Bula!

ClicheI love to travel. I know I do, because it says so in my bio. But hold on a sec, what’s that feeling deep in my soul, aching for my own bed? Or perhaps it is (dun, dun, duh!) bad airline food.

As an aside, I know you aren’t supposed to actually eat the airline food, you are supposed to assemble your own takeaway that you bring to the flight with you. That’s fine for the first flight, but what about the rest of them? Airport food doesn’t have to be terrible (mmm… clam chowder at Logan Field), but it generally is both (a) yucky, and (b) pricey. Moreover, when you are traveling on your own, you often run into food dilemmas.

I am blogging instead of eating. I’m at the Marriott in Brisbane without someone to go to dinner with, which leaves me eating at a sit-down place on my own, which makes me uncomfortable enough it just isn’t worth it. Or I could hike down to McDonald’s or Hungry Jack’s, which also isn’t worth it. (Moreover, they seem to roll the sidewalks up pretty early in the business district.) Or I could try unfamiliar fast food in an unfamiliar city; which experience tells me is not a good idea. Or I could peruse the mini-bar… let’s see… a mini-box of Pringles for $5 (and I’m not exactly a fan). I normally throw a bunch of Balance Bars into a bag for just this reason, but missed it this time around. Maybe it’s time for room service.

The trip from JFK to Brisbane took nearly 21 hours in airtime, and more than double that including layovers and airport transfers. Now, to be fair, the longest layover was in Fiji; much of yesterday, during which I took a boat out to a small private island. It was small enough that I could circumnavigate the shallow waters surrounding it in about half an hour or so. The waters were crystal clear and teaming with aquatic life. I even had a run-in with a banded sea krait, who I find out only afterwards is ten times as venomous as a rattlesnake. Another good reason remote deserted islands (you can see the island where they filmed Cast Away in the distance–check out the Flickr set) should have wireless. You could sit and watch the clouds float by in a perfect azure sky all day long. Yes, laying in a hammock with a cold beer and reading a silly spy novel is pretty clichéd as relaxation goes, but it worked for me.

Unfortunately, the long flights across time zones, date lines, and the equator (along with being way behind on my levothyroxine) has me sleeping in awake times and (mostly) awake in sleeping times, and that doesn’t help finding food.

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2 Comments

  1. Posted 9/26/2006 at 8:26 am | Permalink

    Wow, I miss Fiji. We stopped there for a few days on our way back from Oz last year. I’m pretty sure we even took the same boat out for a day trip — I’ll have to compare my photos to your Flickr set. I did a lot of snorkeling, but (luckily) didn’t see any snakes like that! Good luck finding food — I’m sure you’ll never find yourself more than a few steps away from a meat pie this week…

  2. Posted 9/26/2006 at 10:35 am | Permalink

    2 blocks north of the casino there is a nice food court in a mall that has some passable fish and chips. i suggest going out for thai though, there is good thai almost everywhere. plus the spice is excellent for jetlag.

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