Welcome to the jungle punk, take a look around.
Two weeks in exotic South Africa and now in the massive buzzing neon swarm that is Hong Kong… From one jungle to another.
I only just landed here today and after seven months or so on the road I was prepared for the transition. Used to the long pushy cues and the lack of sleep that comes with crossing time zones, thirteen hours on a plane and the strange feeling that the sun should be coming up when it is going down. I always thought that it would be cool to say that you are suffering a bit of jetlag because of the kudos that comes with international travel but now I know, it’s pretty shit. I do actually like flying but when there is a strange asian woman sitting next to me on the plane skinning an apple with her teeth and I have an ear-full of recently squirted apple juice and peel, you do start to question why you enjoy these times (seriously why is she skinning that thing??)… Yuk man, it’s in my ear.
South Africa was a ball thanks to Seano’s mate Clair who bent over backwards to show me a good time in South Africa (not literally mate, mind you, she does throw a pretty mean back-flip on the stationery wave in Durban).
Because of Clair’s affinity for so called extreme sports (South Africa Long-board champ and international flow-rider demo poster girl), I was treated to the more exciting end of tourism town. We surfed, I skated a Tony Hawk designed skate park, hurt myself on the bloody flow-rider thingy and jumped off a canyon swing. I went to the biggest aquarium in the southern hemisphere and togehter went on safari to Hluhluwe game park (we drove for an hour too far up and then down the coast because it is pronounced shushlooeee… Yeah, spell that without an ‘s‘ people). I got in sniffing distance of all the big gamey animals and reeled off a million boring ‘look at the baby giraffe’ shots. Then bravely got out of the car for a photo shoot and was nearly charged by a pissed off Wilder-beast. The sign did say ‘DANGER STAY IN YOUR CAR’ hehehe.
The whole racism thing is a bit blown out of proportion in South Africa. Sure it is still, poor black and rich white but the gap is closing. The one thing that you don’t see from the media is the way that both black and white South Africa have united in disliking the Indians (jokes). I had imagined a more dicey place with poverty everywhere but to be honest, it wasn’t that different from say, Queensland. There was the white Toyota Hiace vans banging crazily down the road full of smiling black folk and the great slang like ‘shot! Bru ut was kif’ (it was good mate!). Also an abundance of great surf spots and gruesome shark stories to boot. Bugger me, Durban may be hot but it has a heart of gold and a level of comfort on the streets that I hadn’t expected.
I spent a few days at internationally famed right hand point break Jeffreys Bay further down the coast but it didn’t produce any great waves, just a few mediocre dags and a makkin’ hang over from a big night on the cans. My bar tab came up with twenty six glasses of beer. I swear mum, they ripped me off, it can’t have been more than ten or twelve, surely! No wonder me bloody head was thumping.
So it was quickly back to Durban for Caroline’s hospitality (Clair‘s mum) and a very long couple of flights that get me to here and now. I’ll be home soon, up to the eyeballs with dodgy Hong Kong Mp3 players and useless cheap gizmo’s, then who knows? Anyone need a surfer bum to hang around and eat all of the gummy bears in the jar and leave the toilet seat up? Gimme a yell…
Emerson
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