Ruth's Diary

31/3/2011

Silly me! By not mentioning their names I might have accidentally made out the YHA at Lakes Entrance as inferior. In actual fact I didn't know the names at the time of writing. They're called Rik and Samantha, who are indeed very nice. So nice in fact that when I explained I went to Lakes Entrance to figure out how to get to Buchan (for the caves) they drove me up there themselves! They've even got a number of clever ideas, such as finding a car that travellers like myself can hire for $50 with a suggested itinerary of out-of-town activities to do, to make it truly your money's worth. Best of luck to 'em.

But my word, travelling around on public transport in Victoria felt a little old-fashioned to me. I wanted to originally buy all my travel tickets back in Canberra but the V-Line website could never confirm if a journey was even possible. It turns out they let you pick a time to suit you but certain journeys that go along the Princes Highway only run once a day, so instead of denying you an impossible journey, the computer gives a theoretical timetable instead. How bizarre. So at each small town I've been in I had to travel to an office to buy my tickets in person. At Narooma Tourist Office, they don't yet have the specific printer for printing out V-Line tickets, so they had to write out everything. I got reminded of Peru.

And now that I'm in Melbourne I'm reminded of London every so often. There are differences of course, plenty of them, but the key design of streets and older architecture is very English.

In the meantime, here's my updated Aussie vocab list:
electrical socket=powerpoint
flip flops=thongs
duvet=doona
trousers=pants (like in America)
dim sum=dim sim (that's an error, dim sum is the correct pronunciation)

(Right now I'm observing the housekeeping staff in my hostel. They're both Chinese it seems. For whatever reason they speak louder with each other than when they knock on the door and announce themselves.)

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