Melbourne: Day 2

Our second day in Melbourne started WAY too early, thanks to Gary coming in from a night out, falling asleep on his back and doing some of the loudest snoring any of us had ever heard. It didn’t help that I was already awake because I had a horrendous headache. My cold decided to hit me full force that Saturday and I was for about 2 hours with a headache, jaw ache, and with occasional pain in my sinuses. 

I managed to find a tablet which helped me sleep but I still ended up having to have a 2 hour nap after we all got up at 8ish. Tom went on a bike ride, and Meryn went for a walk around the city. She came back with a coffee and some fruit for me because she is an absolute babe and just seemed to know that I was dying and needed immediate pick-me-up treats. 

I started to feel a bit more human after my shower and while I was waiting for Meryn to come back, I ended up having a conversation with Gary. The first proper conversation any of us had had with him! That’s when I found out he was from Perth, here for the football, and he told me all about how he had met his girlfriend; it was a proper “travelling” story where they had met in Indonesia, ended up in Australia at the same time…. it just seemed like one of those stories where everything fell into place to make it happen. 

Tom came back from his ride at about half 12 and he was not okay. Not in any way okay. He told us that he had underestimated jet lag, he was coming down with a cold, and that the heat had just been oppressive. He repeatedly told us that he was never cycling again and had to keep pausing in between tasks because he was so exhausted. He picked up a bit after his shower and our lunch but he definitely thinks he shouldn’t have gone, or maybe not have gone for 4 hours. 

We were all feeling the effects of jet lag, not quite as badly as Tom who has never really experienced it before, but there was definitely a lethargic feeling to our little group on that second day. Saying that though, we’ve all agreed the delays actually worked in our favour. It was a more gradual introduction to a completely reversed time zone, and the nice hotels meant we had good beds and good nights sleep, so we were no where near as bad as we would have been had we stuck to our original outgoing flights. 

Our lunch that day was so weird. We used up our pasta and bolognese sauce which was all fine and good except Meryn had bought a box of eggs and her and Tom wanted to add them to our meal somehow (I’m not a fan of eggs). Their original idea of making an omelette was quickly turned into making scrambled eggs when they realised that only the bottom of the omelette was cooking (and by checking, they had half scrambled it anyway). We all had scrambled eggs in the bottom of our bowls with the pasta on top (I had the smallest portion of egg possible haha!) and it was nice, but weird. Definitely not something I’d recommend you cook up if you don’t live in a student house or a hostel. 

We managed to get some laundry done on our second day as well! This was actually a really good thing because we had all thought it would be a good idea to wash our clothes in the baths in our rooms in Manila, only to discover that 15 hours is not enough time to dry clothes when they’re on a washing line provided in the bathroom. We ended up having to pack half damp clothes back into our bags and it became a top priority to wash the clothes that were slowly making our bags smell. (I actually escaped the damp-clothes smell but only because Tom’s tea tree oil leaked in my bag and my entire backpack smells of that now). 

I won’t bore you with the details of the 3 of us trying to figure out how to use the washing machine and tumble dryer BUT we managed it and we all had lovely clean clothes to put away, so yay! 

We spent our afternoon walking around the city again. I think we definitely needed those extra 2 days we had lost to the delays, they would have been the bonus two days of us being over our jet lag and ready to properly go out and see everything. As it was, I had to go back and lie on my bed for a couple of hours - my cold was horrendous and I had started to feel dizzy and just plain unwell. Tom and Meryn went out for food and brought it back to the room to eat. So we ended up having a chilled evening in the room, packing everything up ready for our flight the next day. It was going to be another early morning and we all just wanted to be rested and ready for our final part of the journey.

It was time to go to New Zealand!