Australia Day- Thong challenge at Sorrento Beach, Perth

I think i am slipping in my motivation lately, I guess it can be seen in my Blogging frequency.

Last Monday was Australia Day, and I heard from a person I met at the blogger's meet that there was going to be a Havaiana Thong Challenge.

When I first heard this, i thought it was a G-string challenge, as i have never heard the expression "Thong" used for anything else. However, to my disappointment, Australian call their jandals/flip-flops/slippers thongs. In fact, I was told that the Thong was as much an Australian icon as the kangaroo or the colour green and yellow.. or gold, as the Australian calls it.

Anyway, Tom and Ashleigh, my collegues came along to join in the challenge. The event was called a challenge because it was a world record attempt for the longest line of inflatable airbeds, and the airbeds being inflatable jandals. We got there early because Tom and Ash missed out on the online registration and they didn't want to miss out on getting an inflatable jandal each. When we got there about 10am, there were already a line at the registration tent.

I'd pre-registered online so I just had to sign in and collect my giant inflatable jandal

The scene was amazing as there were quite a few people walking around with these giant inflatable jandals.

Like any big events, there were a few tents giving away freebies, such as this tent, giving away free Nestea, a concoction of tea and lemon, and tea with peaches and mangoes.

Close by, the local radio station, Nova was there providing some commentation and humor for the day, unfortunately, I find them more annoying than entertaining as the DJ was really obnoxious and was being a smart @ss all day.

Once registration was all done, we joined the cool crowd in carrying these giant jandals. All of them are the right hand side.

For $30aud, we each got a giant inflatable jandal, a small key chain, a small sample package of sunscreen and a postcard. Just as a comparison, I'd placed a small jandal on the side of the big inflatable jandal for size comparison.

We found a good spot at the beach and Tom got quite a few free odd tasting Nestea. I had half of this before going for one of the challenges and got a bit ill.

The first challenge was to run with the inflatable jandal and paddle on the inflatable jandal through the surf via a predetermined route. I was not last and i was not the first, so it was ok.

As the day drew closer to the actual record breaking attempt, there were more and more people a the beach, it was a good sight.

At about noon, everyone lined up at the beach and we awaited instruction as to what to do in order to break to world record. It took them awhile to organize the people, but it was ok because everyone was excited

We all got into the water and held onto a rope connected through a series of buoys. I am not sure exactly how many people there were, but i am sure there's enough to scare away any sharks. We were in the water hanging onto the rope for about 30 mins before they took 3 photos for the record attempt. The temperature that day was about 38C and despite the sunscreen that i'd slapped on, my back got a bit burnt and am currently peeling as i type this blog.

Apparently we broke the record that day, but was later beaten by the crowd at Bondi Beach a few hours later.

All in all, it was a great day.