Victoria – Nanaimo

Yes, I’m on the move again. This time north and about half-way up the east coast of Vancouver Island.

After a very scrappy night’s sleep with the steam hammer from “Lucky” (not for me) nightclub seeming particularly nauseating and four arseholes who returned to the dorm at about 4:00 and proceeded to continue their conversation, with no reduction in volume, whilst opening & shutting their lockers multiple times (no they weren’t Japanese) and then the “early shift” alarms going off between 5:30 and 7:30 I decided: Bollocks to this I will join them! So I got up, showered and got all my bags packed arranged & organised ready to go. I will not be sad to leave this particular hostel as it is definitely the worst I’ve stayed in so far. Having done that I went and had breakfast.

After breakfast I collected my bags, completed my check out and headed for the bus depot.

Having purchased my ticket I had just under an hour to kill, so I labelled my luggage – as was requested by the big sign on the wall and read my book. The bus arrived and, having witnessed my bag being loaded onto the same bus I was getting on, I got on and settled down for a two hour journey. I read for part of the way and slept for the remainder. We arrived in Nanaimo at 14:10 and at the Bus Depot 95% of the bus emptied out. Having reclaimed my bag it was a case of “saddle up and ride out”. I had a little sketch map on the leaflet I had picked up detailing the Painted Turtle Guesthouse (the hostel I was booked into) and so headed up the steep slope out of the Bus Depot. Having got to the top of the slope I stopped at the pedestrian crossing to get my bearings. Believing I was about to head off in the right direction I was about to set off when this beautiful Asian lady asked me if I knew which way was downtown. I replied quite honestly (I hadn’t got a clue) whereupon she flourished a map. As it was much more detailed than my little effort I donned the glasses and was handed the map. (Oh dear, now one had to prove one’s “manly prowess” at map reading.) I correctly identified the downtown area and noticed a map point circled on the map. Referencing it to the index I noticed it was the Painted Turtle. I also noticed I was going to head in the right direction although Bastion Street wasn’t shown on the map! (Blob 27 – it was a black blob with 27 in the middle of it just seemed to be hanging somewhere in downtown Nanaimo!) “Ah, are you heading for the hostel – the Painted Turtle – on Bastion Street?” I asked. “Yes!” she replied with a most winning smile. (Alert! Male ego overload: correct map reading and smile from beautiful woman – all I needed now was a huge 16 and a pack of Marlboro Klan fags!) “You are heading to the same place as me.” I said, “If you like we can get lost together”. “Oh, I don’t want to get lost” she said – joke failed, ego reset to normal, so I just said “It is this way” very confidently. That seemed to do the trick “Okay” she said and we set off up the road. “You must be from England – because you are speaking British English.” she said – score 0-1. “You are quite right,” I said “and where are you from?” “Where do you think I’m from?” (Aagh, the dreaded question. What do I say?) – score 0-2. Cringing inwardly I ventured “Japan?” and held my breath. “No, well, yes because I did leave from Tokyo, but I come from Korea.” – score -10-2. I apologised for the insult and contemplated biting out my own tongue. “Don’t worry, it’s alright” she said, “I’m not insulted” and gave me another of those winning smiles. (Bloody hell, where did I get those 10 lead ingots in my backpack, and why did I pack them?) Believing there is no difference between knees and waist when one is in the shit I just carried on – “so what brings you to Nanaimo?” Kim, that was her name, was travelling around Vancouver Island – she had come from Victoria on the same bus - before heading over to Vancouver (tomorrow) and then back home. She asked me what I was doing in Nanaimo, so I told her. She was astonished by my world travel plans and kept saying “wow” a lot – which was also very fetching. She was most impressed that I was taking a whole year out to travel the world.

Not wishing to notch up another -10 on the score front I accosted a lady in the street and asked her where Bastion Street was – “the next left at the lights”, so we were right on course and I allowed another 2psi into the ego balloon.

After we got checked in I went out for the usual orientation walk – having procured two maps from the front desk – and Kim headed for the kitchen to prepare food.

It would be wrong to say that Nanaimo is a one horse town because I didn’t see any. It is more like a 4000 boat town and lots of men with very small penises. I doubt if one would see more Dodge Rams at a Dodge Owners Club convention. Coupled with a lack of penis size is obviously a need to waste money. Petrol, or gas (which is wrong because they do have real gas here – i.e. LPG), is $1.05 a litre and these fuel hungry large pieces of shit must use 3 litres as soon as the starter motor spins. There are a few hills here but I still can’t see the need for these overblown mobile tin mines. The other thing that I have concluded is that these 16s are horrendously unreliable. I reached this conclusion from the fact that the majority of commercial premises here are motor vehicle repairers, garages, service centres, parts centres, and other establishments providing things to fix or make motor vehicles work. It’s a bit like being in “Children of the Corn” but re-titled “Children of the Combine Harvester (or something equally as big)” – these people were obviously damaged before they took the lead out of petrol.

Having made a circuit of the downtown area and being saved from carbon dioxide poisoning by the brisk breeze from the harbour, I scored a coffee and returned to the hostel.

I settled down in the lounge to write this up and savour my coffee (not as good as Serious Coffee) when Kim came in and asked me about my walk. I pointed out on the map where I had walked and she was most impressed that I had done all that, and got a coffee, in just over an hour. I told her the town was not very big, so off she went to explore it.

After growing tired of typing – it seems that’s all I do on my laptop – I decided to have a goodnight smoke & go to bed. I withdrew to the great outdoors and there met my roommate (note the singular tense) who I had exchanged “Hi” with when I grabbed my jacket to go out and he was sorting out some of his things.

We got chatting and it turned out that Andrew, yes we had exchanged names, was on the return leg of his round the world trip.

He had made the east-west trip starting with Thailand, Cambodia & Vietnam. I extracted information from him on how good it was – amazing (as I expected) and he thoroughly recommended doing it if I got the chance (further plots hatching). He was going to be here for another month and then head to Banff for a snowboarding holiday before returning home to Montrose in Scotland. I gave him my impressions of Banff and assured him he would like it – I don’t think I’ll be proved wrong.
We returned to our dorm – wonderful as we are the only occupants of a four bed dorm. Did I miss the other forty people? Did I bollocks! We settled into our bunks and read for a while then mutually agreed a switch off of the light. Andrew had warned me he would be up early tomorrow as he was working. I told him as long as he didn’t have multiple-personality disorder and want to vocalise forty of them – no problem.

I settled down for a lovely sleep without a repetitive thud or the prospect of multiple alarms starting at 5:00. Oh joy!