SO here we are, the bay that is Byron, me likey very much :P

It wasn't a long journey from Spot X, a few hours maybe, but because we were all hungover and tired and jazzed from surfing, the trip seemed fairly damn enjoyable J from my point of view anyway! That and I finally acquired the immense talent of tuning out Gregs voice…incredibly useful indeed. We were staying at a place called holiday village which sounded nice enough, and the 11 of us were in three rooms, fairly close to each other which was great J the only issue I had with holiday village was that they didn't give you bedding. I mean there was a bed and a pillow but no sheet! No duvet! No blanket even! I ended up hiring a set with anna and splitting it between the 2 of us - I blatantly got the better deal by taking the thick wooly blanket over the cotton sheet - it's a lot colder at night than you think you know… :P anyway, all settled in and unpacked we decided to venture out for nourishment, in the form of pizza. We settled on a large between 5 of us, seemed reasonable at the time anyway, however after we ordered the second large pizza we started to feel slightly piggish :P dinner was appropriately silly with lots of talk about penis's (as you do) until however Maddy made it very clear that there would be no penis talk at the table please! So we settled for talk of scabs instead…trust me it made sense at the time!

The evening came around pretty quick and soon enough we were digging in to another 4 boxes of goon of all different varieties and I was introducing the group to the international drinking rules that I am so fond of as well as the traditional games of thumbs and sharks. This inevitably led to people shouting shark more often than first expected and thus the rest of the people staying at the hostel looking at the group of us very strangely as we continued to jump up onto the benches for no apparent reason (but in my defense there was a shark there for gods sake!) when we were sufficiently plastered we stumbled across the road into cheeky monkeys (the local watering hole for backpackers) and the real fun began ;) I might like to add at this point that Liam, in all his trilby wearing glory, did NOT even make it out. He vommed. Big time. And hunky john had to put him to bed. Awwwwwwww :P (these youngen's just cant keep up with us pro's!)

The rest of the night is slightly blurred (cant think why) but what I do remember is that we spent a large portion of the evening dancing on top of tables to the chilli peppers, sophie got slightly friendly with some ozzy surfer boys, the gavlar robot dance from gavin and stacey was reinvented in true oz style and finally, to top it all off, I decided that the couple dancing and making out behind me were entitled to know the risks of what they were getting into. So I shouted CLAMIDIA at the top of my voice. It was a perfectly rational decision, I was being a responsible adult. And then I laughed and ran away :P the evening was topped off by me, maddy and will undertaking some very important spy work. Basically we decided to leave so I was about to tell sophie, who was talking to gav at the time (keep up) so I went over to her and literally JUST as I was about to speak I noticed gav's eyes were shut and they were about to smooch! AWKWARD!! I didn't know what to do! So I ran away again and hid behind the bar with maddy who was laughing her arse off at me! Then will joined us and basically we just watched them smooch for a while. Pervy huh :P. then finally when they broke I ran over to them will all my might and told her very breathlessly and giggly that we were leaving! At which point we all ran away and I skipped across the road back to holiday village much to will annoyance at me not checking the deserted road for cars first :P the evening finally ended with Will disbelieving my ability to get up stairs and giving me a fireman's lift all the way to the room - how nice he is :P to which we discovered Robin and Anna 'cuddling' in the dark deserted room….totally innocent of course….hehe what scandal! And so soon into the trip, I must admit I quite enjoy being the observer to the gossip as opposed to the cause for once!

The next morning I was on a mission. A hungover, painful, tired, very important mission. A mission of which I required Maddy's expert help. One that would take me the majority of the day and eventually cost me $100 to complete. I had to buy a bikini. Yes parents I forsook food to buy myself a $100 billabong bikini but its really all your faults, its your genes which caused my non-ability to find well fitting bikini bottoms so I wish for no judgment please at the obscene amount of money needed to rectify the sad DNA induced situation :P and don't you dare blame the cake for my ass being too big for tie side bikini bottoms…no no no that wont do :P. anyway, my bikini is beautiful and I love it so. Its my friend because it hides my bum so there.

So as I was saying the mission was set but before we went in search of the elusive treasure we had breakfast. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches made secretly in our 'no food or drink allowed' room with Will's penknife. And by penknife I actually mean a pen with an end shaped like a knife. Quite ingenious really! By early afternoon we had all made it to the beach, some of us surfed and some of us frolicked in the water running away from waves like little girls, but generally we all enjoyed the absolutely wonderful lovely blazing sun that Byron Bay had to offer. To be honest, my long shopping expedition had only heightened my liking of this place, I could very easily see myself staying here a while and I know I say that with a lot of places but this really felt quite homely to me. The sun, the beach, all the shops I need, an amazing chilled atmosphere - it was really brilliant. I would definitely recommend Byron to absolutely anyone, I have a feeling its going to be one of my favorite oz places and one I will definitely go back to!

The evening was rather eventful to say the least. We all went back to Cheeky Monkeys, but this time with the important knowledge that they offered $5 meals - $5 massive humungous fish and cheeseburger and pasta meals. Yes sir that is indeed good s***! Unfortunately once your in cheeky monkeys its very hard to leave, not because they trap you or anything, just because the drinks are cheap and the music is drunk and when you are travelling with a bunch of 18/19 year old boys its very hard to fight the urge to get massively drunk every night. So we ended up staying, and drinking, and dancing, and drinking more, and then the games began… there was a Wii baseball competition going on and surf lessons were the prize - well obviously being a pro I didn't need them but after watching the boys embarrass themselves by drawing with the other team 0-0 numerous times I just had to step in ;) well actually will dragged me in but who cares because I scored a home run baby!! Oh yeaaahhhh put the boys to shame! Even boys I didn't know were shamed! It was immense. Me and will ended up winning and I kindly donated my lessons to him and liam in return for the eternal adoration, respect and servitude that my beating them at sports had caused :P

The next portion of the evening consisted of a wet t-shirt contest. And no this isn't just something that we decided to do in the middle of a club, it was an official $300 prize competition consisting of numerous rounds of girls from all countries gyrating on stage whilst getting water poured over them and eventually taking their tops off for more votes (funnily enough the ones who didn't were voted off?!) I have to tell you I have never seen something so funny! The boys were like kids in a candy shop! Especially james who got thoroughly over excited and was screaming BOOBIES!!! At the top of his voice at every opportunity! Thanks to all the excitement the boys were slightly, how do I put this, over-stimulated for the rest of the night and insisted on torturing me in full view of everyone else - they not only lifted me up numerous times, liam continually pulled my head under his t-shirt and danced, james attempted and succeeded in nipple twisting me at least 5 times and then they all surrounded me and just jumped and screamed and poked and tickled and generally tortured me! By the end of it I was so jumpy I was hiding behind gav and Elliot! It was def a good night though, and I was to be fair laughing my ass off the entire time because I had never seen or been part of something so ridiculous but I think for a while the other girls were generally worried for my safety! (saying that so was I at one point!)

Our final day in Byron Bay began much like the previous, hung over and heading to the beach. What a hard life we have ;). Well it was all going swimmingly until I realized the boys were, as a group, digging a hole. A hole big enough for say a 5ft 4 girl. A hole designed specifically for the only 5ft 4 girl who wouldn't absolutely kill them if they tried to put her in it. I attempted to run. It didn't work. The first time they tried to put me in, they were very logical about it to be fair, they played rock paper scissor for each girl on the beach (me, maddy, anna and sophie) and very seriously debated on the merits of each of us until they finally rested on sophie. Bad choice boys - she was ready pounce and they knew it, as they did with maddy, and eventually anna. This led them to me, and strangely enough they were all smiling at the prospect of burying me alive. How nice. I struggled - it was no good, I screamed - no one cared, and eventually after each of them had an arm or a leg and was carrying me to the sandy grave, I submitted. However, what they didn't count on was my amazing acting ability!! And my stealth ninja like reaction times! Basically I faked that I was really scared and they believed me!! Well, Will didn't, he was suspicious from the start, but the rest of them pulled me out within the second and apologized profusely as they let me stumble back to my sunny spot with the girls! That is until I mumbled under my breath 'I cant believe that worked' at which point they all looked up like a load of bloody meercats seeing some poor little bug to eat! Needless to say I ran, VERY fast to which Will reacted with cat like timing (you liking all my animal references here?!) and literally chased me across the beach in and out of other people, and I was very speedy for a while, I even dodged him a couple of times…until he full on rugby tackled me to the ground with very apparent enjoyment! (it was actually quite a good thing since I was bloody out of breath by that point but still, he rugby tackled a frikin girl!) within 5 minutes I was buried up to my neck with liam still holding my arms down incase I tried anything - to be fair they only wanted a picture and they did go to a lot of effort for it. But once again, for the umpteenth time on this trip I had sand in places I should never have ever had sand let alone have it there again…

Our evening was a bittersweet one since liam and john were leaving us here, they had decided to stay in Byron a bit longer and so goodbyes were the order of the day. But we had a few hours left so what did we do? Drink goon of course!! That is after we had another immense $2 dollar meal in cheeky monkeys! We even got a group of randoms in on the shark game, except that they didn't really understand the concept and when we were singing 'down it down it' they thought we were shouting 'garlic garlic' which inevitably led to them just shouting garlic and expecting everyone to jump up out of their seats and down their drinks…it didn't work. Cheeky monkeys was having a flag night which basically meant people took their tops off and had a flag painting onto their body - it surprised me how many women were waiting for an excuse to get their boobies out, even for the sake of geography! Obviously liam and james took part and were thoroughly content with the half naked women coming over to them all night to have pictures with them…well who wouldn't be really?! Other events of the night…hmmm oh yeah our dear little William had a little smooch with an 'unknown' at which me and maddy laughed our heads off and tried to embarrass him as much as possible including putting his hand on her bum whilst they were mid-smooch - we are such good friends :P needless to say he actually ran away from her and hid behind me, claiming he had been mouth raped and was very upset about it even though he was happy enough to endure it for the good 5/6 minutes we were dancing next to him! :P oh and I made a new friend! He was called phillipe the Frenchman and we made a bet that men did infact have some sense of pride when it comes to girls whereas I disagreed :P and to prove this he claimed if I called a man over to me he would not come because they would totally dislocate his balls and he would have to be mocked. Well, I was never one to walk away from a challenge, so, I saw hunky john who happened to be talking to someone just across the bar from me, and at a simple flick of finger he actually jumped over the bar to get to me with a massive grin on his face…case closed phillipe and in the words of a tiny little Chinese man living in vegas 'suck my balls muthafukkaaaaaaa' (oh parents don't read that bit :P). the evening was done by about 3am and we said our goodbyes to hunky john, liam was currently indisposed with a flag embossed girl in his room ;). The final thoughts of the evening, and the ones I leave you with until my next entry, are courtesy of jane, who has a certain wisdom about her if she has enough drinkys…

"Don't you think it's weird that you can't tickle yourself, but you can masturbate?"

xxx