Hot hot hot! (Marcus)

Well so far the holidays have been somewhat on the hibernative side. The weather remains stinking hot; both day and night. My neck has been really sore the past few days so I decided to walk into town and get a massage. It was around 7:30pm when I left and it must have still been at least 35 degrees. The Chinese were out in force, most opting to sit outside with fans as they likely don't have air conditioning running(or choose not to use it due to costings).

The massage was great. It was at the same blind place we have been to quite a few times before now. These guys really know how to give a good massage, you can feel their expertise as they methodically work every muscle in the neck, shoulders and back areas(or whatever you request).

Had a bit of an awkward moment as the guy was trying to get me to sit on the bench in a certain way to stretch me(he had all these funky contraction style moves he'd do) and I had absolutely no idea what he was meaning. He couldn't speak english, I couldn't understand what he was trying to show me to do and we both cracked up, along with the other woman in the room and her male customer. Ahh language barriers.

When I first entered the room I was immediately relieved that it was air-conditioned. The other two benches were already being occupied by customers recieving massages and when I asked the woman who guided me in, "30 minutes?" in chinese, the first benches occupant immediately looked up. Oh my god, WHITE MAN!!! I think they can detect us talking Chinese at at least 30 paces as whenever we do, suddenly we have everyone in the local vicinity's immediate attention.

I felt sorry for the poor helpful girl in China Mobile the other day. As soon as she started to speak a little english to us to help us sort out inability to call Australia, every single person in the shop(at least 10 customers and 4 staff) all had 200% attention on her and us. I felt uncomfortable to her. Everyone is absolutely amazed by simple things such as that. The girl probably spoke much better english than she let on - and in fact when we saw her in the food street later on and Courtney spoke to her - her english was in fact good - but under that pressure, I wouldn't blame her if she suddenly couldn't speak Chinese!

Anyhow side-tracked as usual and I have forgotten the point of this post. It's been hot hot hot, sooo damned hot - much too hot for us poor Melbournians. It's certainly living up to what we feared at any rate. The air-conditioner is practically staying on.

Poor Courtney went into the city this afternoon to do some shopping with Abby but couldn't get a bus as they had been re-routed. Her experience sounded nothing short of horrible(with a happy ending!) but I am sure she will relate that story here.

For now, I'm off to scrape out frozen coke from the cup I have frozen it in - ahhh inexpensive frozen treats. I could NOT live permanatly in a country with this kind of Summer - and with this amount of FKNG mosquitoes.

Later!