Striptease

Deluxe Budget Hotel; The place I stayed at on my arrival in Sydney! I had booked this temporary accommodation over the internet and at a time when I had absolutely no idea about Sydney. My flight arrived at Sydney around 05:30 in the morning. The laws here don’t allow you to bring medicines, plant material, pets, dried food, spices or any organic material. I still remember the tension gripping me while standing in the queue for Immigration Check. I was so tensed, oh god! Constantly thinking of all the reasons they could ship me back for. I was carrying medicines without prescriptions, I had two packets of Maggi noodles, had aerosol cans in my luggage…..

Proceeding in the queue they gave me a form to fill up in which I was required to declare any such contents of my luggage. The form had a small line at the bottom which read “Declare it or dump it!”, and then I saw the large disposal bin in front of me. I chose not to declare the medicines but declared the aerosols and Maggi, but I didn’t dump the medicines anyways. So finally I’m at the X-ray machine where this young beautiful girl asked me for my form. She gave it a quick glance while I was trying to read her expressions. I think there was a drop of sweat on my forehead, but I’m not too sure about that. Finally she raised her head and I tried hard to not let her read my mind. And then her lips spread into a wide smile. She opened my bag and asked me to show her around in it as to where the food item which I have declared is. I took out two big packets of Maggi noodles, and handed it over to her. Her hands turned into some sort of a crushing machine and she probed around on the packets. Oh yes, they did allow me to bring them through.

I stepped out of the airport at around 06:15 and the first thing I do is dig my pockets for the mobile phone and called up my dad. It rang and rang and no one picked up. I kept calling again and again and I finally I heard a sleepy voice on the other end. Suddenly it dawned upon me that in India it is still around 1’oclock in the night.

From the airport I took a cab and arrived at my Deluxe budget accommodation. It was located in Kingscross. I knew nothing of the area, absolutely nothing. The first thing I noticed on arrival, were the large number of sex stores the place had. Every third shop was a striptease joint. Ahh I thought, Australians really do have a crazy sex drive to have such a large number of sex shops. At that point I presumed that whole of Sydney must be like this. Anyways, I learnt a few hours later that Kingscross was Sydney’s official red light area. No wonder the accommodation here was cheap!

I was staying in a dorm and my dorm had 7 girls and 3 guys including me. It didn’t take long to be friends with them all. I really enjoyed my stay with them all and later prolonged my stay there despite having found a permanent accommodation elsewhere. Everything was fine until one night a middle aged Vietnamese man checked in. he seemed around 40-45. His English wasn’t too good and he never really stuck around. But he definitely made his presence felt at night. His snores didn’t let us sleep that night. It was so loud, so, so loud. How bad could my luck be? He was directly above my bunker and I was the closest to him. The worst thing always happens to me. I don’t know why!

The first night, no one did anything. The next night was my last at the place before I moved into my permanent accommodation. So just to give me a send off they all planned a bye-bye party. We got drinks and stuff and the Vietnamese guy hadn’t come back from his exploration of Sydney. Half way into the party he arrived. All the while we had been making fun of him and now all of a sudden we were all shut. No one had anything to say as he roamed around changing clothes and humming some Vietnamese song. Then someone broke the silence and we all eagerly jumped into a conversation trying to pretend that we hadn’t noticed him. After a while the Viet went and sat on his bad still humming a tune. We all looked at each other and laughed, just the thought that he will be snoring again tonight! And then he got up and walked up to us. I don’t know how he started a conversation but we all just pretended to be nice to him. Somewhere in the conversation one of us said something about the striptease joints down below. The Viet’s eyes opened wide, so wide that he didn’t seem chinki anymore.

“STRIPTEASE! Oh yea, oh yea!”

Pointing at one of the well endowed girls ... “You striping?”

And then quickly he rolled over to his bed and came up with a camera and started inserting batteries into it. And we were all shocked or rather amused by his enthusiasm for a striptease. At the same time trying to suppress our laughter for how he misunderstood us!

No! We didn’t have a striptease. Of course we didn’t! but the Viet was not the only guy disappointed on that. I saw the conversation heading towards an uncomfortable territory. To break it off, I asked him something.

“Will you be singing tonight?”

And we all broke into laughter again except him. So we had to clarify to him that I was talking about his SNORRRR!

He didn’t hang around any longer after that. Before leaving he asked one final time “Are you guys having a striptease or not?” and we all replied “NO!”

Later in the night I got too drunk and was probably the last to goto bed. I could hear him snoring above me, loud and clear. Somehow the alcohol helped me fall asleep. Sometime later my bed started shaking and felt like an earthquake. Still trying to open my dizzy eyes I looked around. Finally when my eyes zoomed into focus, the Danish girl was standing next to my bed. Clad in almost nothing. Oh good lord, I said to my self. I thought I must be dreaming. Shut my eyes and lay back on my pillow. But now I started hearing her voice. She was shaking the bed to wake him up, the Viet. Finally managing it, she shouted on him and asked him to stop snoring.

Q: Did he stop snoring?
A: Well, ehh for around a minute or two he did and then he was singing in all his glory again.

Q: The morale of the story?
A: I got my striptease :)

Q: So?
A: Ohh nothing much about it! :)