I know that as a backpacker you’re only supposed to be overly excited about the country that allows you to come and travel in it. But one of the aspects of travelling is the realisation that back at home is not that bad. The little things that you took for granted at home can turn into major convenience factors that you wish you had on your travels.
Here are some of those things that I will appreciate much more back home after travelling in Australia.
Splitting hairs
A decent, cheap haircut. I am not the all-girly-girl type, but even I saw the need for a haircut after a couple of months. But that idea faded very quickly when I found out about the prices. When asked what I wanted to do with my hair, I explained that I just wanted it a couple of centimetres shorter. Turned out that in Sydney they don’t do that. They only do what they call a ‘new style’ which sounds a lot fancier than cutting a couple of centimetres off your hair and therefore has the price tag of something between $60 to $80. No thanks.
It was from that day on that I started really looking forward to my hometown hairdresser who – without any fancy words – cuts a couple of centimetres off my hair for $20.
Another thing I miss is my own room. Don’t get me wrong, I am not anti-social. I did meet some of the wickedest people in my life staying in hostels, but there are times when it’s tough.
Like that time when I promised myself I wouldn’t eat the whole packet of Tim Tams at once and saved it for after my surf lesson. But then I found my packet of Tim Tams in my roommates’ beers because they wanted to see whether they float or not. Nice guys, thanks.
Or that time when I had my skydive the next morning and reaaaallly wished I could fall asleep very, very soon to get it all over with. But then my roommates started to talk about the guy that died because his parachute and spare-parachute didn’t open. Even better guys, thanks again. (I did survive the skydive by the way – despite awful nightmares that night.)
Another thing I like about my home is the toilets. I guess you don’t really think of the comfort that a toilet brings, up to the moment you’ve actually got your naked toosh behind some bush in the Outback.
Although you feel like a big hero after doing it the first time, the amount of digging before the actual ‘deed’ and the inspecting your ‘deed’ afterwards to make sure you buried it all, is in no way comparable to opening the toilet lid and pushing the flush button. So yes, I am not embarrassed to say, “I love toilets”!
And I really miss flat rate internet. No gigabytes a month, no dollars per hour – just a 24-hour connection with the rest of the world. Nowadays everything is done on the net: tour bookings, airfares, even socialising. So how come on a whole continent, there is no such thing as flat rate internet? I know it sounds a bit pathetic, but I love Facebook and just hate to pay for the internet in order to save my strawberries in Farmville!
But no matter how much I miss these little conveniences at times, I don’t think they will make me leave this beautiful country even one day before my visa ends. I guess I’m just another backpacker overly excited about the country that allows her to travel in it.
And the little inconveniences? I guess I’ll have to keep up with those for a couple more months – and it’s absolutely worth it.
