friends leaving and trips getting planned

Hi guys.

I'm lying in bed. It's 03:26 in the morning (?) and I just said goodbye to yet another friend.

That guy

After looking around and asking different people it seems as the guy from wicked travels fucked us over big time, and we should actually be in the south right now. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess.

I searched some jobs today and I'm hoping for kind of a quick response tomorrow. Me and Henrik will have a big talk on where to head though.

In a years time I should go backpacking in Europe. Remember that future Filip. Remember!

C ya m8s

Writing my CV

Hi guys!

Sitting in Wicked Travel writing my CV (or resume) in english. I'm sure I had done that already but I can't find it at all. Sigh.

So this is going to be a short one. I think my coughing is better today at least, which is nice. What is not so nice however, is the fact that I spent all too much money yesterday going out and that I lost my key on the way home. I'm going to check the last place I was yesterday but so far no luck. I'm hoping someone turned it in but you never know. I also scraped my knee somewhere that I can't remember.

Tomorrow it's Saturday and the plan is to go up early and look for some work. Sitting here writing this I realize there is actually a wanted sign on the wall. Maybe I should try it? But it's commission based work. Could be good until I find something else I suppose.

In other news I really like Cairns. It's a nice place. A lot of backpackers and a lot of nice people. I should get my thumb out of my... ear, and actually look for some real work. Yesterday I got a haircut and bought some new shoes. The old ones were kind of stinky and totally destroyed from the trips we took earlier.

Why do I always look retarded when I'm taking a photo of myself?

L8r peeps!

Still coughing

Hiya!

Week four of coughing like a monster. Everyone around me is getting sick and I'm now convinced I have contracted some kind of deadly plauge that will probably lead to a couple of thousand deaths before it is over. I'm not promising anything, but "the Engman" could actually be the start of a zombie apocalypse.

Me coughing

In other news we are still partying really hard. Tonight though we are taking one off so to speak. Maybe my body will thank me.

I have now realised that the backpacking lifestyle could actually be a little sad. I said goodbye to yet more friends today, and soon I know Joop and Melf are going to leave aswell. It really sucks because you never know if you'll see anyone again. Maybe when I'm done with Australia I'll have to save up money and go on a huge journey around the globe, just meeting a lot of people.

Tomorrow I'm going job hunting. No, I'm not joking, stop laughing. I've decided to at least try the tattoo thing then maybe switching to general work such as storeclerk or dishwasher. I really like Cairns so whatever work that can stabilize my in- and outcome is welcome.

The guys and me are now experts in leeching wifi and we've actually managed to figure out a lot of the passwords for the locked ones. Oh yeah. They aren't very good though, but as you can see it's ok enough for blogging and facebooking, which are to very important things in a swedes everyday life.

Maybe see you guys tomorrow. This guy's going to bed.

C u l8r alig8r
In a while crocodile

Saltwater crocodiles and cassowaries

' Eeeeyo

Back in Cairnes again after a trip up north!

The first day we spent at cape tribulation, walking around the bush, looking for crocs and cassowaries. What's a cassowary? It is one of two birds in the world that could kill you. It's not because of it's size (even though they are kinda big) that they can kill you, but of the daggers on their toes. They use the talons to cut you from the neck to your stomach, spillin' your guts. Nasty!

After a whole day of just us four guys walking around in the rainforest we found... nothing. Well to be fair we did see a fair share of trees. And some bushturkeys. And a dead lobster. Yeah.

We stopped by a small cafe while driving and ended up splitting two crocodile(!)burgers. Tastes a little like fish mixed with chicken. Yum!

Later that night we were arguing where we should sleep when one of the guys cracked the master plan of all of us camping in their 2-man tent. Now we are talking about four full grown (ok maybe I'm not the tallest guy in the world) men sleeping in a four square meter tent. Cozy. Before we went to bed we bumped into two of the girls from Cairns (stalkers!), and then got invited to a bonfire on the beach.

So next thing we are walking towards the pitch black beach, in a pitch black jungle, filled with the most dangerous animals in the world. Woopie. At least we had the torch on our mobile phones.

We arrive at the bonfire and I come to the conclusion that the two guys that's started it doesn't know jack shit about starting a fire. After standing around for a while I try to help them the best I could, but the fight is already over. To cap it all off it starts raining. Groan.

Now we are running through the black rainforest again and the rain is pouring down. After a few quick descisions, we end up sleeping in the car instead.

After a day filled with plants we decided to go to a zoo instead. There we saw saltwater crocodiles (salties), petted kangaroos, wallabies and koalas, and fed some cassowaries. Coooooooooool. I petted a croc to of course. Because I'm that awesome.

In other news the couch is back again and this is third week with a cold. I am hoping it will dissappear soon. I am also seriously cobsidering going back to being an everyday vegetarian. We'll see when I get back to Sweden.

See you around!

Take what you can, give nothing back

Captains log.

A ten hour bus ride and one night spent in cairns later, I'm sitting in one of Wicked Travels shops, contemplating my next step. I'll try to keep this short today and write some things I'm thinking about and a couple things we've learned on our trip.



First of we now have a new mantra. "Take what you can, give nothing back". You who are well traversed in the movie industry may recognize this as a quote from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. If so then ARGH, good on you matey. If not go educate yourself you uncultured swine.

Henrik is an expert in the arts of this our new life saying, but I sometimes have a hard time living by it. For example, we got not one, not two, but three free pizzas in Airlie beach, just by going with people who had been on other ships than our own. We now pillage the "free"-section of the hostels food store and take all that we can in hopes that we're going to need it. We also try to mooch on everything that is free (like the pizza) as often as we can. As I said earlier, I have a hard time with this but I think I'm getting the hang of it, and besides, we're not actually stealing stuff, just maybe overstepping some boundaries for free stuff. Right? Yeah...


We've meet up with a few people here in Cairns and today or tomorrow we are having a kind of reunion for the people that traveled to Fraser together.

The city isn't huge, but it is big enough to have all the nice things like Woolworths (which is like one of the cheapest food stores in Australia) and a lot of other different shops, tattoo studios and the likes. I'm actually considering maybe stepping in to those shops and ask if they want an apprentice. Could work since I have my sketchbook with me. If you don't ask you'll never know right? A good plan would be to work for accommodation in one of the hostels here and then work pro bono at a tattoo studio until I am good enough to apply for a job there.

Other things I've learned during the trip is that Australia has cheap Tuesdays, which is really handy if you want a pizza for example (which is about $ 10 on an average day but $ 5 on a Tuesday). Maybe uninteresting for you guys at home in Sweden, but you never know who's reading these kind of things, right?

The hostel we are staying in at the moment costs us about $ 18/night. It sort of looks like a prison or an insane asylum, transformed into a hostel, which isn't really nice. We are only staying there for four days though, and then we'll find something better. I hope. One GREAT thing with the hostel though, is that they have vouchers for food. You get a voucher, go to a pub in the vicinity, order a (really fucking nice) meal, and get a free drink, for $ 6.50. Awesome.

This is it for now I think. I'll try to update tomorrow again but I won't make any promises I can't keep!

Cya soonish.

Things forgotten... And stuff.

Howzi'goin!?

So there's a couple of things I've neglected to tell you guys. I usually say that I have a good memory, although short, which has led to me forgetting to tell you guys a lot of the awesome things that's happened. So let's go back in time a couple of weeks, days or hours and I'll try to make it as clear as possible (yeah, this is going to be messy).

Where do I start? Let's go back to Brisbane, our original location, and then try to force our way up towards the north. Here we go. 

Me and Henrik met the australians I was talking about in one of the first posts and they drove us to the hostel we were staying in. What I neglected to tell you guys is that the first night, me and Henrik were standing at the balcony of the bar just thinking of what we were going to do and where to go. There was a couple of people out besides the two of us and the night was a bit chilly. All of a sudden a gang of five or six guys comes out from the bar and surrounds a talve a few meters away from us. We can hear them talking about some "stupid fucker in the bar" or some such. The bartender suddenly came out and asked the guys to leave the hostel because they had threatened a guy. They tell him to fuck off, which prompts him to call the police. One of the guys thinks that no one is watching from outside the bar, suddenly flashes a gun under his jacket, showing his friend. Me and Henrik were standing at the perfect angle and we both just went slack-jawed. We moved a little farther from the guys and the friend of the guy with the gun told him to put the piece away. The bartender came out again and told the guys the police were on their way, which made the guys suddenly itching to get out of the place. It really felt as a perfect reminder that it's not just the australian animals that can kill you. People are people. "The last idiot isn't born yet", right?

So, what's next? Hmmm. Let's go to Fraser Island again, shall we?

So I think I told you must of the suff on Fraser, but there are a few things I could add. The first thing happened the second day I think, and it wasn't that big of a deal, but it is worth mentioning. So we were driving in our caravan on the sand roads (which is a pretty bumpy ride) when the car in front of us suddenly loses one of it's tires. Yeah, that's right. The right tire at the back of the car suddenly just fell to the side and the car stopped dead in it's tracks. All of us got out and the guide came running from the first car. Somehow the bolts of the tire had been loosened and had just fallen off. We found two or three of the bolts near the car which sparked a search for more back from the way we had been heading. Three irish girls went looking and I felt I had to go with them. I still felt my cold as strong as ever and I wanted to get moving some. The girls were kind of fast but I didn't mind, so I trailed them a bit slower, looking for the bolts in the sand. A short time passed of just walking and looking at the ground, and when I looked up again the girls were gone. I thought I could still hear them somewhere up front so I continued walking. After about ten minutes of not seeing them, I suddenly realised I was walking alone on a sand road, in the middle of a forest filled with dingoes. Now dingoes aren't that big, but they ususally hunt in packs. Cue horror music.

I followed the road just a bit further, thinking the girls must be just up ahead. They were nowhere to be found though. I saw a branch which I used as a walking staff, but really I was arming myself if shit hit the fan. After a couple of more minutes I turned around and started heading back towards the cars. I walked on the road and kept my eyes open, looking out into the thick forest. Time passed and soon I could hear the rest of the caravan again. As I arrived there was a new car at the site that had helped them fix the tire, and a couple of minutes after that the irish girls arrived again with all the missing bolts. As I said earlier, nothing really happened, but maybe I should start thinking a little about my surroundings and in which country I'm in.

The next thing I could tell you is about the morning on the third day. I'd been feeling like shit the entirity of the journey and as such I didn't actually drive. The third morning I woke up, and unbelievable enough, I was still drunk. Tony, the guide, was doing breath tests on people since he knew there had been a lot of drinking the night before and just for fun I tried it. Tony laughed a little and then said "you are twice over the limit mate". He showed me the results (0.11) and then chuckled. "You aren't driving today". Bummer.

Also, one more last thing about the fraser trip. When we were heading back to the hostel we saw a bunch of kangaroos!

Where to go from here? Let's go to Seventeen Seventy (1770).

In 1770, or Agnes Waters, I surfed for the first time in my life. It was the cheapest surfing lesson for beginners in the entirety of Australia and I think I payed $ 17 in total. That's about £ 13. Let me tell you, it was awesome. We were a bunch of people (20 perhaps?), we got wetsuits and surfingboardes, had a quick tutorial and then we headed for the beach. The waves weren't big at all, but in hindsight, maybe that was a good thing. You walked out a bit, climbed the board, and then paddled with your hands until you got a bit out. When you saw a wave coming that was the right size, you started paddeling towards the beach as fast as you could. When the wave "hit" you and your board started to lean forward, you put in an additional four or so strokes, then tried to stand on the board. I failed miserably.

After a couple of failed attempts I finally sort of got it and I stood up at least five times before it was time to leave the beach. The whole lesson and everything took about three hours and was totally worth the seventeen dollars.

The last thing I wanted to mention was the white bellied sea eagles we saw at Whitsundays. It was actually really cool. Eric, the snorkeling guide, asked if anyone could whistle really loud. Melf, the german guy we have been traveling with, whistled and from no where came two eagles. Eric stod with a little bucket of left over meat from the dinner and the birds sort glided towards him a couple of meters in the air. He then threw the meat up and the birds dived and sntached it from the air. It was really cool. I will see if I can score some pictures of it later on.

So that's it for today peeps. I am still in Airlie beach, and tomorrow night me and Henrik are headed for Cairns on the night bus. It's kind of cloudy today and there's been some rain as well. I will probably check in later but for now I'll try to add a few pictures to the other posts.

See you in the fog!

High waves, big fish and the Whitsundays

Hi gang!

So I haven't got as much time writing this as I want to because we are going on the "after party" from the cruise that I've been on since the 9th.

A lot has happened the last few days and I'll try to descibe it as awesome as humanly possible.

We went on the boat the morning of the 9th. The boat name is "Avatar", which sounds really cool doesn't it? Well I can tell you, the boat lived up to it's name and more to boot. Avatar is one mean looking ship. I am no sailor, nor am I very interested in tin cans floating on the sea, but this ship looked awesome. To all you boatlovers out there, I am so sorry, but I will now try to descibe how it looks, and it will not be a very pretty.

So Avatar has sort of three main areas. The middlepart looked like a narrow ship on its own, and then there were two smaller and even more narrower hulls on each side. These were connected to the ship in the front and the back, and in the middle of it all there were huge nets that you could easily fit everyone on the ship. The sleeping areas were located both in the main hull of the ship, and outside in hatches on the smaller hulls. The smaller hulls weren't big (especially when you are sharing it with a crazy dutch bastard) but I slept very well in the about two squaremeter room.

Fuck the ship let's go through the other stuff that we saw and experienced.

Just a couple of minutes outside of the Airlie port we saw two humpback whales. They weren't huge by whale-standards, but I wouldn't want to go swimming with them if you catch my drift. Everyone on the boat was amazed and I thought we were off to a pretty good start, before I heard the weatherforecast *dramatic pause and gulp*.

The weatherforecast for the next five days were windy with a chance of showers *sigh*. Let's just say I didn't realise I was supposed to have bought seasickness tablets until the next morning.

Back to the adventure! We saw seaturtles, whales, white-bellied sea eagles, amazing beaches, cool islands, and MASSIVE fish. I don't know if you guys knows this, but I hate big animals in the water, and I hate the ocean. I am convinced that if you can't see the bottom of the sea at any given moment, then there's a huge shark or other dangerous animal just waiting to kill me. In spite of all that, I still went on a boatride on the coast of Australia, and I snorkled. It was awesome.

The first time snorkeling I saw awesome multi-colored fish everywhere. They were almost to colorful to be true. I really reacted to the fact that they weren't even afraid of you, and there were schools of fish swimming about ten centimeters away from you. '

Second time snorkeling the snorkel instructor threw in some bread around us that drove the fish crazy. I remember them forming a sort of wall around you and circeling you. It was un-fricking-believable. And then the BIG fish came. They were HUGE. Now I mean it. HUGE. Like at least a meter in length. Two were black ones and they were pretty cool, then Elvis came.

The fish is called Elvis because it has a hump on it's forehead that resembles Elvis hair a bit. It also has huge lips and blue scales. The instructor, which was a pretty awesome guy named Eric, threw a piece of bread like ten centimeters from my face and I went "oh shit" as the big fish swam by me and ate it just in front of me. Woah.

Enough about big scary fish. We saw some awesome environments as well. We went to Whitehaven beach, which is ranked as the second most beautiful beach in the whole world. Let me tell you, even with a cloudy sky, the place was really awesome.

Of course there was a lot of drinking involved at night time, but what can you expect with a guy-girl-ratio of five guys and twenty girls *wink wink*.

As I wrote earlier in a post, there's a lot of stuff I keep forgetting to write down. I'll try to give you a full blown update tomorrow evening.

Now, friends and family, it is time for some goon and an afterparty with free (I'm not even joking) pizza.

See you guys!

Airlie and stingers

Hay guys. Sorry I've been kinda bad at updating my blog.

We are now in Airlie Beach and I am so happy about it. The weather is warmer, the clubs are better and the hostel we are staying at rocks.

The last couple of says I've managed to surf for the first time ever and I have realised there's a lot of things I haven't told you guys.

Tomorrow we head for Avatar, a party ship that will take us out to the amazing beaches. I'll post a major update in about two days.

Until then, later bitches.

Dingoes and death adders

And I'm back!

Oh god, this is going to be a massive one. I suggest reading half of it, go out for a stroll and punch a baby, then returning for the second half. Here it goes:

We drank with a bunch of people the last night before we left the hostel. We made some new friends and we had a really good time.

The next day me and Henrik left the wonderful flashpackers in Hervey bay, and walked a couple of hundred meters to Palace. Now, don't get me wrong, the place was okay. They had no free wifi though, and no free breakfast... and sort of a small cramped kitchen... ...

Later that day wet up with the two dutch and german guys we met in Gagaju bushcamp called Melf (pronounced almost as milf for you fine tasters out there) and Joop (dutch people have weird names). We have the exact same things planned on our trip up to Cairns, so we decided to book them at the same dates so we know people were we are! Besides, both the guys are pretty awesome and frickin' helpful.

After we got the key to our room we started talking to one of the girls staying there called Jessica (crazy drunk canadian) who later joined the same group as we did. The briefing was at 06:00 the day after, but that didn't stop me, Melf and Joop from goin' to town. For you guys at home, I am now officially able to drink beer again. However, during the evening I started to feel sore in the throat. After a few glases of goon (and some Captain Morgan, and beer...) I didn't think much of it. Then the morning came.

I woke up a couple of hours before we set the alarm, and my throat was killing me. It hurt everytime I swallowed and so I just stayed in bed swallowing for like an hour. I was sick as a motherfucker. Piss poor timing if you ask me. Also Ben, if you are reading this and this was your doing, I will have my revenge.

At the briefing we quickly formed a group with Melf and Joop, and met Tim and Mierta who also joined our group. During the morning I had heard that Jessica didn't have a group so I invited her to our car and voila, we now had our seven people for the ride.

After an extensive (read boring and sometimes ridiculous) movie about safety on the island and driving in sand, we left for the cars to start the journey. Oh and what a journey it was. We were really looking forward to this since we payed quite a lot of money for it. We started to drive, and soon it was pretty obvious. Our camp for the night was a fixed location, and there were no toilets there.

None at all. You had to dig a hole (man this is worse than the bushcamp!). We had at least one visit to town per day though, which helped a lot... Let's go back to the trip. (By the way, that's Joop in the middle and a nice guy named Tim at the far left. Henrik is photobombing in the back)

We got to meet our guide and he turned out to be a real baller. He was a really cool guy with a great sense of humour, and I am almost sure that the trip wouldn't be nearly as good without him. Thank you Tony if you ever read this.

After everything was packed and ready to go we drove to the ferry which took us and our cars to Fraser Island, the biggest sand island in the world. On the island there are cool animals like the dingoes, a bunch of snakes and turtles, and you can also do some whale-watching from one of the cliffs. We even saw some dolphins on the way to the island. There was also these big freshwater lakes that were ice cold. They are there because the rainwater has no way of "escaping" into the ocean. They are REALLY deep though, and one of the last lakes we visited was deeper than 35 meters. Tony told us about this japanese guy that tried to swim down to the bottom of the lake, and ended up drowning himself in the process.

The first day we spent driving across the island to the other side, so that we could work our way back down the coast. We saw Indian head, which is a volcanic rock cliff with an amazing view. We went down to a natural pool just beside the ocean, but I was feeling really cold and feverish (word?) so I didn't go in. We went looking for turtles in one of the freshwater pools as well, and we found the little buggers. The last place we visited was a stream of freshwater that was really shallow. Joop challenged med and said that we had to do it, just for the experience, and so I went to the top of the stream and swam all the way down to the ocean. It was really, really cold.

Melf, Mierta, Jessica and Henrik

We headed back for camp and Tony talked to us about safety in numbers. In camp you always needed to be two, even if you were going for a shit in the bush. The reason being that dingoes could come, and if you were by yourself, a pack of dingoes could do some serious damage. We didn't think he was being that serious until he also told us to not leave anything open. We had seen one dingo since we arrived to the island, and it didn't look dangerous at all. Then the night came, and suddenly they were everywhere around the camp. We played some drinking games and we pretty much all got drunk.

We visited another camp during the night and they were playing this game called "zumy zumy". They played it as a drinking game, but later it turned into a strip-game instead. It looked really weird, but awesome at the same time. I'll show you guys when I get home.

The morning of the second day came and we suddenly realised there were dingo-tracks everywhere in the camp. Like just outside our tent, in the big tent that was sort of the common room/kitchen. Everywhere. It was awesome.

We headed for a bunch of lakes this day aswell. At the first lake we arrived at, there was another group. They just stood in ankledeep water and huddled together. I don't know if it was the first day's swimming in the river or the fact that I'm a little retarded, but I just thought "fuck it, I'm going in", and so I just took off my T-shirt and ran straight out and dived. It was pretty cold. On second thought, it was really cold. As soon as I was in, about half of our group (we were 17 by the way), jumped in after me and we played some volleyball.

We drove around on crazy looking sandroads in the middle of what seemed to be a thriving jungle (remembering that it's winter here) and saw shipwrecks, other lakes, and cool environments. When the night came we were kind of tired so we just chilled. Just kidding. We partied hard. Me and my group had practiced the zumy zumy in the car on the way to camp, so when the game came we were prepared.

Let's just say I wasn't super good at it, and that the night was kind of cold when you were naked.

The third day, we headed back for palace but before we left we went to one last lake.

In the bush just near the water a pretty small, grey and black striped snake was lying half buried. Tony said it was a Death adder, and that we should keep out distance. We were standing about two metres away from it taking pictures when Tony told us that it's one of the fastest pouncing snakes in the world. It was also very poisonous, and you'd be dead in about 40 minutes. Near a town or city that wouldn't be so much of a problem, but out on fraser, you were pretty much screwed.

We drove home, ate pizza with the whole gang, said goodbye to a lot of awesome people, and got drunk. Am I drinking to much? Nooo... Right?

This morning when we were leaving Palace, Melf and Joops car was broken into and they had taken everything of value (fucking scumbags). Lucky for me and Henrik, we had taken our backpacks the day eralier. Dodged a bullet on that one.

The rest of the day we've been in flashpackers again, with the free wifi and the free breakfast. We washed our clothes (boring) and met up with Melf and Joop again. Tomorrow we are going further north, and we are thinking of stopping by 1770 (yes that's the name of the city).

Signing off for this one.

Someone needs to teach Mr. Carrot some manners.