Standards of living

While I was in Asia Orit, a friend of mine, asked me how do I handle the degradation of the standards of living I was used to. It came to my mind again while traveling in Australia. While I was in Asia I used to have a room all to myself, sometimes sharing it with someone else, with en suite bathroom. I always ate out, whether in restaurants or on the street, whether noodles, rice dishes, organic salads or croissants.

In Australia, a Western country, prices are Western too. Therefore I sleep in rooms of four, six or eight people. My earplugs have finally began proving their worth. The bathroom is en suite some times but it can also be on the other end of a corridor. The quality and prices vary, but they are not necessarily related. I mostly go to YHA hostels. They are a bit more expensive and tend to be quieter, in contrast to hostels defining themselves as "party" hostels. When ordering a package from a travel agency on the East coast, you get vouchers that give discounts for several hostels on the East coast. I use the vouchers to know where not to stay for the night and, on the other hand, where to go out to.

I have a green bag full of groceries I fill up in the big supermarkets, like Woolworths or Coles. For breakfast I eat muesli with yogurt (actually quite good, might turn out to be my new breakfast). At evening I "cook" an instant pasta meal from a bag, improved with some canned "goods" (that's how my cousin, who traveled up the East coast too, calls them) like tuna (in flavors!) or salmon. For lunch I go for the cheapest food I can find. It usually consists of either fish and chips or a burger. I started going for the "works" or the "lot" burger, consisting of a tiny burger topped with lettuce, tomato, beetroot, fried egg, bacon, cheese and pineapple. Unfortunately, in Australia the cheapest food is junk food (nothing like Humus or Falafel). You can get a huge box of chocolate chip cookies for two dollars! and for the same price, half a banana (exaggerated a bit...). The basic menu of take away store will consist of fish, chips and burgers.

There is a positive side of course. Traveling is much easier. Everything is in English and almost everything is online. There are information centers and loads of brochures. Sometimes the huge selection is actually confusing and that's where talking to other travelers helps sorting things out a bit.

And one last complaint, why the Internet tends to be really slow in a lot of places? Why it was easier to burn DVDs in Asia than in Australia??