Well, it was Saturday the 7th when Lisa and I got moving again. For some strange reason, most likely ambient light, we awoke around 6:30am. Lisa needed to prep or a few hours for a gig she has this upcoming week with a bunch of educators, so I lounged about reading the daily newspaper before slipping out to the coffee shop along the water’s edge and grabbed a mocha and two breakfast sandwiches for Lisa and I. I purchased two bacon and egg; one with BBQ sauce and one with a chili sauce. Its worth noting that the bacon over here is more like what we in the States call ‘Canadian bacon.’ Less fatty than what we normally get. The sandwiches came on Ciabatta bread.
Mocha
Not a bad sandwich, but I must admit I still feeling out the whole mocha process down under. for example on Friday, I ordered an ‘iced macho’ and it didn’t come with ice, but more likely what seemed to be a scoop of ice cream or some other type of cold cream plopped in it. Today, the mocha seemed to be pretty light on chocolate. Of course, this maybe because in the States, many coffee places dump a lot of chocolate into theirs. The worse offender is Starbucks. Nonetheless the day continued. And yes, I have seen two Starbucks here. No comment.
Mardi Gras Sydney style and Thai massage
After a couple of hints over the last 24 hours from Lisa about her usual Thai foot massage, we decided to head up or out to Oxford road in the Darlinghurst neighborhood where it is located as well as her Bikram Yoga studio. Darlinghurst is best described as one of the artistic, funky, immigrant and gay communities. It was a decent hike from our place on Hickson Road, maybe took around 45 minutes – 10 of which was backtracking after we found we couldn’t get out of the Royal Botanic Gardens the way we wanted.
Here is a snap of me in front of Lisa’s favorite Thai foot massage place. It ran $65 AUD each for an hour which included the lower legs, neck area, and back.
Man, my belly looks to be carrying a lot of mana in this snap. Need to work on that.
Back to Thai: I’m listening to David Byrne’s song, Strange Overtones, while I write this. They lay you back in these massive brown Barco-Loungers, for lack of a better description, toss a towel over your upper thighs and another over your upper torso and one over your eyes, and then get started. Starting on the right foot and working from there. Mostly they use their hands, but occasionally use some type of unseen hard rubber blade and fork to hit pressure points on the bottom of your feet. After finishing the left leg they moved up to the neck by standing behind the Lounger. Lisa always seems to take me to places where they beat on my neck and this was no exception. At least is wasn’t the chiropractor in NOLA whose touch – my neck still hasn’t recovered from.
Being of shaved head, I always get extra attention from masseurs. I think Lisa may get a little jealous here, but I think the extra exposed skin just draws a masseur to work on it. I found the Thai foot massage to be an experience I recommend to others. I don’t think I’ll crave it late at night, but I did feel better afterwards and it most likely helped get blood moving and tension removed after the 14 hour flight here. Lisa and my favorite masseuse is still Cindy Anderson in Austin. I had her swing by the last week I was there for a massage and to pickup the massage table that we had of hers that stayed at our place. NOTE: if your masseuse allows one of her spare tables to be stored at your place, then you are living right. At one time, we saw Cindy almost weekly.
Don’t tell anyone, but I was so strung out that last week in Austin with all I was trying to do, I had tears streaming down my cheeks during Cindy’s massage. Oh damn, now I’ve blown my cover.
After the Thai experience, we where starving and the Mardi Gras parade wasn’t suppose to start for another three and a half hours, so we started wondering the street of Sydney looking for something to eat that would be good and healthy. Alas, we walked all the way to Darling Harbor on the other side of the city and had pretty mediocre Mongolian BBQ. You know the stuff, you toss a bunch of freeze dried meat in a bowl, add some veggies and noodles, slide it under a Plexiglas windows where a cook grabs it, tosses it on a large, flat, hot, steel drum, cooks it and slides it back to you in another window. Lisa told me she had take out from here and it was okay when she was living in temporary housing at Darling Harbor. The guy that owns the place used to live in New Orleans east. I can’t envision anyone doing Mongolian BBQ in NOLA. Anyways, if you want to stuff yourself with mediocre food, do the all you can eat Mongo BBQ. The shame is, I remember having really good Mongo BBQ in Sydney when I was here about 15 years ago. Oh well, onto the parade.
Not your New Orleans Mardi Gras
Mardi Gras in Sydney has nothing to do with Christ, Ash, Easter, Lent or anything like that. It is a Proud to be Gay, or Lesbian, or Cross Dresser, or Transsexual, or Abba-loving Dancing Queen, or Leather Fetishist, Dykes on bikes, or half a dozen other passions. Toss in a pinch of Halloween as well. The parade starts near Hyde Park (north) around 7:45pm and promenades Oxford street deep into the Darlinghurst neighborhood. The crowds are gay, straight, individuals, groups, costumed, couples, packs and everyone there is a good time and cheer the parade on. People were camped out on cheap $10 AUD stools by 3pm that afternoon when Lisa and I came this way for our massages. Once the parade rolls, if you are not a the barricades then you will need something to stand on to see since large floats are few and far between and marching groups are common. No beads get thrown as they would in the States. Here is a snap of Lisa and I with our backs to the parade route:
In the background of this snap you can see part of a float with exposed flesh, and I am sure that is the type of photos you really want to see. Sorry, its out of focus.
And Yes, public flogging is still preformed for apt crowds. Here is another way to watch the parade if you don’t have a stool or ladder to stand on:
Lisa has more and better pictures, but I don’t know if she will be posting them on her blog or not. NOTE: These blog things do seem to take a lot of time.
On the Subject of Cross Dressers and Drag Queens, I have a theory that I want to share with you and you can comment on it as you wish. Straight woman find good cross dressing fascinating because they fully know how hard it is to get dressed and look fabulous. And there were plenty of fabulous cross dressers out and about for the parade. I shared my theory with Lisa and she didn’t agree nor disagree with it; she said she is just attracted to beautiful people. I like that answer, but I’m not backing away from my theory until it is proven wrong.
Lisa and I eventually escaped the 350,000 estimated people there and caught a cab home. We were beat.