So, what is it that they say about good intentions? The road to....well, perhaps not applicable here, but I have had the good intentions to write about my amazing trip to Australia for like, um.........6 months now. Yeah, sorry about that delay. Good news is, I finally figured out how to link to my photos! Bad news, in this digital age, I apparently have stopped keeping track of my trips in assiduous detail in journals, so I have forgotten the names of most places now that it's been so long. Sad for me, unimportant for you.
If you just want to see some cute koalas and platypuses, just follow this link, and you don't have to listen to me go on and on about how much fun it was and how you really should go because it's super amazing, but crazy expensive, so be sure you have some good friends to stay with, cause you're gonna need it. To see all 400+ photos, you need to click on the word Australia to open the album, or to see the highlights, just click on the first photo and scroll through.
https://plus.google.com/+HeatherAskew79/posts/QL8xjF76vdV
The flight, Nov 4:
Hellish. I flew AirAsia, which saved me about $500, so that was great, but it meant I had to fly to Bangkok from Chiang Mai and sit in the freezing (I'm talking like 50 degrees F) airport, alternating napping with reading for 5 hours until I could check my bags into the next flight to Malaysia. Malaysia has an awesome airport. I would have loved to go see some of the city, since I had a 5 hour layover, but apparently it takes about an hour to get to the city from the airport in a taxi, and it was rush hour, so I figured I would play it safe and stay in the airport, eating Malaysian food and bingewatching The Knick on my iPad (side note: don't bother, it's just House with more sex and language). Also, freezing again.
Sydney Day 1, Nov 5:
Then came the long flight to Australia (8 hours, way better than the 16 hours my parents flew from Hawaii). I swear, they keep those planes freezing cold on purpose. Darn AirAsia. They provide no blanket or pillow. Oh, you can rent one for $10, but you have to return it! I was wearing four layers of clothes and my fingernails were turning blue. I swear you could see your breath on that plane. BUT! I arrived with all fingers and toes intact to lovely, beautiful, WARM Sydney, where my friend Sydney picked me up with her adorable baby boy Josiah in tow. We drove into the city to meet her husband Kevin at his job, a cafe recently opened by a friend of theirs. It has an awesome mural on the wall that I had to take several pics to fit it all in. (Shout out here to VanNessa, who donated her amazeballs camera to HUG Project, so I borrowed it for this trip to get some great shots).
So, over the years, I have discovered if I am traveling with other people and/or staying with other people, I need to manage my expectations of how much I can see while there. I used to totally try to pack in every single thing Lonely Planet said I HAD to do, but then I would inevitably be disappointed if something conspired to prevent my plans from happening. So, my goals on this trip were simple: hold a koala, see a platypus, see the Opera House, scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef, surf in Byron Bay, hang out with my friends. All were accomplished (to a degree) with varying levels of whelmingness. (Platypus was overwhelmingly cute, Great Barrier Reef was underwhelming).
Anyway! On with the story. We had a delicious lunch, then drove to their house just as it started to pour rain. Kevin stopped in front of this awesome mall and we jumped out to rush through the rain to one of the most amazing ice cream shops I've ever eaten at: Gelato Messina! I literally wanted to eat like 15 different flavors on the list, but I settled for 3. We just hung out at their house, having leftovers, meeting their various housemates and catching up on our lives over the past 4 years since we had seen each other. (Sydney moved to Australia with Kevin at the same time I moved to Thailand.)
Sydney Day 2, Nov 6:
That morning, Sydney, baby Josiah and I went out for fish and chips at a nice restaurant near their house, then went into the city to meet up with Kevin at his cafe and wandered around the city doing a bit of sightseeing.
Have I mentioned yet how expensive Australia is? And I'm not comparing it to Thailand, I'm comparing to the US. I stayed with friends or mooched off my parents the entire time I was there, and had many meals provided for me, and I STILL spent more in 2 weeks than I did in a month in the US. So, needless to say, entrance fees were a bit exorbitant at times. Luckily for me, Sydney's mom had recently come to visit and they had purchased a city pass that lasted for a year, so I was able to see the Sydney Tower for free (it's a cool building, similar to the Space Needle in Seattle) as well as go to the Wild Life Sydney Zoo at Darling Harbor. They have so many cute animals there! Tons of koalas, including babies, echidnas that walk in circles, a ginormous crocodile who killed the two females the breeding program sent him on blind dates with (just a thought, guys. Maybe DON'T leave him unsupervised with female number 2 after he already killed female number 1), and kookaburas! My quest to see a platypus in person was unfulfilled, though, no platypuses here. Also, you can't hold koalas inside the city limits of Sydney. There is some complicated reason for that, but I can't remember it now.
Facts about koalas: They are born hairless and are only about an inch long. They have to pull themselves up from the birth canal to find the pouch and hang out there for almost a year before they are ready to go out on their own. They are the only animals on earth that can eat eucalyptus because it's so poisonous, but it's also the only thing they can eat. So, when the trees are being cut down to make room for housing developments, it's killing the habitat of koalas. They also are incredibly stupid. Their brains only take up 3% of the space inside their skulls, and they are just kind of floating around in there, so they don't have the ability for higher level reasoning. Because of this, they only know how to eat the leaves off the actual branch attached to a tree. If the leaves are taken off the branch and given to the koalas, they don't understand what to do with them. Same if the branches are cut off the tree. So cute, yet so, so stupid. Finally, they are not born with the ability to process eucalyptus. How do they train their bodies to digest it, you ask? Why, by eating their mom's poo of course. In the first few months of life, that is where they get their sustenance and ability to eat the leaves. A steady diet of mom's milk and mom's poo. Kinda gross, koalas.
After the zoo, we met up with Kate, went to the tower and went to this cool place called the Arcade Strand that is like an outdoor shopping center, but it's covered with this cool curved glass ceiling. I bought some A-MAZ-ING marshmallow cloud (like marshmallows but more airy) rolled in toasted coconut at a candy store, and changed some money. Then, we walked by the water so we could see the opera house and the Sydney Harbor Bridge. I thought it would be really cool to do the bridge climb at some point, where you climb all the way to the top of the bridge, but it was 300 DOLLARS! Then, I thought it would be cool to just walk across it, but by the time we were getting close, it was getting late and cold, so we decided to just take some cool pictures of the area we were in.
Sydney Day 3, Nov 7:
Sydney, baby Josiah and I decided to have an adventure in the city, so we set out for Bondi Beach! This is a world famous beach, and I don't know if you've heard, but it's kind of a big deal. It was a beautiful, gorgeous day, which was a nice change from the previous two days that had been cold and windy. Unfortunately, our timing was a little off with the baby. He was only 3 months, and they need to eat pretty often at that age, so he wasn't too happy with how long it took us to get to the city and find parking! We had planned to do a picnic on the beach, but scrapped that and just ate our picnic supplies at the mall, then took the bus down to the beach. It turned out to be a good idea because it was the final weekend for the Bondi to Bronte Beach art walk! (For those of you who know me, you know that my favorite book of all time is Jane Eyre, written by Charlotte Bronte, so I was super stoked to see the beach named after her!)
This is an amazing yearly art sculpture walk that you do along the coastline on a path carved out of the hillside. There are some really inventive and cool sculptures and it's a gorgeous setting. By the time we were finished with the walk, Kevin was done with work, so he picked up the car from the mall garage and came to pick us up. Then, we went to meet my parents for dinner at a cool pizza restaurant called Pino's in North Sydney where we ate truffle oil pizza and drank wine. Afterwards, we got dessert at a Hungarian restaurant. Both the restaurant and dessert were called Kurtosh. Deliciousness! Wish I could have it here in Thailand.
Kevin dropped my parents at the subway station and then we headed home for my last night with them.
Sydney Day 4, Nov 8:
My last morning with the Lingberries was a great brunch shared by all their housemates and a new housemate moving in to replace someone moving out. It was delicious! A perfect morning for it, nice and warm and sunny. I was so lucky to get to spend so much time with these great people and hang out with adorable baby Josiah so much! Now, they have moved back to Austin, TX, so next time I see them will be stateside.
One of their housemates, Josh, was kind enough to drive me into the city and drop me at the subway so I could meet up with my parents at their hotel. It was a bit confusing as I had looked up bus directions on the internet, but then when I arrived at the bus stop, the number I needed to take was not listed as running from there, and since it was a weekend, there wasn't anyone at the info booth. Weird, you would think there would be MORE people not less on a weekend, but not so! Eventually, I just dragged my heavyass suitcase down to the subway and paid twice as much to take the subway to the hotel. Had to go down some stairs too, fun times! However, the walk to the hotel was actually really cool.
You have to go down this tiny side street and then down a walkway between a row of apartments on the right that are carved right out of the stone and a community rec center on the left with basketball, tennis and a playground. Then there is some cool mural art on the walls in the cul de sac that the walkway empties into. Cool little neighborhood. If you keep walking to the end of the second little street, you run right into the harbor and there's a cool strip of fancy restaurants and a dock for small sailboats.
Since I'm smart, I had brought two phones with me to Australia and got Aussie SIM cards installed, so I gave one phone to my parents at dinner and kept the other. So, when I got to the hotel, I was able to check in with them and plan to meet up later.
I love walking through cities so much more than driving. I feel like I get to know the city more intimately and see more than I would otherwise. So, I grabbed a map from the hotel and walked along the water to the amazing botanical gardens. It just so happened that they open the Government House for tours on the weekends, and there's not much I love more than doing tours on my vacations, so I got a ticket. Then, I realized what time it was and that I would miss meeting my parents for lunch if I stayed for the 2 hour tour, so I ditch. Sorry, GH, maybe next time.
I walked over to the Circular Quay (ok, does everyone but me know this is pronounced "key"? Cause, I totally looked like a moron calling it "kway" for days. College educated, folks, but can't pronounce words that I've only read but never heard spoken.) and bought some awesome handpainted boomerangs from an Aboriginal family who was selling them on the docks. It was cool, cause they were painting them right there, so I knew they were legit. Beautiful work too. I got one for me and one for Sophie as classic Aussie souvenirs.
I met up with my parents and we chatted about our plans for the rest of the day. They had bought a city walking tour package and had a few tours they were going to do for the rest of the day, I wanted to take the ferry across the Sydney Harbour to Manly Bay (apparently this is a super famous place too). It was so beautiful! Gorgeous day, the best way to see the Opera House because you go directly in front of it, and a beautiful beach too. It's an hour each way on the ferry, so I didn't actually get off and explore. I wanted to go back to Bondi Beach and do some souvenir shopping, cause I had read online that there are some really cool funky shops in that area. That may be, but I certainly could not find them. I walked all the way to the beach, since it was a beautiful day (yeah, I regretted my lack of sunscreen later, let me tell you!) and only found typical cheesy tourist trap shops. :( However, I did get to watch part of a cricket match for the first time ever. SO BORING! hahaha
I hiked back to the hotel through some cool side streets and neighborhoods and got back to the hotel just before my parents, and had time to get ready to go see a play with my mom. Putting my theater roots to use all over the world! We saw a one man avant garde show called November Spawned a Monster, featuring the music of Morrissey. I was kinda surprised my mom picked this play. Here was our conversation upon my reading about it.
Me: Huh.
Mom: What? Don't you think it looks interesting?
Me: Yeah......but, mom, do you even know who Morrissey is?
Mom: Who?
Me: Yeah, that's about right.
Anyway, it was interesting because they used a variety of visual effects, music and props, even though it was a black box, minimalist stage. Only seated about 50 people, so it was very up close and personal! I love random plays that I have never heard of. Incidentally, this one was a world premiere and went on to win an Australian Theater award of some type.
Sydney, Day 5, Nov 9
Blue Mountains Day! Yay! We took a tour up to the beautiful Blue Mountain of Australia where there are amazeballs views on an epic scale like the Grand Canyon. We first stopped at Cultural Heritage Center where we got to hear from some Aboriginal men about customs and traditions in each of their tribes. They explained the meanings of their names and what their body paint meant in their various tribes and they did a few tribal dances. It was really interesting and cool to watch.
Next, it was on to the Blue Mountains Scenic World and views aplenty. We took a sky train across a great cavern that has to be wider than the Grand Canyon, then took a train almost straight down the side of a mountain and saw where they used to mine. There is a beautiful nature trail, but too long to do in the short time we had allotted. We took the tram back to the top of the mountain and did some gift shopping before getting back on the bus. We stopped for lunch in adorable scenic Katoomba where they had a flea market and a cute tea shop with hundreds of antique tea sets! Then we continued on to Featherdale Wildlife Park where I got a bit closer to holding a koala. Here they hang out in trees and you can pet them and take pictures, but not hold them. I also got to pet a very lazy kangaroo. Then, back on the bus!
We walked through the St. Mary's church square but they were having mass, so we didn't get to see the whole thing. It's beautiful, though.
Early night, because we were off to Cairns in the morning!
Cairns, Day 6, Nov 10
SUPER airport drama. My poor parents didn't realize when they booked the tickets through a third party website that they had to pay separately for baggage. I asked them the night before if it was included and they assured me it was part of the tickets they bought. However, when we got to the airport, we discovered that was not the case. If you pre-pay, each bag is $35. We got there and ended up paying $400 for our 5 bags. PLUS they said two of the carryons that my mom had measured at home to make sure they fit were too big. SUCH A RIP OFF. We only paid $250 for our plane tickets, but $400 for the bags. But, as my dad says "Good thing I'm rich!" (Yeah, that's totally a joke, they were both teachers for 40 years. They barely even have health insurance).
But, we arrived in one piece in Cairns. So, unpleasant surprise #2: We discovered upon arrival that our much anticipated pool was out of order and that there are crocodiles in the nearest beach, so no swimming. SAD TIMES! But, the city has a city pool that is free, so we took advantage of that for a bit. We did a lot of shopping at the night bazaar there and the next day did our tour of the Great Barrier Reef. I didn't want a repeat of my dolphin trip in Hawaii (where I got so seasick that I ended up curled up in a ball on the edge of the boat watching my legs develop 2nd degree sunburns because I was so worried that if I moved I would throw up again) so in preparation, I took motion sickness medicine. I made sure to get the kind that was non-drowsy. The pharmacist said "well, this should work. Only like 3% of people still get sleepy from it." To which I replied, "I will bet you money that I am in that 3%." Man, should have followed up on that, cause I took those pills and full on PASSED OUT. In the middle of the scuba speech no less. I was practically drooling on the table as everyone else listened with rapt attention. Good thing I've done it 3 times already. Sadly, I think we missed the prime of the Reef. It's so overvisited that when I did the scuba dive, all we saw were a couple of clown fish and one Maori Wrasse fish (with the big mouths.) It was kind of a disappointment, but at least it's off the bucket list. After lunch, I went swimming instead of diving and saw one sea turtle before anyone else, so that was kind of exciting. He was just gliding through the water, not a care in the world. So small, maybe just as long as my wrist to my elbow, but cute!
Cairns, Day 7, Nov 11
The next day, we took a bus up to the beach that we could swim at inside a net, and that was fun, and decidedly UNtouristy. As in, there was like, nothing there. One restaurant, one minimart, a lot of condos. Sand. Water. And apparently, crocodiles, though we didn't try to find any. We headed back to the hotel, and in classic me fashion, I forgot the brand new Australia swim towel that I was using on the bus. That night we took another bus waaaaaay up the coast to see the Aboriginal Cultural Center, founded and run by people from local tribes. It was delicious and really fun to see the different dances. We saw how they made fire with sticks and got our faces painted with traditional marks. I even got dragged up on stage with all the other people under 40 to join one of the dances, which was more fun than embarrassing, surprisingly. At the end of the dance, we each got an Aboriginal rock which is supposed to give you good dreams (if I am remembering correctly). We had to take a very expensive taxi back to the hotel as the buses stop running after 8pm. That's gotta be lucrative during tourist season!
Brisbane, Day 8, Nov 12
More baggage drama for my parents, but I bought my ticket separately, so I was all good. They had to pay an additional chunk again. Man, I bet that 40th anniversary trip was seeming like less of a good idea with every passing minute.
Today it was goodbye to my parents. It was more emotional than when I left them in Seattle in October, because I knew I would see them in only 6 weeks. This time, I had to fight back the tears a bit, knowing it would be more than a year until we were in the same time zone again. I was looking forward to seeing my friends in Brisbane, though, and they were looking forward to New Zealand. I figured that rather than visit NZ while all my Kiwi friends were in Thailand, I'd wait and tag along one time when one of them went home for a visit. I am a firm believer in mooching off locals whenever possible. You get a much more authentic experience. ;)
So, we all flew to Brisbane together, where I got my ticket to meet Sally at the first station. The G20 conference was in town, so it was kind of exciting to be there at the same time as all these world leaders, even if that meant the city was basically shut down. We did a lot of fun stuff, and since her kids James and Adelaide are homeschooled, we got to hang out a lot.
James is a master gymnast, (like, seriously. He just got 2nd place in the all-around for his age group at state and will compete at Nationals.) so we first went to have a farewell dinner at a steakhouse for his coach who was moving gyms. I have a severe lack of beef in my diet in Thailand, so I gladly devoured a giant hamburger. It was fun to meet all these gymnast parents and think about maybe seeing their kids in the Olympics someday.
After dinner, we took a drive up to this awesome lookout at the top of the city and took some pictures. Of course, just my luck, I had left my fancy camera at the house! It was a really cool sight and the night was so clear we could see tons of stars. It's so cool to look at the night sky there, they have totally different constellations than we do in the Northern Hemisphere!
Brisbane, Day 9-14, Nov 13-17
I honestly can't remember what I did each day in Brisbane, so I'm going to just summarize.
I had a lot of fun hanging out with the Hardys and their kids and getting to go along to all their activities. I got to see both do gymnastics, dropped Adelaide at her drama rehaearsal by a cool lighthouse on a peninsula, and had delicious Iced Chocolate at the ANZAC Square City Hall fancy schmancy restaurant.
We took a day trip to Byron Bay where we played in the water, did a little shopping, ate some fish and chips and met up with my friend Heather who just moved back to Australia after spending a few years in Thailand. She was just a few months pregnant at the time and now has a baby. That's how long it has taken me to write about this trip.
Byron Bay is the easternmost point of Australia, and almost the furthest East you can go on the planet before you run into the International Date Line. There is a gorgeous lighthouse and walk out to the cliffs that we did. It was crazy windy but so beautiful. I felt like I was in Pete's Dragon (yep, dating myself with that reference) and wanted to start singing the song from when they paint the lighthouse. It was definitely a highlight of the trip.
After Byron Bay, we took the beautiful scenic route home and stopped at a cool cave with glowworms! Like, actual glow worms! I LOVED my stuffed glow worm as a kid, so I was very excited to see this place. Of course, they really only come out at night, so we didn't see any, but just knowing they were there made me happy. We also saw and heard some wild kookaburras!
We took another day trip to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, which was a blast. I finally got to check two things off my list: holding a koala and seeing a platypus. First the koala: For only $16 you can hold a koala and take pictures with it on your own camera and on theirs. My koala was named Eeyore, which is also my favorite Winnie the Pooh character. They are not nearly as soft as you would think, but they are pretty darn cute. Some would absolutely refuse to go to someone because of their scent or something. It was so funny because the trainers would hang them on your body like a Christmas ornament and they were pretty pliable for the most part, but every once in a while, when they were draping the claws over a persons' shoulders, the koala would just lean straight back like dead weight and refuse to hug the person.
There were talking Cockatiels too who spoke with an Aussie accent which I found delightful. We also got to hang out for a long time with a ton of kangaroos and feed them. There were a few joeys and one tiny joey was really funny. He had dived into his mama's pouch head first and got stuck, so just his feet were sticking out and he would sporadically kick his mom in the chest every few minutes. Finally, he wriggled around and stuck his head out between his feet so he was basically folded in half! It was so cute.
Finally, the crown jewel of the park: PLATYPUSES! Not one, but two! They are nocturnal so they keep the enclosure quite dark, but they were super active. The trainer came in just before they were fed and told us a little about them. They are very shy creatures and love the water. They are mammals that lay eggs, called monotremes. They and echidnas are the only animals that do. They also feed their babies milk by secreting it through the skin on their stomachs. So weird, right? They were so cute, I couldn't get enough!
We got to see lots of the animals get fed, like the Tasmanian Devils and wombats. Those devils are vicious. They pack a box with a chicken so the Devils have to work to get their food. They are part of a multi-park coalition to help raise the numbers of Tasmanian Devils in the wild, so they want to keep them on their toes for when they get re-released into the wild.
I got to eat meat pies, delicious local burgers, fish and chips and so much good food while I was there, it was great. I had the early morning flight down to Sydney and then back to Malaysia, Bangkok and finally home to Chiang Mai. All in all, it was an amazing trip and I'm so glad I got to go. I hope to go visit Melbourne and New Zealand next time. Enjoy the photos!
If you just want to see some cute koalas and platypuses, just follow this link, and you don't have to listen to me go on and on about how much fun it was and how you really should go because it's super amazing, but crazy expensive, so be sure you have some good friends to stay with, cause you're gonna need it. To see all 400+ photos, you need to click on the word Australia to open the album, or to see the highlights, just click on the first photo and scroll through.
https://plus.google.com/+HeatherAskew79/posts/QL8xjF76vdV
The flight, Nov 4:
Hellish. I flew AirAsia, which saved me about $500, so that was great, but it meant I had to fly to Bangkok from Chiang Mai and sit in the freezing (I'm talking like 50 degrees F) airport, alternating napping with reading for 5 hours until I could check my bags into the next flight to Malaysia. Malaysia has an awesome airport. I would have loved to go see some of the city, since I had a 5 hour layover, but apparently it takes about an hour to get to the city from the airport in a taxi, and it was rush hour, so I figured I would play it safe and stay in the airport, eating Malaysian food and bingewatching The Knick on my iPad (side note: don't bother, it's just House with more sex and language). Also, freezing again.
Sydney Day 1, Nov 5:
Then came the long flight to Australia (8 hours, way better than the 16 hours my parents flew from Hawaii). I swear, they keep those planes freezing cold on purpose. Darn AirAsia. They provide no blanket or pillow. Oh, you can rent one for $10, but you have to return it! I was wearing four layers of clothes and my fingernails were turning blue. I swear you could see your breath on that plane. BUT! I arrived with all fingers and toes intact to lovely, beautiful, WARM Sydney, where my friend Sydney picked me up with her adorable baby boy Josiah in tow. We drove into the city to meet her husband Kevin at his job, a cafe recently opened by a friend of theirs. It has an awesome mural on the wall that I had to take several pics to fit it all in. (Shout out here to VanNessa, who donated her amazeballs camera to HUG Project, so I borrowed it for this trip to get some great shots).
So, over the years, I have discovered if I am traveling with other people and/or staying with other people, I need to manage my expectations of how much I can see while there. I used to totally try to pack in every single thing Lonely Planet said I HAD to do, but then I would inevitably be disappointed if something conspired to prevent my plans from happening. So, my goals on this trip were simple: hold a koala, see a platypus, see the Opera House, scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef, surf in Byron Bay, hang out with my friends. All were accomplished (to a degree) with varying levels of whelmingness. (Platypus was overwhelmingly cute, Great Barrier Reef was underwhelming).
Anyway! On with the story. We had a delicious lunch, then drove to their house just as it started to pour rain. Kevin stopped in front of this awesome mall and we jumped out to rush through the rain to one of the most amazing ice cream shops I've ever eaten at: Gelato Messina! I literally wanted to eat like 15 different flavors on the list, but I settled for 3. We just hung out at their house, having leftovers, meeting their various housemates and catching up on our lives over the past 4 years since we had seen each other. (Sydney moved to Australia with Kevin at the same time I moved to Thailand.)
Sydney Day 2, Nov 6:
That morning, Sydney, baby Josiah and I went out for fish and chips at a nice restaurant near their house, then went into the city to meet up with Kevin at his cafe and wandered around the city doing a bit of sightseeing.
Have I mentioned yet how expensive Australia is? And I'm not comparing it to Thailand, I'm comparing to the US. I stayed with friends or mooched off my parents the entire time I was there, and had many meals provided for me, and I STILL spent more in 2 weeks than I did in a month in the US. So, needless to say, entrance fees were a bit exorbitant at times. Luckily for me, Sydney's mom had recently come to visit and they had purchased a city pass that lasted for a year, so I was able to see the Sydney Tower for free (it's a cool building, similar to the Space Needle in Seattle) as well as go to the Wild Life Sydney Zoo at Darling Harbor. They have so many cute animals there! Tons of koalas, including babies, echidnas that walk in circles, a ginormous crocodile who killed the two females the breeding program sent him on blind dates with (just a thought, guys. Maybe DON'T leave him unsupervised with female number 2 after he already killed female number 1), and kookaburas! My quest to see a platypus in person was unfulfilled, though, no platypuses here. Also, you can't hold koalas inside the city limits of Sydney. There is some complicated reason for that, but I can't remember it now.
Facts about koalas: They are born hairless and are only about an inch long. They have to pull themselves up from the birth canal to find the pouch and hang out there for almost a year before they are ready to go out on their own. They are the only animals on earth that can eat eucalyptus because it's so poisonous, but it's also the only thing they can eat. So, when the trees are being cut down to make room for housing developments, it's killing the habitat of koalas. They also are incredibly stupid. Their brains only take up 3% of the space inside their skulls, and they are just kind of floating around in there, so they don't have the ability for higher level reasoning. Because of this, they only know how to eat the leaves off the actual branch attached to a tree. If the leaves are taken off the branch and given to the koalas, they don't understand what to do with them. Same if the branches are cut off the tree. So cute, yet so, so stupid. Finally, they are not born with the ability to process eucalyptus. How do they train their bodies to digest it, you ask? Why, by eating their mom's poo of course. In the first few months of life, that is where they get their sustenance and ability to eat the leaves. A steady diet of mom's milk and mom's poo. Kinda gross, koalas.
After the zoo, we met up with Kate, went to the tower and went to this cool place called the Arcade Strand that is like an outdoor shopping center, but it's covered with this cool curved glass ceiling. I bought some A-MAZ-ING marshmallow cloud (like marshmallows but more airy) rolled in toasted coconut at a candy store, and changed some money. Then, we walked by the water so we could see the opera house and the Sydney Harbor Bridge. I thought it would be really cool to do the bridge climb at some point, where you climb all the way to the top of the bridge, but it was 300 DOLLARS! Then, I thought it would be cool to just walk across it, but by the time we were getting close, it was getting late and cold, so we decided to just take some cool pictures of the area we were in.
Sydney Day 3, Nov 7:
Sydney, baby Josiah and I decided to have an adventure in the city, so we set out for Bondi Beach! This is a world famous beach, and I don't know if you've heard, but it's kind of a big deal. It was a beautiful, gorgeous day, which was a nice change from the previous two days that had been cold and windy. Unfortunately, our timing was a little off with the baby. He was only 3 months, and they need to eat pretty often at that age, so he wasn't too happy with how long it took us to get to the city and find parking! We had planned to do a picnic on the beach, but scrapped that and just ate our picnic supplies at the mall, then took the bus down to the beach. It turned out to be a good idea because it was the final weekend for the Bondi to Bronte Beach art walk! (For those of you who know me, you know that my favorite book of all time is Jane Eyre, written by Charlotte Bronte, so I was super stoked to see the beach named after her!)
This is an amazing yearly art sculpture walk that you do along the coastline on a path carved out of the hillside. There are some really inventive and cool sculptures and it's a gorgeous setting. By the time we were finished with the walk, Kevin was done with work, so he picked up the car from the mall garage and came to pick us up. Then, we went to meet my parents for dinner at a cool pizza restaurant called Pino's in North Sydney where we ate truffle oil pizza and drank wine. Afterwards, we got dessert at a Hungarian restaurant. Both the restaurant and dessert were called Kurtosh. Deliciousness! Wish I could have it here in Thailand.
Kevin dropped my parents at the subway station and then we headed home for my last night with them.
Sydney Day 4, Nov 8:
My last morning with the Lingberries was a great brunch shared by all their housemates and a new housemate moving in to replace someone moving out. It was delicious! A perfect morning for it, nice and warm and sunny. I was so lucky to get to spend so much time with these great people and hang out with adorable baby Josiah so much! Now, they have moved back to Austin, TX, so next time I see them will be stateside.
One of their housemates, Josh, was kind enough to drive me into the city and drop me at the subway so I could meet up with my parents at their hotel. It was a bit confusing as I had looked up bus directions on the internet, but then when I arrived at the bus stop, the number I needed to take was not listed as running from there, and since it was a weekend, there wasn't anyone at the info booth. Weird, you would think there would be MORE people not less on a weekend, but not so! Eventually, I just dragged my heavyass suitcase down to the subway and paid twice as much to take the subway to the hotel. Had to go down some stairs too, fun times! However, the walk to the hotel was actually really cool.
You have to go down this tiny side street and then down a walkway between a row of apartments on the right that are carved right out of the stone and a community rec center on the left with basketball, tennis and a playground. Then there is some cool mural art on the walls in the cul de sac that the walkway empties into. Cool little neighborhood. If you keep walking to the end of the second little street, you run right into the harbor and there's a cool strip of fancy restaurants and a dock for small sailboats.
Since I'm smart, I had brought two phones with me to Australia and got Aussie SIM cards installed, so I gave one phone to my parents at dinner and kept the other. So, when I got to the hotel, I was able to check in with them and plan to meet up later.
I love walking through cities so much more than driving. I feel like I get to know the city more intimately and see more than I would otherwise. So, I grabbed a map from the hotel and walked along the water to the amazing botanical gardens. It just so happened that they open the Government House for tours on the weekends, and there's not much I love more than doing tours on my vacations, so I got a ticket. Then, I realized what time it was and that I would miss meeting my parents for lunch if I stayed for the 2 hour tour, so I ditch. Sorry, GH, maybe next time.
I walked over to the Circular Quay (ok, does everyone but me know this is pronounced "key"? Cause, I totally looked like a moron calling it "kway" for days. College educated, folks, but can't pronounce words that I've only read but never heard spoken.) and bought some awesome handpainted boomerangs from an Aboriginal family who was selling them on the docks. It was cool, cause they were painting them right there, so I knew they were legit. Beautiful work too. I got one for me and one for Sophie as classic Aussie souvenirs.
I met up with my parents and we chatted about our plans for the rest of the day. They had bought a city walking tour package and had a few tours they were going to do for the rest of the day, I wanted to take the ferry across the Sydney Harbour to Manly Bay (apparently this is a super famous place too). It was so beautiful! Gorgeous day, the best way to see the Opera House because you go directly in front of it, and a beautiful beach too. It's an hour each way on the ferry, so I didn't actually get off and explore. I wanted to go back to Bondi Beach and do some souvenir shopping, cause I had read online that there are some really cool funky shops in that area. That may be, but I certainly could not find them. I walked all the way to the beach, since it was a beautiful day (yeah, I regretted my lack of sunscreen later, let me tell you!) and only found typical cheesy tourist trap shops. :( However, I did get to watch part of a cricket match for the first time ever. SO BORING! hahaha
I hiked back to the hotel through some cool side streets and neighborhoods and got back to the hotel just before my parents, and had time to get ready to go see a play with my mom. Putting my theater roots to use all over the world! We saw a one man avant garde show called November Spawned a Monster, featuring the music of Morrissey. I was kinda surprised my mom picked this play. Here was our conversation upon my reading about it.
Me: Huh.
Mom: What? Don't you think it looks interesting?
Me: Yeah......but, mom, do you even know who Morrissey is?
Mom: Who?
Me: Yeah, that's about right.
Anyway, it was interesting because they used a variety of visual effects, music and props, even though it was a black box, minimalist stage. Only seated about 50 people, so it was very up close and personal! I love random plays that I have never heard of. Incidentally, this one was a world premiere and went on to win an Australian Theater award of some type.
Sydney, Day 5, Nov 9
Blue Mountains Day! Yay! We took a tour up to the beautiful Blue Mountain of Australia where there are amazeballs views on an epic scale like the Grand Canyon. We first stopped at Cultural Heritage Center where we got to hear from some Aboriginal men about customs and traditions in each of their tribes. They explained the meanings of their names and what their body paint meant in their various tribes and they did a few tribal dances. It was really interesting and cool to watch.
Next, it was on to the Blue Mountains Scenic World and views aplenty. We took a sky train across a great cavern that has to be wider than the Grand Canyon, then took a train almost straight down the side of a mountain and saw where they used to mine. There is a beautiful nature trail, but too long to do in the short time we had allotted. We took the tram back to the top of the mountain and did some gift shopping before getting back on the bus. We stopped for lunch in adorable scenic Katoomba where they had a flea market and a cute tea shop with hundreds of antique tea sets! Then we continued on to Featherdale Wildlife Park where I got a bit closer to holding a koala. Here they hang out in trees and you can pet them and take pictures, but not hold them. I also got to pet a very lazy kangaroo. Then, back on the bus!
We walked through the St. Mary's church square but they were having mass, so we didn't get to see the whole thing. It's beautiful, though.
Early night, because we were off to Cairns in the morning!
Cairns, Day 6, Nov 10
SUPER airport drama. My poor parents didn't realize when they booked the tickets through a third party website that they had to pay separately for baggage. I asked them the night before if it was included and they assured me it was part of the tickets they bought. However, when we got to the airport, we discovered that was not the case. If you pre-pay, each bag is $35. We got there and ended up paying $400 for our 5 bags. PLUS they said two of the carryons that my mom had measured at home to make sure they fit were too big. SUCH A RIP OFF. We only paid $250 for our plane tickets, but $400 for the bags. But, as my dad says "Good thing I'm rich!" (Yeah, that's totally a joke, they were both teachers for 40 years. They barely even have health insurance).
But, we arrived in one piece in Cairns. So, unpleasant surprise #2: We discovered upon arrival that our much anticipated pool was out of order and that there are crocodiles in the nearest beach, so no swimming. SAD TIMES! But, the city has a city pool that is free, so we took advantage of that for a bit. We did a lot of shopping at the night bazaar there and the next day did our tour of the Great Barrier Reef. I didn't want a repeat of my dolphin trip in Hawaii (where I got so seasick that I ended up curled up in a ball on the edge of the boat watching my legs develop 2nd degree sunburns because I was so worried that if I moved I would throw up again) so in preparation, I took motion sickness medicine. I made sure to get the kind that was non-drowsy. The pharmacist said "well, this should work. Only like 3% of people still get sleepy from it." To which I replied, "I will bet you money that I am in that 3%." Man, should have followed up on that, cause I took those pills and full on PASSED OUT. In the middle of the scuba speech no less. I was practically drooling on the table as everyone else listened with rapt attention. Good thing I've done it 3 times already. Sadly, I think we missed the prime of the Reef. It's so overvisited that when I did the scuba dive, all we saw were a couple of clown fish and one Maori Wrasse fish (with the big mouths.) It was kind of a disappointment, but at least it's off the bucket list. After lunch, I went swimming instead of diving and saw one sea turtle before anyone else, so that was kind of exciting. He was just gliding through the water, not a care in the world. So small, maybe just as long as my wrist to my elbow, but cute!
Cairns, Day 7, Nov 11
The next day, we took a bus up to the beach that we could swim at inside a net, and that was fun, and decidedly UNtouristy. As in, there was like, nothing there. One restaurant, one minimart, a lot of condos. Sand. Water. And apparently, crocodiles, though we didn't try to find any. We headed back to the hotel, and in classic me fashion, I forgot the brand new Australia swim towel that I was using on the bus. That night we took another bus waaaaaay up the coast to see the Aboriginal Cultural Center, founded and run by people from local tribes. It was delicious and really fun to see the different dances. We saw how they made fire with sticks and got our faces painted with traditional marks. I even got dragged up on stage with all the other people under 40 to join one of the dances, which was more fun than embarrassing, surprisingly. At the end of the dance, we each got an Aboriginal rock which is supposed to give you good dreams (if I am remembering correctly). We had to take a very expensive taxi back to the hotel as the buses stop running after 8pm. That's gotta be lucrative during tourist season!
Brisbane, Day 8, Nov 12
More baggage drama for my parents, but I bought my ticket separately, so I was all good. They had to pay an additional chunk again. Man, I bet that 40th anniversary trip was seeming like less of a good idea with every passing minute.
Today it was goodbye to my parents. It was more emotional than when I left them in Seattle in October, because I knew I would see them in only 6 weeks. This time, I had to fight back the tears a bit, knowing it would be more than a year until we were in the same time zone again. I was looking forward to seeing my friends in Brisbane, though, and they were looking forward to New Zealand. I figured that rather than visit NZ while all my Kiwi friends were in Thailand, I'd wait and tag along one time when one of them went home for a visit. I am a firm believer in mooching off locals whenever possible. You get a much more authentic experience. ;)
So, we all flew to Brisbane together, where I got my ticket to meet Sally at the first station. The G20 conference was in town, so it was kind of exciting to be there at the same time as all these world leaders, even if that meant the city was basically shut down. We did a lot of fun stuff, and since her kids James and Adelaide are homeschooled, we got to hang out a lot.
James is a master gymnast, (like, seriously. He just got 2nd place in the all-around for his age group at state and will compete at Nationals.) so we first went to have a farewell dinner at a steakhouse for his coach who was moving gyms. I have a severe lack of beef in my diet in Thailand, so I gladly devoured a giant hamburger. It was fun to meet all these gymnast parents and think about maybe seeing their kids in the Olympics someday.
After dinner, we took a drive up to this awesome lookout at the top of the city and took some pictures. Of course, just my luck, I had left my fancy camera at the house! It was a really cool sight and the night was so clear we could see tons of stars. It's so cool to look at the night sky there, they have totally different constellations than we do in the Northern Hemisphere!
Brisbane, Day 9-14, Nov 13-17
I honestly can't remember what I did each day in Brisbane, so I'm going to just summarize.
I had a lot of fun hanging out with the Hardys and their kids and getting to go along to all their activities. I got to see both do gymnastics, dropped Adelaide at her drama rehaearsal by a cool lighthouse on a peninsula, and had delicious Iced Chocolate at the ANZAC Square City Hall fancy schmancy restaurant.
We took a day trip to Byron Bay where we played in the water, did a little shopping, ate some fish and chips and met up with my friend Heather who just moved back to Australia after spending a few years in Thailand. She was just a few months pregnant at the time and now has a baby. That's how long it has taken me to write about this trip.
Byron Bay is the easternmost point of Australia, and almost the furthest East you can go on the planet before you run into the International Date Line. There is a gorgeous lighthouse and walk out to the cliffs that we did. It was crazy windy but so beautiful. I felt like I was in Pete's Dragon (yep, dating myself with that reference) and wanted to start singing the song from when they paint the lighthouse. It was definitely a highlight of the trip.
After Byron Bay, we took the beautiful scenic route home and stopped at a cool cave with glowworms! Like, actual glow worms! I LOVED my stuffed glow worm as a kid, so I was very excited to see this place. Of course, they really only come out at night, so we didn't see any, but just knowing they were there made me happy. We also saw and heard some wild kookaburras!
We took another day trip to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, which was a blast. I finally got to check two things off my list: holding a koala and seeing a platypus. First the koala: For only $16 you can hold a koala and take pictures with it on your own camera and on theirs. My koala was named Eeyore, which is also my favorite Winnie the Pooh character. They are not nearly as soft as you would think, but they are pretty darn cute. Some would absolutely refuse to go to someone because of their scent or something. It was so funny because the trainers would hang them on your body like a Christmas ornament and they were pretty pliable for the most part, but every once in a while, when they were draping the claws over a persons' shoulders, the koala would just lean straight back like dead weight and refuse to hug the person.
There were talking Cockatiels too who spoke with an Aussie accent which I found delightful. We also got to hang out for a long time with a ton of kangaroos and feed them. There were a few joeys and one tiny joey was really funny. He had dived into his mama's pouch head first and got stuck, so just his feet were sticking out and he would sporadically kick his mom in the chest every few minutes. Finally, he wriggled around and stuck his head out between his feet so he was basically folded in half! It was so cute.
Finally, the crown jewel of the park: PLATYPUSES! Not one, but two! They are nocturnal so they keep the enclosure quite dark, but they were super active. The trainer came in just before they were fed and told us a little about them. They are very shy creatures and love the water. They are mammals that lay eggs, called monotremes. They and echidnas are the only animals that do. They also feed their babies milk by secreting it through the skin on their stomachs. So weird, right? They were so cute, I couldn't get enough!
We got to see lots of the animals get fed, like the Tasmanian Devils and wombats. Those devils are vicious. They pack a box with a chicken so the Devils have to work to get their food. They are part of a multi-park coalition to help raise the numbers of Tasmanian Devils in the wild, so they want to keep them on their toes for when they get re-released into the wild.
I got to eat meat pies, delicious local burgers, fish and chips and so much good food while I was there, it was great. I had the early morning flight down to Sydney and then back to Malaysia, Bangkok and finally home to Chiang Mai. All in all, it was an amazing trip and I'm so glad I got to go. I hope to go visit Melbourne and New Zealand next time. Enjoy the photos!
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