Australia day 3

I woke up at 7:30am and raced to the courtyard to get my free breakfast. Once I powered through the bowl, I went back to sleep.

I woke up at 9:00am and raced to the courtyard to get my free breakfast. Once I powered through the bowl and 2 slices of toast I met up with John again and decided to walk around town with him.

John is my American double. He's a 25 y/o engineer from California and literally has the exact same world view I have. The only major difference we have is that he has a job working at Tesla Motors and I don't :(. We walked around the Brisbane botanical gardens and around the city a bit before heading back to the hostel.

My first impression of Brisbane was very positive. There are a lot of aweosme pubs, its really clean and the river walk is amazing. However once you've done South Bank, the river walk and botanical gardens, there is hardly anything left to explore! I'm amazed at how dead Brisbane seems to be during summer!

When I got back I heated up a shit tonne of pasta that I had made for myself yesterday and went for another walk around town. I went outside for a total of 5 minutes and ran into a German guy who looked desperately lost and asked me where the nearest supermarket was. While i was walking him there i discovered he was a 35 y/o who decided to spontaneously quit his job and book a flight to Australia once his girlfriend dumped him. I advised him against spending new years in Brisbane and to travel to a beach instead. There's a good chance we'll both end up hitchhiking our way to surfers Paradise tomorrow :)

Australia day 2

I woke up at 8:00 sharp to get my free breakfast. The hostel was offering free cerial and Vegemite on toast.

Shortly after that I decided to walk around town so I packed my bag and walked along the river for a few hours. I ended up at south bank beach; a small artificial beach in the middle of the city. I suspect the beach would have been better to see at night because it was a public holiday and there were kids screaming and shouting all over the place.

While walking back it struck me just how many fat people there are in Brisbane. Especially coming from Korea, the high obesity rate here is remarkably transparent. There are plenty of druggos here too. Spotting a crystal meth addict is super easy; just look out for the super skinny bogans trying to stay balanced on flat ground.

Later on that night I made friends with an American guy called John and a few Germans. We all went drinking in the pub by the hostel and met a group of bogan Aussies. The Aussies were extreemly friendly but clearly racist. Also, they bought their drug addicted 50 year old mother along to go partying with them. It was a strange sight to say the least.

Australia day 1

I decided not to book a hostel and simply rock up at fortitude valley instead.

The first hostel I landed at was pretty epic. It was called "bunk hostel" and it was $20 / night. A big change from the $4 / night I was used to in Vietnam; but it would do. Once I realized how packed the hostel in Brisbane was on a Sunday night, I decided to book my hostel for Byron bay immediately for New Years. No luck; apparently every hostel (not an exaggeration) had been booked out months in advance. In my desperation to find a place to stay, I found a vacancy at a hostel in Surfers Paradise. Not as good as Byron, I know, but at least it has a good beach. Plus I heard Surfers Paradise is famous for skateboarding!

The hostel gave new residents a free beer on entry and a free sausage sizzle on Sundays. Guess who was first in line? I met 2 Brazilians and a Sweedish girl while devouring my free meal. Even though their English wasn't the best, I still spent the entire night chatting with them at a pub which served $11 burgers and $10 beers.

Christmas break

I celebrated Christmas with my family in Brisbane this year. Aunty Christine and Uncle Ron were kind enough to let us use their boat, Tonic, for the occasion. After filling the floating house with heaps of beer, food and $1000 worth of diesel we were on the open blue road.

Overall the trip was good. I got the opportunity to show off my music, go swimming, play my new favorite game 'slapcock', and eat enough food for a lifetime.

For two nights everyone on the boat had to deal with a severe mosquito infestation, but distracting myself with game of thrones and breaking bad on the boat television was a perfect distraction.

My Dad offered to buy me a ticket to go back to Sydney, but I declined and decided to travel more down the east coast. I can't spend another new years in Sydney. First stop; Brisbane.

South korea day 14

Today was my last day so I wanted to make it count. Sadly I had no idea what I wanted to do, so I asked one of the receptionists, Jeonbuho, for advice. Even though I didn't know Jeonbuho very well personally, he insisted on being my own personal guide for the day. How kind is that!?

I waited for him to finish work at 12, and then we headed out in search for some traditional Korean markets. We walked past all the touristy places and then had lunch at a place I would have certainly missed if it weren't for him. Jeonbuho insisted on buying my lunch as a farewell gift. It was called Zzajangmyeon and it was a Chinese dish with Korean sides. It was delicious, filling and only 3500 won ($4). During this time, I kept asking him about Korean culture so I could confirm or debunk some of my working generizations. Here's what I've found out:

1) Koreans are all incredibly hard working. A business man working for a company like Samsung can easily expect a 6am - 8pm work day. Even kids will typically go to school and then go to first after school care then second after school care leaving them to finish at 11pm. Jeonbuho reckons this is the main cause for Korea's high depression and suicide rate because the inflexible working hours leave no time to develop socially. He also thinks its especially bad because the large working hours don't equate to more productivity; workers will typically sit patiently at their desk for several hours doing nothing if they finish their work early.

2) about 50% of Korean women and about 20% of Korean men have plastic surgery. It's quite typical for a middle class family to reward their daughter with a nose job or eye job as a graduation present. Unlike western cultures where there are several different ways to look attractive, Korea has just one and everyone tries to live up to this standard by trying to have the same chin, eyes, nose and personality. Hair colour is the only acceptable form of individuality.

3) Korea is advancing technologically faster than its culture can keep up. Smart phones are everywhere and computer gaming is not only acceptable, its encouraged in men. Atheism is growing too which means young men, which would have otherwise involved themselves in the commilunity through religion, are becoming increasingly socially distant. Women are still somewhat subservient to men and less likely to work full time even though their are equal employment opportunities. The major family decisions are still made by the father. Marriage is still very traditional; the divorce rate is low and many couples will only get married when they have enough money for a house and family. This is a problem for the younger and poorer generation, who are likely to simply remain unmarried till their mid 30's.

4) all Asian hair is the same. It's beautiful and long in the 20's and 30's then starts to thin out in the 40's. By the 50's and onward all women will have hair which looks kinda like a weird afro.

OK OK OK that's enough about culture. What did I do then? Oh yeah, Jeonbuho showed me the apartment he was staying at with his sister. The only furniture was a tiny traditional dinner table with no chairs. No desk, no computer, no beds. Jeonbuho was studying neuroscience and was running his own English teaching company in between working part time at the hostel so there were books and clothes all around the apartment. Upon leaving he tried to offer me a jumper as a gift. I honestly couldn't accept it after seeing how little he had. I think he was a bit offended by that. After that we walked to the world cup stadium where he told me his ambitions in life; he wants to find a western girlfriend, leave Korea and find a cure to Alzheimer's.

We split off when he had to go teach English. I went back to the hostel and met a group of Australians from Sydney. We all got drunk, ate Indian curry for dinner and went to a busy bar. They were all aged 21 except for one bloke who was only 18.

It was a good end to an amazing trip.

Oh yeah, the young Aussie managed to lose his passport by morning! It turns out that on other nights out he'd managed to lose his credit cards and his phone too... He reminded me of me when I was young.

South Korea day 13

I woke up with one thing on my mind. The Google Center in Seoul! I think Google has 7 centers around the world, all of them famous for their innovative design, free entrepreneur workshops, kick ass café and water slides. I rocked up to the Google center called "Seoul campus" in Samseong only to find that no entrepreneur workshops were running, the cafe was closed, the office was tiny and there were NO water slides. I was very disappointed :( in hindsight I really should have guessed this was the case though because no one on Korea actually uses Google products here; they all use 'Naver'.

After a disappointing start to the day, I got in contact with Matt via Facebook and arranged to meet him, Josh and Woo in Sinjeong. We were all starving by the time I arrived so we decided to get Korean pizza (yes, that's a thing). It was good, but not as good as the Cambodian pizza I got in SE Asia.

Because we were insanely unorganzied we had to sprint with our pizza boxes through a whole bunch of public transport to arrive in Hongik University to complete our 'escape the room' adventure we had booked earlier that day. The Koreans on the subway must have thought we were the most passionate pizza delivery men in existence.

Escape the room was great!! I loved it. Solving puzzles, finding clues and arguing with your friends are 3 of my favorite things to do in life. I really enjoyed it. Plus we were only 10 minutes behind the record for escaping the room!

After escape the room, we all decided to go to a PC bang and play some computer games. That was also pretty epic! Josh, the Australain civil engineer, crushed us in StarCraft :( its my  fault. I should have practiced more.

We played computer games till about 12:30am. Sadly the public transport shuts down at midnight for some reason so I had to walk for 2.5 hours home. Walking through Seoul at night is actually a lot of fun. I got back at 3am and passed out.

South Korea day 12

Matt Gates had arrived in the late evening last night and had booked a hostel in Hongik University. Somehow I managed to multi task having a shower and being hungover at the same time so that I could go meet him and his Korean friends.

Matt and Josh arrived at Iteawan and we enjoyed a Korean BBQ together. It was nice catching up and exchanging stories about our adventure through Asia.

Josh is an Australian civil engineer that Matt made friends with on his last visit to Korea over a year ago. Josh graduated from engineering, tried working as an engineer for a year, decided he didn't like the working hours and work environment, then decided to quit everything and come to Korea to teach English for a year. Is that inspiring?! You decide! Either way, he's a really interesting and intelligent guy.

After eating food, we all decided unanimously to watch the latest star wars movie! We couldn't understand the website for the GVC cinema (since they said their start times were at 28:00 or at 36:00) so we decided to just train it to Gangnam and see if we could find seats.

Just as we arrived, a Korean lady came up to us and said in broken English "hey guys, do you want 3 free tickets to see starwars in 3D?" She had purchased 3 tickets for her son and a few of his friends, but apparently they coudlnt make it so she was giving the tickets away for free. We tried desperately to pay her for the tickets but she wouldn't accept it, so we thanked her heaps and waddled our way towards the cinema. Star Wars Free-D !! Wohoo!

After the movie, we met up with another one if Matt's friends, Woosung, who is half Korean, half Aussie. We enjoyed another Korean BBQ together and then went walking around hongik university.

So much was happening around hongik! Food, lights, performances, protests etc. It was great.