The Week of Birthdays

This week is the week of birthdays here in Byron. Sunday was Sophie's, Monday was Noah's and mine is tomorrow! Well a couple days away for those of you reading this from Canada. It has been a very fun week so far and I am definitely looking forward to tomorrow.

On Sunday Stew and I got up early and drove to Surfer's Paradise to meet a guy who was buying our van for commercial use. We sold it to him for $3200 and then took the greyhound back to Byron. It was a sad day having to say goodbye to the currymobile and all the memories that it had. It was nice, however, to get some cash to put towards our future Asia trip. We told the guy about the van and the curry story of course so he knew her background! Never going to forget the miles we've been on that van, learning to drive stick shift on the opposite side of the road and car, living out of it for months on end and having our 2-man pre drinks in the parking lot of local grocery stores. Our time with the van was great and I can only hope she's as good to this new guy as she was to us :)

Sunday evening we went over to the girls' place for Sophie's 25th birthday where we had jello shooters, cupcakes and drinks before heading to the Beach Hotel. It was a fun night and Sophie had a great birthday. Monday was Noah's birthday and we were both working so we didn't get the chance to wish our roommate a happy birthday until the evening but it was a really fun day. After working at Subway I went out for an 8km run that felt terrific as have most of my runs lately with the new Nike Lunar Flys. After the run we got ready for the party and it wasn't long before our house was filled with people who live in Byron and work at the local businesses on Jonson Street. I had baked cookies on Saturday for Sophie and Noah so I put them out at the party and then vanished quite quickly--peanut butter chocolate chip, delicious! I literally had over 85 cookies as I decided to double the recipe as per Noah's recommendation....I was baking for over 3 hours on Saturday haha. Fishmongers, Asia Joes, Fresh and other places were supposed to be having a big beach party with music and fire but since it has been pouring the party needed a new location. Noah volunteered our house so we had a big party of people for his birthday/work party. Lots of fun!

Tuesday was a lazy day of sleeping in and movie watching until Stew had to go to work at Fishmongers. I watched movies and hung out with no intention of doing anything until Stew called me to tell me Maseo from De La Soul was going to be DJ-ing at Woody's that night. Being as we are both huge underground hip hop fans of groups like Tribe, Ghost Face Killers, Jurassic 5, Guru, Pharcyde etc. we couldn't pass up the opportunity to see De La LIVE! It was $10 to get in and he put on a great show. I even got a shout out from him before the night was done! Needless to say I felt pretty cool and was a minute away from asking him to DJ my birthday party haha.

Tomorrow is my birthday and I'm pretty excited about turning 25. I don't feel much older and am not un-happy about getting older...but ask me again on my 30th and I might have a different story. So far I don't have any real big plans, maybe go to a yoga class in the morning, have dinner with Stew and then our friends are going to come over for drinks before going out. I bought a new dress so I'm excited to wear it finally!

We have booked our flights for Asia and will be flying to Kuala Lumpur on May 2 out of Coolangatta. We're going to bus up towards the island of Ko Samui where we will be meeting Curt and his brother  to take a boat over to Ko Pengang where the full moon party will be held. The full moon party is May 5 and attracts literally thousands of travelers to party on the beach, paint their bodies, have bonfires and listen to live music. After the party we'll be heading north towards Bangkok and then on to Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos depending on where we feel like going and how much we want to travel around. We'll be touring South East Asia for a couple weeks and then I'll be heading to Bali for a week on my own to relax, do yoga, and just chill out. Then I'll be flying back into Perth (WA) and spending the first weekend in June there. Then I'll fly back to Brisbane for a couple days before spending 7-10 days in Fiji. From there you'll have to stay tuned but for now there are lots of flights coming up in the next couple months and surprisingly not too expensive! My flight from Kuala Lumpur to Bali is barely $60 and the flight from Perth to Brisbane is only about $100. All in all our trip to Asia isn't going to cost much as the flights are cheap and everything in Thailand is dirt cheap once we're there apparently. After researching, we've found that you can buy dinners there for under $4 and beers for 50 cents!!! holy moly!! We're going to feel like ballers, so excited.

So we have a couple weeks left here in Byron and its been great so far. Mick was able to come visit us last week for a day which was great because we hadn't seen him since November! We're going to spend a few days on the Sunshine Coast again before we head to Asia so that we can see Mick and Rachel, our Canadian friend! We're also going to be visiting Rachel McKay in Redcliffe as she has so kindly offered to let us keep our stuff there while we're backpacking through Asia.

Anyways, hope everyone had a great Easter Weekend. While we didn't really celebrate here it was fun having the town so busy and being able to go out with friends. We're definitely looking forward to bein able to celebrate occasions when we get home as Aussies don't really celebrate anything here besides Australia day. Either way, Canada day celebrations will be a must with or without Aussie support haha.

Have a great one everybody and will update again soon!! xo