AWESOME dude!

As promised I’m blogging again so soon because I need to catch up to where I am now – which is in Vietnam as of 6pm today!

So, right after the horse ranch jolly I jumped on a coach at Tamworth and headed for my next adventure which was to start in Byron Bay.  Getting there wasn’t too bad. 14 hours on a coach; the Greyhound service is pretty good although you should be warned that they drive like lunatics. I found that out the hard way when trying to sleep across two seats he jammed the brakes on and I promptly flew into the foot well.  

Having heard quite a lot about Byron I was pretty excited to get down there. I was joining a good mate of mine, Vicky, and we were hooking up with a 5 day surf school which was taking us down to Sydney. Unfortunately we only ended up in Byron for one night so I can’t really say much about it – especially as I was a bit lame and went to bed early cos the coach journey mullered me. 

Anyway, before I actually met any real ‘surfer dudes’ I have to say I had a pretty fixed image in my head of what they would be like. Lean, tanned, blonde scruffy haired boy who said things like ‘relax dude’ and ‘awesome man that surf is sweet’. I was not disappointed. 

At 10am on the  day we were met by the crew of Waves Surf School. One of the bigger schools in the area and run by a band of motley surfer dudes with names like ‘scrappy joe’ ‘dumpster’ and scuba steve’. As soon as we got on the bus I knew it was going to be a fun trip; first we had to stop off and pick up scrappy who was still asleep in a parking lot somewhere after a heavy night out and then once we had got scrappy on board he gave us a little pep talk which went something like ‘now… listen guys… it’s real hot and the sun, that’s real hot too. so remember man the sun is a criminal and it should like, be in jail. even when it’s behind the clouds it’s out to get you yeah.’ 

Don’t get me wrong by the way – this isn’t criticism – on the contrary we had an awesome time with the surf dudes and despite the fact that I was rubbish at the surfing itself I would definitely do it again.

And yes that’s right, I’m soooo bad at surfing. I did ok the first day but the more hungover I got throughout the week (which is hardly my fault given the company right?) the worse I got. I nose dived, face planted and washing machined in the waves so many times I eventually gave up and decided I was far better off using the board to lie on on the beach. Vicky, sorry babe, was even worse, after day 1 she gave up even taking a board down to the beach. To be fair they are very heavy. Best way to carry them is on your head if you ever give it a go.

What Vicky and I did both excel in however, unsurprisingly, was the drinking games. The more ridiculous the better and we more than succeeded in up-holding the pommie reputation for being alcoholics.

And erm, thugs too. Not intentionally may I add! I was in a drinking game which was basically musical chairs but they would shout out a task and you had to run and do it then come back and grab a chair. There were 3 of us left and while running a lap around the pool I was suddenly grabbed from behind by some french girl who shoved me out of her way on to the floor – well I wasn’t having any of that and as she was just about to jump in the last chair I shoulder barged her out of my way and victoriously sat down – I honestly didn’t realise quite how hard I’d shoved her until I looked round and saw her practically rolling back out the door of the bar and then tuned into a load of people shouting ‘dude! I can’t believe you just did that! that was AWESOME man!’  – i felt quite bad actually so afterwards I went to say sorry for being so rough, she accepted gracefully and it seemed the bridge was being built until someone knocked my elbow and my pint went straight down her top…. she wouldn’t even look at me after that – oh well some friendships are just not to be I guess!

Anyways – the whole trip was AWESOME dude so I would definitely recommend it. Got to see some beautiful beaches away from the crowds and got to drink, a lot. What more could you want??