Challenge day

A few of you had sent in some things for me to do, I thought It would be fun to try and do them all on the same day. My to do list was looking good:

• Buy some provisions (not recommended by anyone, just had some things I had to buy)
• Go the Greek quarter of the city and eat.
• Drink Bubble tea from Bimbos in Brunswick
• Watch the Dalai Lama
• Go to the Belgian Beer Cafe
• Go to the Indonesian quarter and eat
• Then mission accomplished I could go and have a night out.

Once I started to look these places up on the Internet I realised the scope of what I had agreed to, its like you guys anticipating that I was going to see them all in one day. Hatched a plan to find things from the farthest reaches of Melbourne that had no direct public transport routes between them. But that can't be true? Can it?

OK , so I walked to town and did some shopping, I then walked all the way across town to the Greek quarter and had a Souvlaki. If your after a Souvlaki I can recommend the Souvlaki King the owner is really friendly, and has a signed photo of Rocky on the wall as well as a lot of pictures of Angelina Jolie. Then I walked back across town to get the tram to Brunswick.

Bimbo's is really nice pub/cafe place unfortunately they had never heard of bubble tea, upset by this I did the best I could and ordered a cocktail that had tea in the name, it was very alcoholic costing over 10 bucks. That's right I was getting drinking before seeing the Dalai Lama, I didn't notice it at the time but if you look at the top right of the inside picture of Bimbo's bar you can see a picture of the Dalai Lama pointing at me disapprovingly. Spooky!

Time was already running short, after my drink I caught a tram back to town then another to the arena where the Dalai Lama was gigging. The Dalai Lama is a very interesting guy, I was skeptical about going but he opened with a few jokes and I felt my heart warming to him as he used a lot of science in his brief explanation of how he thought we had got to where we are. For example he mentioned we think that the universe was 15 billion years old and talked about how we evolved. I was pleasantly surprised. He talked a lot about environmental problems like dwindling natural resources and dangerously rising population rates.

He reminded me a lot from Yoda from the Star Wars movies, very funny yet insightful. He mentioned a few things like whenever we decide love or hate an object/person after that decision 90% odd of the feelings we felt from then on was just mental projection based on our beliefs about how we shoud feel. He had a lot of good points, like when he went to Iraq recently he told all the waring fractions

'you may hate each other, but you no choice but to live togther, do you want to make it better or worse?'

He also provided me with the best quote ever (warning this is a dangeriously out of context quote)

'all religion is bad' - Dalai Lama -June 2007, Melbourne

Next stop was the Belgian Beer Cafe, in an effort to get away from the massive crowd I thought I would walk a few blocks across and get a different tram line into town. On the way I saw Melbourne Cemetery it was massive, it looked like a good short cut and no one else seemed to be walking there, this was my chance to distance myself from the crowd. After about 30 minutes walking around this place I had come to the unfortunate realisation that there was only one way in/out and that was the way I had come in. Logic dictated that a place that big should have more than one exit, but sadly that wasn't the case, worst short cut ever.

Anyway I got the tram into town, it was staring to get late between the Lama and my shortcut I had lost a lot of time. Once in town I got another tram to St Kilda for the Belgian Beer Cafe, on my tourist map it looked like the last stop on the tram was only a short walk away from it. Easy I thought just get on a tram wait till it stops at the end then get off and have a few beers. Sadly the journey wouldn't be that easy.

It wasn't that the tram had its final stop as indicated on the map, it was that the people who made my map had got bored and simply stopped drawing the tram route at that point. This possibility started to dawn on my when I had reached the coast! So I got another tram back then walked around looking for the cafe. You can tell from the lighting difference in the photos how long this had taken.

The Belgian Beer Cafe was a really nice pub, I order a very welcome Leffe beer. This bar was great I would have to come here again when I had more time. I finished my beer got the tram back to town, walked across town to my hostel to drop of my shopping and stuff and get changed for a night out.

I really can't describe how disappointed I am at my self I couldn't find the Indonesian quarter as I had dropped my notes off with the rest of my stuff, so I was travelling blind. I walked around town for over an hour even asking taxi drivers to take me there but no luck. I had failed my first mission, I ended up compromising and eating in an Indonesian restraint. It was nice.

I had enjoyed challange day, if you guys send me more stuff to do I will have another go at it. It was more than past time for a night out but that's a different story ...