Dublin and The Canary Islands

We made our first stop in Dublin, Ireland for just one night. We managed to have a good time, despite being very tired from the trip.

REVIEW: JetBlue and Aer Lingus
We made it to Ireland via JetBlue and Aer Lingus. We were impressed with JetBlue airlines. They got to JFK from Buffalo quickly and efficiently. We waited all of five minutes to get our bag as it came right off the carousel. The only complaint we have is their check in process. We thought that using the check in machines located in front of the counter would be quicker. However, their “touch’ screens are extremely difficult to touch. It shouldn’t take THAT much effort to type something in. And once we got up to the counter to check our bag, the woman printed us off our “official” boarding pass. Apparently, if you use the pass printed off the machine, you will have to show ID at the gate. A waste of paper and effort if you ask me. I wish we could say that we were impressed with Aer Lingus, but not so much. It seems that it is more of a discount airline than a regular scheduled airline. It was actually worse than flying a charter airline – Air Transat is actually better. First, there was confusion on whether or not we would be getting a “free” meal on our way to Dublin. For a flight that left at 6:00pm, I figured that we’d get the meal after we reached altitude. I was wrong. After reading in the book that we may have to buy our meal, I wasn’t thrilled as I hadn’t really had much to eat all day. We did end up getting fed, but it was a bit later and there was no brekkie in the morning.

To get on with our Dublin experience, we didn’t have much time so we took the bus and walked around the city as much as we could. We hit the Guinness museum and found out more than we ever wanted to know about the brewing process. I actually got to start my own brew! While the building we were in is not the main brewing factory anymore, they still brew some beer. Eight times a day, they start a brew and have one of the visitors push a button to physically start the brew. I volunteered and was counted down by the control room, which is in a building across the street. I was told that in 9 to 10 days, I’ll be getting an email as to where my brew will be going. It could end up anywhere in the world that Guinness ships to, but not Canada as they brew their own under license, as we were informed. I’ll also find out if mine is regular or extra strong. The last part of the tour includes a fantastic view of the city and a free pint of Guinness from the “gravity bar.” This was nice as the sun was setting and there was a 360 degree view of Dublin.
The next day we were off to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. Since this is winter, the weather in the Canaries isn’t that great. It’s certainly better than freezing temps and snow, but for visiting a group of islands, you’d hope the weather would be at least warm enough to enjoy the beach. The numerous European tourists had no problem jumping in the ocean or a cold swimming pool. We, on the other hand, never even made it into our bathing suits and I had a jacket on for most of the time. We still managed to do and see a lot. On arrival to Lanzarote, it was so covered with clouds that the pilot couldn’t even see the runway! We ended up having to make a second attempt at landing. This was NOT fun. I don’t like flying and when the plane all of a sudden starts to climb when it is supposed to be landing, it’s not fun. It is not fun while the pilot comes on and informs you that she can’t see the runway either. Thankfully, we made it in one piece. On the next attempt, the clouds had cleared a bit and the runway was clear.
The island of Lanzarote is the 4th largest Canary Island. We ended up driving around most of the island during our 3 day stay. And I also learned how to drive a standard car here. It’s always more difficult and more expensive to rent an automatic car in places where standard is the norm. Mark had taken a lesson prior to the trip and he did great. I’ll never make another comment about his inability to drive a stick. By the time we left the Canaries, he had no problems. I, on the other hand, did ok, but still need some practice before I can drive in high traffic and high pressure situations.
Most of the Canary Islands are made up of very touristy resort areas. This is to the Brits and Germans what Mexico and Cuba are to Canadians – cheap vacation spots. There’s not much authentic Canarian cuisine to be had – it’s mostly British or Irish pub food or Italian cuisine.

REVIEW: Lanzarote Attractions
In Lanzarote, there are a couple of sites to visit and we just about hit them all. We drove all over the island visiting small towns and sites along the way. The Cueva de los Verdes is, hands down, the worst thing we have ever paid money for…ever. It’s a cave created by a volcanic eruption. We paid 16 Euros to go with a group of about 60 people and walk through a 1 kilometer cave. You have to be accompanied by a guide even though the cave is completely lit and even has very annoying music pumped in throughout. It was not worth an hour or more of our time and definitely not worth 16 Euros! Our other main excursion was to the Parque Nacional de Timanfaya. This is in a region that was completely destroyed by volcanic eruptions in the 1700’s. There are hikes available, but we went for the regular bus tour. This was better than the Cueva de los Verdes, but still it’s quite exploited for the purpose of tourism. Again, the only way to see it is either by walking or through a bus tour – the majority chooses the bus option. If you go during a busy time, you’ll likely end up waiting a few minutes to catch a bus. The landscape is quite dramatic and this is something worth seeing, especially if you’ve never seen any volcanic craters before. The audio tour that is provided in Spanish, English and German was good, but I could have done without the dramatic Star Wars music at certain points. There’s also a restaurant on the top serving meat barbequed using the heat from the earth below. If you’re lucky and get lost on the way…signage in the Canaries isn’t that great and for such a big attraction, it had very little signs pointing us in the right way…you’ll come across more land that was devastated by the eruptions. You can pull over to the side of the road and explore some yourself. We found a path leading out to a mountain. We aren’t sure if they really allow you to hike by yourself, we did and so did others, but do respect the landscape. Lichens grow all over the volcanic rock and something that took many years to create can take just a few minutes to destroy by stepping on it.

From Lanzarote we took the 30 minute ferry to Corralejo on the island of Fuerteventura. Even though Fuerteventura is a larger island, we still managed to see quite a bit. One of the main attractions is the Parque Natural de Corralejo. The park is home to the impressive sand dunes. You pretty much just drive on the road and pull off when you want to get out and take a look. From there, you wander through the dunes by yourself.
We went from the top of the island to the bottom. Along the cost, there are some beach resorts. The main ones are in the south of the island on the Peninsula Jandia. This is a HUGE resort area. Tons of people, especially Germans. In fact, most signs were in German and Spanish. The beach was nice, although much too cold for us to go in. We enjoyed a walk down the beach, until we encountered a group playing bocce ball – naked. In that area of the beach, most people were completely naked. I’ve now seen more than I ever needed to see.

REVIEW: Binter Airlines
From Fuerteventura we flew to Tenerife on Binter Airlines. It’s an airline of the Canaries and was actually not bad. I’m always a bit nervous flying some random airline and flying in a small prop plane, but this wasn’t too bad. The plane can hold about 50 people or more, so it’s not that small and for what we paid, it wasn’t a bad deal. We got some water, a granola bar and candy. This is way more than we got on our Iberia flights…more about that later. In another note, Binter airlines seems to be connected to the car rental agency Cabrera Medina or Cicar. This agency is all over the island and is the rental company we used. They provided good maps and usually good service.

Tenerife seems to be the most populated of the Canary Islands. In Santa Cruz de Tenerife, it is mostly locals, very few tourists. The tourists flock to the resorts in the south. I enjoyed Tenerife and Santa Cruz the most. We visited some of the tourist resort areas and we also headed to the big attraction – Parque Nacional de Teide. Teide is the highest peak in Spain at 3700 meters. It’s very impressive and we were disappointed that we couldn’t go to the peak. Actually, we couldn’t even get close. It was closed due to snow on the peak. There’s a cable car that will take you within 200 meters of the peak. At that point, if you have a permit, you can climb to the top. Apparently, even though it’s only 200 meters, it takes about 20 minutes. We also weren’t able to see the top as it was covered in clouds. It was freezing up there as well. Close to zero Celsius. On the way back, we were driving through the clouds as they had descended lower as the weather got worse. It’s pretty scary to be driving on a mountain roads with cliffs on one side and not be able to see a thing!

REVIEW: Iberia Airlines
Our original tickets did not allow for a stopover in Dublin or in Madrid. However, we knew we wanted to stop in those places. Changing the flight out of Dublin was no problem. Changing the flight into Madrid turned into a nightmare. On arrival at the airport in Fuerteventura, we went to the Iberia reservations desk. It’s always a pain to make phone calls in foreign places and we thought we would just do this from the airport. Well, it only takes one person to misunderstand and mess things up and we found that one person. He was very nice and it’s not his fault, but it really was a pain for us. He cancelled us off our flight from Tenerife to Madrid and couldn’t book us on a new one because of a technicality. This meant, we had to call American Airlines in the U.S. to fix it. Except that they wouldn’t fix it either as the guy at Iberia had done something so that only someone from Iberia could put us on a new flight…but no one at Iberia would do this because of a stupid mistake that AA made when originally writing the tickets. This cost us mucho Euros and time to fix. We were finally put on a flight to Madrid and got our stopover. And here goes my review of Iberia – they are, by far, the WORST airline we have flown! How they can be considered a scheduled airline is beyond me as we’ve gotten more “frills” from a no-frills airline than we did with Iberia. We arrive at the airport in Tenerife to a ticket agent who had no idea what she was doing. She was hesitant to put us on the plane. After that, she couldn’t figure out where our bags should go to – Madrid or Cairo. Even though, the computer clearly showed that we were ONLY going to Madrid that day. Next, the flight is delayed for an unexpected amount of time. Because the room at the gates in the Tenerife airport is non-existent, most people scatter. We are able to board earlier than expected, but not many announcements are made. Hence, people take their time getting on the place. Once again, we lose our spot to take off and have to wait. At this point, it’s well past lunch and Mark and I haven’t eaten anything. Hoping that we will at least get a snack on the plane and something to drink. We get nothing! If you wanted a drink of anything at all, you had to pay. As well as for snacks. Not impressed at all. There’s absolutely no entertainment either. Our flight to Cairo from Madrid was awful as well. The leg room was equivalent to a charter airline and again, no entertainment besides the horrible elevator music they piped in that only had about 6 songs on rotation. The planes were old – or at least looked it as they were filthy. Especially the plane from Madrid to Cairo. It was horribly filthy.
After being delayed, we didn’t arrive in Madrid until the evening and we were tired and hungry. We walked around a bit, but I didn’t get to see much. The next day was spent organizing our hotel for Cairo. I got to visit the Prado museum, but after that it was time to get to the airport for our flight to Egypt.

Oh, the places I've been and the food I've eaten!

We are now in final countdown mode. As of today we only have 2 more weeks left! I have mixed feelings about returning. There were times on this trip that I thought the day to go home would never come (such as after the bed bug incident in Perth). This has been an incredible trip and one that has made me re-evaluate what's important in my life. This will probably be my final blog. I hope that you've enjoyed reading it! Even though I managed to write quite a bit, it's still difficult to express just what it has meant to see places that I've been interested in for a while, some since I was a little girl. Not everything has sunk in yet and I'm still processing what happened weeks ago. Now onto some final thoughts about Guangzhou...

I've tried a lot of interesting food on this trip and the other night is just one example. Mark's cousins had invited us out to dinner to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival or in Cantonese "Dune um zi." They invited us over for lunch to eat the traditional food of the festival which is sticky rice wrapped in a bamboo leaf and then steamed. Inside the rice can be many different fillings, such as beans, peanuts and meat. In Cantonese, these are called "jong." But this was not the most interesting food of the day, in fact, Mark's parents often send us jong and we eat it regularly for dimsum.

For dinner, we were taken to a restaurant that specializes in emu meat. Yep, emu. You know, the Australian relative of the ostrich. It used to be popular for farm them for meat in Australia and New Zealand, but it fell out of favour a while back when there were too many people trying to get rich off of emu farming. I wasn't really sure what to expect from emu meat and was pleasantly surprised. And it's a good thing that I liked it because every single dish we had contained emu meat. I figured that we would try one dish and then the rest would be beef or chicken. We had emu hot pot and emu stirfry. I guess emu is really the speciality of that restaurant. Apparently, during the day you can see live emus across the pond. I'm kinda glad that we couldn't see them though. I don't even like to see the lobsters or crabs that we eat when we order them back home.

Australians joke that they are the only country that eats its coat of arms. (Their coat of arms contains both the kangaroo and the emu. I guess that I should be an honorary Aussie since I've eaten both now. I think I forgot to mention that we tried kangaroo meat while in Australia. It was in Darwin, our last stop. We found a small, cheap kangaroo fillet in the grocery store and decided to go for it. Ordering it from a restaurant was much too expensive, especially if we didn't end up enjoying it. It's supposed to be eaten quite raw and there is hardly any fat in it and it's actually a purplish colour. But we cooked it up really well - I'm not really a fan of raw meat. We ended up not liking it very much. It's hard to say if we just didn't like the meat or if it was the way we prepared it. Plus, it's really weird to be feeding a kangaroo one day and then have one feeding you the next. I just couldn't get over it.

Here are some other insights that I haven't previously shared (or I don't think I have). It seems that urban Asian women are obsessed with whitening themselves. I'm not joking - we saw this in the cities of Thailand, Malaysia and now in Hong Kong and China. Women go to great lengths to keep their skin from getting dark. Most carry umbrellas during the day to protect themselves from the sun rather than the rain. There are a plethora of whitening creams as well. I'm thinking that Michael Jackson must import them all from here. And it's not because they are afraid to get skin cancer - if that were the case sun screen would be the answer. These are creams that make you whiter. It's hard to believe, but I actually have more colour than a lot of the people here. Can you believe that?! Who would have thought that I'd stick out because I was darker than the Asians rather than whiter. Well, actually I still stick and people still know that I'm white. I just find it so ironic that North Americans spend so much time and money making themselves darker, while the Asians I've come across spend money to make themselves whiter. Truly an example of how the grass is always greener on the other side.

Another thing in Guangzhou that reminds me very much of Russia is how you need to be very careful when crossing the street. Public buses come seemingly out of no where and will have no problem running you down if you are in their way. And don't think that just because you have the signal to walk that means you're safe. Oh no, people making a left turn don't care and feel that they, not the pedestrians, have the right of way. It actually requires quite a bit of attention to cross the street.

One last note, it's becoming more and more apparent that the people of Guangzhou do not have much contact with western foreigners. I regularly get stared at on the subway, in local restaurants...actually anywhere. Anyone who knows a bit of English will say hello and then giggle when I respond...sometimes I respond in Cantonese just to throw them off. I didn't think I'd be such a big attraction here. It didn't really happen anywhere else in Asia and I didn't expect it here. Mark's relatives have also told him that they have never met a foreigner who was so easy to get along with as I seem to be. I found that really shocking. Apparently there aren't many foreigners in Guangzhou who are representing themselves or their countries very well.

Well, I guess that's all. Take care and I'll see everyone soon!

Guangzhou, China

We arrived in China a little over a week ago and are still trying to orient ourselves to this huge city. Our guidebook, which is a couple of years old, puts the population at 10 million. Mark was last here 13 years ago and he was very surprised at how much this place has changed. For example, the train station we arrived at is now a bustling section of the city with expensive hotels and shopping centres. 13 years ago it was a dirt road with a hut. The school he attended years ago only had a dirt road around it, now there's highways all around it. It's quite evident that China's economy, at least in southen China, is thriving. Guangzhou and the Guangdong province are know to be quite wealthy. It seems that people in the cities now have some discretionary income. In fact, there's something else different now than from years ago. Before, movement between cities was restricted, but that has since changed and people are free to move where they'd like. What this has meant for Guangzhou is an influx of people coming from Mandarin speaking areas. Cantonese is the main spoken language in the Guangdong province. Mandarin speakers often times get the low paying service positions, such as working the reception counter in hotels, waitresses and so forth. What this means for us is that we have a very difficult time communicating with people in the hotels and restaurants. Mark knows only a little Mandarin and can only read a little bit as well.

Some things about China remind me very much of my experiences in Russia. There is so much beaurocracy and officialness attached to everything from checking into a hotel to changing money and opening a bank account. And yes, we actually opened a bank account. Believe it or not, that is actually the easiest way for us to access money while here. Mark has an ATM card and everything. There is only 1 Bank of China in Guangzhou that exchanges traveller's cheques and it's not exactly convienent to go to often. On top of that, the bank is always full of people making the lines long. There was a ton of paper work to first open the account and then cash the travellers cheques. Mark thinks that this may come in handy in the future if the Chinese government floats the yuan. Right now the yuan is attached to the US dollar, but if it floats it could do very well.

We spent the first week in an area of the city near Bei Jing Road. This is a very large commercial area. There are lots of shopping malls, restaurants, clothing stores and about 3 McDonalds within close proximity of each other. Clothing seems to be quite popular here. In Thailand, we encountered about 50 mobile stores whereever we turned, but you don't find that in China. Perhaps, because it's government controlled. You also don't find many internet cafes either, but the library is a cheap and reliable place to go for interent. This area was ok, but there was no way we could afford to stay because the food in this area was much too expensive. It seems that trendy foreign cuisine restaurants are quite popular. Western, Thai, Korean and Vietnamese seem to be big, but this also means a higher price for average food. These were pretty much the only option in the Bei Jing Road area. However, we did eat at a very popular place that specialized in Cheung Fun. It's usually a dim sum dish of rice noodles stuffed with beef or various other foods, such as shrimp, pork or veggies.

We've now moved to a much more residential area and are finding the choice of eateries to be much more to our liking and budget. Yesterday the total bill for lunch was a little over a dollar and we both got 2 soup noodles and pop.

So far we've met quite a few of Mark's relatives. His Mom's older sister and her 2 children and their families live here. His Mom's younger brother is also coming in from the village later this week to see us. His Dad's "younger brother" and his 2 children and their families are also here. We all went out to dinner the other night and had a very good time. They were all very impressed with my chopstick skills and the fact that I ate Chinese food. When Mark told them that I'm quite good at cooking certain asian vegetables they were all quite floored, either that or they thought he was lying. I put younger brother in quotation marks because it's really his dad's cousin, but in the Chinese culture cousins are considered siblings. In fact, his "uncle's" children all call Mark "big brother."

We haven't really done any sight seeing since we've been here. We were too busy trying to find a school for us to learn some Chinese, but that didn't happen. All of the summer programs start in July. But we did get tutors, they are university students who wanted to make some extra money. I'm learning Cantonese and Mark is brushing up his Mandarin or putonhua as it is called. It's been interesting and I've learned lots of new vocabulary, but as good as it as I thought I would be. In fact, my first lesson I felt like I was in that episode of Friends where Pheobe is trying to teach Joey French and he completely says the wrong thing. My tutor just looked at me like whatever was coming out of my mouth was so way off from what she had said, but to me it sounded the same. I've gotten a little better over the past few lessons, but I have a long way to go before I'll ever be able to join a conversation with Mark's family. Good thing his parents already like me because I will definitely not be impressing them with my Cantonese skills at the end of this trip. Although, his Dad did say that it's enough I know how to say "hello, how are you?"

Well, I need to get going. Hope everyone is doing well!

P.S. I just found out today that I did officially graduate on June 1st!!! My diploma will be waiting for me when I return.

Southern Thailand

From Northern Malaysia we set off and headed back to Thailand, this time to see the islands in the south on the Andaman Sea. Now for all those who are wondering, not every Thai island was devastated by the tsunami. In fact, we visited plenty of areas that weren't touched or only recorded large waves and water damage. However, those that were hit, were hit hard. On Ko Phi Phi (pronounced Pee Pee) there are only about 2 concrete structures that remain.

To get from land to island, we needed to stop in certain towns along the way. The first being Hat Yai. Hat Yai is a few hours from the border of Thailand and Malaysia. Our guidebooks warned that there wasn't much in Hat Yai except garbage and sleaze. Apparently it is popular with Malaysians looking to find a prostitute. However, we found neither garbage nor sleaze, perhaps because we weren't looking for it and it wasn't looking for us, but nonetheless Hat Yai was actually quite pleasant. Hat Yai also has a significant Muslim population and I was able to keep up my habit of eating Roti Canai for breakfast that I had started in Malaysia.

From Hat Yai we went to Trang town which is the gateway to the islands in the Trang region. From Trang we spent 2 nights on the island of Ko Ngai. We were a bit disappointed though. We were promised great snorkeling off the beach in front of the resort, but since it was monsoon season the visibility wasn't that great and quite frankly neither was the reef. We were staying at a resort that was hosting the crew of a European gameshow. We think it was something like a Dutch Survivor. The contestants were apparently on the islands near Ko Ngai, but we never saw anything. We figured that European reality shows must not bring in as much money as the American ones as the crew was staying at the same resort we were. It was a nice place, but I figure that Mark Burnett and his crew probably would have put out for the top notch resort at the next beach over...or at least one that had hot water.

From Ko Ngai we went to Ko Muk. We ended up spending 1 night here and on our first day we headed out on a trip that took us to many snorkeling sights and the Emerald Cave. The Emerald Cave is located on Ko Muk. It's an area where a cave has been eroded from the limestone rock. (In the South of Thailand there are tons of limestone outcrops throughout the sea.) However, the top of the rock has also been eroded so that the cave is open. What you get is a secluded beach that can only be reached by swimming into it. When the sun shines down into the cave the water looks emerald green, hence the name. It was quite nice to see, but something I'd never do again. A once in a lifetime thing, if you must. The swim into the cave was treacherous and neither Mark or I would be here today if it weren't for the lifejackets provided. Plus, there's about 10 meters of complete darkness to swim through until you reach the beach. Again, not so great for those who don't like deep water, wavy oceans or the dark. (As an aside...when we were in New Zealand and we did the cave tour, they company had us fill out a form that asked a bunch of questions about our health and swimming ability. Not one question ever asked if we were afraid of the dark. A lot of the tour takes place in the dark and I was not too happy. We had head lamps, but to be able to see the stupid glowworms we had to turn our lights off! I thought that should be the first question they ask...are you afraid of the dark!) From the cave we went to many different snorkeling sights. The visibility was much better, but we ended up seeing the same tiger fish over and over. Tiger fish love to eat anything you give them and will bite you if they think you even have food.

After our brief tour of the Thai islands we headed to Krabi town. Not many tourists venture to Krabi town, most stay in the beach area which is a good 45 minutes from town. We also enjoyed Krabi. Right outside of the hotel was a great night market where all of the town seemed to gather in the evenings. Not only did we eat supper there every night, but it was full of goodies and snacks. For those wondering about the cleanliness of food and food prepartion in markets or food stalls, I can say that in Thailand, people keep their stalls immaculate. You'd never tell that this food was prepared where it was.

We spent our last 2 nights in Thailand in Phuket town (pronounced Pooket). Again, most tourists go straight to the beach, but the two suited our needs more. (In truth, the town had an English movie cinema and both of us wanted to catch the new Star Wars movie before we left for China.) We miss Thailand...a lot. The people are wonderful and the food is excellent and inexpensive. Plus, it's hard not to love a country that has so much fruit readily available. I've never eaten more fruit in my life than what I ate every day in Thailand. Any place where food and snacks are loved that much is definitely the place for me!

Hong Kong

We flew from Phuket to Kuala Lumpur and from KL to Hong Kong. Flying over the islands was beautiful, but just made me want to be back on one again. And I have to say that after all of that snorkeling I think I may be ready to attempt scubadiving again. Some of you may know that I tried scubadiving in a pool and it didn't go so well so I never made it to the ocean. But now that I've got the hang of snorkeling I think I'm ready to move on.

Flying into HK late at night and in the middle of a thunderstorm was not exactly what I was hoping for. Lightning was all around us or so it seemed. The pilot said that we were flying around the storm to avoid it, but he certainly wasn't seeing all of the lightning right outside my window. I had one hand gripping Mark's and the other on my life jacket just in case.

HK was as I expected, crowded and expensive, but still neat to see nonetheless. We only spent about a day and a half, but we covered a lot of ground. We staying in North Point which is on Hong Kong island. This is where the main business district is located. On the way to the hotel we passed many of the famous buildings in the skyline. Mark was even surprised to see new buildings that have been added since he was here 13 years ago. We stayed at the Ibis North Point hotel. Ibis is a European chain of 2 or 3 star hotels. We discovered them in Morocco and have been big fans ever since. They tend to place themselves convienently near public transport. (In Morocco, most Ibis' are right next to the train station.) And they can be counted on for clean, simple accomodation. Ibis North Point was no different, except that with space being a precious commodity in HK the rooms are very small. How small you ask? Well, there's not much else besides a bed and they utilize every imaginable space. It wasn't so bad and we fit all of our stuff with no problem and had room to move. Mark says that the small guesthouses will have rooms that are 1/3 the size of our room. I'm guessing that those roomse fit only a single bed...and let me tell you they aren't that cheap!

We took the Star Ferry and wandered around the shopping district in Kowloon. Mark was looking for some electronics, but it seems that HK is not longer the place to get the best deal. The U.S. now has the best deal on electronics and computer supplies, at least the online stores do anyways.

Changing money in HK was quite the ordeal. Most banks charge outrageous service fees and offer down right lousy exchage rates. (50 to 100 HK dollars...divide that by 3 and you have the CDN dollar equivilant!)

On Sunday, we found ourselves at a very busy dim sum restaurant and I ordered my favourite dish (si lo bao) pork filled dumplings, all by myself in Chinese!

Well, that's about it for HK. We are currently in China and I'll have a blog up as soon as I can.

Take care,

Nicole

More pictures

Just wanted to let everyone know that more pictures are up at our yahoo site. We've got more from Bangkok as well as Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Here's the link again! http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/my_photos

Perhentian Islands, Malaysia

What can I say about the Perhentian islands? Imagine the perfect, secluded island with the clearest waters. That about sums it up. Secluded, paradise, beautiful. And while the journey to get there and back was about as fun as a trip to the dentist, it was well worth the 3 days we spent there.

There are 2 islands, the small and large island. We opted for the larger one, even though we rarely left our beach. Plus, the smaller one that is closer to the mainland often gets booked up. There are numerous places that offer basic chalets on the beach. Quite a few have dive centres and a restaurant. All we did for 3 days was snorkle, go on a couple of walks and read. The snorkling off the beach was fantastic. I realized on this trip that I've never really snorkled before. This was a great place to start. Not far from the shore there were huge reefs with tons of cool fish. There was no need to take a boat anyway, just walk about 50 meters off shore and you were at a reef. I've never seen such brillant colored fish before, some quite large. We also saw plenty on Nemo fishies - baby nemos too. We saw quite a few cool things, such as a sting ray, crabs, and sea cucumbers. I know for some people it's probably not that exciting, but for me it was fantastic. We snorkled almost the entire day on our last day there.

Not as thrilling was the journey to and from the islands. While there is plenty of accomodation on the islands, it's still not that built up and hasn't really been taken over by large hotels and resorts. To get there, we had to take an overnight train from KL, then a 2 hour taxi ride from the train station to the port and then a 2 hour boat ride on a junk boat to the island, then a quick ride on a small boat to get to our place. It was interesting to say the least. All of the touts kept warning us that the boat left at 9:30. Well, the boat doesn't leave until it's full and that's not necessarily at 9:30. But, part of the adventure is getting to these destinations.
We are back in Thailand now and heading up to some islands, hopefully. It's monsoon season on one side over here so we don't really know how we will fare. But we figured we'd check it out. Despite my feeings about Bangkok, it's nice to be back in Thailand. We've already had some great meals here and last night I ate way more fruit than I should have :)

We got our Chinese visas in KL and are set to leave at the end of the month before the school holidays make it difficult to find a place to stay. It's hard to imagine that we'll be home in a little over 1 month. I'm sure June 28th will come very quickly!

That's all for now! Take care.
Love,Nicole

The journey to Malaysia and Kuala Lumpur

Unknowingly, we decided to make our way by bus from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur on Labour Day in both Singapore and Malaysia. This is at least the third time we've celebrate Labour day in our 2 1/2 months of travel. Our very 1st day in Perth it was Western Australia's labour day and then we hit it again at our next stop in Melbourne. Not to mention the other public holidays we've encountered along the way.
Note to others making this trip - don't do it on a public holiday! Or if you do, buy your bus tickets in advance. We, of course waited until the day of to get our tickets and there wasn't a ticket to be had until later in the evening. Deciding that it wouldn't be good to arrive so late into KL we took the public bus tot he border and thought it would be much easier to get a bus from there. We were wrong, AGAIN. The bus drops you off at the bus station in Johore Bahru and this was the first sign that we had left the order and neatness of Singapore behind us. The bus station in JB was crazy to say the least. And again, no tickets until very late at night. Mark, however, went out to assess the situation and ended up buying them from a scalper! Yes, a scalper. Not exactly the luxury coach that was promised, but the drivers were good and got us there safely. However, due to heavy traffic, a trip that was supposed to take 4 and a half hours ended up taking six and a half. We still got into KL late. Luckily, we found a place close to the bus station. We've met some really interesting proprietors of guesthouses and hostels throughout this trip and the woman who owns traveler's Palm in KL is no exception. Until 6 months ago, she was a flight attendant for Malaysia Airlines. She's been everywhere they fly and says that it's quite the posh lifestyle as flight attendants are seen as ambassador's from their country and are treated very well. She gave that up to run the guesthouse and meet genuine, not "plastic" people, as she referred to those she would meet. She was incredibly helpful, especially with us arriving so late.
The original plan was to stay in KL for a month while taking Chinese language classes. That didn't pan out so we stayed for about 10 days, but only took a few of those days to explore the city. (I was still sick from Thailand and Mark ended up getting sick as well.) We took time to rest and get better. We did see the touristy things in KL, such as the Menara KL (which is a tower), the Batu Caves and the Petronas (pronounced Petro-nas) Twin Towers. The Menara KL isn't as high as the CN tower, but it came with a really nice audio tour so we actually knew what we were looking at. At the Petronas towers you can go up to the 41st floor skybridge that connects the two towers. We were told that on windy days the bridge can sway about 10 inches. Thank god it wasn't windy when we were there. The towers are 88 floors and the design is inspired by Islamic beliefs. It is quite an impressive sight.
There's also some nice parks and gardens in KL that we explored. We didn't really do too much. We did read the English language newspapers though and you can certainly learn a lot about a place by reading the paper, or should I say the government propaganda. There's no doubt in my mind what's on the agenda of the sultans and king.
Bali has been, by far, the cheapest place we've visited. We were hoping the prices there would hold throughout SE Asia. Thailand is about double the cost of Bali (although still very cheap) and Malaysia seems to be almost double the cost of Thailand. Coming from Bangkok, we were pretty disappointed to find that what you got for your money didn't go too far. For instance, we got some very decent accommodation in Bangkok (attached bathroom, aircon, fridge and tv) for what we paid for the traveler's Palm in KL. Traveler's Palm was ok, but rooms were quite small with only a bed and with a shared bathroom. And there was no sink! We had to brush our teeth in the shower. But, the price we paid for that seemed to be the going rate for accommodation in KL. Then the food in KL, in a word, sucked. We didn't have 1 enjoyable meal there. In fact, we didn't even like eating because we never found anything that great and it was twice what we would pay in Thailand. From what we have discerned, Thais love to eat and expect the food to be good and cheap. That doesn't seem to be the case in Malaysia. We are willing to accept that we just didn't do enough searching, but we did a fare amount. All we had to do was walk out of our door in Bangkok and great food at a really great price was right there. Again, take my opinion with a grain of salt, but Mark and I love to eat and have some sense of what's good and what's not.
Since we weren't staying a whole month in KL we decided to head for some islands. First stop, the Perhentian islands in north east Malaysia.

Singapore and the pink dolphins

We really enjoyed ourselves in Singapore, but it's hard not to. Singapore is, in my opinion, similar to Disneyworld. Everything is neat, clean and orderly - rarely a thing out of place. I'm sure that everyone has heard of the strict laws and fines for thing such as jaywalking and littering. You'll be hard pressed to find litter on the streets (although we did see some) but it's even harder to find any dirt in their subway system. Things seem to run so smoothly in Singapore. People exiting the subway walk on oneside, while people entering are on the other. Need a taxi - Simple just queue at one of the many taxi stands. No need to flag one down. Singapore is definitely THE place for an obsessive-compulsive person who wants to travel to Asia (AKA - me)!
We only had 2 days there so we filled up each day. We visited Chinatown and Little India to check out the scene and search for food. I got a chicken biryani in Little India from apparently the best stand in Singapore. I waited about a half hour in line. I figured it must be great if so many people were lining up. I also loved the freshly squeezed, right from the cane sugar cane juice. And despite what others say, it's not sickingly sweet - it's perfectly refreshing.

We spent the majority of one day on Sentosa island. Sentosa is a big theme park like attraction. It houses various attractions and hotels. Instead of paying one admission price you pay for each thing you want to see. There's also a number of beaches there and while they are nice with bays protecting them from the ocean, it wouldn't rank on my top 10 beah list. The water had a lot of algae in it and it was VERY warm. It wasn't a refreshing way to cool off. We did make it to the southern most point in SE Asia though. Most of the attractions on Sentosa are overpriced and cheesy. One, however, caught our eye - Underwater world and the dolphin lagoon. Underwater world is an aquarium that was described as spectacular by our guide book. Obviously, the writer has never visited any other aquariums. It was ok, but certainly, I wasn't as enthusiastic about it as the guide book. The dolphin lagoon, however, which was included in the admission to Underwater world, was definitely worth it. They put on 3 shows a day in a sectioned off portion of the beach. Plenty of room for these dolphins to swim and play. And yes, they are pink, bubblegum pink. They are endangered due to habitat destruction and fishing nets. The show was great. First, they bring out this huge male dolphin they call "Jumbo." He definitely was a big dolphin. It's surprising he could throw himself in the air so high. We later got our picture taken with him as we were next to him in the water and petting his back. (Mark forked over an extra 10 dollars so I could get near the dolphin.)

So here's the exciting part...They needed volunteers during the show and of course I immediately wanted to get up there. We came extra early so we could get good seats and we ended up in the front row. And...I was picked to be a volunteer! I got to get in the water with one of the dolphins and it kissed me and I got to kiss is back as well as rub its tummy and back and feed it! And at the end, the dolphin waved goodbye to me! It was great! It's something I'll never forget!

After the excitement of the dolphins, we spend the next day checking out the Botanical garden. Again, a very nice and free attraction. It's definitely worth taking a walk through. There's is also an orchid garden that charges a nominal fee to see these beautiful flowers. There are way more orchids than I thought and the Botanical gardens has actually created numerous hybrids. Apparently, I'm just not special enough to have an orchid named after me. The King of Morocco visited 2 days before us and he got his own.

Our stay in Singapore had to come to an end and once again we were foiled by Labour Day. But that's a story for another blog...

The Floating Market

We just returned to Bangkok from a town about 2 hours from here that has a floating market. It was a great experience and I'm glad we went. It's been my favourite experience in Thailand so far.

Even though the floating market is now mainly for tourists and not for Thai people, it's still a worthwhile experience. However, we were warned that it's better to go to the town and stay the night to get up early in the morning before the hordes of tourists come in on the tour buses. I'm very glad we listened. The first hour of our boat ride through the canals was very peaceful. Only a couple of other boats on the water. It's mainly people selling souveniers, but there were a few boats of ladies selling fruit and vegetables. Mark even got some soup noodles from a man making them on his boat. Once it hits 9am, the buses pull in and it's no longer quiet. That was actually exciting though to see all the boats on the water and people trying to sell their goods. It's just too bad that we weren't witnessing locals doing this and not other "faroungs or foreigners" like us.

I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but the area where we were staying seemed to have a large population of people that are deaf. Most of the street vendors in the area are deaf. We discovered this the first day and I was immediately curious if they would understand the sign language that I know. I still haven't quite figured out if Thai sign language is similar or the same as American sign language. I tried having a conversation today with the woman who sells stickers. I'm not sure if she didn't understand the sign language or if she did, but just didn't understanding what I was asking. In any rate, thank you is still the same.

Ok, so I'm not as good at eating spicy food as I originally thought. I kept telling Mark that I wouldn't have any problems here. Well, I have to take that back. The food is incredibly spicy. And even though I've had a cold and been unable to smell or taste for the past 4 or 5 days, my mouth still burns when something is spicy. I'm craving plain old bland food! We've been eating a lot in the food courts of these enormous malls that are all over the place. Most of the time the foodcourts are the same or just a bit more expensive than eating at a food stall, but they are much cleaner. And they are definitely cheaper than eating at a restaurant. We spend about 3 to 5 dollars per meal. What's also interesting is the method of payment at these food courts. Before you go in, you buy coupons in any amount that you want, say 200 baht. When you order, you pay with the coupons, no cash is exchanged at the places that are making the food. Not only does this save time in making change, but it also means that the workers are not handling dirty money and food. Makes a lot of sense to me. If you have extra coupons you simply go to the refund counter and they give you the cash back.

Well, that's about it for now. We are heading to Singapore tomorrow and then onto Malaysia for a month.

Pictures!

We've finally managed to upload some of our pictures. I have emailed some people (probably all of you who actually read this have received an email from me already) and invited you to look at the pictures. However, I just figured out how to make the albums public. Now, when we have new pictures I will just put a link on my blog so that you can view them.

I have tried to label some of the pictures so you know what you are looking at. I normally label the first one in a group so assume the ones that follow are from the same location. We still need to get the New Zealand and Sydney pictures up. Some of you may know that we lost half of our New Zealand pictures. We had 2 memory chips for the digital camera and I foolishly let Mark hold them. He lost the bigger of the 2 chips with all the pictures still on it. We have the first have of our New Zealand trip which is where we did the more exciting, adventure stuff, but we still lost out on everything we did after that :(

I will also be updating each blog to include links to the pictures that go with that blog.

Here's the link for our entire album:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/my_photos

Happy reading and viewing!

Bangkok

Bangkok is a very large city! Each different section seems like a different world from the next. We've managed to stay out of the backpacker central that is Khao San road and I'm quite happy we did. (We had enough of backpackers in Australia and Bali. Actually, not all - just the noisy and inconsiderate ones.) Khao San is insane with hundreds of guest houses and restaurants jammed into a street that is much smaller than I thought it would be. We visited the other day, but decided we were quite happy on the other side of town.

It's embarrassing to admit, but I haven't been having the greatest time in Bangkok. I couldn't wait to get to Thailand, but so far it's been rough. It's very large, dirty and polluted. It's not uncommon to see people wearing surgical masks here. At first I thought this was leftover from SARS, but then realized that they are trying not to breathe in all the pollution. All of this would be much more tolerable if I didn't have a bad cold. I've been to dirty and polluted places before, but I was also feeling much, much better. My stomach is no longer bothering me, but now I have this stupid cold and I've been miserable. There have been good times, but for the most part, dealing with the city has been made much more difficult since I've been sick. The heat here is incredible. I've never sweated so much in my entire life! And watch out if the sun comes out! We are hopefully going to Chiang Mai tomorrow and my opinion should change. Chiang Mai shouldn't be this crazy.

Here are some of the interesting things we've seen here:

There are numerous options for getting around the city, however, there isn't one that will take you throughout the entire city. It's often necessary to use many different modes of transport. They have a subway, a skytrain, buses (regular and with air-con) and river and canal boats. Sounds pretty crazy, huh?

We set off to take a canal boat trip the other day and it was pretty neat. The canal boats are smaller than the river boats. Those things dock and leave within a matter of seconds. People are just so used to jumping on and off that I didn't want to be the one holding everyone up - nor did I want to end up in the canal. The boats are long and just have benches across. There's no room to stand up in the boat. There are normally 2 guys who stand on the outside edge of the boat that are in charge of collecting the fare and docking the boat. They must have incredible balance to do this job as the wake that the other boats create is pretty big. I had wanted to get a picture of these guys in action, but they work so fast there was no way we could get them. These guys also wear helmets. We realized what they were for once we passed under the first bridge. The boats are small, but when going under a bridge, the guys on the side of the boat need to duck and they actually have to lower the roof of the boat - which is really just a tarp attached to a metal pole. There are also tarps on the side of the boat that can be raised and lowered. These are so you don't get wet as the boat is zooming through the water.

Yesterday, we visited the main temples in Bangkok. We only saw 3 and apparently there are about 300 temples in the city! It's very interesting architecture and some of the statues actually look Chinese. One of the temples we visited was Wat Po. It has a huge statue of Buddha. Buddha is lying on his side and it's just enormous. He's covered in goldleaf and his feat are decorated in mother of pearl. It's quite a sight. We also saw the Emerald Buddha is another temple. It's not actually emerald, but jade. It sits high up within the temple and is quite small compared to the huge Buddha in Wat Po. But, what I found interesting is that the emerald Buddha has his own wardrobe. They change him 3 times a year according to the season.

That's about all I can remember for now. Mark has me on so many different medicines so that I can feel better my mind is a bit fuzzy right now.

Pictures of Bangkok from April 22 - 25, 2005:

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/album?.dir=fe0b&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/my_photos

Cockroaches, Rats and Elephants, Oh my!

The answer to the above riddle:

What is things you find on the streets of Bangkok.

That's right, we're in Thailand. And it is pretty exciting to be in a place that has been on my list for so long. Bangkok is quite a modern city and it's pretty large making it overwhelming, especially coming from Bali. We felt very comfortable in Bali. We had our favourite warungs and we picked up the important words quickly. The thai language is a bit more difficult, not to mention the written format.

We've just had time enough to spend exploring our area as we arrived very late the other night. Coming out of our place tonight there are many stalls set up selling food. None more interesting than the man peddling a whole stall full of bugs. Yes, bugs. All different kinds too. Neither of us have the guts to try any - we aren't on Fear Factor after all. We've seen plenty of big cockroaches on the streets as well. Consequently, we saw no roaches in Bali and Australia has more cockroaches than I care to ever remember! The most fascinating sight of the night was the baby elephant that was on the street. I spotted him right away - after all what is more out of place than an elephant? My better judgment told me not to buy the sugar cane to feed it, but when the elephant stuck it's trunk out toward me, I couldn't resist. And of course, I loved every second of my elephant encounter.

Well, that's about all for now. We're still getting our bearings before we head out for some serious exploration Thailand. And we definitely need to learn how to order because both of us have gotten some pretty interesting dishes the past couple of meals. My mouth is still on fire!

Bali Part II

Bali was a constant assault on all of my senses. I figured that after a couple of days I would get used to everything, but it was just as exciting on the last day as it was on the first.

I guess where I'd like to start this entry is with the Balinese people. They are wonderful! Of course, there are touts and scam artists. More often than not, the Balinese people we came across were super friendly and helpful. A little cultural respect and basic language skills goes a long way. It was hard to leave our favourite "warungs" (restaurants or food stalls) as the people who ran them were very nice and always dished up great food. What is even more interesting is their reaction to the horrible bombings that occurred in Kuta on October 12, 2002. They are truly upset and outraged by this incident and not only because it severely affected their tourism industry. They are outraged that terrorists would come there and bomb their home. They let you know that none of the people involved with the bombing were Balinese. They also stress that they are peaceful. I actually saw a couple of locals wearing shirts that said F--- terrorists. They also sell these to the tourists too.

We managed to do some day trips from Kuta so that we could see more of the real Bali. Kuta is very touristy. I kid you not, there's a Bubba Gump Shrimp Factory restaurant and store. Something tells me you won't be finding any locals in there.

Our first adventure sent us into the capital city of Denpasar. It was much different than what I expected. I guess I expected bigger and more modern buildings. There were drastically less tourists there so that made it nice. We took a "bemo" bus, which is a public bus. It wasn't that uncomfortable or crowded, but Mark and I were drenched in sweat throughout the ride, while the locals seemed just fine in jeans! We ended up visiting a bird market - which was both interesting and sad. It's always difficult for me to see animals in small cages, but not a sight we'll see back in Toronto. As a side note I should mention that chickens and roosters seem to be almost as common as cats and dogs in Bali. There were chickens roaming the streets and you could always hear a rooster crowing somewhere. We also visiting the main produce market in Denpasar. Let me tell you, it was quote the spectacle. I'm sure that the pictures will barely do it justice. It was huge and overwhelming and completely chaotic! Definitely a worthwhile experience.

We took a day trip to the town of Ubud, which is north of Kuta. It's the arts and crafts capital of Bali. We ended up with 2 sarongs and a painting. Along the way we saw quite a few temples and a monkey forest.

We spent another great day traveling further north to see yet more temples and the famous rice terraces. Bali is a beautiful country! This day we some some of the most important temples in Bali, including 2 that were set in magnificent surroundings. One was set on a very peaceful lake in between 2 mountains while the other was set right on the ocean. It's easy to see why those spots were chosen. The rice terraces were equally impressive. To best utilize the land, they build terraces into the hillsides to grow rice. It was so brilliantly green and beautiful - we could have stayed all day just staring at rice.

The inevitable happened in Bali - I got traveler's diarrhea. For 2 days I was unable to eat and drink. Luckily, we had designated those days to rest. I was pretty much unable to go very far from the place we were staying. I figured it was coming. I had been tempting fate all week by drinking fresh juice and eating other questionable things. Hopefully this just makes my body able to deal with it quicker in the future. Consequently, it must have been something we both ate because Mark's tummy didn't feel great either, but he was better after 15 minutes while it took me 2 days! I told him that's the difference between growing up playing in the dirt in Rochester, NY versus playing in dirt on a commune in China. He told me a story how he once got pretty sick from eating spoiled chicken kidneys at a road side stand in China when he was there years ago. I know what everyone is thinking so no need to comment. I told him that I probably would have died if I had eaten spoiled chicken kidneys if my body couldn't even handle some bad OJ.

Pictures from Bali (April 10 -19, 2005):
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/album?.dir=ea9c&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/my_photos

Bali!

I have touched down in South East Asia and I love it! It's everything I expected and it's thrilling to be here. I figured that we'd be crossing over into another world when we landed in Bali. In a way I was correct, but it hasn't been as difficult as I expected. Bali is a cheap vacation spot for Aussies. Right now, we are in Kuta. An area that is heavily populated by tourists. There are plenty of McDonald's, Pizza Huts, KFCs and Starbucks to fill a craving. Although, if you ask me, it's pretty sad that you come to such an interesting country and camp out in a Starbucks or onlyt hang out by the pool of the hotel - all day, every day. We are hoping to move to a less touristy area in the next few days as we are itching to see the real Bali. (or at least as real as we can get.)

I don't know what else to say to describe this place. It's a combination of all the senses combined. It can be loud with motorbikes scooting around the alleyways, there are temples and what look like ancient buildings all over mixed with more modern buildings. It's incredibly hot! I've been sweating buckets since we arrived. Our plane landed at 11pm and it was 31 degrees. There's never any relief from the heat and humidity. I seem to be adjusting though. Each day I've been sweating a little less. Mark's clothes were even drenched the first day. And of course, we've been enjoying the food. We feast for dinner - ordering appetizers and multiple main dishes. On average, we spend about 6 dollars for a very good dinner. I've also been enjoying the fresh fruits and juices. There's nothing like fresh guava juice for about 50 cents!

Hope everyone is doing well!

I held a koala!!

And yes, there are pictures to prove it! Unfortunately, we still don't have the time to get the pictures on the web :(

The last blog left off at Byron Bay, the quaint hippie town. From Byron Bay we moved into the state of Queensland and an area called the Gold Coast. We settled down in a town called Surfer's Paradise. I had assumed that Surfer's would be similar to Byron Bay and I was completely off the mark. While Bryon Bay is a nice small town with no highrises, Surfer's is packed with hotels all along the beach. The Gold Coast area must be a popular vacation spot for the Aussies. A bit overdeveloped for my liking, but it was still a neat place to see. It reminded both Mark and I of the Torremolinos area in the south of Spain. All the hotels fighting for the best spot on the beach. One thing that Surfer's has over Torremolinos is a great beach. And you can definitely understand the name once you see the waves! There is only a very small section of the beach that lifeguards patrol because the water is so rough. It can pull you out to see in no time at all. Mark and I jumped in for some fun, albeit cautious fun. We were having a great time until my back was turned and a huge wave came. It knocked me down and in no time I had a mouth full of salt water. It was not pleasant. We decided it was time to get out of the water. We had wanted to hang out and enjoy the beach, but because it was so windy the sand just whipped against your skin. Not that pleasant either. We spent the rest of the day exploring Surfer's.

We then headed to Brisbane. And for me, we were going to Brisbane for one thing and one thing only - to hold a koala! The Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, which is just 11km outside of town is great. I had found it on the internet in the months prior to doing the research for this trip. I knew we HAD to go there. The biggest attraction is the koalas, but they actually have quite a bit of other stuff to keep you entertained. We headed right to the koala cuddling section first. I couldn't stand to be there knowing that the koalas were just waiting for me! Surprisingly, there wasn't much of a line at all to hold one. Cuddling a koala is free, but they ask that if you want to take your own pictures, that you also pay them to take yours. I coughed up the $15 in no time and made sure Mark got plenty of extra pictures. They are just as cute and soft as they look. While they have some serious claws, they never really dug into you. I would have held it all day if they let me. We tried to talk to the koala keeper as much as possible so I could keep holding it, but I had to let it go eventually. We went back at the end of the day and got to hold another one. This time is was a little one. Not a baby, but a 2 year old. They still aren't full size by that age.
We spent the rest of the day feeding kangaroos and wallabies and looking at the other animals that Lone Pine has.

Of course the day that we had planned on seeing the city of Brisbane turned out to be rainy and gloomy. But we still proceeded with the plan. We bought a day pass for the transit system which allowed us to take the buses and ferries. The have a ferry system that runs through the river. Despite the weather, the ferries were a good way to see the city. Both nights we were in Brisbane we were treated to wonderful meals by my cousin from Newcastle. Thanks Steve and Casey - we had a great time! They were in Brisbane for the weekend and took time to have supper with us.

From Brisbane, we flew over to Darwin in the Northern Terroritories. I wasn't too thrilled to be visiting Darwin. First it was hot and humid - very hot and humid. Then, there are very few places you can actually swim in Darwin. They have a beautiful harbour and you can never swim there. As our bus driver from the airport warned - they pull out about 200 crocs a year from the harbour. If the crocs don't get you, the box jelly fish will. What a crazy place. I thought for sure we'd see a croc walking down the street, but I was told they never venture that far. Darwin was practically a ghost town. We arrived on a Saturday afternoon expecting things to be open and nothing was. Apparently things open in the evening again, but there was really only life on one street - the street with the majority of hostels. I guess that's not too bad considering Darwin only has about 6 main streets. We walked around the entire city and decided that we wouldn't be entertained for 5 days and that we needed to change out flight to the next day. The flight to Bali left at 10pm so we would still have another whole day to explore. We decided to do a day tour of one of the parks in the area. Parks with waterfalls and swimming holes where we assured we could swim safely. The first part of the tour invovled a jumping croc tour. They take you out on a boat on the Adelaide River - home to about 2000 crocs. Once they spot a croc, they dangle meat over the side of the boat so that the croc jumps up to get it. People can be real dumb and here's a great example. The boat isn't that big. It was pretty stable, but since there were a lot of people on the cruise, not everyone can rush over to one side of the boat. Simple logic. The captain promised that they would feed crocs on both sides. Once the croc was fed on one side he would turn the boat around and feed the croc on the other. Simple - everyone gets to see. Well, no one seemed to understand that and kept rushing to whatever side the croc was one. No matter how many times they kept telling us that the crocs view us as one big piece of meat- these people never got that we'd all be croc food if the boat flipped and sank. Stupid people. Next, we were driven out to a very nice waterfall and plunge pool. We were promised no crocs and I believed the guide. We were pretty high up at that people and as we learned on the cruise, crocs are lazy. None of them would climb up all that way. Plus, the water was crystal clear - a croc would be spotted immediately. After the 12 hour tour, we headed to the airport to say goodbye to Australia. South East Asia was only a couple of hours away!

Pictures for Brisbane and Darwin:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/album?.dir=8916&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/my_photos

Byron Bay and koalas

We are continuing our trip north up to Brisbane and have stopped in Byron Bay. We heard from numerous people that we just couldn't miss this place. We're finding that it's not exactly our cup of tea, but we did have great fun at the beach yesterday.

Byron Bay is the eastern most point in Australia. It's a town inhabited by hippies and tons of backpackers who come here for the sun, surfing and parties. Luckily, we landed ourselves in a guesthouse called
"A Peaceful Place" and it lived up to it's name. It was nice, quiet and peaceful and we actually got some good sleep. Just what we were looking for after being on the go every day. (I know we've had it so rough :) I have a feeling we would have headed out after 1 night if we had stayed at the usual hostel. A hostel would not have been peaceful nor quiet.

We have been much happier with the accomodations up north. It seems that the farther north you go the better the hostels are. We haven't ended up in a dump since Sydney. In fact, we stayed at an extremely nice hostel in Coffs Harbour. It was brand new and had a pool. I wish we could have stayed longer. I've also found myself a "job." Hostelz.com was looking for people to review hostels while they travel. They only pay $7 USD per review and require that you take a couple of pictures and write a couple of paragraphs. Not that bad. I figure we'll be staying in quite a few between now and when we return. Plus, I have already been keeping a log of everyplace we've stayed so that I can create a blog with my recommedations at the end of the trip.

We had a great day at the beach yesterday. We played in the water for a while and had fun letting the waves carry us back to shore. In the afternoon we headed to the town of Lismore and a nature reserve called Tucki Tucki. It's a reserve specifically for koalas. We were hoping to spot some wild ones. We went through the entire reserve and didn't see any. It isn't very big and we figured we'd be able to spot them easily. Finally, right at the end Mark spotted one high up in a tree. You could barely make out what it was, but it was definitely a koala - the ears gave it away. On our way back to the car, right by the road, wouldn't you know there was one taking a nap. He was in a tree, but not very high up. He was just high enough so he was out of reach. He put on a little show by stretching and scratching a bit, but just kept on going back to sleep. I guess we couldn't convince him to come down and play. We left the reserve and went to another lookout point. This one was in the town of Lismore and right in a neighborhood. We saw another koala and this time he was eating. It was dark at this point and that's when they start to become active. He was pretty high up, but we could see him reaching to get the best leaves all the way on the end of the branch. So we ended up spotting 3 koalas in the wild. Pretty neat. Although, we will still be visiting the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary which is just outside of Brisbane. They allow you to hold a koala and get your photo taken with it. I can NOT leave Australia without this taking advantage of this opportunity!

Today we head into Queensland (this is state where Brisbane is located) to a town called Surfers Paradise. We spend a night here and then head to Brisbane. Only a little over a week left in Australia. I'm a bit nervous and excited to get to Asia. One thing I can't wait for is the fruit!! Fruit here is very expensive, even fruit that's home grown. Can you believe they sell bananas for as much as $4 a kilo? We've found them for a little cheaper, but no where near the 40 cents a pound we pay back home. They even grow bananas here. Oh, and if you think that New Zealand has cheap kiwi fruit, think again. We waited to get kiwi until we got to NZ and it was $4 a kilo as well. Mark promises lots of tropical fruit when we hit Asia!

Well, I have to get going. Time to move on.

Hope everyone is well!

Newcastle to Port Macquarie

We had an absolutely fantastic time with my relatives in Newcastle! It was very sad to have to leave them after only a couple of days. It was also very weird to be visiting them. I still can't quite get my head around being so far away from home.

We got a great tour of Newcastle on the first day. There's plenty of nice beaches in the area and Nina pointed out all of the popular wedding spots along the way :) The next day we spent at the vineyards that are about an hour and a half outside of town. It's a beautiful area full of vineyards. I'm sure you can easily spend an entire weekend sampling all of the wine. We tried some very nice wine and had a lovely picnic.

The next day they took us to the BlackButt reserve. This isn't too far from where they live and the reserve has koala bears, wombats and wallabies. The wombats were very active and cute. I was ready to take them home. You can get very close to the koalas in the reserve, but again you can't touch them. Nina and Michael had to drag me out of there as I was facinated with the animals. We were on our way to Port Stephens which is about an hour and a half north of Newcastle. This is a bay of water that is known for having a pod of dolphins that live there. We headed out on a dolphin watch cruise and hoped for the best. And boy we got a show!!! There were so many dolphins we couldn't even count. It was fantastic. We got very close as well, although I still couldn't manage to reach out and touch them. Some came right up under the front of the boat and they were riding our wake for a bit. Really, really neat.

The last night in Newcastle we got everyone together for a BBQ and had a great time. We prepared our now world famous Korean BBQ ribs for everyone and every single piece went! There were even requests for the recipe. We will just have to come back to see everyone again.

We moved on from Newcastle to the town of Port Macquarie. This is one town where Mark had gotten a job offer. We thought we'd check it out to see what we were missing. It would have definitely been a cool place to hang out for 6 months. Plenty of beaches and a cute town. It's too bad it didn't work out, but maybe in the future.

We are spending the next few days heading up to Brisbane and then are heading out to Darwin on the 9th of April. Darwin will be our last stop in Australia and then the Asia portion of our trip begins. I think we are in for a big shock. We've had it very easy so far in terms of being in an English speaking country. We also just checked the weather for Thailand. The high there is 36 Celsius and the low is 29 Celsius! That's just insane. Should be quite the adventure.

Pictures for Port Macquarie to Brisbane:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/album?.dir=3fca&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/my_photos

Sydney

So we're back in Australia and Sydney is certainly an exciting place to be. It's a beautiful city. They certainly know how to build up the waterfront. Circular Quay (pronounced key), where the opera house is located is just beautiful and a really fun place to hang out. Not only do you get spectacular views of the opera house and the harbour bridge, but there are numerous places to just sit and relax with a drink and enjoy everything around you. The area is filled with street performers, which I love, that provide interesting entertainment. We've hung out in circular quay quite a bit while we were here.

There's also Darling Harbour which isn't as spectacular as Circular Quay, but another nice place to hang out.

We've been busy exploring the city and seeing what Sydney has to offer. Sydney actually has a pretty good Chinatown. We figure that if we lived here, we'd know where the good food was. It's a little hard though when there are so many choices and you're new to the city. But, overall we've been impressed. Despite the large Asian population throughout Australia, we haven't been that impressed with the other Chinatowns we've visited, but Sydney's gets a thumbs up from us.

We spent 1 full day at the zoo here and it was great fun, but of course, I love zoos. The easiest way to access teh zoo is by ferry, so we got a harbour tour on our way over. For $6 extra dollars we also got our own personal tour of all the Australian animal exhibits. No petting an koala bears here, but the tour was extremely informative. The volunteer who took us was very knowledgeable and even though the tour was only supposed to be 1 hour and 15 minutes, she spent nearly 2 hours with us. With most of the exhibits you can get very close to the animals. In fact, quite a few are exhibits where you walk through. You aren't allowed to go off the path to touch the animals, but if the happen to hop on by, you are allowed to interact with them.

Yesterday, we visited Sydney's famous Bondi beach (pronounced Bon-die). Unfortunately, the weather was not great so there was no swimming or sun bathing, but at least we saw it.

Today, we are off to see my relatives in Newcastle. I'm can't wait to see them! It also means that we are going to get to relax for a couple of days and do some laundry :)

New Zealand - Absof---inglutely Fantastic!

As you can see from the title, I had a GREAT time in NZ. We failed to read up about it at all, save for the 3 hour plane ride from Melbourne. We had no expectations, but it has completely impressed us.

NZ has a population of about 4 million people and has 2 main islands, the north and the south. We stayed only on the north. The sheep population of NZ is about 40 million. No joke. You'd think they'd be all over the place, but we actually saw more cows than sheep.

We flew into Auckland and decided to rent a car so we could see as much as possible. We estimate that we drove about 2100 km over our stay there. And it wasn't easy driving. Going up, down and around the mountains wasn't fun. And I even drove for quite a bit too - on the other side of the road!

Auckland is a nice city. We managed to see the sights in about a day and a half. We were surprised to find a substantial Korean section there. Korean food doesn't seem to have the same popularity in Australia. There is also a very nice waterfront section in Auckland. It seems to be the place to hang out on the weekends, although much too expensive for us.

From Auckland we headed to the Coromandel Peninsula, more specifically to Hot Water Beach and Cathedral Cove. To be able to dig up the hot water and Hot Water Beach you need to make it for low tide, which we missed, but we did picnic there. Swimming at the hot water beach is out of the questions because of the strong undertow and large waves. It was a surfer's paradise - we saw plenty trying to catch a wave. We then headed over to Cathedral Cove. The Cove can only be accessed by either boat or a 25 minute walk down to the beach. It was well worth the walk! It was absolutely beautiful and has now been put on the top of my list of favourite beaches! It helped that it was a perfect day to go to the beach as well. The water was a bit calmer than hot water beach and perfect for swimming. It's named Cathedral Cove because water has eroded a hole into a section of rock that creates a cove. You can actually walk through the cove to another beach that was more quiet and secluded. Definitely a must see on the north island of NZ.

We then headed to Te Kuiti for the night. We ended up using the BBH guide to hostels in NZ. They have a range of places to stay from big hostels to farms stays. The place in Te Kuiti would definitely rank as a farm stay. This family had built a set of rooms behind their house - which was pretty high in the mountains. It was a really nice place with very nice owners. Te Kuiti is actually the shearing capital of the world. Interesting, eh? Not only do they shear sheep, but they shear rabbits too for making angora scarves and others products. WE didn't see that, but we heard that it's a pretty weird sight to see a rabbit with no fur. Te Kuiti is also in an area that has a lot of caves. We decided to do a day long caving tour out of the town of Waitomo. Waitomo is a Maori word for water cave (Don't quote me on that, I can't remember exactly what our guide said. I know that Wai is water and tomo is when there is enough erosion to show an opening to a cave.)

Our cave tour was fantastic! It was one of the cheaper options, but it managed to do everything the other companies do as well. What's nice about the Waitomo region is that every company has their own cave. Therefore, there's not a lot of tourists in the same cave at once. Our tour had us rappelling (or abseilling as it's called in NZ) down 27 meters into the cave. And yes, I did it with just a little hesitation. The guide had to tell me a couple of times to put my feet on the edge and that everything would be ok. After all the anticipation, it was a lot of fun and it's wasn't that high either. The next part of the tour involved trekking through the cave. It's pretty wet down therewith water reaching up to our chest at points. The company provided all the gear including wetsuits that reeked of our people's sweat! Not that pleasant, but necessary. It was realy cold down there. We rode around on inner tubes for a while looking up at the glow worms. Glow worms are a big attraction. They are actually fly larvae. They live in the glow worm stage for nine months. During that time, they live in the tops of caves in order to feed. They drop down very fine lines and wait for insects to get caught. They attract the insects by glowing. A bugs natural instinct once in a cave is to fly out. Glow worms sense their vibration and begin to glow to convince the bug to fly towards what looks like the night sky. Pretty clever. What's even more interesting is how they glow. They don't have any digestive system, hence no way to expel waste. They are actually burning off waste. So we were watching shit burn. The last part of the tour involved rock climbing out of the cave, and yes I did it too. (the guide made me go first so I wouldn't have any time to think about it.) It wasn't so bad and I made it up pretty quickly. Overall, it was a great day!

That night we headed to Tongariro National Park Village. The next morning we were set to do the Tongariro Crossing. It's considered the best 1 day walk in NZ. It's a 17 km tramp (NZ speak for hike)that takes you between 2 volcanoes to see some crater lakes and down again through the bush and the last 2 hours our spent in a rain forest. It took us 7 and a half hours to complete with a half hour stop for lunch. There's a good 2 hours, if not more of challenging steep climb up volcanic rock and ash. I was a bit worried that I wouldn't make it. This is by far the most physically challenging thing I've ever done, but it was worth it. I thought I'd be ready to collapse on the way down, but instead I had so much energy from all of the adrenaline. There's no way out if you don't make it. No one is there to get you if you can't continue. The bus drops you off at the beginning and picks you up at the end. No buses go back to the beginning after dropping you off in the morning. If you don't make it, you become a permanent fixture of the park.

After a very physically demanding few days, we decided we needed a break. W headed to Taupo, which is the centre of geothermal activity in the north island. There's a large lake and it's quite the resort spot. Unfortunately, it wasn't a great day, but we did manage to see some stuff. We saw some geothermal hotspots where steam was coming out of the earth. We then went to swim in a hot pool heated by the steam. It's just like a hot pool, but heated naturally. It felt so good to immerse ourselves in that water after the physically demanding days before.

Next, we headed over to Paihia, which is in an area called the Bay of Islands. We weren't blessed with great weather there either, but that didn't ruin our fun. We took a day long cruise through the islands out to a point called Hole in the Rock. Again formed from the water eroding a massive rock. We also got to see lots of the islands in the bay. The water is very calm in the bay and it looks like a really nice place to spend time. Each island had a few permanent residents who paid a ton of money for the property. Sure would be nice to afford that!

From Paihia we moved to a town called Ahipara. This town is located at the beginning of 90 mile beach. It's not actually 90 miles, but it is long. This stretch of beach is along the north west coast of the island. We weren't going all the way to the top, but it was nice to have the beach right across the street from our hostel and to have the waves put us to sleep.

Can you tell - I love NZ. It's a bit cheaper than Australia and we are finding that in terms of accommodation you get much more value for what you pay. We stayed in some very nice backpacker places throughout the country. Most of the towns we visited were pretty small and isolated. They call it kiwi outback. I'm pretty jealous of all the Brits and Canadians who can get working holiday visas. This is definitely a place I'd like to stay for a while.

Well, back in Australia now. Currently in Sydney. We aren't too happy to be paying a lot for crappy accommodation, but I guess that's how it goes.

Hope all is well!

P.S. Nancy - that Sex and the City reference was just for you!

Melbourne

Currently, we are in Melbourne and 16 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time.
I honestly think that it's much easier to get over jet lag when you cross so
many time zones. We've had no problem at all adjusting. Mainly we are just
tired from being out and doing stuff all day.

Before I write my review of Melbourne, I thought I'd write about our last
day in Perth.

We decided to make this a beach day as there are many beaches in the area.
We managed to see a lot of beaches. All were pretty much the same. It was
pretty windy the day we went so there were lots of surfers and kiteboarders.
One beach actually had a warning that there were venomous snakes living in
the dunes (not right on the beach, but close enough). I really didn't need
to see that sign - I'm paranoid enough already. I was positive one was going
to jump out and bite me. Luckily, no sign of snakes anywhere.

On the way home we went to Lake Monger. This lake houses the famous black
swans of Perth. There were plenty of them and a couple of pelicans too.
Well, it's official - swans in Australia love me! If you guys could only see
the pictures. At one point, there were about 10 surrounding me and they
weren't attacking me. They were eating right out of my hand!

A little about Melbourne:

It's a city of about 3 million and it has a very different feel from Perth.
In retrospect, we really like Perth! Perth was very laid back. It had lots
of palm trees and green space around the city. Melbourne is very much like
Toronto, or at least it feels that way to me. It is much more rushed and
dirty. Even though you won't find much garbage around, it's still dusty and
dirty and can tire you out quickly. And it's very expensive. Luckily, Mark
has a friend here and tomorrow we are going to stay with him. We did a lot
of exploring today seeing a lot of the city. They have a neat city circle
tram that can take you around. It's not the most frequent, but it is nice to
have. Tomorrow is their labour day so we plan on catching a parade and
playing a round of golf with Mark's friend. Just our luck - last Monday was
labour day in Perth and this Monday is labour day here.

Well, that's about it for now. Hope everything is doing well!

Love,
Nicole

P.S. Thanks for those of you who are sending me emails! Even though we don't
get to check email that often, I really enjoy getting your messages. Even
though this is an exciting trip of a lifetime, I still get a little
homesick, so hearing from friends helps.

Pictures from Melbourne (March 12-17, 2005):

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/album?.dir=b547&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/my_photos

Melbourne

Well, I had written a very long post on our last days in Perth and our first days in Melbourne, however, it seems to have gotten lost and hasn't posted to the site. So here's the abbreviated version:

We really liked Perth. Despite the misfortune of getting bedbugs on our very first night, we really enjoyed the city. It's very laid back. It's quite small and therefore much less hectic. There's plenty of green space and it seems pretty popular to hang out by the river. It's definitely a place that we'd return and spend some time in again. Our last day we were able to visit many of the beaches in the area. They weren't the best beaches I've seen, but they were nice. The water was quite rough and wavy. We saw many people surfing and kiteboarding. Kiteboarding involves a parachute and a board. You are essentially being carried by the wind over the water on a surf board with a small parachute tied to you. Looked like it involved quite a bit of coordination. We also made a stop to Lake Monger which is home to the black swans of Perth. As I mentioned before, the black swan is the symbol of Perth. It's official now, the swans in Australia love me! I was surrounded by about ten of them while I was feeding them. And they weren't attacking me! It was fantastic. I'm convinced that everything is just the opposite down here in the southern hemisphere.

We'd actually be in New Zealand right now if it weren't for Mark's friend inviting us to stay with him in Melbourne. He rescued us from our hostel and took us to his fabulous house in the suberbs! This place is incredible. He's got a pool and a tennis court. It's an old house that was built in 1880 and it's been beautifully maintained. Apparently, Cate Blanchett and Kylie Minongue grew up right in this suberb! His family has been great. And Richard, Mark's friend, has been taking us all over. We were able to visit quite a few things that would have taken us much longer and much more effort to see on our own. Today, we actually got in a round of golf.

Melbourne reminds me a lot of Toronto. It's much more fast paced than Perth was. The city drivers are crazy, just like at home. And it's even more expensive than Perth. We are continually shocked by the large Asian population here. Although, we shouldn't be seeing as Australia is much closer to Asia than Canada is. There's a large Vietnamese population in Melbourne and we ate out in the "Little Saigon" section of town one night. I don't think we were expecting to find this many Asian restaurants in Australia.

I guess that's all for now. We are leaving on Thursday for Auckland. Looking forward to New Zealand the more I read up.

I hope that everyone is doing well!

Love,
Nicole

P.S. Thanks for everyone who's sending me emails. I really enjoy hearing from everyone! Even though we don't have much internet time, I love getting mail. This may be an exciting once in a life time trip, but I still get a bit homesick and hearing from people helps!

Not exactly the Australian welcome I was looking for!

So, our first few days in Australia didn't exactly go as planned. I woke up
after our very first night in Australia to see that I was eaten alive by bed
bugs! I've been told by some that they have never seen so many bites on one
person before. The bites are so itchy that I've been doped up on extra
strengh anti-histamine the past few days. We still managed to get out an
explore the city, but we also needed to find new accomodation ASAP, as I was
not sharing my bed with bed bugs anymore.

We managed to find an absolutely lovely hostel, Governor Robinson's that
cost only $5 more than our original one. It's very clean (and for those of
you who know me, you know that I set the standards of cleanliness very high)
and the owner is very friendly.

As I've said before, the city of Perth is quite nice. It's a city of a
million and a half people. Although, I'm pretty sure they are including the
suberbs in this number. We've managed to walk around the entire city even
though they do have free buses within the city centre. One thing that we
didn't expect was the cost of everything. Everything here is VERY expensive.
And for those of you who know Mark, you know that he's freaking out about
the cost especially since the Australian dollar and the Canadian dollar are
now at par - in fact, the exchange rate is even worse when we exchange
money. We are paying $55 dollars for our hostel now which is a double room
with shared bathroom. We don't know how the Aussies afford to go out to eat
or drink here either. A six pack of beer costs $15! Main dishes will run
anywhere from $10 and up. Even in Chinatown it's expensive. We've paid much
more for sub-par Chinese food than we ever would pay back in Toronto. And
there is a very large Asian population here. Even the Asian grocery stores
are expensive. We've been taking advantage of the kitchen facilities in our
hostel, but buying the food at the grocery store and cooking it hasn't come
out to be that much cheaper than eating out. From what we've seen in our
lonely planet guide book, prices are not going to get much better throughout
the rest of Australia either.

We have managed to have a good time though and we've rented a car so that we
can see the sights in the surrounding areas.

We visited Yanchep National Park the other day. It was quite nice, although
most of the property was destroyed in a fire that came through a couple of
months ago. That prevented us from doing some bushwalking. However, the did
have koala bears!! You couldn't touch them, but you could get pretty close
to them as they were in an area that was uncaged. They aren't the most
exciting animals, especially during the day when they are sleeping. But they
are just so cute. I love how they just hang off the branches while sleeping.

We also got up close and personal with a black swan. Black swans are the
symbol of Perth. For those of you who know me - you know that I've been
attacked by swans on numerous occaisons. I was very hesitant to approach the
black swan the other day, but it actually came right up to me. It was taking
food from my hand and I got to pet it! I reckon that because this is the
southern hemisphere everything is opposite here therefore, the swans here
like me.

Yesterday, we visited Rockingham and Freemantle. These are towns that are a
bit south of Perth. Rockingham's main attraction is swimming with dolphins
and penguin island. Seeing as the dolphin swim is very expensive, we opted
for penguin island. There are supposed to be 1,200 penguins living on the
island. We saw none! We only saw the captive ones they have that can't be
released back into the wild because they have been raised in captivity. We
did have a nice walk around the island and enjoyed spotting pelicans. As we
made our way to one of the beaches on penguin island, we see an injured sea
lion laying on the beach. It was still alive, but looked like it was on the
verge of death. We made our way back to the info centre to let them know
what we saw and apparently this sea lion has been there and injured for 4
years! They are monitoring it and giving it antibiotics, but all attempts to
rescue it have failed. It seems to like hanging out by itself.

We also spent the afternoon in Freemantle. Since we couldn't afford to hang
out on the "cappachino strip" we made our way to the marina and hung out at
a brewery there. We thought it was much cooler than the cappachino strip
area as it was right on the water.

Then, last night, on our way back into the city, we stopped at Harrison
island which is not far from the city centre. Harrison island houses a
kangaroo sanctuary which the public is welcome to visit for free. We got
very very close to 5 kangaroos. They were quite curious about us and had no
problems coming up to us at all. I got to pet one too! But eventually they
got bored of us and hopped away!

Today is our last day in Perth. We are catching up on email and heading to
the beach this afternoon. Tomorrow we catch a flight to Melbourne. It looks
like we will be cutting our time short in Melbourne seeing as the prices to
stay in a hostel there are pretty ridiculous.

That's all for now!

Take care,

Nicole

Pictures of Perth and surrounding areas (March 6-12, 2005):

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/album?.dir=5841&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/my_photos

We're in Perth!

Well, after 19 hours on a plane we made it to Perth! So far, so good. I
reckon it's about 35 Celsius here. Perth is a very nice, clean city. Too bad
I can not say the same for our hostel. I was eaten alive by bed bugs last
night.

We really enjoyed our Qantas flight. We got lots of snacks throughout the
flight - including Lindt candy bars! Although, I was a bit mad that they
never let me see the upstairs of the plane!

We are hopefully going to see some kangaroos tonight. Apparently, they come
out to feed at night on a small island near our hostel.

Well, that's about it for now. Internet is not cheap here!