Today is Liv's 21st birthday!! Strange how every girl on the bus, who has a birthday during the trip, happens to be turning 21!! Anyway, happy birthday mate!
Last night ended up in a surreal manner. After putting yesterdays blog online, I spent a while trying to get Jennifer Parsonage's net-book to connect to the internet and failed!! What is up with me!!?I lent her my net-book for a while to get her facebooking done and then I spent a while looking through a few of the upcoming hotels, which look pretty good! I also tried to have a look a 'The Sun', website, to catch up with news and sport from home – But it was blocked, because it contains pornography!! Bloomin heck!
Liv and Michele were there playing a daft game, where you have to guess who they are thinking of and so I joined in for a little bit, before I headed up to the room I was sharing with Chris and Mark.
I expected to go into a dark room ,where they would be asleep. But I wandered in to find two fully grown men, watching 'Top Gun', on local TV!! It was really funny as we watched the end of the movie together and took the piss out of the movie. Why would a dodgy pilot, just out of pilot school, be posted abroad after 1 day, with all the other junior pilots, to fight an unknown enemy. Then they celebrate when the obviously deranged pilot who recently killed his best mate, miraculously wins a dogfight and then saves the day! All the recent past (2 days ago?) is forgotten and when he lands he is greeted like Geoff Hurst was after winning the world cup in 66! To cap it all he is then offered any posting in the world (Has no other American pilot actually won a dogfight then?) He takes a job, back at the pilot school from where he came just 2 days ago and is now an instructor – surely he should gain a little experience first? I have never thought about the movie like that before, but me Mark and Chris were almost pissing ourselves with how bloody American it was! Its not a bad thing, but haahaahaa! You have to laugh~! I know it is nothing to do with Ozbus, but any experience on the trip is good enough for the blog!
This morning we were all up and out of bed by 5.30.am. I quickly packed my bag and headed downstairs to the bus. I wanted to grab myself a window seat today, so my stiff neck from yesterday wouldn’t get any worse. I managed to grab a seat behind Lana and Kenneth and was then joined by Jennifer Parsonage, whose seat had been nick whilst she had a cup of tea. Breakfast was handed out in boxes and consisted of rice, noodles and a slice of watermelon. We then set off back onto the roads through the Sumatran jungle. Anto, told us that in about 4 hours we would stop at the Equator and finally we would be in the southern hemisphere. Everyone is really excited to see if the toilets really do flush in the other direction!
So at 9.26am, we arrived in the middle of nowhere and the middle of everywhere! The marker for the equator is actually a 5-6 metre high square monument, with a golden globe atop it. It has the words 'TUGU EQUATOR', written in gold down the side. I was really please that it is just a simple monument, without any signs of anyone trying to cash in on it. I imagined lots of touts and hawkers selling t-shirts and miniature globes with 'I was here', written across the middle. But for once, it was just really quite simple. We all took our turn to pose and have our photos taken, before we got together and had a few group photos taken too. It was a nice touch.
We then loaded back onto the bus and headed into the southern hemisphere. During the afternoon we had a couple of the usual pit stops for food and toilets and at one the girls were scared when a large beetle seemed to take a fancy to them whilst they queued. Frankie was brave though and she used a brush to pick it up and move it along. Nearby, we found another rhino beetle that was missing a front leg, had a back leg that didn’t work and an antennae missing. He was the hardest beetle I have ever seen as he continued to move like the terminator after he had had his arms removed. The beetle climbed over mud that was twice his size and landed upside down in a puddle. It seemed that he was trying to commit suicide as every-time we turned him over, he ended up back on his back! Eventually we had to leave, but I like to think that little Ozzy, as we named him, is still fighting for survival.
The afternoon flew by as we slept, watched movies and stared out of the window and now at just after 5pm we still have a couple of hours to go......
7.30pm and we are still going! We have just had another toilet stop and yet we are still going!! Lana has just told us it wont be more than another, hour, but with a silly smile on her face. A lot of people arenty happy and just want to get there, get off this bus and have a beer.
Well we are finally here – its nearly 9pm and we are in a lovely hotel. For only 11 hours – whats the fookin point. At least now we are here we can go out and celebrate Liv's birthday!!!
Equator fun!!
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