THE VENGABUS IS COMING

They had to go so Seamus dropped me at the backpackers hostel in West End.
West End is cool - a hybrid of Byron Bay and Camden located a mile from the centre of Brisbane. Backpacker’s hostels are not cool. Like I say, I was so tired I just wanted my own room to shower, take a cat nap and get a good night’s sleep in. “That’ll be $84 please” Jesus Wept. I’m not Mary and Joseph, we’re not pregnant and this ain’t Christmas, yet it felt like there was no room at the inn.

I took a $30 (£14) room sharing with three others who luckily turned out to be three Kiwi guys, Michael, Mike and Mickey or something,; to be honest I stopped listening after the first intro. They were over for the test match, I presume at The Gabba. Fortunately for me they were not the Irish Mick plebs drinking, shouting, throwing each other in the pool and showing each other their arses and cocks in the way that only real heterosexual men can. The three Mikes were very reserved when they arrived back from wherever they had been all day to wake me from my top-bunk cat nap at six o’clock.

Venturing downstairs the place was full of gorgeous English and Irish girls. Oh, and few chunky monkeys…. and lots of Irish boys. A few of the former were stunning but not really my cup of tea. These type of stunning girls are always either stupid or snooty or both. Not snooty in a posh way, more in a ‘fit but you know it’ way. They can reserve their sun-dyed hair, bronzed tummies, perfect bottoms, pert breasts, tan lines and no chat for ugly Irish boys, who incidentally could all be identical twins. Twins that were born drunk with malformed potatoes fror heads and badly crafted Celtic tattoos like House of Pain. If one of said girls attempted, by mistake, to have sex with me then I guess I’d have no other option than to let them, but they’re not the kind of girl I talk to. I’ve worked out that I prefer interesting looking people. All these beach-fond, bleach-blonde girlies look the same or watered down versions of each other. I like window shopping but I ain’t talking to any of ‘em. It’s just a shame that interesting gorgeous girls are so few and far between. Or in my case far away. Other ones do exist. I’ve read about them in magazines… Well, I’ve seen pictures of them anyroad.

The hostel had arranged games for all and it seemed that everyone was staying in to play. I prefer going out to play, unless it’s in a bedroom. The thing that struck me about this place and therefore all backpacker hostels was that it was essentially Butlins. It’s as if a part of their brain has been removed and they can’t decide what to do or where to go for themselves and need to be told. For the same reason toddlers shouldn’t be politicians, these people don’t deserve to be on the other side of the world, they should be back at work. Burgers will always need flipping.

Everyone seemingly goes on organised tours during the day and drinks Heineken, eats ten-dollar steaks, plays pool and loud games organised by glorified club reps. I thought everyone would be surfed-out guitar-playing hippies. Couples with names like Bodhi and Jodie. Or at least people like me and my friends, or younger versions of them, but instead shaven-headed shouty, drunk, Man United-supporting Irish now outnumber also bald Hare Krishnas ten to one. I guess all backpackers were subversives a while ago, but everything underground eventually becomes mainstream. Even my punk music gets diluted nowadays.

While I’m ranting in E minor, why can’t the Irish get their own game. We’ve got football, you’ve got shinty… or whatever it is. Sorry, it’s just that when there is no escaping them; Bangkok, Chaweng, Brisbane, and they’re all the same (they are all the same) it grates a little. When will someone teach them not to piss on the toilet seat? Let me just say that I’m really glad I’m not a backpacker cos if I had to stay in dorms every night I’d be a proper murderer by now, and would be in a dorm for the next thirty years. With someone called Bruiser or Chopper.

Feeling really ill-at-ease with the place, I felt more at home in Thailand or even Malaysia - at least you can find somewhere that will sell you some food for under fifteen quid. Granted, it will be chicken’s feet but it all comes out the same way. So, cautiously I went out, only to be tricked into parting company with three dollars for a glass of flat Pepsi from a two litre plastic bottle in return for an unforthcoming free wifi connection. It was open decks night in the same bar and had I been able to see straight or stand up properly I might have taken them up on the offer. I’d have cleared the place in seconds but I’d have found some melon-twisting, cop-calling, fudge-packing, cool-as-fuck, punk-fucking-rock bollocks in amongst all the Spiller and Groovejet extended club-house 12 inch remixes.

In the only flip-flops in existence that can hurt a man (Sorry; thongs, I‘m in Oz now) , I walked the streets until I eventually found a café that had free wifi:
“You’ll have to buy a coffee though”
“Oh, ok that’s fine…”
“But I’m closing up now”

He could have saved a whole sentence.

After buying some tobacco, skins and filters for the first time in a very long time I found free wifi. Everywhere, everywhere you have to sign up and part with two bucks for twenty wireless minutes. Tis scandalous. This island’s ancestors were such notorious thieves, cut-throats and horse-pleasuring, grave-robbing-corpse-rapists that our forefathers sent them on six-month boat journeys to the other side of the world just to get rid of them. Many of the journeys carrying the worst offenders never made it. Perish the thought. On an evolutionary scale, DNA doesn’t mutate that much in two hundred years, so why do people holiday here? In not giving me free wifi their true colours were shining through now. Even Thailand has free wifi and that’s a developing country! Anyway, sitting in a rather well-done out restaurant, without parting with any money for a drink I sat down to abuse the system, anarchic communist that I had become.

A text from Nat’s parents in response to mine giving them my Oz number said they had chatted to her and that she’d hiked The Great Wall of China. The first of two man-made objects visible from space. My rucksack being the second… so she buys a Chinese SIM card and texts her parents but not me. The cold-hearted bitch! Two seconds later I get a text and four seconds after I appeared online up flashed ‘You have a new message from Natalie!’. We chatted for what must have been nearly two hours before my battery died. I had no UK-Aus travel adaptor. The only one that I don’t have, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Europe, The States, Mars, The Moon, but no Ozzie one.

My eee PC died after the perfect sign-orff and I walked home with passers-by thinking I was drunk due to my swaying… I slept for nine hours.