We are staying with our lovely friend Beth that we met in Fiji. She is nice enough to host us and drive us around in her manual car (we are very impressed with her driving skills) and show us the sights. We can't always understand her accent, she swears like a sailor and she likes to remind us often that we are almost closer to 30 than 20. The joys of living with an 18 year old! :) Thanks to her we had a great time last night! We didn't get home till 530 am, I forgot how much energy young people have!
Speaking of young people, today is my 25th birthday! It's sad to age a year after being 24 for only 3 months but if Australians read my ID they see 11/02/1987 and the way they write the date makes today my day! I learned this in tas when we rented a car and the lady said "are you girls 25? Oh soon!" maybe I can get some free birthday dessert tonight? I'll try!
Last night we took the train downtown and went to Belgian Beer Cafe! Mmm it seemed legit and we felt like we were in Europe with a lot of stuff on the wall written in some other language. Which I happily read with a Dutch-ish accent! Alexa puts up with a lot from me :) We got leffe beer (gross!!) and waited for our friend Alysha to join us! We walked to a club to dance. A fight broke out which seems to be pretty usual around these parts. Someone told us that Australians fight a lot more than the Irish even tho the Irish get the bad rep? I dunno if there is anything to that but that's what they said. Alexa got her foot stomped on (she thinks it's broken!!). I assessed it several times over the night but it appears fine. Her poor feet also got stepped on a lot by a very zealous salsa dancing clubber who randomly turned around and said to her "and what's YOUR problem?!??" Alexa learned that Australian men don't hold back on saying what they are thinking. A few would randomly approach her, say something, then walk away. Highlights include "you have the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen" and "you are too pretty to look sad" and then "you still have the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen"! And "you girls look weird dancing by yourselves." Yet no one wanted to stick around and talk to us! Walking home a group of police approached us and said "be careful this time of night a lot of girls get robbed" then walked the other way.... Thanks for making us feel safe! Before they left they commented that Beth needed to watch out (she took her heels off) for glass. Beth was quick to yell "I'd like to see you try walking in these all night!!" haha they didn't seem to mind at all. Later on the train some guy was clearly throwing up (he had had 3 kebabs -pronounced kabAAb not kabob- that night so of course!) and the police looked right at him and then continued their convo. We caught the free train a 4 am and finally made it home!
A note about aboriginals. (this is Alexa now btw, I'll try to be as politically correct as I can but as we saw previously I'm not very good at that). Back home people aren't really openly racist. We hadnt really encountered any aboriginals until we came to Perth. Here, some australians are way openly racist against aboriginals. They describe them as a different, uncivilized species and treat them like animals and tell us to watch out or they will kidnap us etc. But. We have heard some pretty crazy stories about aboriginal encounters. Example: an older aboriginal woman put an Australia guy in the hospital bc he didn't have a lighter. The cops warn groups of girls not to walk alone because they're prime targets. We were walking down the street the other day and one guy walking behind us yelled "girls! Hey girls!" nonstop for about ten minutes. We went to this awesome beach and apparently after we left a bunch of aboriginals got in trouble for lighting stuff on fire. We had no idea there was such a culture clash here and so much tension between the two groups.
Anyway...shockingly we didn't have the energy to do it all again sat night... Instead we spent the day walking around the city, shopping a little and going to kings park. We found a good restaurant for dinner before calling it a night!
Today is our last day in Perth before we leave on a week long road trip up and back down the western coast. We used today to plan our next adventure when we return from the coastal trip!
Surprise: we are going to Bali!!!!
Why not?! It's cheap and beautiful and will give me another continent on my passport! Now I just need Africa to complete the world... I have no intention of going to Antarctica! Anyway we are staying at a nice hotel with a pool for $25 a night. If food is as cheap there as they say we can finally eat a lot again and return to our original weights/our pants can stop falling off! We will be there for the last week of feb, can't wait!!!
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