S-A-S-Q-U-A-T-H

Yes, my favourite weekend of the year has once again come and gone.  I know a lot of you who read this blog were there with me, but if you weren't, here's a little update.

1. We listened to songs, we sang songs, we wrote songs.  Yes, I know the C is missing in S-A-S-Q-U-A-T-H, but it just doesn't fit. 

2. A good friend got arrested.  In the words of my favourite employer, "what a fucking gongshow!"  This turned a five hour drive home into a thirteen-hour ordeal, including a pre-trial hearing.  Yikes!  Behave yourselves in America, friends.  They take their shit seriously.

3. I saw a disgusting amount of amazing music.  I cried my eyes out at Bon Iver, thrashed at Nero, and tried to propose to several members of the Head and the Heart.  fun. did their adorable thing, Hey Rosetta! made Canada proud as usual, and SBTRKT made me want to move back to Australia stat.  Coeur de Pirate broke my heart, Girl Talk made me lose my mind, and Jack White seven-nation-armied the shit out of me.  There are about a million more, but my memory is drooling already.

4. I was stunned once again by the gorge.  The area's natural beauty is astonishing.  For once I find myself out of words.

5. I stayed 100% sober for all five days, you know me.  Hm, jk.

6. My ladies and I ran a perfect love nest.  I snuggled Rob, Rob snuggled Sashka, Sashka snuggled Jesi, Jesi snuggled Raq City (bitch).  "Good morning, world!"

plus my girls are really cute.

If you weren't there this year, I'll definitely see you there next year, right?  Down in the U-S-A, having a blast with your friends.  It's really the only way to live your life.

for my ladies

dream boiiii

I don't even like cats that much, but I think the world is conspiring against me to make me love them as much as I love all these boys.  You're welcome!

dan!

a conversation I had once

him: "so, you're from America?"

me: "no, Canada."

him: "obviously.  What part of America?"

me: "..."

and now back to regularily scheduled programming

Jess and I are both very, very single.  I say this not in the sad cathy type of a way, but in an allergic-to-feelings type of a way.  While we were away, we developed a whole lexicon to refer to the weird sort of itchy ribcage you get sometimes after spending some time discussing politics with a particularly attractive Puerto Rican.  Yes, feelings are a disease frequently contracted and often succumbed to.  I see people everywhere with deeply entrenched cases, the type that bring about months of crying when the fever finally breaks.  It's kind of sad, and especially terrifying when one recognizes the symptoms in oneself.

There are three strains of feelings, each with their own particular set of symptoms and side-effects. 

Strain O, for hOromone induced, is perhaps the easiest to get over.  You probably didn't do much talking with the guy or girl who gave you strain O.  "Gin and tonic, please!"  You know how it is.  Anyways, you find yourself thinking about their lovely broad shoulders three days later and there you have it.  Strain O.  Luckily, treatment for strain O is quite simple: find yourself another set of shoulders.  Holla!

Strain B is for strain Brain.  This is the one that does actually involve talking to the transmitter.  Probably for a few hours, in the corner of the party, ignoring everyone around you, giggling and discussing how you both hate-love that portrait of Stephen Harper.  Strain B is dangerous.  "We just like... talked."  As though talking is some sort of new thing that the two of you just invented.  Watch out!  Strain B is harder to get over, and sometimes takes up to two weeks of your precious time.  Maybe just avoid it altogether, okay?

Strain H for Heart is a tricky one.  It's a weird combination of strains O and B, plus an entirely new thing where you kind of just want to like ick out and gaze at the person who infected you.  "He's just like... I don't even know."  Sometimes there's hand-holding, ew or forehead kisses.  Be safe, ladies and gentlemen.  Strain H can take months to get over, depending on the severity of the infection.  I haven't caught any strain H for a while and I am very happy about this.

Given all of this, I have to admit that I currently have a mild case of strain B.  I'm hoping to get over it rather quickly, but I think I might get re-infected and I'm concerned for myself.  Single-girl happiness involves staying feelings free at all times!  But no, I feel feelings and they're making my insides feel strange.  EW.  Learn a lesson from me, folks, and keep your guard up.  Feelings are not a disease to be trifled with!  In the meantime, party hard and I'll see you at Sasquatch.

sum it up

It's so easy to get sucked right back into hometown life.  I've been home for two days and already all I want to talk about is how beautiful all my ladies are, what my favourite drink is, and how much I like Rihanna.  Kelowna definitely has its positive points, but I think I need to say something to sum up being away.

Firstly, let's have some stats.  During our four months away, we flew through fourteen airports in ten different countries.  We travelled by car, truck (both in the cab and in the back), motorbike, scooter, bus, mini-van, horse-drawn carriage, foot, bicycle, ferry, boat, tuk-tuk, quad and plane.  We visited seven countries and flew through three more.  We met dozens of new friends from every continent on earth, including dear Pedro from Antarctica.  We learned to say thank you in five different languages and learned that grinning means the same thing everywhere.  We fell in love a dozen times with as many boys and broke just as many hearts.  We had, in short, a stunning kaleidoscope of a trip.

If I have a piece of advice for any of you, it's to get out of wherever you are.  It's sometimes hard to tear yourself away, but it just needs to happen.  Buy yourself a ticket without thinking too much about it.  Go to South America, to Asia, to India, to Eastern Europe.  Go by yourself, go with your best friend, go with all my love.  There's nothing any of us need more than somewhere.  You grow up and out and into yourself travelling, and I think there's nothing each of us need to do more than that.  Just go.

So if you've been following me for the course of the trip, thanks.  I hope you enjoyed it, and I apologize for all the swearing.  I'm touched that you all bothered to keep reading, and those of you who passed the name of this blog along to friends rock my world.  If you got anything out of all of this, I hope it was that you need to go travelling too.  So thanks again, friends.  I love you all!

halong bain't: get me off this f**king boat

I'm sorry, that's hardly even a pun at all.  The truth is, our Halong Bay tour barely left me with any sense of humour.  Halong Bay is a magnificent bay about four hours North of Hanoi.  It's studded with over a thousand limestone islands that jut out of the water and straight on up.  Really the only way to see the bay is to take a tour, something we usually hate doing.  For Halong Bay though?  It was going to be totally worth our 65 bucks.

Things started off well enough: the boat was alright, the people around us were friendly enough, and we got a free water on the minibus ride there.  Things began to go downhill around the time of the promised seafood lunch.  You know how food is supposed to have flavour?  Well, apparently the staff on the Du Gong haven't heard.  Our food tasted of texture and soy oil.  Yum!  The next four meals weren't any better, either.  Ugh.

The afternoon was alright.  We wandered through an enormous cave and jumped off the roof of our boat into the water. These are good things!  We were happy enough until we finished dinner and were sitting waiting for the evening's entertainment.  Oh wait, no.  The karaoke and 'exciting games' promised by the lady who booked our tour turned out not to exist.  The twenty or so backpackers unlucky enough to be on our boat sat in the dark on the rooftop deck and watched Asia Cruise next door party.  No music, no lights, minimal fun.

I have to point out here that no one in their right mind even likes karaoke, but it's the principle of the thing.  Once you've been promised something you want it, dammit!  Especially when stupid Asia Cruise is singing their little eye-of-the-tiger hearts out a hundred metres over and you're stuck on a boat that's swaying rather disconcertingly in the breezing wind.*

Things went even more rapidly downhill from here.  We finally headed to bed, where we discovered a colony of smallish cockroach-esque creatures living in our things.  Delightful.  Then, the bloodstains.  Oh, the bloodstains.  I have never seen so many bloodstains in my entire life.  What are they thinking?!  Who in their right mind would use such horror-movie prop sheets?  Ugh.  We cranked the air conditioner and finally fell asleep, repeating the weprobablywon'tdrownweprobablywon'tdrown mantra to ourselves.

The next day it rained.  Yes, stunning limestone cliffs are still beautiful in the rain.  No, tanning on the roof of the boat is not beautiful in the rain.  The ongoing incidence of squelchily oily food completely devoid of flavour didn't help.  I know I said I wouldn't say any more about the food, but they literally fed us four slices of untoasted white bread for breakfast and one cold fried egg. Unacceptable!

Moral of the story is that organized tours are less than the best thing of my life.  Sometimes nature demands that you take them, but shit.  Don't if you don't have to.  On the other hand, we developed a whole new lexicon of boat-related inside jokes and swear words, so y'all have that to look forward to.  See you guys in.... a week?!

so young, so innocent

there are bugs in here

and the bathroom smells like a pit of hell

and my sheet may have been used as a groundsheet during a brief knife fight

for whom the du gongs

*Breezing wind was a fan in Indonesia, and as such has come to mean any barely perceptible breath of wind.