Day 229 - Back To Sydney

After a reasonable night's sleep for once, I had a breakfast of tom yum noodles & toast with promite (nutritious) and got the bus to the airport. There was a bloke on the bus who's heading to Thailand, and asked me a few questions about the place - this seems to be a common theme of the last few days, I've met loads of people going there who ask me the best places to go (Steve was asking me all about Thailand last night, and telling me how worried he was about accidentally encountering a Ladyboy) - my reply is generally just about anywhere (avoiding Pattaya and Samui of course), I really wish I was going back there, I miss it enormously. The flight was pretty dull, although we did fly over the Great Barrier Reef for a bit, whihc made for some cool views. Sydney was warm and cloudless, I rushed to Em's and it feels pretty awesome to be back here. I headed off to buy some Sanuks (shoes I had seen in Cairns but the shop had been shut) and realised the shop was close to Rob's, so I walked there and we hung out for a bit. We went for dinner at a cool little Thai place, and on the drive Rob and I had a chat about meeting people - I was saying how good it was to be back around mates, as opposed to meeting new people all the time and having to decide whether to be friendly and forward and try and make friends, or whether you just can't be arsed that day and elect to spend it alone. We went to a 21st party at Rose Bay RSL, which had the theme "Lights, Camera, Action". This mostly seemed to consist of girls dressing in either Moulin Rouge corsets etc, or very elegant red carpet styles - of the blokes, there was one '50s gangster and one guy in a tux, but that was about it. There were a few people I remember from before, including Dan who has offered to take me surfing at Bondi early Monday morning, which'll be awesome if it happens. I also met a chap called Yule (who I thought had come dressed as Woody Allen - nope, that was just his style) with whom Rob and I had an astonishingly frank and somewhat obscene conversation, sure to appall almost anyone who overheard it. Bizarrely, after this he and I had a lengthy chat about self-sufficiency and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, during which he told me of his dreams to settle down for his last few decades on a farm in the country, somewhat incongruously. Oh, also all the drinks were free, put on the birthday girl's tab - I felt a bit cheap for a while, then realised that my few beers would have a negligible effect on the bill for this stranger I would never see again. Rob gave me a lift home by about half 12, where I found that Em had set up a bed for me (ahh) and I got to sleep in a room without a load of strangers for the first time in a month.