Hello from the Land Not Down Under
Oct. 10th, 2016 07:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrSo things have NOT BEEN IDEAL but are looking up. Here's some rambly thoughts, with a lot of stuff about issues relating to my illnesses cos I know that's something I like to hear about from travelers with similar issues. I may make a shorter, pithier post later with the more interesting details.
So! Short summary of the trip:
Planes from Perth to Melbourne (2.5 hour trip starting at midnight with a 4 hour layover) to LA (14 hour trip), then the Disneyland Express bus to the Howard Johnson hotel with a power chair hired from One Stop Mobility.
I organised a manual wheelchair for every airport through the airline (Qantas), which was a VERY GOOD IDEA. Perth wasn't so bad, but the Melbourne domestic to international transfer and LAX were SOOOOO much "walking". I still had to walk a little in Melbourne from the shuttle to the international airport for disabled people to the wheelchair stand maybe 20m away, and Cam had to push me around all the Australian airports which he found tiring (apparently you can get staff to push you if you have no other option). We were given a staff member push me in LAX who was also a useful source of directions and reassurance that while customs was slow, it wasn't usually THIS slow (it was the agent's first day, apparently, and he sped up as he went). The Perth chair was ok but a bit narrow, I fit comfortably but wouldn't have wanted to be any wider. The Melbourne chair was TERRIBLE to push apparently. The LA chair was nice.
The downside was that we lost the exit row (extra leg room) seating Cam had organised since you have to be "able bodied", and while I fit their criteria, using a wheelchair automatically disqualifies you. After a long conversation with the clerk in Perth we managed to get separate seats with exit row seating for Cam but not me. So we sat separately on the flight to Melbourne, luckily the guy next to Cam moved and we got to sit next to each other asides from take off and landing on the flight to the US. When I went back to my assigned seat for landing the guy next to me had this OH NO YOU CAME BACK look over the pile of crap he'd covered the seats with haha.
Sitting for 14 hours was NOT FUN, especially since the exit row seas are narrower to fit the tray tables. On the plus side they had a wide range of movies and I got to watch Finding Dory, which was fun. Mostly I played Stardew Valley and slept.
I could not eat anything qantas serves except the "fruit platter", which was a few slices of orange and the WORLDS WORST STRAWBERRIES on the flight to Melbourne. The flight to LA had a wider variety of less terrible fruit but I'm still glad I packed food and also had a hearty steak and eggs at P J O'Brian's, which opened at 7am.
We had to wait a while for the hourly Disneyland Express, which takes an hour to get to Anaheim, and the aircon didn't work, so we were dehydrated and warm by the time we got to the hotel. Watching LA got by was cool though. The climate is much like Perth so the plants are disconcertingly similar, lots of palm trees, hibiscus, boganvillia and even eucalypts. It's the same "city on flat land edged by hills" geology except the flat area/city and "hills" (eg mountains) are wayyyy bigger. Architecture is kind of similar but with more church spires and water towers.
The hotel did not have our room ready for hours and is overall not fantastic in terms of location or amenities. There's no hotel restaurant, they advertise a local place as affiliated but it's half a block down and across the very large road, with lots of guests from multiple hotels causing long lines. The restaurant, Mimi's Cafe, is also not very good and the one thing I can theoretically eat made me queasy. There is a hotel shop but it's all snacks I can't eat. So we spent a few hours feeling crappy sitting on the hotel couch in stinky clothes.
And the wheelchair place lost our booking and then when we did get the chair it was just. So bad. Low on battery, with a center of turning near the front so I kept hitting things with my back when I turned, and jerking in random directions that made me feel like it was going to send me into traffic. I tried going to the nearest supermarket a few kilometers away and it ran out of batteries leaving me crying for half an hour while it charged in a service station shop, wondering if I'd make it back. On the plus side the attendant didn't bug me for sitting there and I managed to find a small container of fruit I could eat. I managed to make it back to the hotel, down to one red blinking bar of battery, told a half asleep Cam what had happened then fell asleep myself.
When I woke up at 9pm I felt better and Cam had replaced the chair and then we went to the supermarket and got a pile of food. I fell back asleep and don't feel so bad right now! Am resting up then hope to make it to Disneyland today for lunch.
The bread here is all super sweet but seems less prone to containing diary and soy so I have a wider range of options. Had a Sara Lee raisin and cinnamon bagel with almond butter for breakfast ^_^ Also some "Rice Krispies" which though, like the Aussie Rice Bubbles, are a puffed rice breakfast from Kellogs that goes "Snap Krackle Pop", taste subtly different, and are flatter. Grapes taste the same but right now the grapes you get in Perth are from California so that's not surprising! The non dairy milks are full of vegetable gums which make me nauseous which is annoying. May got to water which is just sad.
Two good things about this hotel are the free wifi and microwave. Mmm boiled frozen peas. Also it has a small attached water park which is possibly why half the guests seem to be Australian haha. Meanwhile Cam and I have no plans to swim.
My regular Bankwest card works fine here though I'm probably getting fees. I also have to remind myself to increase distances and prices by a factor of 1.5. Fahrenheit is beyond me entirely haha.
Cam got us some AT&T sims and I can play Pokemon (also make smss etc ;)) but it's the same crappy rattatas etc as at home. I was hoping for something exotic! Speaking of which I hope to see a squirrel while I'm here, and I will coo over it and the locals will think "lol tourist".
Growing up on US media I tend to associate American accents with fiction. This is not helped here by many of the people we meet (largely service workers and tourists thus far) not having a typical "American" accent from TV, instead having what I guess is a more Mexican accent. There's a lot more Asian and Latino people than on tv (QUELLE SURPRISE) and people speaking Spanish to each other. So TV-ish US accents on tvs and loudspeakers feel like some alien scifi thing impinging on the lives of the real people. Other tourists do sometimes have that kind of accent but they're hardly less foreign feeling, and most have slightly different accents again. No offense to people with TV-ish American accents, I do realise you are actually real people :) Be interesting to see if I get more feel for Mexican vs Latinx Californian vs African American Californian vs White Californian vs Midwestern Tourist vs Broadcast Voice etc accents by the end of the trip.
Hmm ok will stop there and get a painkiller for my headache. On the plus side other than that I don't feel too bad physically and managed to sleep from 10pm to 5am which isn't TOO far off a reasonable time. Kind of want to go back to sleep but I probably shouldn't let myself.
So! Short summary of the trip:
Planes from Perth to Melbourne (2.5 hour trip starting at midnight with a 4 hour layover) to LA (14 hour trip), then the Disneyland Express bus to the Howard Johnson hotel with a power chair hired from One Stop Mobility.
I organised a manual wheelchair for every airport through the airline (Qantas), which was a VERY GOOD IDEA. Perth wasn't so bad, but the Melbourne domestic to international transfer and LAX were SOOOOO much "walking". I still had to walk a little in Melbourne from the shuttle to the international airport for disabled people to the wheelchair stand maybe 20m away, and Cam had to push me around all the Australian airports which he found tiring (apparently you can get staff to push you if you have no other option). We were given a staff member push me in LAX who was also a useful source of directions and reassurance that while customs was slow, it wasn't usually THIS slow (it was the agent's first day, apparently, and he sped up as he went). The Perth chair was ok but a bit narrow, I fit comfortably but wouldn't have wanted to be any wider. The Melbourne chair was TERRIBLE to push apparently. The LA chair was nice.
The downside was that we lost the exit row (extra leg room) seating Cam had organised since you have to be "able bodied", and while I fit their criteria, using a wheelchair automatically disqualifies you. After a long conversation with the clerk in Perth we managed to get separate seats with exit row seating for Cam but not me. So we sat separately on the flight to Melbourne, luckily the guy next to Cam moved and we got to sit next to each other asides from take off and landing on the flight to the US. When I went back to my assigned seat for landing the guy next to me had this OH NO YOU CAME BACK look over the pile of crap he'd covered the seats with haha.
Sitting for 14 hours was NOT FUN, especially since the exit row seas are narrower to fit the tray tables. On the plus side they had a wide range of movies and I got to watch Finding Dory, which was fun. Mostly I played Stardew Valley and slept.
I could not eat anything qantas serves except the "fruit platter", which was a few slices of orange and the WORLDS WORST STRAWBERRIES on the flight to Melbourne. The flight to LA had a wider variety of less terrible fruit but I'm still glad I packed food and also had a hearty steak and eggs at P J O'Brian's, which opened at 7am.
We had to wait a while for the hourly Disneyland Express, which takes an hour to get to Anaheim, and the aircon didn't work, so we were dehydrated and warm by the time we got to the hotel. Watching LA got by was cool though. The climate is much like Perth so the plants are disconcertingly similar, lots of palm trees, hibiscus, boganvillia and even eucalypts. It's the same "city on flat land edged by hills" geology except the flat area/city and "hills" (eg mountains) are wayyyy bigger. Architecture is kind of similar but with more church spires and water towers.
The hotel did not have our room ready for hours and is overall not fantastic in terms of location or amenities. There's no hotel restaurant, they advertise a local place as affiliated but it's half a block down and across the very large road, with lots of guests from multiple hotels causing long lines. The restaurant, Mimi's Cafe, is also not very good and the one thing I can theoretically eat made me queasy. There is a hotel shop but it's all snacks I can't eat. So we spent a few hours feeling crappy sitting on the hotel couch in stinky clothes.
And the wheelchair place lost our booking and then when we did get the chair it was just. So bad. Low on battery, with a center of turning near the front so I kept hitting things with my back when I turned, and jerking in random directions that made me feel like it was going to send me into traffic. I tried going to the nearest supermarket a few kilometers away and it ran out of batteries leaving me crying for half an hour while it charged in a service station shop, wondering if I'd make it back. On the plus side the attendant didn't bug me for sitting there and I managed to find a small container of fruit I could eat. I managed to make it back to the hotel, down to one red blinking bar of battery, told a half asleep Cam what had happened then fell asleep myself.
When I woke up at 9pm I felt better and Cam had replaced the chair and then we went to the supermarket and got a pile of food. I fell back asleep and don't feel so bad right now! Am resting up then hope to make it to Disneyland today for lunch.
The bread here is all super sweet but seems less prone to containing diary and soy so I have a wider range of options. Had a Sara Lee raisin and cinnamon bagel with almond butter for breakfast ^_^ Also some "Rice Krispies" which though, like the Aussie Rice Bubbles, are a puffed rice breakfast from Kellogs that goes "Snap Krackle Pop", taste subtly different, and are flatter. Grapes taste the same but right now the grapes you get in Perth are from California so that's not surprising! The non dairy milks are full of vegetable gums which make me nauseous which is annoying. May got to water which is just sad.
Two good things about this hotel are the free wifi and microwave. Mmm boiled frozen peas. Also it has a small attached water park which is possibly why half the guests seem to be Australian haha. Meanwhile Cam and I have no plans to swim.
My regular Bankwest card works fine here though I'm probably getting fees. I also have to remind myself to increase distances and prices by a factor of 1.5. Fahrenheit is beyond me entirely haha.
Cam got us some AT&T sims and I can play Pokemon (also make smss etc ;)) but it's the same crappy rattatas etc as at home. I was hoping for something exotic! Speaking of which I hope to see a squirrel while I'm here, and I will coo over it and the locals will think "lol tourist".
Growing up on US media I tend to associate American accents with fiction. This is not helped here by many of the people we meet (largely service workers and tourists thus far) not having a typical "American" accent from TV, instead having what I guess is a more Mexican accent. There's a lot more Asian and Latino people than on tv (QUELLE SURPRISE) and people speaking Spanish to each other. So TV-ish US accents on tvs and loudspeakers feel like some alien scifi thing impinging on the lives of the real people. Other tourists do sometimes have that kind of accent but they're hardly less foreign feeling, and most have slightly different accents again. No offense to people with TV-ish American accents, I do realise you are actually real people :) Be interesting to see if I get more feel for Mexican vs Latinx Californian vs African American Californian vs White Californian vs Midwestern Tourist vs Broadcast Voice etc accents by the end of the trip.
Hmm ok will stop there and get a painkiller for my headache. On the plus side other than that I don't feel too bad physically and managed to sleep from 10pm to 5am which isn't TOO far off a reasonable time. Kind of want to go back to sleep but I probably shouldn't let myself.
