Drunk in Manly

My Aussie friend Abbie is perhaps one of the drunkest people I have met. At Oktoberfest she was photographed wearing her sunglasses and Aladdin pants on a drip in hospital. I met Abbie in Portugal and this time I arranged to meet her half way around the world in Oz. I was supposed to be meeting her at the Opera House, but was running rather late. The bus over from Bondi Beach had taken a lot longer than I anticipated and then I couldnt go out without having a shower. "Where are you?" she texted. I lied and said I was walking down Macquarie street right at that moment. Instead I was still trying to brush the knots out of my hair. I ended up paying the money to take the train to circular quay, which is only about 2 stops.


When I finally got to the Opera bar Abbie was rather tipsy already. If there's one thing you do in Sydney you must go for a glass of wine in the Opera bar and catch a view of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House at sunset. In my opinion half of the worlds sights are best seen at night. I was glad I hadnt gone in my typical backpacker gear- everyone is so glamorous at the Opera Bar- full of suits and dresses and clinking of glasses. We shared a bottle of wine or two and suddenly realised we hadn't really eaten anything so the wine had gone straight to our heads. Already drunk, we went to this restaurant called City Extra on circular quay, where the table cloths and the menus are newspapers. How novel. The waitress could tell we were all rather tipsy but Abbie in particular looked a little boozed up. "Are you OK?" she asked politely. "I'm a little bit drunk." Abbie slurred. "I can see that..." she said "...the Schnitzel will help."


The following day we took the ferry over to Manly, one of Sydney's top seaside destinations. It's a scenic trip and only about 8 dollars return, which is well worth the money. Manly is quite a touristy town and the long narrow beach full of families, but it has a welcoming laid-back charm to it. Abbie and I walked along the sand trying to avoid the bluebottles that had been washed up on the shore- they're the tiniest little buggers but you wouldn't want to experience their sting. It's true that everything in Australia is dangerous, its the most inhospitable country ever. We met up with Steve, whom I also met in Portugal and who continuously has bloodshot eyes, and his friend Brad. After about half an hour in the roasting heat, someone piped up; "fancy going for a beer?" We went to Wharf bar and one beer turned into two beers which turned into three. Later Cam joined us; Cam had been with them on the trip through Europe, but had run out of money before he could make it to Portugal, which is a damn shame because Portugal may be my favourite place on earth. I could soon see where all his money had gone; on booze. Brad spent most of his time trying to work out whether the bartender's boobs were real or fake, which in the end we decided were real. The strange thing about Manly is that no-one who lives there really ventures outside of Manly. A bunch of girls walked in dressed up to the nines and I heard one of them say it was her first night out into Sydney.


Eventually Cam went outside and wasn't let back in, so at 5 o'clock we were walking through the streets pissed, with Cam and Brad crouching with their bums in the fountains, and trying to climb lamp posts. We ended up at Brad's house listening to him play the guitar and put on his "Kings of Leon" voice which I have to say was pretty impressive. He was desperately trying to avoid texting a girl he'd met but you could see him itching to pick up his phone. A while later he disappeared into the house and came out with his housemates laundry. Rifling through them, he thought it would be fun to try on her sass and bide jeans and a black croptop. Now this was the result....

I've always found that men secretly enjoy in some way or another wearing womens clothes. Not satisfied with their own, they have to try on ours under the disguise that it's 'fancy dress.' They pretend not to enjoy it, but I could tell Brad quite fancied himself in his housemates Sass and Bide jeans. "Maybe I should wear them out..." he joked. Instead of taking the ferry back, Abbie and I were persuaded to go on a night out in the city, so off we went in a taxi to Sydney with a man in girls jeans to watch some band play at the Macquarie hotel. What's funny is nobody even noticed that they were girls jeans, so he had to walk around pointing them out to every girl that moved.