculars we went hunting for them but alas the escaped us, we did however find kangaroos, possoms, wallabies and wombats.

Every story we have from home seems to start with 'when we were at this music festival..' so it seemed only fitting that we got a festival in on our travels! Going to falls music festival for new years was one of the selling point (aside from Maxi-taxi) for us to go to Tasmania. It's the social highlight of the Tassie year! Our first point of call was to get ourselves in some sort of decent state after camping for the week- ten showers later we were  slightly recognisable. Second on the agenda was buying alcohol supplies for the weekend, Annie's first introduction to goon. The drink of choice among 16 year old Aussies and poor backpackers! 4 liters for 10 dollar, yes please! Our third task was the biggie, sneaking the drink into the festival. We were warned repeatable that alcohol is not permitted at falls. Eh relax people, its not allowed in Irish festivals either- you just poor it into water bottles and you'll be grand...Nope not in oz. They cannot be fooled by this so called fool proof technique!! Its 100% not allowed in and if your caught, they not only take your alcohol but they take your ticket from you and kick you out!! very extreme..and therefore we went to very extreme lengths to get the alcohol in. They do full car, boot, bag searches so you really have to commit. We choose the car door route. What's that you say? Well basically, we put all the drink into plastic water bottles, took the door panels off, taped all the bottles in and then screwed back on the doors!! They have been known to catch on to this, if the doors rattle and hang down! We later learnt some other ingenius and meticulous methods, some people had built fake floor on the bottom of the yute's, fake bottoms on the inside of fridges. We even met one group who using syringes had taken all the juice out of capri sun bottles and the syringed in vodka! If theres one thing that will bring out peoples creative side its the thought of paying full price for alcohol for three days of solid drinking.

So with our alcohol stowed we were ready to go. A quick 8am Kopparberg breakfast and we were ready to rock. We met the rest of the car convey and hit the road. The guilty head on the three of us going into the festival. There were warning signs about alcohol everywhere,and as we passed the last 'amnesty point' to drop off the alcohol we were feeling the heat, play it cool guys! We had heard loads of theories on how to avoid getting searched, stick to the left lane, go in before this time etc! We were last in the convoy and signalled to the right hand side..eek! but alas with a flash of a smile and an Irish accent we were waved through woowoo!! It was only when we were through and safe we kind of got dissapointed, all our effort and they didnt even check! What a waste, damn it, we should have brought more in!!! Everyone else got in and thank goodness all the different smuggling approaches worked and we had enough drink to not only supply us for the weekend but possible to start a small bottle-o if we wanted.

We all set up camp togther, forming a little tent village. We had set up the tent so much in the last week we had it down to a T and literally had tent, canopy, the sleeping and drinking area set up in minutes. Within a half an hour we had all the alcohol freed and started the pattern for the next few days, drinking, singing, dancing and fun.

The first day we got to see our child hood hero Coolio! Rodrigous  and Gabriell and the highlight of two door cinema club. Quick sleep, wash of the face and we were ready to go again. Well almost. Everyone was a little ill after the previous days drinking, and was a bit of a struggle to drink. Theres one thing to solve this- a friendly game of DRINKSHEEN!This game we invented in helium a few years ago, its pretty straight forward- every minute you have to shout drinksheen and take a drink. Not to be confused with eh power hour. DRINKSHEEN is much better, and guaranteed to cure all hungoverness and promote fun times. By the end every word must end in SHEEN, as in ANN-SHEEN, SHER-SHEEN, BRAD-SHEEN etc..It was also a major day of bonding with our new bessies, Katie, Tyler and Nick (i.e our gays!). Annie had been admiring Tyler's outfit and when she found out he was going out with Nick she proclaimed- oh that explains the fashion! After venturing down to the stage for a few hours to see some bands we all wandered back to the tent area to top up supplies. It was at this point shit got cray cray! After Brad body dived onto the canopy (nobody knows why!!) the guys started fighting with the poles (eye roll, boys are so stupid and immature). We're not sure how it happened but suddenly we were in the midst of it (after first checking it was covered by our travel insurance) and we were going hell for leather, were lucky no one lost an eye!

After that out came the glow stick, mexican hats (from where we don't know) and we were ready to ring in the new year. Hands down, without doubt it was the best new years, we've ever had! The only downside was when we got back to the camp and our tent had been attacked and was just a pile on the ground. Poor Sherry thought that Annie was inside and was dead until she heard a voice coming from a few tents down. When Annie had come home and seen the tent, after a few pitifully attempts to fix it she had hijacked someone elses tent!

Oh so much fun. The only downside..The hangover...What's worse..It was a goon hangover..Oh goodness new years day 2013 was by all means a rough day for us! For the first time since we left we watched TV, in fact we watch about 7 hours of family guy in a zoombie like state! We tried to redeem ourselves the next day by heading to the Mona museum and Taste of Tasmania, still not quite recovered from the weekend.

 It was an emotional goodbye with Brad but he pinky promised us he would come visit us in Ireland and we all know now if you pinky promise you can't back out :)

Melbourne, Sydney

Before we made it to Melbourne, we had a stop off in Bangkok-its safe to say that Bangkok is practically our home these days for the amount of times we’ve been there in the last few months. This time we were meeting our Laos ladies Alexis and Jordan. We decided to pass on the night out and have a quiet catch up and DVD night, get some pizza, put on face masks, braid each other’s hair...ah ye right, as if that was ever gonna happen! The night was mental :) and of course Koh San Road, lady boys and ping-pong shows were central to the messiness! We had few drinks on Koh San to warm up and then headed back to the girls apartment to drop our rucksacks off. This is where things got crazy. An hour and two bottles of rum later we were all fecked, another hour and a bottle of vodka later we were all well and truly fecked!! At this stage we lost Jordan, man down man down. But being the good friends that we are, we all stayed in and minded her....ehhhhh....well not exactly. We held her head out the window of the taxi, jousting it back in to avoid the oncoming traffic, got her home and put her to bed, took off her shoes, gave her a basin and headed back to the Koh San :0 it’s what she would have wanted! We’d love to tell you more but that would break the code of the Koh San, as quoted by an obese man with his arms around two small Thai girls- ‘what happens on Koh San, stays on Koh San!’.

Nearly two months of travelling had left our hair in dire straights; we decided that the lady boys of Thailand were the best equipped to deal with us. If anyone was going to be able to redeem us, these were the guys (no the girls..guys??..Eh the people!). It was a particularly scary experience for Sherry who had never dyed her hair before, especially when they put peroxide streaks on her jet black hair ahhhhh...Annie was ready to run to the nearest chemist and buy a bottle of black hair dye but alas we should have had more faith..Roll on FIVE hours and she was transformed into a blonde (ish) bombshell!!! Maybe now the endless comparisons between us and the Kardashian sisters will end!

So onwards to Melbourne. We were only staying here for a few days before we went to Tasmania for Christmas. We got the shock of our lives when we landed. I don’t know why people don’t tell you these things but Australia is EXPENSIVE!! Asia had spoiled us, within a few hours we had gone from $5 hotel accommodation to $35 dollars for a 12 bed dorm (which by the way was our worst accommodation yet, so disgusting). To our horror we then saw the price of vodka, literally 30 times more expensive than Laos. Sherry was in Oz last year so she had some idea, but poor Annie nearly had a heart attack. Whats worse our once celebrity status had dwindled rapidly and our pale white skin no longer drew the crowds, apparently being Irish in Australia isn’t such a novelty.

With our new money woes we luckily randomly got offered a few hours work handing out leaflets in return for a free bar and some dollar..Hell to the ye! ChaChing! For the first hour we ran around the place handing the leaflets out, really taking our job seriously. But then the devil on shoulder took over and we *gasp* threw all the leaflets out, spent the day sunbathing and then drank the bar dry. Don’t judge, were backpackers! That night we had the first of our Australian reunions when we met up Jackie. Que a lot of hugging and high pitch screaming! 

With the state of the hostel we were in, all we can say is thank god for Olmo, who very kindly put us up. It was actually hilarious when we were reunited, so basically last time we saw Olmo he had a full grown beard and was rocking a fro, the classic travelling through the wilderness look! When we met him he had been reintegrated into western society, shaved the beard and cut his hair-he was transformed! It literally took us four takes to realise who he was. Like a new man!! We honestly wouldn't have recognised him if he walked by us on the street. Ah hopefully travelling won’t have the same effect on us :0

We had timed our stay with Olmo to perfection as they were having blowout party that weekend, eek. The house was unreal, with a pool room, Ping-Pong table, a bar, slides and pools; it couldn’t have been built better for a party. And these guys went all out with the preparation, putting up lights, building stools (so manly Will!), setting up lasers etc. We got so involved in the set up (even cleaning the pool with sieves) that by the time the party arrived we were calling it OUR party! When we started drinking at 12 in the day we knew it was going to be a off the chain and even better the Irish were taking over with more reunions with Trish and Claire! It definitely will go down as the best party we’ve ever been too, like a downscaled project X. The rave cave, which was a shut off room with lasers, pounding music and strobe lights, was definitely the highlight, we were couch surfing and dancing there for literally hours. At seven in the morning it was still rocking. Things took a drastic turn after the rave with a very sophisticated wine, cheese and cracker spread! Hosted by none other than Chase who only a few hours earlier had been running around in a sparkly G-banger! (That’s a male G-string for anyone who didn’t know!!)

It was at this point that Annie realised her ankle was severely swollen and painful. It had been sore during the night but she had ignored it, claiming it was 'just a headache', kinda like when Liam Leamy thought his potential broken neck was just a pulled hamstring! Being severely hung-over, we ignored it for another few hours until the point that Annie couldn’t walk and was crying with pain. When Claire Dillion, a nurse by profession, saw it her jaw dropped and we were straight to A & E! A small cut on the ankle had gotten infected and we were facing potential blood poisoning *Gasp, dramatic music dun dun duuuunnnnnn* not cool, that would definitely put a dampener on the party. Prognosis was that it required surgery. *More dramatic music* Well not exactly surgery per se but the doctor used a scalpel and bandages. Annie in her delirious state thought the liter of iodine poured over her cut to clean it had actually come from her ankle…Sick! Things were bad but not that bad! Poor Sherry was distraught! But thankfully the cute doctor kept her preoccupied. Turns out it was nothing an antibiotic drip and a mcflurry couldn’t fix. Things were looking up, Annie had survived yet another near death experience and we were all set for Tasmania. Maxi Taxi look out!

(Tasmania was so awesomely cool and eventful that we thought it deserved it’s on blog, so were skipping ahead to Sydney where we went after Tasmania)

Our Australian reunions continued when we were back on the mainland in Sydney. This stop was dominated by meeting up with all the Irish ex-pats! There’s so many Irish there that we actually got the fear that we were back in Ireland and had to cut our Australia trip short (that and the fact it was bleeding us dry, not two dollar to rub together!) Our headquarters for Sydney was 91 Bream Street, home of Fiona, Nadia, The Goat and his Billy and about 70 other people. The place was pure mayhem, we’ve been in many a hostel but this place beat them all. There were so many people staying there that there were actually people pitching tents in the back garden (no joke!). Sure what’s two more slight Irish cailins! Despite the chaos we settled in pretty quickly, especially when on arrival they had cups of Barry’s Tea waiting for us- a moment of calm amongst the never ending party!We got back to Sydney just in time to meet Annies sister Niamh and her boyfriend Emmet who were on route to South America. Not only were we going to be on the same continent for the first time in a year but also the same city. Only for 12 hours though. It was Kirwan overdrive from the second we met up (Sherry can vouch for this, she didn’t get a word in all day!), cramming all our stories from travelling into those few hours. The only time Emmet got to speak was to explain his monstrous beard growth, which he has impressively been growing for months all so he and his friends can drink whiskey, with beards in South America! Sherry and Emmet did a lot of bonding that day, practically bessies by the end; she was even combing his beard! We did the usual tourist haunts- Manly Beach, the Opera house and Sydney Harbour. Aisling even made a quick appearance!!!

We also got a new recruit- Elton the duck. He's the coolest lil' dude ever, such a party animal!

Continuing the Irish invasion we met up with Edel and Des the following night. The last time Des was spotted was a weekend in Amsterdam- so the standard for the night was set high. It was always going to be a winner though when we found blue WKD, the staple to any ridiculously drunken night! Between the Blue WKD and the amount of Brigids girls out that night you swear it was just a regular night in coppers! This was the first of many a drunken night in Sydney and many a reunion. It was a never ending cycle of going out, going wild (they have 24hour bars), hangover food and hangover TV mainly Gossip Girl (xoxo).

The only time we broke the cycle was to fulfill our lifelong dream to go to Palm Beach, where they film Home and Away. Poor Pauric didn’t know what to do with two hyperventilating girls in back of the car. The excitement was so much we even acted out scenes from the best drama in the world. Sherry got a little too into it slapping Pauric across the face- sorry about that. Life couldn’t get any better when low and behold the Brax brothers rocked up (blood and sand, for life).

We had to say our goodbyes to Fiona, Nadia and 91 Bream Street; the endless partying had taken its toll on us and our pockets. It was time to start planning the next stage of our trip and no better place to do that than the safe haven of Claire Donoghue’s apartment. We spent so long sleeping on couches that we actually found it difficult to adapt to sleeping in a bed. What we had attempted to do for the previous three weeks we got done in one day there, clean clothes again, hurray. We even managed to book our trip to New Zealand, just in time too because we were leaving the next day. Typical us though, we always leave things to the last minute, it makes this more exciting- especially for the poor travel agent who spent her morning frantically trying to organise our trip.
                                                          Kia Ora New Zealand.