Albert Park Backpackers, Auckland, NZ

I’ve mentioned once or twice how bad my sense of direction is, but in Taupo it’s completely nonexistent. I got lost so many times before finally finding my hostel, the Rainbow Lodge Backpackers Retreat. Yes, it’s really called that.

There’s not a whole lot to do in Taupo except see the lake. I saw the lake.



The real entertainment, however, were my roommates. I managed to find myself in a dorm with four men, who, I was warned, had the tendency to be a little wild. I took my chances. They were nice enough, and long-termers who managed to NOT sprawl over everything.



In every few hostels there’s the problem of long-termers. They’re people who have found a job in the area, aren’t planning to stay too long, but have been there long enough that their belongings have oozed onto every chair (if there’s a chair) and into every crevice, and over every bunk-rung. It makes it hard to figure out which bed is actually free, and where one’s own, neatly (ahem) packed belongings might find a spare square foot or three.

Point being, they’re deeply annoying.

At any rate, these chaps were fine, compared to some I’ve seen. I was taking a nap one afternoon when one of them came in, and since he was cute we chatted a while, and he regaled me with story after story about various times and places that he’d gotten drunk/stoned on herbal pills.

There are, mostly in the cities, shops selling party pills, these herbal (“herbal”?) pills that are supposed to be illegal already, I believe, but from what I hear they’re having some trouble with it. So if you want to have a “herbal high,” whatever that means, now’s the time, apparently.

So it was boring.



One of the others was showing off an… extremely intimate series of text messages that he was getting from a woman that he’d, ah, befriended a few days prior. Since English wasn’t his first language, and since he wasn’t experienced in writing such explicit texts (and apparently had no imagination) he decided to have one of our other roommates compose a message, and add to the bottom “I had someone else write this.”

I told him that was a terrible idea, and he didn’t get why, so I explained that she just might not appreciate the fact that he was showing her texts to everyone, he said, “Oh. I didn’t think of that.”

I honestly wish I was kidding.

In the meantime I learned how to snap beer bottle caps so they fly across the room, got nicknamed “America,” and met a Canadian who actually knew what contra dancing is (it wasn’t one of my roommates). Since, as I’ve heard, more people collect stamps than contra dance, this is saying something.