The Universe and You: Through The Looking Glass

I've been lucky enough to travel quite a bit; not enough mind you to stop me from wanting to pack my bags and get leavin' on a jet plane like John Denver did and sang about; but just enough that if my hair was platinum blonde I'd like to think that I'd warrant the nickname Jet Set Barbie. (Note to self: Hairdressers appt)
The one thing that I never factored into the idea of traveling the world was that you miss things once you're gone. I know that sounds so blatantly obvious but I think it's one of those things that you don't realise because it is just right in front of your eyes; perhaps it just never occurred to me.
I knew I'd miss people; but I thought I'd be overjoyed to be somewhere and that the excitement of a trip would be stellar without the worrying about what I'd be leaving behind.
I'm not going to talk about moments or people or missing the town; I'm far too materialistic in nature and to be honest I really only crave to be in London - and I know I've covered most every angle of that in this blog previously so I wanted to jot down little things I miss from each place - the things only money can buy. (The best things in life, of course). Be warned though: most of the things I miss about places are food. It's not that I miss the food so much as the experience but if you're hungry I wouldn't continue through this.


THAILAND

Bangkok

The LeBua State Tower was the hotel I stayed at for almost three weeks in Bangkok. It was a palace. Not literally, but it was beyond amazing. The service was even more friendly than the customary Thai service, if at all possible. Each morning Elliott, my boyfriend at the time and I would wonder downstairs to the Starbucks in the lobby (Thai coffee is terrible no matter where you have it. I've learnt that when traveling if you are a fan of skim milk and a particular style of coffee - Starbucks, though terrible in terms of Melbourne coffee, is your best safe bet) and then we would head into the breakfast room. It was a plethora of treats. Upon walking in there was a fruit section, I've never seen so much fruit laid out and all these different types we don't often see or have in Australia. There was a sushi section; which I can't stand but the idea of having it was pretty swell. You had a private chef that would prepare your eggs perfectly to your liking. Almost any cereal or type of pancake you can imagine. It was like I had died and gone to heaven where fat people were God and they knew exactly what was going on.

The LeBua also had amazing room service; they would wheel in dinner on silver platters with flower arrangements and candles. I was pretty much in bed alot of the time I was over there and I didn't have the ability to move about too much; so I ate alot. Thankfully the food in Thailand is so good and the weather was so somehow I came home smaller than I was when I left. Sometimes I think about going back to Thailand just for the food. I will just starve myself for two weeks and then cut loose upon arrival.

Phuket

Again my obsession in Phuket remains around food. This time we stayed across from this family owned Thai restaurant. I don't know if I liked the food or the Thai girls that worked there more. They were both unbelievable. The girls would always have in new bunches of old men oggling them and they would sit about giggling and telling me the greatest jokes. I would go down every day and sit there for dinner and tell stories and drink Coronas and then at night we would go down to Patpong Rd where because I couldn't drink as much as them or get up to mischief at all, I would go shopping with Elliott and they would go off partying and we'd meet up the next day to regale in stories of their night before. I adored this place but I can't for the life of me remember if the name was definitely 'On 200 Year' but it rings a bell. It was directly opposite the Mercure Hotel in Patong. If I do recall it; I promise to edit because anyone traveling to Phuket should definitely go down there.

UNITED STATES

Los Angeles

This was probably the most surreal place I've ever encountered in my life. We stayed in Marilyn Monroe's old bungalow and I stole the key for keepsakes. The bungalow itself was breathtaking. The fact that we had a driver at our beck and call; well, we just didn't know what to do with that. At first it felt really strange to have someone wait for you outside a store whilst you shopped or a restaurant when you wanted lunch, so we made a deal with our guy to give us his number and he'd go off and do whatever he wanted and we'd call him when we were ready to go. He was really unsure about this; which goes to show that almost everyone in LA is in a hurry or is purely an insensitive cunt.

Again, the food was amazing. We were in LA for Christmas and so to cheer up Prudence I'd order us bottles of Veuve Cliquot and the famous milk and white covered strawberries and we'd sit and dine in our silk night shirts and pretend there wasn't a care in the world. Also they did the most amazing wagyu steak. It costs about $250USD but it's probably the nicest thing you could ever order.
I also really miss the spa at this place. It couldn't be more decadent. We bumped into heaps of famous people staying there. One of the guys from Weeds, Steve Buscemi, a lot of older Hollywood types from the 1950's and the golden age of cinema love the Polo Lounge there. Jack Nicholson has lunch there almost weekly. I fucking love Jack Nicholson - I think if he were there I'd probably have cuddled the poor chap silly.

New York

I miss the 24 hour diner underneath the hotel where we stayed called Tick Tock. They used to serve this foul concoction called Disco Fries which would actually make you see stars if you ate too many because they were fucking grosse/oh-so-amazing. They were fat chips with melted cheese and gravy. Tell me how it gets any better? I wish I stole one of the menus though because the slogan for this cafe was so great - yet I can't remember what it was. It was something that basically insinuated 'if you eat here, you're fat or you soon will be'. How marvelous.

Brooklyn

I say so often that I disliked New York City, and as a city I did. But no word of a lie; I loved Brooklyn. I loved the Century 21 that was so full of people buzzing about to grab whatever was last seasons designer wear (stuff that Australia generally doesn't get for another year to come - so score for Australian travelers). I loved the subway station (I know, what?!). I loved the funny diner that was supposed to be 24hrs that was never actually open when we'd come home drunk out of our skulls craving something disgusting and talking about the chilli fries for ages, only to be disappointed by their lack of ability to schedule their opening hours around my drunken cravings. But most of all I love love loved (and this is probably top on my list of things I miss) the 24hr Bagel store. It had the most amazing Brooklyn feel to it and you could get sandwiches (oh I missed sandwiches, it's so hard to get them anywhere in NYC or LA) and the way you'd ask for 'just a little bit of cream cheese' on your bagel but still manage to get more than usually needed to feed an entire army of starving children. I loved the boxes of Cruellers that they sold which we only had one time but it was on New Years Day when Prudence and I had hangovers so extreme I thought she might seriously die. The sugar cured everything. But most of all I loved the boy that worked there. He was this goofy, adorable guy about my age who used to take serious interest in what we were doing on our trip and was never ever creepy or sleazy. He reminded me of an older version of Squints Palledorous from the Sandlot Kids. Prudence and I talk about him all the time, we wonder what his actual name was. We never got to actually go in there one last time because our departure from Brooklyn was pretty abrupt. I'd definitely go back there if I ever went to NY again.

UNITED KINGDOM
London

I don't particularly miss anything food related about London. Which is pretty sweet considering I want to move there and not get really fat. More so I just miss the rituals. We'd wake up in the morning in the Mile End house (a place where I've never ever felt more welcomed and more like myself), either Prudence or myself would wonder down to the offy to get 2 cans of diet coke and 2 99p Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bars (we were usually prepared with them in the fridge so we wouldn't have to go anywhere but living with boys, these items went 'missing' often), we would skin up and smoke the morning away.
Then eventually wonder out into the real world and down to assault our senses some more at Camden Market, Oxford St, Brick Lane... any of the wonderful places that London has on offer. We would party all night in Shoreditch and Soho and take the night bus home in the early hours of the morning. Then we would wake up and do it all over again.
The other thing I miss terribly about London is really trite and every girl who visits will cough it up on their list too but I miss TopShop. TopShop is my equivalent of the Little Mermaid's grotto. I could go on forever about what I miss about London. I could talk for hours about Camden alone, but I won't because I will probably bore each and every single person reading this to tears. I prefer to be a bit bittersweet in this case otherwise I'll ramble like some annoying girl talking about her boyfriend.

EUROPE

Amsterdam

Oh now, come on. This one is obvious. I miss the green. I miss the way this city felt so different to anywhere I've ever been before. I didn't even visit the red light district or any of the places you are supposed to go to. We stayed in Zeeburg just outside of Amsterdam and we either just went on little walks or sat on the window sill (it was really fucking cold) and smoked up. Amsterdam was beautiful. I fully intend to go back there and soon.

Brussels

I don't think I'd ever return to Brussels without good reasoning. Never say never I know. But I don't think that it is a place I really look back on and think "Wow, I need to do that again".

I miss the night that we spent at Rock Classique with Diaz and Kadaver. It was some pokey little bar with David Bowie on the toilet walls that played lots of American cock rock and no one but our party spoke english.

I loved the garden at the Botanique as well. We got stuck in it after doing something rightfully embarrassing that I don't wish to repeat and it was like Alice in Wonderland on acid. I would go back to Brussels if someone said I could take acid and lock myself in here playing nothing but Disney tunes really loudly.
More than anything else that I liked about Brussels, I liked Curry Ketchup. It's what you would call a taste sensation. Don't knock it till you try it on french fries and even if you don't like it I don't care to hear that sort of nonsensical rambling. It was so good that I've tried to source it on the internet since to order a few bottles for Prudence and I to live off here. We mostly ate it in Paris on baguettes so it seems like such a Paris thing, but it was found in Brussels and then nowhere else on our trip. Trust me, we've looked in every country since.

Paris

I miss really funny little tid bits about Paris. Mostly the architecture or the way the cafes all had rows of chairs facing out to the streets so you could sit and stare at the beautiful people walking by. I miss speaking French or the way Prudence would forget that she needed to learn another language and instead of trying to rephrase her sentences when someone might not have understood what she was saying she would say it louder or slower. Then she would get all flustered because she knew she was looking like an arrogant tourist. I miss the cranky concierge who thought we were lesbians because we wanted a room with a king bed not two singles. We like to sleep next to each other, doesn't mean I'm fiddling my hand down her pants.
I miss sitting underneath the Eiffel tower drinking whiskey and telling stories. I miss baguettes. Oh they are so much better than you think that they will be.
I really miss just wondering about and losing myself in such beauty and history everywhere I looked. Paris was like some surreal dream for me. I can imagine myself going to live there and changing my name to Sophie; cutting my hair into some sleek bob and telling stories about my lovers.

Madrid

I definitely miss the hotel we stayed at and how we spent most every moment in it completely naked watching Rock Of Love or Tila Tequila's monstrosity of a television show in Dutch on MTV at the hotel. I don't know why MTV in Spain was running shows with Dutch audio but it was and we adored it.
I really also miss DiBocca, the restaurant that we went to about three times in the duration of our week stay. The food was so good and I think that we pretty much ordered the same thing each time that we went there but as long as we got our litre of Sangria first we were always super happy.
El Cortes Ingles is this massive department store there that was always fun to wonder through. The shopping in Madrid is pretty good compared to everywhere else we'd been so far in terms of affordability. Most things we wanted in Paris were so over priced you can't justify it unless you are a Beckham or Cruise. So Madrid was fun and we basically spent the entire week shopping, grooming and eating. Perfection really.

Rome

I was devastated that we missed seeing the Vatican and St Peters Bascillia in Rome - we went but we got to the Vatican five minutes too late to enter and we weren't aloud into the Bascillia because we were wearing dresses that showed our knees (yeh, what-the-fuck.)
I did however love the Piazza Di Spagna (Spanish steps) where everyone would gather to drink and play guitar or sing along before making their way out to Campe Di Fiore which housed our favourite bar The Drunken Ship (with a slogan like "Get Shipfaced" you can do no wrong). We met tons of interesting characters there that I really wish I had maintained contact with but nonetheless I won't forget a single one of them any time soon.
I also liked the hotel we ended up finding and how it also had Dutch MTV and we'd sit on the bed in our down time and watch episodes of Rock of Love we'd seen about 9 times already and laugh at the guys doing construction work in the building opposite our window that would scream obscenities we didn't understand in Italian and gawk at us whenever we were in the room as if they'd never seen a woman before. It was irritating and kind of creepy but looking back on it now it was part of Rome's charm - it amused me to no end.

Milan

We arrived in Milan on Easter weekend so most everything was shut the time that we were there. Milan was nice, I don't think I'd hurry back but it was a pretty city. My favourite part was how the hotel that we were staying in had a lower ground level in which they would offer breakfast or some dinner events so upon finding out that there was an entrance to this kitchen that we could pretty much access whenever we wanted (granted no one was looking at the security cameras - we were stealth so we never got caught) Prudence and I would go down there and steal muffins and biscuits, cereals and jams or packets of honey. We'd steal so much more than we actually needed and then to amuse ourselves and stop ourselves from over eating we would take the muffins and throw them out the window of our room and duck down until they made a really loud clanging sound upon hitting someones roof or balcony or worse, window. The last day we stayed there I decided to out-do myself and I stole a shitload of wine and grappa from the kitchen. Again, we got away with it and we were going to take all the grappa back to Mile End on our return to London but our suitcases were too heavy so we left it all at the airport.
It seems like a waste but I'm certain a bunch of boys waiting to drop off their mate at the airport got a whole world of joy out of it. Plus, it tasted like perfume so much that I spent the entire bus ride to the airport drinking it and then questioning the label written in Italian - I didn't stop drinking it but I definitely considered that it might not be worth throwing my entire stomach lining up over later.

I'm really glad I wrote this. I suppose in a way it's like a short version of my travel journals compacted for anyone elses amusement but mine and Prudence's as well. I know I'll read through this again in a few years and reminisce and it will be nice to think of all these little things I did and experienced. Plus if I ever suffer an extreme blow to the head and get all Long Kiss Goodnight amnesiac - we can try using this as a trigger to my past.