Like a tattoo horoscope

http://www.sloshspot.com/blog/10-18-2009/21-Awful-Tattoos-and-What-They-Say-About-You-228

Are you from Syria?

I see so many people now with blogs, most of them taking their blogging seriously. Poor fools.

Then we did this, it was good, we decided next to do this, that was good. Here are all of my photos.

Mac. Bare. Us.

Firearms and miscellaneous

This is a collection of the firearms and other various weapons which i have aquired along my travels.








I would be happy to provide captions upon request.

After travelling far and wide, I have just over a week left travelling. Its been an amazing trip, many tattoos, remenising on the STC championship to anyone who will listen, thinking about re joining the Demons cheer club, many life changes ahead. But anyway, many great stories to tell you all however you dont get this shit anywhere else, thats why I love coming home to Melbourne. See you soon. Love Tom

I am not here!

I am not here around whole nacht spin to fuck!

(for those non germanig speakers this is the gist of my previous post)

love to post more now but i have to rouse rouse, everyboby rouse!

Ich bin nicht hier!

Ich bin nicht hier um die ganze nacht spinnen zu ficken!

Tattoo chronicles

I don´t know who keeps putting these travel blogs on my blogspot but I´d appreciate it if they´d stop doing it.

I got bored of my Australian tattoo so I had it removed (a pretty painful experience). Instead I got some others. Just so you dont doubt that they are all me, I should warn you that I've also put on some weight and caved to my star-war fetish, grew a beard, became a psycho and convinced my fat, ugly, criminal dad to `GIT-R-DUN´ and get a tattoo too, then I lost the weight, shaved my beard and my head, had the other tattoos removed (pretty painful once again) and got this alien cracker that I´m now proudly sporting. It´s amazing what being away from Australia can do to you.

SPARE US THE WANKY TRAVEL BLOGS!

Isla del Sol

The sun was born in Bolivia apparently. It was born on this island in Lake Titicaca right next to the island where the moon was born, which is pretty convenient because now tourists can pay to see both in one day (there´s that jaded traveller talking again).

It is the most beautiful island I´ve been to. It´s in the middle of a lake that is so big and such a blue, that every time you look at it it decives you into believing that you´re actually looking at the ocean. The lake is at 3800m above sea level so you realise that the massive snow and glacier capped mountains you´re looking at across the lake on the Bolivia side must be 6000m or well above.

In the northern summer of this year I swam in a mountain stream which we worked out to be about 1800m above sea level, it was so cold it felt violent. On my day walk around the Isla del Sol I took an alternate route and found a secluded rocky bay with a bunch of ledges perfect for jumping and diving from. I was unsure if swimming in such a sacred place was frowned upon. I swam anyway. For my first swim I was by myself and I couldn´t resist the temptation to get into a bit of ´sin ropas´ action (little spanish lesson for y´all). I was too proud of my little discovery so on my return journey I took a couple of canucks and swedes there to share the beauty, ´con ropas´ this time. At twice the altitude of the canadian stream the water this time was violently pleasant.

Great day, probably my best day yet. Waiting on some pics from my company on the return journey. I just ripped these ones off the internet.

Me and my Bo-stars

I´ve had feedback from my blog suggesting that I´m not having a great time and I realise that this latest blog probably reeks of lyrical similarity. I am having a good time, this is an amazing place, as miserable as I might sound I´m not able to bring myself down. Me and my tat (which I´ve named bo-star, an amalgam of bogan stars) are doing fine. Thanks for your concern.

Hippy bell-ends

I just arrived in La Paz. It´s the most spectacular layout for a city I´ve ever seen. Built into a steep valley with massive mountains all around, the suburbs on either wall of the valley appear like blocks of lego rammed into a near veritical cliff. Surrounded by all this coolness, all that I seem to notice is that proportionately, there are that many more tragic hippy bell-end types here than any place I´ve been before. Does anyone have a shirt that says ¨You cant snort wisdom... Dickhead!¨? I´d give it a run.

Eureka Bizzo, photos

I´ll post more when i get the chance. But for now, let me introduce...


The group on salt, check out the ups on the second from the right, still on his way up.



You know what blood looks like on a black and white television... Shadows, shadows! (I understand that this is a very inside reference but for all you John Prine fans out there let it be known that I represent)



Señores Bach y Fowler at Lagoona Verde, Vulcans Latacunga y Huajuasi hover in the background.



Nothing bright or witty for this one. Gives you an idea of what i had to put up with for four days though.



No time to admire the surroundings. Considering my next blog and mulling over whether or not the aussie tatoo was in fact a good idea.



Look whos wearing shoes! Heaps artistic photo like eh.



A rare smile, I hate this place.


All photos are coutesy of Asher Floyd, for his blog visit
http://www.asherfloyd.com

Hey Yo Foto

About time I posted some photos (that aren´t of my new and long overdue tatoo). I still don´t have a photo of any sort of bank card but with that aside I hope these ones will do. They are from a trip I did into the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia. It was a 4 day trip with lagoons, flamingos, gringos and salt flats. With the risk of this turning into a travel blog I´ll stop there. It is with these pics that I´m tying to turn around this blogs dangerous trajectory toward becoming a ´lame blog´. Alas, as I go to upload my pics none of the Bolivian computers wish to recognise my hard drive. For now, that one of my acne covered patriotic back tatoo will have to suffice.

Memory

I´d love to have a better memory. After losing my first bank card to an atm in Peru, I´ve now lost my remaining canadian atm card, ergo, I´m a dick. I have all these extravagant systems going with making sure passports and wallet are safe, putting them in special and safe pockets in my carry-on bag, this mean bugger all if you lose stuff anyway. I have all my other cards in my wallet apart from the card I need to get money... I wonder if my working with children card can get me some money. Mastt memory.

No Matter How Far Or How Wide I Roam

As one of the great Aussie bands once wrote, “I still call Australia home”. I’ve been the first to criticize those Aussies you meet overseas who over parochialise everything the second they leave the country, but across my travels I have come to realize just how good we have things back home. We really are the lucky country but more of that later.

Since my adventure at the over crowded soccer stadium and after several extended bus journeys, Jimmy and I have found ourselves in La Paz, Bolivia. The highest city in South America. Boonies record impresses me even more now that I have felt the effects of alcohol at over 3700m. Jimmy and I have been out a few times now and after one memorable outing two weeks ago where in my best Spanish I convinced the publican to play us a one day game, Aussie V England. It seems that I may have been a little overexcited and may have made a hasty decision with clouded judgment (pissed) to forever proclaim my love for our country. All of this happened two weeks ago and for the first week I was regretting my decision, but the more I think about it the happier I am, I love Australia, plain and simple and the off the cuff decision to ink that love forever scared the hell out of me for the first week but not any more.

I Tomas Michael Malcolm Bach still call Australia home.

A Dynamic Blog

South American football*, manic as it is, only becomes more scary when a nation´s place in the world cup is at stake.

I´ve only ever been to one soccer game and that was a Melbourne Victory game, in Melbourne, against the might of the Wellington Phoenix. There were maybe 20 thousand there to be generous, and what seemed to be a pretty timid 20 thousand at that.
Considering the recent history between our two nations with regards to football world cups, I understood that an Australian might not be too welcome at Estadio Centennario in Montevideo, Uruguay. Last night I defied this lack of welcome and went to Uruguay´s world cup qualifier against Colombia.

Uruguay needed to win. To encourage a good attendance promoters decided to impliment a 2 for 1 ticketing policy. What this meant wasn´t with every ticket you buy you recieve another ticket for free, intsead it meant that with every ticket you buy you can bring a friend along. So now to go with the tension of Uruguay´s need to win, was an over-sold, overcapacity 80 year old stadium that you could feel bounce when everyone started to jump. They liked to jump.

(As a bizarre side-note to this story, as I´m typing this, right now, one of the lads I´m here with has come in off the street and said he just saw the girls who were sitting behind us at the game last night. They gave him a note, addressed to us which they had written on the off chance that they would run into us the day after. The note is a page long, it starts by introducing themselves and continues to tell us how they thought it was great that we enjoyed ourselves and really got into the spirit of Uruguayan football. It finishes by saying that they hope we remember and love Uruguay. Accompanying the note were some pictures of Uruguay and one of them together at the game last night. The world isn´t as weary as it was on those bus trips with Jeaninne but once again, so shines a good deed).

I´m not sure if my initial blog idea can upstage the weirdness that just happened. Either way it was pretty special. Uruguay won 3-1. There weren´t any riots and the Estadio Centenarrio remained in tact.



*Soccer, sure, but this is what they call it so suck it up.

HI Boycott

Boycott Hostelling International Hostels!

I can´t change things by myself but if you get on board we can do it together. This is my social movement, I feel it calling me.

There are better options, use them instead.

Colonia, Uruguay.

So Precious

I´m really precious with what i write on these blogs and this is probably why I never blog (as I think the only comment to date alludes to, among alluding to various other things). I´ve just re-read my first 2 posts and all I can think is that I sound like a complete wanker. Good for me.

Jeaninne

There is a quote in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that gets me, rather, I remember it. ¨So shines a good deed in a weary world¨. Oh, the wisdom of Wonka.

A couple of days ago I had the worst bus trip in my experience of crappy bus trips. It started well before this, but for the sake of blog-brevity I´ll start at bus number 2. I was put in the front row of the 7 hour overnight bus, there is no seat in front to put your feet under when you are at the front of a bus, there is only a wall. My seat was broken, if I put any weight on the backrest it reclined violently. It reclined violently into a mother and her infant child. The chair squeaked, that irritating creaking, squaking squeak so that every time I failed to maintain complete uprightness squeaked and pissed everyone off. I didn´t sleep a wink that night. Bus number 5 began after the following day was passed sleeplessly in a town called Arica in Northern Chile. Skip to Bus number 5. This was a 30 hour journey to Santiago. I chose the front seat in this trip because I was assured it was a double decker sleeper bus, at the front of these buses you can put your feet up, stretch out and appreciate the view from above the driver. The bus wasn´t a double decker and I was in no state to see the a 30 hour trip (on the back of a day and a half of no sleep, 4 shitty buses and a border crossing) for its character building potential. I was livid but only had the energy to feel defeated and sorry. A weary world was an understatement.

I sat down and the lady next to me spoke to me about putting my bags in the overhead compartment so that we had more space. I translated this to ¨as soon as you go to sleep my accomplice is going to come and steal your passports, your wallet and your ipod¨. I replied in english with ¨spare us masthead, not in the mood¨. She was confused, but sensed my tone as hostile and seemed a little upset. My foul mood continued, she gave up on the bags issue but continued to press my weary mind and dwindling patience with spanish to find out where i was from, what i do, had been doing, why had my parents moved to australia and what was the origin of my strange name... Turbo? Her name was Jeaninne and she was far too pleasant for the situation. I just sat there and started ignoring her questions, pretending i couldn´t hear her, what a dick eh. I noticed her keep on looking sideways at my sultry, miserable face and I got the sense that she was starting to feel how pathetic I had become. There was a spare seat in the front row opposite to us. Jeaninne moved. So shone a good deed and I slept 8 hours.

So much for blog-brevity.

If I shot a bullet?

"If I shot a bullet along the equator..." then I stopped listening or I got distracted. I thought that it was funny that the first question this American guy had for his tour guide at the equator* involved shooting a gun. Stinkin tourists, go home!

*In Equador the equator is delineated by three lines which run parallel to each other at intervals of around 300 meters, each line is a part of a different museum and each museum happens to charge a seperate admission fee. Don't do what Donny Don't Does?