Tripping Out Alone

Monday in Melbourne Cold and fresh, undeterred by either tiredness or the chill factor I went with Kepsibel into the city where we had a great breakfast at Captains of Industry a most unusual, hipsterish cafe. Industrial in design it used to be an old shoe factory and is now retro fitted to accommodate an airy cafe staffed by faintly bearded young men who look vaguely Amish and pale. The food was wonderful soda bread with mashed avocado and a pear, almond and saffron chutney. Sufficiently fueled we went to collect the items on my first part of the shopping list, which was fun, if not a bit overwhelming to be amongst such choice and retail affluence. We found bargains in David Jones, where I was also mistaken for a sales assistant, which I didn't mind so much so I did my best. We went to ACMI and spent a brilliant afternoon amongst the exhibits in the free Moving Pictures event. Afternoon tea was taken in DeGraves at another hip coffee place, Melbourne does eating really well

October 2011. I flew AirAsia to Darwin and then took a JetStar flight to Melbourne arriving on a Sunday into a clear, sunny and cool city after minimal sleep and a full on day in Bali traffic trying to get last minute things organized...but none of that mattered. I am here to see my girls, hang out with them, study with them, eat, laugh and shop with them. That is all that matters now. Kepsibel met me a Southern Cross Station and we went to my hotel in South Yarra, a place Mick Jagger stayed in, albeit some, many, years ago and where U2 is rumoured to have trashed the penthouse. I intend to behave very well and enjoy the ease of getting in and out of the city, being near a park and enjoying the clean comfortable bed and the heater. Melbourne is pretty and cold, it is October, I feel like I am approaching winter not spring and I don't know if I have enough clothes..but again, who cares I am here to see the girls. Severen met us with Koh and Lyndon and we headed into the funky C

Well I couldn't resist and in the end went downtown for a wander and tiny bit of shopping for new books and a peruse of all the glints in the hot sunshine of the skyscrapers before getting off to the airport and boarding the flight back to Bali. Eighteen flights! I thought I would have cured my fear of being enclosed in a metal tube by now but when the child behind you is freely allowed, by her over loud mother, to kick you in the back. And despite politely, and then menacingly asking the mother to stop the child have it continue, and not just from the child but the mother you have to accept that some times you are not meant to chill out on a flight. The nasal braying of the mother to the father one row behind kept the whole section awake, I moved away but not before we were all treated to her complaints that her tv didn't work and she wanted to be upgraded, or at the very least get a voucher up grade for her return. Well, you can only feel sorry for people like that, especiall

All I do in Hong Kong is wake slowly up from the realization this is my last day of this adventure and as I was in Beachwood Canyon I am way way up in The Peak in a beautiful home by myself and there is nothing to induce me down into the melting pot of the tumultuous city, even though I do love it. So I sit at the picture window gazing out over the harbour and watch Hong Kong go about its day, while I consider what awaits me back home, and schedule myself for all sorts of new challenges and deadlines. It is good to have this time if only to collect my thoughts and wash my clothes...and dream about the next adventure.

I love Los Angeles, with a big heart! I love the way the waiters compliment you on your choices, the way they always behave so gracefully, even though I think it maybe because they want to be tipped. I'd tip a surly waiter anyway because it is a hard job to be so so nice to people all day long. I met up with Beau for a bakery brunch and marveled at his awesome recovery rate and also his exceptional skills in articulation on the subject of relationship dynamics which make him fascinating to listen to and an object of my deepest admiration. The coffee was superb too and we ate delicious pannini with mozarella and basil and arugula..mmm and then he left me to wander Abbott Kinney and peruse the shops for hours until my feet hurt really badly and I had to limp home! Then later Dylan and Hope came by and we went to Hama: Suchi at the beach an great diner style place that we thought may have been a bit 'sketchy' on the outside but was filled to the brim with hip and happpening ty

Venice Beach - Los Angeles At nineteen I knew what I wanted in life, I wanted a clean bathroom, I wanted perfume and soaps that smelled expensive, I wanted a place of my own and a door I could lock behind me.... I managed to achieve most of the above, the door though never did, never has locked, and I find myself wondering what my life would have been if I had achieved that one last wish. Staying as I am alone in a brilliantly funky bungalow, just made for one, a block from Venice Beach, a short walk from the cafes and shops on Abbott Kinney Ave I feel like I have now got that key, I can lock the door. I fall for places more than people, I love walking alone, thinking alone and being alone in order to share more completely the process of my journey of observing and listening, drifting through stories in my mind.. I see a million futures ahead of me, paths beckoning and opportunities knocking. I made my bed and now I lie in it, happily, contemplating the glimpses of shadow lives I might

My journey to the Bahamas was incredible, the location is stunning, there's no rubbish on the beach, and while the underwater environment, although clean, seems a little devoid of life it seems the resort does good things to encourage growth and minimize harm..People are friendly, I found out there were original inhabitants but they were taken by the Spanish to be slaves elsewhere and then the British left Africans freed after the abolition of slavery to live in The Bahamas as free men and women. There are words like Goombay and Jankanoo that are Bahamanian and refer to festivals but are also the names of drinks and corn chips...

On our day off we went exploring at the far end of the island and discovered a beautiful estate that once belonged to Huntington Hartley. It is now a part of the One and Only Resort but his gardens stretch beyond their boundaries and were created in the style of the Versailles courtyards and goes from the Bay to the Ocean. Stunningly beautiful and haunting it is full of stepped gardens and sculptures that were very romantic and Victorian in theme. Hannah and I took photos tuning in to the spirits of the women that were abandoned on the island as their men left of journeys overseas... The pillow on my bed is cold, My man is gone, so I've been told The seas have kept him for their own my man, my life, my love, my home.. I fear the loss but hope resides in my heart I am still his bride I call to sirens, seducers in sea you set my lord and lover free I was his star in the sky at night I was his joy, his song, his light I can raise my voice in prayer I can call him back from there.. God

After I left LA I flew to Washington and met up with my friend Bekah and together we flew to Orlando, Florida where I spent a great night with her mum and her mum's husband George. We went to the beach, Bekah ran and I sat on the beach with George who was very interesting, and gave me some ideas about direction. Being in the midst of such a dynamic interesting family was fantastic after my LA Alone Time. The next day I went back to Orlando and flew to Nassau in the Bahamas...and entered another dynamic family, the one of Hannah, Jasmine and their mum, Re. The beginning of my Bahamas vacation...the challenge now is to have, to take, to enforce myself into vacation mode..what is that?? I am used to exploring, to seeking out, to engaging with people around me. Fortunately I am here to help Hannah make a documentary on her work so I have been engaging with people and filming their responses to Hannah's performances both in and out of the water and that has been great..the effect of

I decided to take myself out of the canyon, off into the world below regardless of no car or phone, which it turns out is still very lame of me to possess neither but now instead of being apologetic I am determined I can negotiate my way about without either. As it turns out this is not so difficult, maybe a little more effort required that's all. So I walked ALL the way down the canyon, with my lap top in my bag, turned left at the gas station on Franklin, found an awesome juice bar called Live.Raw.Real, ordered a juice, set up my lap top and spend the time making arrangements on gmail phone. I kept one eye on the Scientology Centre for Celebrities but noticed nothing. The people dropping into the juice bar seemed quite regular types, there was a Dave Navarro look alike but I think he had a slightly Australian accent. Then I headed to Gelson's supermarket which overwhelmed me with choice, I was picking up things to make for lunch over where Beau was staying in Encino. The supe

The first thing to discover is that without a phone that receives email or a vehicle to drive in LA you are toast, unless that is you have friends. Luckily for me I have a great friend in Brenda, who despite not seeing me for ten years was happy to spend her last day in Los Angeles with me. We visited Erewhon Health Foods store and after a stunning lunch of spinakopita and kale salad we took a moment to linger at the juice bar to catch up on the latest in snake oils..Ant Extract, Caterpillar fungus and Deer Antler extracts..as well as the usual suspects of Maca, Goji and Astragalus. We drank-ate our vanilla cookie dough health shake with all sorts of vitamins and other things in it while listening to the juice-a-gician spin forth his pearls of wisdom, or not, actually there was fresh water pearl extract available too. I wonder if any of the people who make or drink these concoctions in all seriousness realize just what they are doing. The processing of commercial fresh water pearls is

The arrival into Los Angeles was easy because I'd done all the hard stuff in the no mans land of Vancouver Airport Transit Area and in moments I was off the plane and onto the streets of the ..no hang on a minute, not onto the streets! I got in a queue for a shuttle bus and made a small tour of Inglewood and West Hollywood with a group of very pleasant strangers before arriving at the rarefied atmosphere of the Chateau Marmont..do people take the shuttle to this hotel usually? Well you'd think so, I was greeted with such charm and warmth that I felt immediately welcomed, despite the fact I wasn't even staying and taken care of. Here the service exceeds anything else about the place. Brenda was already there and we sank into the deep lounges of the restaurant and enjoyed the combination of catching up about twenty years of lost time and the conversation with the waiter, who could hardly be called a waiter, he was more like a new friend that had decided to join us but with ac

Cool I got to go to Canada! I have been before, 30 odd years ago I went to Niagra Falls twice, once on the American side the other on the Canadian side. This time I didn't get to exit into Canada real as I transited into US territory on arrival at Vancouver. However, gosh, Vancouver is beautiful and Canadians appear to be a friendly lot, the crew and the service from London was amazing, the entry into no-mans land Canada was welcoming and nothing from this comforting experience could have possibly prepared me for the shock I got on entering "US Territory"! The officious and miniscule man in the strange blue plastic gloves who directed me with military abrasion through my entry process was terrifying. So much so that I could not place my fingers on the scanner in the right way, got my left and right digits mixed up and really became tongue tied when he implied that my name was just a lame misspelling..he called me "Miss Kayti, ma'am..." in such a sarcastic to

The familiar streets of London. Favourite buses : 137, 22, 19, 49 and 10 ... Favourite corner: from here you can go left to Chelsea: King's Road along Sloane Street, straight on for Knightsbridge and the museums and left for Kensington High Street. There's the park with the Serpentine, the Peter Pan statue, the ice creams on Saturdays and the prancing ponies. Saying goodbye to London always hurts a little, the questions remain, mostly why and how did I end up out in the Wide World that Rat cautions Mole against: "'Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wide World,' said the Rat. 'And that's something that doesn't matter, either to you or me. I've never been there, and I'm never going, nor you either, if you've got any sense at all.'" There's no one answer but I did go beyond the river bank and through some very wild woods and although I relish deeply all the opportunities I have had to travel to lands far and wide I wonder what would ha

The River Thames has held me in its spell since childhood, the history of the country I grew up in is written on the banks and in the bends of this great water course. So it was with great fortune that we stepped aboard a small launch to take a Saturday evening cruise along from Sonning to Shiplake and tells tales of times past and enjoy the scenery that inspired Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows... "The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spell-bound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea." - Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows. "After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy worki

I had not considered writing about England, mostly because I like to write about travel and the exploration of the new, but I have discovered that what is familiar, or at least seems so becomes more foreign with time. Not the friends and the family occasions, all of which were wonderful, warm and quintessentially English, a trip on the river, a lunch at the pub, a play in the West End, not that, but the shocks of returning to a place and a society that has undergone considerable change. I left in 1984 as Margret Thatcher was doing her bit to provoke war and there was a sense of oppression in the air, riots on the streets and too much nihilism. I returned briefly on the wave of New Britannia as Tony Blair took office and the coolest couple - believe it or not- were Liam and Patsy - now it is William and Kate and the pendulum has swung back and forth many times over and Britain feels almost middle aged rather than cool. The lack of healthy protest at Glastonbury was one indication, but o

Nine women, all graduates of the same high school, some of us haven't seen each other in a very long time, and yet here we are and what is wonderful and strange and again not so strange after all because essentially we haven't changed! There was not a moment of awkwardness and we all agreed on one thing very strongly. We got possibly the worst education a girl's only high school could provide and yet despite this we all went on to succeed in life, each of us gaining satisfaction and success in our chosen paths. High achievers, all of us independent earners we have all learned how to make the most out of life and enjoy the journey. Juliet and Anne drive sports cars as we knew they would, Charlotte owns a yacht, some of us have children and others do not, the ones who seemed the worst suited to school are now working in education, and others are managing soccer players, running departments in the health authority or have a PhD in provision of health care systems. Some of us a