Some Memorable Travellers

To start things off I'll recall a few travellers that I've spoken to in recent weeks and then try and update this on a weekly basis.

The first one is actually from some time ago - perhaps 18 months or so. He was a young guy in his early 20's, a New Zealander I think, and he had spent only one night in Sydney and then 3 or 4 nights in Thredbo. That was his entire stay in Australia and as this was during the summer period I was a little curious as to his reason for visiting Thredbo.

It turned out he was a mountaineer and was progressing towards his aim of climbing the Seven Summits, ie. the highest mountain on every continent. His father had already achieved this and he was well on the way, having climbed at least 2 or 3 of the others before Kosciuszko. I can't recall those those he had already done but do remember that it didn't include Everest. I reckon Kosciuszko was the easiest one to achieve as even I've done that one.....

A couple of weeks back I interviewed a young German girl who had spent a few months in Australia. At first I thought she was just another backpacker who had travelled and partied up the East Coast but it turned out there was a little more to her story. She had worked as a jillaroo for a couple of months on outback farm in South Australian and then spent a couple of months working in the pub in an outback S.A. town of only 7 people. Presumably there was a reasonable amount of passing traffic. During this stay she met an Aboriginal Australian guy and was now engaged to him. He now has his trip to Germany planned for later in the year. Just shows that you don't know where your travels will lead you and where you'll end up finding love.

I met an Australian woman recently that was working in the Cayman Islands as a speech therapist and her husband is a lawyer there. She'd been there 3 years already and was just visiting family back home. It never ceases to amaze me how far and wide our 1 million Aussie expats are spread around the world.

An Indian gentleman I spoke to recently after his few days stay in Sydney told me about the family wedding he had attended in Hua Hin, Thailand. I was curious and asked why in Thailand - did some of the family live there? Was it a Thai style wedding? He said that no, it was an Indian wedding and none of the family or other guests lived in Thailand. As some guests were in India and others were in the USA, they just decided to have it in an in-between place. I have been to Hua Hin - its a weekend beach resort more for Thais than international visitors - and am still getting my head around how the locals reacted to a big Bollywood style wedding in their midst!!

On MH140 a couple of weeks back I met a Malaysian civil engineer who was working in Sydney on a 4 year contract on a 457 visa. He was enjoying it here and bringing his family down in December. It seems that there are rapidly increasing numbers of overseas workers arriving on these visas who have skills in fields where there are shortages in Australia.

I recently also spoke to a British guy who had been living in Bangkok for the last 5 years and was working as a lecturer in ecology at Mahidol University. He had come here for a conference in Cairns and was looking at moving there to live. This made sense as his particular field of interest was coral.

Last month I interviewed a young male German backpacker in a group of 3 who gave me World Youth Day as their main reason for coming to Australia. He then told me about how he had hitched around NSW and Queensland after WYD activities getting lifts with truckies and even sleeping in a shower/toilet block in one place. Then the 3 of them started eyeing off some young attractive women that sat down in the departure gate area nearby and told me that they were having a week in Bangkok on the way home. They just didn't seem to fit the WYD pilgrim profile that I'd come to expect....

Feel free to make comments or tell me about other interesting travellers you've met in Australian or other airports or on planes.

Till next time.

Peter

Souvenirs Australia Warehouse