Our last week in Australia was awesome. The car that was lent to us was great and we drove up the coast to Nelson Bay. The Australian coast is beautiful in a way that that is hard to describe in words. One night we camped out at One Mile Beach and went for a run around sunset. We ran into the neighboring Samurai beach and came across two nude fishermen. (Samurai beach is a nude beach). After a few days of good eating and fun in the sun we drove back to the Blue Mountains to meet our French-Canadian friend Pascal, who we'd met in the Arapiles, and do some climbs that were previously denied to us due to rain.
When we arrived in the Blue Mountains it was pissing rain and was just above freezing, but by the next morning the rain had stopped and by noon it was sunny again. We had a solid 24hr window of sun and we used it to climb some of the most fun and exciting climbs that we have been on in OZ.
My personal favorite climb was Lardy Lady's Lats. It was 22 and very sustained the whole way up with a roof at the top and a powerful crux. I took a nice fall once and got it on my second try! Very rewarding!
After we got back to Sydney we both decided we were ready to leave OZ early. I was pushing the case based on our financial limitations and how it would be cheaper to change our tickets than to stay another 20 days. And we would be in guaranteed warm weather in a culture that would be very different from our own.
We booked a flight to Hanoi for the following day over the phone for an amazing deal of $550!!! We were so proud of ourselves we spent the day having brunch with our hosts, hanging out around Byron Bay and generally enjoying ourselves... That is until we found out that we need a visa to get into Vietnam and it was almost impossible to get one before our flight was due to take off at 7am the following morning!!!! Added to that once we looked at our flight itinerary we discovered that our awesome flight was really booked for Nadi, Fiji and NOT Hanoi!!! Somehow, the non-English speaking booking agent had interpreted "Hanoi" as "Nadi."
BLURG!!! We both got very sad when we called the airline and the situation was explained to us that there was no way that we were going to Asia for less than 1,200 dollars. We canceled our tickets and re-booked with Thai airways for a flight at 7am the next morning.
And that is how we ended up in Thailand early. Even paying the extra money to leave early, we are still coming out ahead and the culture shock is amazing.
Till the next time, Nolan
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