Ah, poor bucket list blog.

How you're been neglected for a number of years.

Basically, here's what happened, I think.

I went to Egypt with Kathy, to sip champagne on a Nile river cruise. Which was likely to be a long blog entry, but when I got back I had to get stuck into devising and performing a 24 hour impro show with Reid. I got further and further behind updating the blog that it became a chore... A chore I didn't have time or energy to follow up on.

Shame. The bucket list got a little neglected too as life overtook me. I have been achieving items at a steady rate, but there are a number that it looks like I will never get to.

I've just had my 38th birthday. It's time to take stock of which items I've achieved, and then focus on getting as many done as possible before the deadline.

• I went to Egypt with Kathy.
  
  It was at the height of tourist fears of Egypt being a dangerous place. It totally wasn't, but there was no tourists anywhere. My example is the Valley of Kings - it used to get 10,000 tourists a day. When we were there we spotted about 6 tourists.
  
  As such, when we booked a cabin on a Nile river cruise, it turns out we had booked a BOAT. We were the only customers on ship and so they upgraded us to the two nicest cabins. Champagne was consumed.

• Reid and I devised and performed a 24 hour impro show.
  
  It was called "Hotel Incognito", and was set in a hotel filled with spies.
  
  It was so much fun, we did another show, "Schnitz Street", the next year. Then it became annual and we did "The Bold and the Hospitalised" and "Camp Radicool" after that. We haven't done it the last couple of years, despite receiving a number of requests for us to do it again.... from the cast.

• A number of us skydived onto the beach.
  
  Geoff and I were dressed as Batman and Robin. We also had a Flash and a Catwoman. The skydiving place asked to take photos of us to use for marketing on their website.

• Henry and I spent an afternoon on winter solstice wandering around Canberra, taking photos of ourselves not wearing any clothes.
  
  The only place that told us not to was the Canberra Theatre.

• Lara and I did a beginner Italian course.
  
  We considered continuing after the first term, but ended up deciding we were finito.

• I walked the Milford Track. Unfortunately, after doing the lion's share of organisation, Kishen injured his ankle and couldn't do the trek. There was still a fun group of us who did it in his honour though.
  
  It was incorporated into a trip around New Zealand, which is a beautiful country.
  
  Kishen ended up joining us for the trek to Everest base camp, so that partly made up for him missing out.... I hope.

• I bought a new car, and Dad came along to help pick which one.
  
  I ended up buying a Volkswagen Polo.

• Naomi and I (and others) got our tarot cards read.
  
  It all seemed a little silly to me. I can't recall how accurate the predictions ended up being. I should have taken better notes.

• I went on a trip to Italy, but Jules couldn't come along.
  
  Unfortunately, I lost my driver's license in an earlier part of that trip (riding rollercoasters in Chicago), so I wasn't able to drive a Ferrari. Italy was still a wonderful visit though!
  
  Also, Ferraris cost a TON to rent. 

• I went paragliding with Kelly when I was on a trip to Brisbane.
  
  It was great fun, though I definitely got a bit queasy.

• Kieran and I (and others) trekked to Everest base camp.
  
  It was tough. Not because the walk was hard itself - it was actually pretty easy going - but rather it was the altitude. I was one of a number in the group who got sick and it really took it out of you.
  
  Everest base camp itself was completely unremarkable, but the views for most of the trek were absolutely spectacular. The scale of the mountains is something that you can only really experience in person. Seeing it on TV just doesn't do it justice.
  
  Nepal was also an interesting country to visit. I particularly enjoyed my days in Kathmandu.

• Jeremy and I organised a cake eating contest for my birthday.
  
  Everyone who participated brought a cake. We put the cakes around a table, and everyone made there was around, eating a slice of cake at a time. The winner was whoever ate the most cake in 30min.
  
  Kathy smashed the rest of us, by going round the table one and half times. I struggled big time, but was proud to make it to having one slice of each cake (just!). I felt sick for the rest of the day.

• My family and I sang a traditional Welsh song in the middle of Canberra, wearing (some) traditional Welsh clothes.
  
  We sang an encore even though nobody asked for it.

So there's still a long way to go to complete the list, but I have done a great number of unique experiences I would not have otherwise done.

I've come to grips with the fact that I won't get to all of them. Many are wacky challenges that are too much of a bother to get done (sing a duet with the Hoff for example). For some, such as running marathons, I've been unable to do it because of injury. And others, were created by people I have since drifted apart from (either our friendship has drifted apart, or we have physically drifted apart by people moving overseas).

#54 Attend a Pink Concert



Truth be told, when Kristy's "Attend a Pink Concert" appeared on my bucket list, I didn't really know much about Pink. I knew of a couple of her songs, but I thought this was going to be a hard one, "What's the likelihood of Pink doing a concert in Australia?" I thought, "Has she retired or something?".

How wrong I was.

When Kelly send me an email mentioning that Pink was coming to Australia I thought I was in with a bit of luck - she's actually doing a concert here! I contacted Kristy and started talking to Kristy, Kelly and my housemate Bec about going to a show.

Well... Turns out that Pink is extremely popular here in Australia. The show sold out by the time that the group got back to me about tickets. Ugh. I didn't want to miss out on what I still naively thought would probably be my last chance to go to a Pink concert and tick it off the list, so I hit the ebay and bought some really expensive tickets off a scalper. Too expensive for Bec... She pulled out.

And so it was that one fine Saturday night Kelly, Kristy and I headed to the Sydney Entertainment Centre to see Pink's "Truth About Love" tour.

The first thing that was immediately obvious was the demographic of the crowd. There was a reason why my Mum had been telling me she was really jealous I was going to Pink - Pink's fan base are middle aged women. To a ridiculous degree. There must have been at least 10 women to every one man, and, rather pleasantly, I felt YOUNG at a music concert for once (certainly since turning 30 I've definitely felt like one of the oldies at most of the concerts I go to, so to feel like a young one is a nice change).

It was definitely going to be a first for me - not only was it the first time I'd been to a concert for middle-aged women, but it was also the first time I'd really been to a pop concert as such. To be frank, the pop concert part concerned me a lot more than the age/sex of my fellow attendees - I'm not the biggest fan of pop music and some little "individualist" part of my brain was telling me that there's no way I can like this - I'm way too unique for pop music dammit!



Bungie Jumping from topless men.
As you do.

So all this said, the usual next line is, "I was amazed from the very first song and Pink captivated me to the very end. So glad I went!"

Unfortunately, that's not really the case. I was immediately weirded out by just how showy the whole thing was. Here I am used to a band coming on stage and making music together... but in the very first song Pink came out doing bungie jumping from a trio of semi naked men, all while singing her heart out!

I stood flabbergasted. The music was entertaining and it all sounded good, but I had no desire to dance. I just wanted to watch the show and see what happened next. What sort of a music concert encourages you to watch rather than dance? A pop concert I guess (going off my extensive research of one pop concert).


More differences I observed from this concert to the average rock concert I might attend:

• No moshing. Everyone kind of pleasantly swayed to the music and sang along a bit but, like me, mostly just watching the show. Maybe things were a bit more excitable up the front, but it didn't really look like it. Certainly less energy that I'm used to. I didn't even need a shower afterwards!
• So many costume changes! Every second song Pink and her backup dancers would pop backstage for a moment to change into something else.
• Special effects! An astounding amount of effort had been put into the audio visual aspect of the show. Giant screens hung above the stage showing unique graphics for each song, fancy apparatus was used by Pink and the dancers to do acrobatics and entrances and exits were made from every corner, trapdoor or on stage elevator that could possibly exist on one stage.

Can you believe this is one of my best photos of the concert?
My camera doesn't like the dark...

The weirdest thing to me though was that lots of people had brought GIFTS to give to Pink. Every now and then she'd go over to somebody in the front row and they'd pass her a stuffed animal, or scarf, or Tim Tams, or hat, or whatever. Then she usually said thankyou, tried to say something about the gift and then add it to a massive pile at the side of the stage. So strange! Shouldn't it be the other way around? After all, we'd paid a couple of hundred dollars to be there, and it's not like the merchandise was marked down or anything! Shouldn't she be thanking her fans, not the other way around? This concept was so bizarre to me. I wonder if it's something that happens at other pop concerts, or has Pink found some way of making this a part of HER show? That when people go to see Pink they're expected to bring her gifts... And after a run of more than 40 shows in Australia, how many freakin' gifts will she have accumulated? Surely she's not taking all that stuff home. What's she doing with it?

I was still scratching my head over exactly these thoughts when Jimmy Slolina, the "host" for the concert came out to introduce the encore, one of the more hilariously revealing parts of the show. Why? Well, he came out and started organising a chant - getting the women to scream for an encore, followed by getting the men to scream for an encore. Problem was, when it was the women's turn a great shout came from the audience... but when it was the men's turn well, the only cheering you could hear was the quiet pre-recorded one coming from the speakers!

Anyway, Pink came out and did a very spectacular rendition of "So What" while swinging around suspended above the audience. It was indicative of a lot of the show - Pink belting out songs (without lip synching) all while doing energetic dancing/acrobatics. Even though I may not be a fan of her music, I couldn't help but be impressed by her as a performer - there's not too many people out there with a show quite like it.

According to Wikipedia, Pink's Truth About Love tour was the third highest grossing tour in 2013. In the nine weeks she spent in Australia, the tour made more than $100 million. Very impressive. She was the first artist to sell more than 250,000 tickets to Rod Laver arena in Melbourne, which she did during a record-setting 18 sold out shows. And I thought nobody really cared about Pink anymore!

As for our evening, there was just one *very* important thing left to do after the concert... planking!

 

Thanks for the enjoyable evening Kristy. I'm glad I went. Despite not becoming a Pink fan... and despite the damage it has done to whatever reputation I had as a young alternative male!

#47 Play board games for 5 days straight, stopping only to eat, sleep & use the bathroom

Easter was the perfect time to do this item: all Petra and I had to do was take one day off work and we'd have five days free to chill out and play board games all weekend. So first thing in the morning on the Thursday before Easter I packed a bag and headed to Petra's, where I'd be staying for the weekend playing games... only stopping to "eat, sleep and go to the bathroom".

Thursday

We'd invited people to join us at times over the course of the weekend, but as everyone was working, the first day was just us. So we set up in Petra's library and dived into a bunch of two player games:

Lost Cities
Classic 2 player card game that's got a simple mechanic and is always a favourite

Mr Jack Pocket
One player is Jack the Ripper... The other player must catch them!

Black and White
An angel and a devil influence innocent souls to do their bidding

Dominion
Some game I've never heard of

It was a bit dangerous once we started playing Dominion. As it is our favourite game and recently the online version we played had been taken down, we could totally see ourselves continuing to play Dominion all weekend. We ended up deciding to just play a few rounds, but to leave it set up in the library and to play other games downstairs. So the library became the Dominion domain, and we moved downstairs.

Mr Jack: The Board Game
One player is Jack the Ripper... but this time in board form!

Kieran joined us for a game of Booze Cruise. He beat us, so we didn't invite him to play anything for the rest of the weekend!

Friday

On Friday, we figured we'd do something a little different - board game championships were being held at the Hellenic Club in Woden, so we entered into the Settlers of Catan tournament.

Settlers of Catan tournament

Neither of us qualified for the final.

That evening, Kelly joined us from Sydney. She wasn't super enthralled by the idea of a full weekend of playing games, but figured she'd pop in and out, or read; as well as joining in for the occasional game. As there was a Ticket to Ride tournament at the Hellenic Club which we'd entered, we taught Kelly how to play Ticket to Ride.

Soon after that Quay also arrived and joined us for a couple of games.

Ticket to Ride
Build railway lines across America. Toot toot!

Tobago
Slowly narrow down the possible locations of buried treasure - then nab it before the others do!

Saturday

As Kelly had enjoyed learning Ticket to Ride, we managed to convince her to join us in the tournament on Saturday.

Ticket to Ride tournament

Unfortunately, given her inexperience with the game, Kelly instantly qualified for the bottom table, where she stayed for the rest of the afternoon. Petra and I fared a little bit better, narrowly missing out on the final (there was four spots and we came fifth and sixth).

Ticket to Ride tournament

Kelly has since got addicted to playing Ticket to Ride on her iPhone and owns all the expansions.

That evening we decided to up the geekiness factor - board games PJ party!




Zooletto
Build a little zoo by claiming incoming carts of animals. Kelly will let baby pandas die.

Zooletto - With PJs!



Trans America
Building railways lines across America... Sounds a bit familiar...

Sunday


On Sunday morning, we started off with a bit of Havana...

Havana
Managing resources and roles in order to build buildings in a fledging Havana

... and then Petra had invited a bunch of her board game friends to come round. They were board gamers indeed and brought piles of games with them... along with a desire to play really complicated stuff instead of the casual, mildly strategic, takes about an hour to play kind of thing that Petra and I had mostly been playing up to that point.

Puerto Rico
Erm... Managing resources and roles in order to build buildings in a fledling Puerto Rico. And there's trading

It was when I ended up with a group playing Eclipse that I really knew I was in hardcore gamer territory. They'd decided I didn't have a chance and didn't bother explaining all the rules to me... because there was too many rules to bother explaining to me....

Eclipse
Get confused trying to conquer space

I didn't have a chance, and spent most of the time watching the others have space battles with each other.

Eclipse + a whole pile of games

Monday

Last day! We were on the home stretch. Petra had invited people over again, but we didn't play Eclipse. Thank God.

Innovation
Really fun. Really random. Really like nothing you've played.

Terra Mystica
You're a race of mythical creatures trying to live in a magical world. There's mana orbs and stuff.

As the evening got later, and Petra's guests had left, we figured there was only one appropriate way to end the weekend - and that was by playing Dominion!

Yes, while it didn't look like it in most of the pictures here, pretty much any moment we had to fill in, Petra and I filled it with playing Dominion in the Dominion Domain (aka Petra's library).

Card Sharks

Nerdy Planking!

Thanks Petra (and Kieran) for having me for the weekend. It was fun, and I didn't get as sick of playing games as I thought I might. We tried out lots of new games and played some favourites as well. A nice way to spend Easter.

Thanks also to the team at the Toy and Game Expo for the pictures of the tournaments. The Toy and Game Expo is in July in Sydney; but they also run casual game tournaments around the country.
www.toyandgameexpo.com.au
http://tournaments.toyandgameexpo.com.au


Summary

For the record, Petra's favourite games over the weekend were:
1. Dominion - because even though Brad beat me two times out of three the variability and luck of the draw kept things exciting.
2. Lost Cities - because it was simple to learn, challenging to play and didn't take more than about half an hour!
3. All the various Ticket to Ride games - because you get to play with little trains (toot-toot!).

Kelly's:
No.1 Has to be Ticket to Ride for me, since I'm still playing it on my phone hehe.
No.2 I like to the Zoo one, its fun cute with animals and I won, twice :P

No.3 Hmmmmm I have trouble remembering what new games we play, I quite like the one we played with Quay, the treasure one! (Brad: It's Tobago)

 Brad:
1. Zooletto - It was an easy game to get into, with a nice theme. Plus you could play with each other's heartstrings by threatening to kill baby Pandas (by the way this isn't actually what happens in Zooletto).
2. Dominion - Always love me some Dominion, and Petra was a good opponent.
3. Tobago - Another game with a great theme. Who's doesn't like treasure hunting? Plus, the way you play the game is really original.


More Stats!

Brad won:
Lost Cities
Mr Jack (pocket)
2x Black and White
12x Dominion
Ticket to Ride USA
Ticket to Ride Nordic
Kingdom Builder
Tobago
Trans America
Innovation
2x Terra Mystica
Total: 24

Petra won:
Lost Cities
Black and White
6x Dominion
Mr Jack
Innovation
Modern Art
Total: 11

Kelly won:
Dominion
Ticket to Ride USA
Ticket to Ride iPad
2x Zooletto
Havana
Total: 6

#23 Attend 3 National Sporting Events of Sports You've Never Seen Before

Oh poor bucket list blog, how you've been neglected lately. I've been busy with lots of things, but the bucket list is still a priority in my life! In fact, I've got three items completed, but un-blogged... with some big plans for completing some of the larger items next year. So there'll be some more lovin' here soon!

My friend Liz's suggestion for the bucket list was to attend sporting events I'd never seen before. An interesting idea! Unfortunately, she shot me down when I suggested going to Lingerie Football...

Dancesports 

AIS Arena filled with dancers

The first event we agreed upon to go to was the National Capital Dancesports Championships. We both thought it fit very well with the theme of going to odd sporting events... even if we happened to be stretching the definition of sport a little bit.

The National Capital Dancesports Championships is an annual event held in Canberra at the Australian Institute of Sport. It's a three day event, but we only bought tickets for the last day - we wanted to see those who made it to the finals!

Oh, how we were not prepared for the sheer number of glittery dresses! As soon as we walked into the arena, over the top outfits were abundant. Seems female dancing attire is just not appropriate unless it's brightly coloured and very glittery.



Dancing's meant to be fun people!

Already we were feeling like this was a different, strange world. Women in far too much makeup led their men around like trained puppies and nobody seemed to be having fun - all around it was serious faces or fake smiles.

We made our way to our seats. I'd been under the impression that this would be a busy event, as there didn't seem to be too many seats left when I booked the tickets. The reason for this became quickly apparent - the majority of the seats around the arena had been reserved for performers and their family/support crew. We took our seats with the 14 other people who had actually purchased tickets and started to watch the show.

... And got bored.

Well, maybe that's a bit harsh. I think for the first few minutes we made some sarcastic comments such as how long the men must have trained to pull off their smiles; but before long we were pretty bored.

Here's how it goes.

First they announce the category and pairs of dancers pour onto the dancefloor. The pre-determined music starts to play and everyone starts to dance around in a circle following the moves they'd been practising for weeks. In some cases, the moves were determined by the organisers, but regardless it always seemed very static to us. After a few minutes, they play another song, then the dancers leave and another category is announced.



You have to see some dresses in motion to

fully appreciate the dazzling spectacle



I think it would have been much more fun if they'd actually had a band, but I guess they had to play the same music that everyone had been practising to. Which well, kind of defeats the purpose of dancing in my opinion. The fun of dancing is in expressing how you feel about the music. The music drives you to move in certain ways, so you move in that way. Liz being a band member and I being a (former) dancer understand that the dancers feed off the band and in turn the band feeds off the dancers to create an enjoyable energy.


Gives you a bit of an idea what the afternoon was like.
This is the latin section, the most entertaining part of the day.

 

The dresses in the latin category were far skimpier... but just as glittery

There was no enjoyable energy. It was just people moving through the motions. Too many game faces (heavily sprinkled, of course, with fake smiles), too little engagement of each other, too little FEELING. Maybe technically they were moving in skilled ways, I don't know. The dancers' disengagement resulted in our disengagement.

Things got a little more interesting when the latin category started. The dancing was more playful, the outfits more outrageous (for both the men and women, but of course particularly for the women) and the music was more enjoyable. It wasn't enough though. We'd been there three hours by that stage, which was plenty enough for us, so we went home.

 

 

Squash

Yes, this was our view of the action

A few months later we booked ourselves into another interesting looking event in Canberra - The Australian Open Squash Championships. This is another annual event in Canberra, this time taking place at the Convention Centre. The championships is big enough to encourage top ranked players from overseas to come and compete in it, so it is sad that our cricket and football dominated Australian society has no idea of the existence of this event.

But we thought we'd check it out!

We bought tickets for the men's quarter finals, which was held on a Friday night. We were pleased to see our tickets got us front row seats! Though, frankly, there wasn't really a bad seat in the house.

The Convention Centre turned into a squash arena

The setup was very clever - they'd set up a squash court in the centre of the room, which had one-way glass. So the crowd could see through whichever side of the court they needed to look through, but the back of the court appeared solid. In similar fashion, to the players it seemed as if all sides of the court were not transparent. The players could hear the crowd (but not see them) and the crowd could hear the players (and see them).



Clever cost cutting measures meant that the organisers'
kids did all the cleaning up between matches

It all made for an excellent viewing experience. The action was close and exciting. As per the requirements of this bucket list item, I'd never seen top level squash before, but it was very entertaining indeed. I enjoyed the tactics involved in trying to get the ball past your opponent and certainly admired the players' ability to track and anticipate the ball's trajectory as it bounced off the walls. At that distance too, the personalities of the players really came through... When one player started to voice his frustrations at some not-so-good decisions by the umpire, the crowd could feel his agony.

We were treated to four matches for the evening. A couple were easy straight sets victories, but a couple of the matches were very tight as well. The most popular players were the Aussie (of course), and Ramy Ashour, ranked 5th in the world and the defending champion. Ramy, in fact, went on to win the tournament two days later, and has since become the #1 player in the world.

Both Liz and I thoroughly enjoyed the Australian Open. We both commented that we would go again. Unfortunately the reason we had great seats and easy viewing was because there was not many people there... and sadly Canberra managed to kill off another interesting event on its calendar via lack of interest... because sadly I can't find any media that suggests the Australian Open will be back in 2013, so I think it has been cancelled.

Not even the positive media that a good planking can drum up could save it!

Water Skiing

Driving to work one day I noticed an interesting sign advertising "NZ vs Australia - The Bledisloe Cup of Water Skiing". I had to contact Liz. Luckily, we were both available and so agreed that water skiing would be the third sporting event we hadn't seen before.

The event was actually the Australia vs New Zealand Water Ski Championships. It has been running for a number of years as a way to develop young water skiers in Oz and NZ and 2013 was the first year it was to be held in Canberra. Indeed, the first time any international water skiing event was to be held in Canberra.

Beautiful day... Nice relaxed setting... Lovely

We met up at Liz's house on a sunny Sunday morning and rode over to Pialligo to where the event was being held on the Molonglo river. It goes without saying that it was a very nice ride and a lovely setting for a sporting event. This was a little corner of the river that nobody really knows about and as we rode up we already started to get the feeling like this was a little escape from the city (not that Canberra's the kind of city you feel you need to escape from!).



Waterskiing backwards using only one leg

We rode up behind some small sets of bleachers that had been set up to watch the river. Pockets of people sat around them enjoying a bite to eat and awaiting the next competitor. It all had a nice feeling of being like some sort of large family picnic rather than an international sporting event.

We pulled up a spot on a nice looking bleacher in time to catch the next skier. It was the slalom, in which the boat went at a constant speed through the middle of the river, while the skier had to ski between marked buoys. Luckily, there was an announcer to explain all this to us and the other viewers in a very friendly manner or we would have had no idea what was going on.

The slalom wasn't that interesting, but we'd timed it almost perfectly for the end of that segment of the day. The next event was the "tricks". This was more fun to watch. The boat moved slowly past the shore, while the skier had a 50m window to pull as many tricks as they could. Yes, there was some jumps and stuff, but most of the tricks were things like going backwards or using your foot instead of your hand to hold on. Some of the kids were absolutely amazing! ... Some of the kids fell in.



Jumper Take-Off

After the tricks was the jumping event. There'd been a big ramp sitting there all day and we were pumped to see it get some use. Interestingly, the jumping event is not about doing tricks, but rather simply a distance event - with the boat going at a constant speed for all jumpers, who could launch themselves off the ramp the furthest? ... And stay upright for the landing.



Jumper Landing

This was definitely interesting to behold. The first dozen times. After that it started to get a little monotonous, so, exhausted after a long day in the sun, Liz and I decided to go home. This was a much different feeling to going home after the Dancesports - there we felt fed up and bored. For the water skiing, we felt like we'd seen the exciting stuff, had enjoyed our day and didn't need to stay longer. Besides, as the announcer had told us, the Australians had a commanding lead - so there wasn't much tension. We certainly felt satisfied by our day though... and all for free!





Couldn't leave without an action planking shot - can you spot the skier?


Going to new sporting events was such a great idea. Thanks Liz. It was really interesting to check out new worlds and new sub-cultures. We even agreed after the water skiing that we should continue checking out unique sporting events, even though the bucket list item is technically completed now.

 

#3 Chew Betelnut

For the first international item on the list I travelled to East Timor to chew betelnut with Hannah. Of course, while I was there I spent some time travelling around and experiencing the country with Kelly.

I've been debating for a while how I would eventually write up this item. Should it be specifically about the act of chewing betelnut, or should it be more of a travel blog entry? I've decided a little bit of both, as the travelling is part of the story of the betelnut and vice versa. I could write a lot more about the travelling though, so I'll try to keep it to a minimum.

First though, many people ask me: what is betelnut? Well, chewing betelnut is an activity that is common across Southeast Asia. People wrap areca nut in a betel leaf; chew it; and then spit it out. Why? Well, it's traditional. Also, it's a stimulant; suppresses appetite and causes cancer. So yeah, it's kind of like smoking. Why do people do that?

Oh, and it turns your mouth and saliva bright red and eventually stains your teeth red too. I wonder why it hasn't made its way into our culture?

An example of the skinny roads on the edge of mountains
in Timor, with some of our fellow road users

Anyway, on to the trip: when we first arrived in Dili, we planned with Hannah that we would go to Atauro Island (just off the coast from Dili) that weekend and chew the betelnut there. In the meantime, Kelly and I decided to do a road trip to the eastern most point of Dili and go to Jaco Island.

We rented a car and set off. Immediately it was apparent why we'd had to rent a 4WD - the roads in Timor are in a terrible state. They're not particularly good to begin with and any repairs that are done are pretty shoddy... Then the rain comes and washes half the road down the mountain! There are massive potholes everywhere. In fact, it was a little scary driving - the road wasn't quite big enough for two cars, and we were on the edge of some very steep hills. Plus, the locals coming the other way thought nothing of tearing around blind corners at high speeds!

Kelly points out Jaco Island
Look at how clear the water is!

We got to Jaco Island in one piece though, after a couple of days of driving (despite Jaco only being 240km away). Amusingly, Google maps says it should take a little under 3 hours. Ha! Jaco was worth it though. The beaches were beautiful, the water perfectly clear and there was nobody else around. Plus the drive itself allowed us to peek into a bit of life in East Timor, which was interesting in itself.







Our little cabin on Atuaro Island

Once we got back to Dili from our trip out east, it was time to head to Atuaro Island. On the weekend, a lot of people from Dili catch the ferry over to Atuaro to escape the city for a few hours. It was very busy, and a slow going ride, so personally I started to get a little sea sick by the end. Once we got to Atuaro, we checked into a nice little cabin, relaxed and had a couple of beers. After a couple of hours Kelly and I headed over to the market to find some betelnut to chew that night.

But the market was closing. We walked all around and asked everyone if they had some betelnut, but everyone had sold out for the day. The ferry had packed up and gone home, so the Atuaro locals had chewed up all they hadn't sold and were ready to head home. The betelnut plan would have to be put on hold. The new plan would be to get some in Dili and chew it at Hannah's house.

Hanging out (alone) at the hostel in Hato Builico

Once we returned to Dili, Kelly and I rented another car and headed southwards to the centre of East Timor to climb Mt Ramelau - the highest mountain in East Timor. Driving was again quite tricky, but the distance was shorter so we managed it in just one day and stayed the night in the nearby town of Hato Builico. Hannah said she had gone to Hato Builico to climb the mountain just a couple of weeks earlier, during a local religious festival. When she was there it was very busy, lots of people in the hostel, lots of people climbing the mountain. However, when Kelly and I arrived it was deserted. I'm pretty sure we were the only tourists in town and it was very creepy staying in a big quiet hostel with nobody there (not even staff!).

Statue of Mary at the top of Mt Ramelau at day break

We didn't stay at the creepy hostel long though as we got up at 3:30am in order to get to the top by day break. It's the first time I've done a night climb (though it was the first time Kelly had done any climb) and it was a little bit freaky climbing up a steep mountain at night. There were definitely points were we'd walk along a little path and right next to the path the mountain would plunge into darkness and we couldn't see the bottom. Spooky!

Again, it was worth it though. The views from the top of Mt Ramelau were spectacular - we could actually see the ocean to the north and the south - so we could see across the whole of the country! For me, one of the highlights of the trip was seeing Kelly's face light up once we got to the top and she felt for the first time the joy of reaching the top of a hike.

So even though it was spooky, it was kind of nice to have the mountain to ourselves as we did the hike. Much more, um, "authentic" that way. Hannah's descriptions of people everywhere didn't make it sound like anywhere near as much of an adventure.

Just one of the amazing views from Mt Ramelau

When we got back to Hato Builico we found out that the weekly market was on that day. We thought it might be a good opportunity to scout out some betelnut, so headed on in. The market was tiny - just a few people from around the area come in to sell some items they had grown - but we had made a good call... Practically everyone was chewing betelnut!

Our guide from the mountain (our translator) and Kelly (our translator of the guide) asked some merchants if we could buy some, but they said they didn't have any. So they asked some others, but they said 'no' too. Seemed that nobody had any to sell us! Completely confused, we asked a store nearby and they said nobody would have any. I decided we had to clarify things. So I got everyone's attention and pointed to the big red stains on the ground where people had spat out the betelnut. "Ah!" They all said. Followed by some words I can only assume meant something along the lines of "you mean betelnut you stupid foreigners!".

So now we went back into the market and all of a sudden everyone had betelnut for sale (now that we were actually asking for betelnut). It was cheap too - we bought a couple of sticks and some leaves and started to head off... When we bumped into the first foreigner we'd seen outside of Dili and the first people who could speak English outside of Dili. The foreigner's guide told us that we'd got most of the ingredients we'd need - but that we needed lime powder as well. So we went back to get that. The guide then said she should get some for helping us out, which we happily obliged and she showed us how to do it (though she said she hadn't done it in six years).

She took a leaf, put a nut in the leaf and put some lime powder on it. She then wrapped up the leaf and put it in her mouth and started chewing... Looks like she thinks it's great!

Betelnut in hand Kelly and I returned to Dili for the main event. It also happened to be our last night in Timor by this stage. Hannah and her housemates cooked up dinner and then we all went out the front of her house to drink wine and chew betelnut.

Posing with five betelnut "shots" lined up and ready!

We set up the leaves, nuts and powder; just like the guide had told us, took some photos and then chowed down. Photos tell the story better than words can:

What Hannah's friends thought

It was not tasty. It was a lot more painful than tasty in fact. We each had a few rounds of nuts, chewing for as long as seemed logical, spitting it out, taking some photos... but nobody felt any fun effects. In fact, you'd have more fun just hanging out and drinking wine than getting any betelnut involved!






With our mouths turning bright red, there was only one thing left to do:

Oh, and plank, of course!

By now our mouths were very painful. Drinking hurt. Brushing our teeth hurt.

Nursing our wounds we headed to bed.

The next morning, nothing had improved. Our mouths were still very sore - it felt like a whole bunch of the inside of my tongue and cheek was burned. We had done some serious damage to ourselves. Turned out we had been a little too liberal with the lime powder and had indeed dissolved a large portion of the inside of our mouths. That's pretty much what it looked like when I bared the pain and stuck my tongue out. Talking wasn't fun, nor was eating. Guess that's my fault for flippantly consuming a substance the mafia uses to dissolve bodies! Luckily, it wasn't permanent damage (isn't the tongue meant to be one of the most resilient parts of the body?), so after a couple of weeks my mouth was back to normal.

So while I didn't really enjoy the betelnut itself, it was a good trip (thanks for coming Kelly!), and it was great to catch up with Hannah while she was living in Dili. Thanks Hannah!