Andrew's Road Log

2007 Day 1 - Arrival in Melbourne

2007-11-11T04:06:00.000+09:00

Flight over
Well, I'm off again over east to have more adventures. The adventure started minutes after the commencement of the flight when my MP3 player ceased to work (Update: It's started working again after landing - weird.) As a result I watched a far-more-than-healthy number of Tom and Jerry cartoons on the inflight entertainment while enjoying a lunchbox of food prepared by my dad. Yay for Virgin Blue! Flight path was almost a straight line - we had a great view of Perth and South Perth before turning east, unfortunately I wasn't in a window seat so couldn't snap it. One bit of light entertainment during the flight was a guy a few in front of me who spent about half an hour arranging his dreadlocks.

Arrival
Got the Skybus, realised my MP3 player did work after all and listened to Butterfly Effect on the way in - is weird arriving in a major city at sunset. Got to my accommodation at 8:30pm only to find out the only bed in the place, which they'd allocated me, was an upper bunk. Now as some of you might remember, while I can power walk for hours without grief, with two dislocated knees from my teens, I am just not able to haul myself over the threshold into one of those things - especially with the single-bar steps they provide for them. So after considerable negotiation they managed to plonk a folding bed with a mattress into some people's room on the top floor. I aim to sort this out today.

Food variety is just as I remembered it :) I feasted on a vegetable tempura bigger than a Hungry Jacks whopper, a tuna handroll and roti bread for the sum total of just $6.50. Just to remind me why Melbourne is my favourite city (Perth is still my fave place to live though :)... Went and saw Ratko (long term readers might remember Chris in the same spot some years ago) singing and playing guitar under Flinders Street Station for around half an hour.

Let's hope Day 2 is an improvement.

2006 Bunbury - Day 3-5

2006-10-23T21:54:00.000+08:00

The time certainly flew by there, so I'll recap on the rest:

Day 3 - Eaton, Pelican Point, Australind, Concert

I spent the day walking around the northern suburbs of Bunbury - in fact, I managed to walk right past the end then right back in again. Between gorgeously cute baby ducks, forests of rooftop TV antennae (they seem to be in fashion in Bunbury), long walks around obscurely distant "rural residential" estates which look nice enough, and less rural estates most likely designed by someone after a night of bad drugs (think of a bad theme party with a $350,000 hangover), I got in about 6 hours of walking. Also managed to pick up some info for Harvey the next day, including a walking trail map. I also saw the area that got hit by the tornado back in August, including the Settlers' Hall, a small community centre that had first fallen victim to the weather, then to vandals. Unfortunately I missed the bus back (he was early by 4 minutes!) and had to get a $23 cab back from Australind.

I then went to the Birds of Tokyo gig at Prince of Wales Hotel. BoT didn't just play their oldies but also previewed their new material due in February. Now I had planned to leave early, as I wanted to go up to Yarloop and Harvey the next day, but the concert went to midnight and I then ended up staying behind and chatting to members of the band and of Loose Unit, the support act. Fantastic guys (not to mention high quality music) - I'll definitely be going to any shows either band do in the future.

Day 4 - Harvey (not Yarloop)

Waking up rather, um, out of sorts at 9:30am, I felt more like drinking Diet Coke and eating some of my food than going anywhere, but eventually worked up the energy to walk to the train station via East Bunbury, where I saw some more historic parts of the old town, including a general store just 1km from the Bunbury Centrepoint complex (how cute!). I then got the train to Harvey (it's a very well-written page... by me), but after walking just 2km was really feeling the draining effect of the humid weather, so settled for:

* a bag of mandarins from a local farmer
* a walk around the just-closed Stirling Cottage
* ridiculously cheap baby peas and chocolate from one of the town's two IGAs (they're right across the road from each other - odd)
* a Yarloop Special at Anchovies Pizza (comes highly recommended!) They also sell gourmet icecream.
* chatting to some local Maori girls at the train station.

I then ended up spending my 40 minute train journey playing peekaboo with a small child on the seat in front, and then got a cab back to the backpackers.

Day 5 - The End

I am coming back to Bunbury - unexpectedly good place with excellent budget accommodation. So much to see down here that noone knows about, not even the local tourist agency. I haven't got to see the dolphins yet, but they'll be here when I come back.

I went up the "milk carton", more properly known as the Bunbury Tower, only to find I couldn't get a photo of Bunbury from it! I settled for one of Marlston Hill and a couple of Koombana Bay then went shopping and wandering. I ended up at the local library where I read some local history, before returning to the backpackers. It's amazing how tourists are just given no information at all, I guess I'm lucky in that I seem to be naturally able to explore such places and bring out the best in them (apart from maybe Queenstown in Tasmania) without need for much guidance.

The train journey home was uneventful, it was surreal being in Bunbury City at 2pm and being at my front door at 5:40, having only used public transport to get home - living in Perth one gets so used to flying.

So... that's it for another few months until the travel bug bites again.

2006 Bunbury - Day 2

2006-10-20T16:52:00.000+08:00

I spent today down in the south of Bunbury. First stop was the Maiden Hill Reserve, where I got to see native tuart trees in the coastal ridge. Bunbury's done a better job than the new northern suburbs of Perth in preserving what was there previously, both with this and the new Usher-Dalyellup Regional Park and the Tuart Walk (commissioned by the Minister for Peel and the Southwest just days before I walked it). After seeing the new suburb of Dalyellup (actually within the Shire of Capel just beyond Bunbury's southern fringe) I have thought of several new slogans the developers could use:

* Just beyond the edge of civilisation!
* Dalyellup: The New Mindarie
* Just 40 convenient minutes' walk from a beach you can't get to!

Anyway, enough dissing of Dalyellup. I had a pretty quiet day thereafter and got to chat with some locals, then went back to the backpackers. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day.

2006 Bunbury - Day 1

2006-10-19T22:48:00.000+08:00

Eventful day.

8:30 - Got to Perth
9:30 - Boarded Australind train to Bunbury
10:30 - Mused about where Perth ended and country began, concluding that funny looking animals staring at me were probably a good indication.
12:00 - Arrived in Bunbury, booked forward tickets to Yarloop/Harvey
13:00 - Arrived at YHA Bunbury after an odd ride through the suburbs which look like a forest of TV antennae as Bunbury people tend to prefer receiving Perth stations, and can do so as they're 180km from Perth.
14:40 - Left hostel initially just intending to go have a look at the beach.
17:20 - Returned to hostel having walked all the way to, and around, Big Swamp (Prince Philip Drive) - it was well worth it, at this time of year the waterbirds have all had young and just about every species of baby bird you can imagine is walking or swimming around there. So cute :) Also walked up Tuart Street in the "tree street" district of town with well maintained older country-style houses. Apparently this used to be the town limit.
18:40 - Left hostel to get sunset photos, ended up in the Thursday late night shopping experience at Centrepoint (which used to be marshalling yards for the railway before the railway was removed in 1986).
20:00 - Cooked a rather odd dinner for myself and have been chatting to other hostellers.

I'll write more when I feel less tired. It was unexpectedly warm here so the walk did quite take it out of me.

Quick update

2005-04-22T14:02:00.000+08:00

In Pemberton at the moment - Saw Cascades and the Gloucester Tree today, walked 11km of the Bibbulmun Track through some amazing karri forest. Yesterday's weather was dreadful so did basically nothing, and I got lost the previous day (although was a lot closer to one of the attractions than I thought I was!) Will update more later :D

SouthWest Day 2-5 - Busselton / Moving on

2005-04-20T08:13:00.000+08:00

I have had a great and relaxing time in Busselton. I got to see a lot of the Busselton metropolitan area (it feels so weird saying that!), made a friend or two and did a good job in getting lots of exercise and eating home-cooked local food. Scrambled free-range eggs rock, especially with a chopped-up tomato cooked into them!

Anyway, my entry went AWOL, so I'm rewriting it here in Pemberton. (Correction: silly me, I forgot one had to republish :))

Saturday 16th (Day 2)

Weather improved by the time I finished the last entry, so I walked to East Busselton and the new Port Geographe development - Busselton's outer extremities. After basically determining that it looks just like Mindarie, I opted for a change of scenery and walked along a 4WD track along the still-somewhat-wild Vasse Estuary, where I saw a fantastic sunset. I spent most of the rest of the night chatting with my friend Stuart by phone and chilling with other backpackers back at the hostel.

Sunday 17th (Day 3)

Beautiful fine day - total contrast to the last couple! Woke up late, but managed to cook most of my food for later consumption, before doing some shopping (btw Daniel, this place has a book exchange!) and taking advantage of the unexpectedly beautiful weather to head off to Broadwater, the sprawling western suburb which contains most of Busselton's holiday parks and best beaches. From the city, it was a 1.5 hour walk to a small point jutting into the ocean which I wanted to take sunset photos from (near Barnard Street, for future reference). It is a hike from the city I'd only recommend for very fit people or those with a car or bike, though. But it is honestly worth it. After that, I came back along the highway, and was initially lost because the bit I came out on looked awfully "country".

Monday 18th (Day 4)

Probably the most relaxed day so far on my itinerary. Decided to check out Busselton's public transport system, still in its infancy, with buses at 9am, 1pm and 5pm every day except Tuesdays which does a figure-of-eight route that covers first East and then West Busselton, and costs $5.20 for the whole trip. While I'd walked large sections of it, the route wandered into suburban areas I hadn't been to, and the driver knew a lot about the development of modern Busselton and the surrounding area. The bus is just like the modern Transperth ones you see on some northern suburbs routes - it's longer than the Circleroute buses, and has more seats, but ample room for walking frames and prams to be stored - as I found out later in the route, there was a reason for this :)

One thing I've always enjoyed doing as well is seeing how and where people live in different places. In Busselton, there's now an even mix of suburbs mimicking various Perth housing estates such as Mindarie, Currambine and Leeming to different extents, and charming old streets with no kerbs and an abundance of old style houses with eaves.

I'm starting to conclude Busselton has an extreme version of a problem I've seen elsewhere - everyone is either very old or very young. You see groups of young teenagers, but rarely people over about 16 or 17, and many old people, and a few young families, but that's it. The busdriver believed this was due to the sudden increase in Busselton's population (~9,000 in 1993 to ~20,000 today) and jobs and rental properties not being able to meet this increased pressure. The owner of the backpacker hostel believes that Busselton's council designs everything with seniors in mind, often ignoring the needs of younger people.

The fact Busselton was so recently just a small town was especially hard to believe after my return to Busselton, where I had to compete with peak lunch traffic in Queen and Albert Street, which was just nasty.

At some point I decided to find out about Dunsborough, and found to my surprise that TransWA does a return concession ticket for just $5.80. So I went there for a few hours - the beaches there are stunning, and the forest is literally just out the back. Dunsborough has all the young people Busselton seemed to be missing, and is a lively surf town not dissimilar to Torquay (Victoria) and some of the Hawaii surf towns I saw, with surf brand names *everywhere*. With a local butcher, baker and seafood wholesaler, people there don't live too badly! :D

Came back to Busselton to photograph the sunset from Busselton's main canal where it meets the ocean. Again, stunning, this time made rather unusual by the smoke from a fire on Cape Naturaliste - the flames of which could be seen clearly after dark.

I spent the rest of the night concluding that one cannot buy a chocolate bar in Busselton, or in fact ANYTHING, after 10pm on a Monday night - so much for 24-hour service stations! - and chilling with other backpackers.

Tuesday 19th (Day 5)

First priority was to cook my remaining food - my Busselton free range eggs worked well as scrambled eggs with Roma tomatoes and Dunsborough veal steaks :D The priority this morning was to go up Busselton Jetty - the longest in the Southern Hemisphere at 1841m long - and see the Busselton Underwater Observatory ($15 for adult including jetty admission). One thing they don't tell you is that the walk will take longer due to having to dodge careless people with fishing rods waving around, and family groups taking up the entire width of the jetty that you have to push past and apologise. But the last 600m was better than the rest. The Jetty has had its fair share of disasters - the first section was destroyed by Cyclone Alby in 1978, then the end bits were affected by a fire in 1999 (probably arson) and a storm in 2004. The UWO was awesome :D Got to see all manner of fish in quantity 8m under the ocean - we got a guided tour and then were left to take our own photos.

I had intended to go to Margaret River for a few hours, but sadly took longer to get back from the Jetty, and missed it. However, it was a fine day and I wasn't going to waste it, so after going to the Net cafe and uploading some pictures and catching up on the real world, I walked around the beach and town centre for a while, said my goodbyes to the backpackers, and got my bus to Pemberton via Augusta.

Unfortunately, my camera chose this moment to run out of batteries, so I have no shots of the pink, smoke-filled sky and yellow sun among the forests in a tremendous sunset between Yallingup and Margaret River. We watched 'Scooby-Doo' from Augusta to Pemberton as it was now dark and, although the headlight-lit forest along the road was beautiful, it was too hard to see :D

Pemberton YHA so far seems to be a professional and well-run establishment with friendly staff. I have no regrets so far about basing my next four days here before my return to Perth.

SouthWest Day 1-2: Busselton

2005-04-16T14:34:00.000+08:00

Pre-trip information

In my usual impulsive fashion I did a bit of looking up on the net, a bit of phoning and now have a week-long holiday booked. The weird bit is the baseline costs on it are just A$185! Doesn't include keeping myself alive, but includes the transport and shelter. Oh, and the sanity of being away from home again. Somehow, the road seems to do a lot for my poor brain.

So plans are:

Fri 15 Apr 05 - Perth-Busselton
Tue 19 Apr 05 - Busselton-Pemberton
Sat 23 Apr 05 - Pemberton-Home!

Day 1-2 - Arrival; Busselton

Left Perth at 17:00 from the rather impressive East Perth terminal aboard TransWA's SW1 coach. Sun set spectacularly somewhere around Kwinana-Rockingham - unfortunately no photos - and we got to Busselton at 21:00.

A rant about "road movies"

We got subjected to De-Lovely, a musical documentary on the life of Cole Porter starring Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd, on the way there. Considering the average age on the bus was probably younger than me, it's hardly surprising people weren't straining to hear it. There was some quite risque gay scenes in it as well. I didn't get the plot at all until after I watched it - not helped by the relatively low volume - and often wonder where they get road movies from. Last time I came back from Busselton in 1998, we got Race the Sun starring Ben Affleck's younger brother Corey, about the Adelaide-Darwin solar-powered car race. The plot sucked, and the acting (aside from Corey's) just bombed. I don't know what his manager was thinking! On the Calgary-Edmonton bus trip in early August 2004, we got some highly violent movie involving 1930s characters - entirely appropriate for the many kids on the bus, I guess. They're always current, but B-grade movies! At least Singapore Airlines gave me Spiderman 2, even if interspersed with that Jackie Chan version of Around The World in 80 Days, which was so terrible that I had to watch it to the end out of morbid curiosity. Grrr.

Back to the road log...

Busselton Backpackers was just a few hundred metres from the stop. It's a very informal establishment (the common areas remind me a little of Aboriginal Hostel in Hungary, but with a sort of open area out the back with loud music!), but the guy seemed to be pushing it a bit by asking what I considered to be too many questions, and rather too enthusiastically recommending the winery tours. It may have been alright, but after my experiences in Turkey, I guess I'm a bit wary. As at 24 hours later, though, he hasn't asked me again, so I think he was just trying to be helpful.

(For some reason I didn't write about it in my blog, but the staff at Grand Yavuz in Istanbul, circa 2 October, were putting considerable pressure on me to buy expensive tours of the Bosphorus, and were taking advantage of the fact I had to walk past them to get in or out of the hotel. I wouldn't budge, though. Also, different staff in the hotel quoted different rates for the same airport shuttle.)

Anyway, I got settled and then went for a walk, checking out the centre of Busselton - very quiet at 9:30pm on a Friday night! - avoiding the occasional drunk motorist who occasionally sped along and yelled out the windows, and decided to walk out of town and take some night pictures of the road leading into Busselton. I got as far as the Vasse Highway intersection, and got to listen to, although never actually found, some interesting wildlife.

Today, I've been to the library and gotten maps of Busselton and Pemberton, been to the tourist centre, and checked out Queen Street. This place is so weird though - it FEELS like a small country town, but has a population very close to Bunbury's or Albany's and has all the facilities you'd expect for a metropolis of this size (Coles, Woolworths, 2 Action supermarkets, 12km of beach...). Most of the population are either very young or very old, and alcohol consumption and bad driving seems to be universal. Weather turned crap though and I happened upon an internet cafe, so here I am!

Day 80-83 - Singapore - End of world trip.

2004-10-10T13:48:00.000+08:00

Sunday 10 October 2004, 14:00 Singapore time

Well, it's finally over. In just over 4 hours, I hop on a plane, and 83 days, 4 hours and 25 minutes after I left Perth for Auckland, I arrive back in Perth having circled the world. I miss my home city, but I feel sad now that this adventure is coming to an end. It's been an experience, and one that has changed me in a lot of ways that I'll probably only fully appreciate after I get back to a normal routine, working, saving money and seeing my friends.

My favourite places have been, in no particular order: Auckland, Vancouver, Vienna and Singapore (along with Melbourne and Perth).

People have been curious to know what I think of Singapore - apart from the fact I am totally not acclimatised to the weather (32C and humid every day), this place is amazing. Food is cheap, and now that I know how to use it, the public transport is amazing and gets you anywhere on the island. The tropical scenery and surprisingly clean streets make for a certain experience. The smells remind me a little of Hawaii, as the vegetation is in some ways similar. I've been to the Museum of Asian Civilisations, Sentosa Island and the National Orchid Garden - I would have done far more but I am tired after 12 weeks of holidaying out of a bag, and I think my health is still recovering from Turkey.

I'm definitely planning on coming back here - possibly as a 2-3 week domestic trip incorporating Melbourne, Auckland and a bit more of New Zealand, and Singapore, which is quite doable from Perth. I'll have to see what it costs though.

Anyway, my money is being extended to new lows right now, so I have two minutes left at the net cafe. See you all back in Perth!

Day 78-79 - In transit, Singapore

2004-10-07T13:22:00.000+08:00

Wednesday 6 October 2004, 23:40 Singapore time (GMT+8; same as Perth time)

Well, I've made it to Singapore! Firstly, let's follow on from the previous post.

After posting the last post, I had dinner at Orban, a quick nap, and then went back to Orban Restaurant. It was quite amusing - I went there with the intention to buy food, but for whatever reason I never got asked to order, ended up watching MTV and bantering with Nigel for about two hours, and got two free teas. (I love free tea in Turkey, especially when the person offering is not trying to sell me a carpet.)

Then it was off on the shuttle to Atatürk International Airport, a surprisingly large and modern facility. On the way, we saw the modern, green beachside suburbs to the west of Istanbul and part of the remains of the old city walls. I didn't get to go to Kariye Museum or the city walls - that will have to wait for another trip. While Istanbul was a crazy place which I didn't handle too well, I think I'd be more ready for it if I went a second time in a few years.

Free entertainment at the airport was provided by the Singaporeans and Hong Kong citizens on my flight, every single one of whom failed the security check. After going through so many of them I have no problems passing them at all, it's one of those things that if you follow the routine, you can't go wrong. Mine is - dump mobile, camera, coins and keys in the bucket, dump anything I'm carrying, plus the backpack and my jacket into the conveyor belt, then walk through, and collect my stuff at the other side starting with the jacket. I always wear my jacket through airports as it provides another few places to store small items such as the phone, and is too heavy and large to pack.

The flight to Singapore, as it turned out, went via Dubai, where we had to get off for security reasons and go through a security check. Dubai's got a very nice airport and it's a city I wouldn't mind visiting at some future point. I bought a couple of postcards, walked away with uncertain change from a US dollar (not being able to read Arabic would be an issue in the UAE) and got on the plane again. *edit* Turns out I got 2.50 dirham change, which is almost 1 Australian dollar. The Web is a good thing :)

For the curious, the route taken by the plane was:
- Southeast through Turkey to around Alanya
- South, crossing the easternmost tip of Cyprus
- East, crossing Lebanon to eastern Syria
- Southeast into Jordan and from there, drawing a neat parallel line with the Iraqi border through the Saudi desert - so no insurgent pictures, which may disappoint some readers
- Over Al-Khobar, then north of Bahrain and then into Dubai from the Gulf
- From Dubai, almost a perfect straight line to Singapore across southern India.

Airport food and the service was in a class of its own with Singapore Airlines - more like meals than the usual sort of prepackaged food you get on planes. By the end of the flight, though, my knees were sore and I was underslept, so most of yesterday (Wed) was spent sleeping off the last of the Sultan's Revenge and recovering from the flight. It's bizarre how after 3 weeks in Turkey the so-foreign thank you, "tesekkür ederim", and hello, "merhaba", has become habit and I feel almost strange saying "thank you very much" in my own language in this city. I'll get used to it, I'm sure, just like the left-hand drive, which took me about 15 minutes to get used to. It seems funny not talking about millions of the local currency any more, as well. A bottle of water here costs S$1.20, not one million.

In the meantime, I have discovered the joys of the Shaw Tower's food centre. Food in Singapore is clean, healthy and ridiculously cheap for the most part if you know where to go, and I had the benefit of a few good tips. Roti and vegetarian buffet with ginger tea and grass jelly for brunch, big bowl of green vegies and meat for dinner, and hopefully murtabak for breakfast tomorrow. People speak good English here and are generally friendly, and the traffic is orderly. Despite the heat and humidity, you can walk quite easily between most places, and airconditioning is almost an institution here. My hotel, for which I am paying less than half the price, is awesome, and I have vouchers for almost all the major attractions. I also like the fact that this city accommodates both cheap tourists like myself and the big end of town - meaning I get the place to myself whenever I want it and don't have to compete with masses of tourists with loud shirts.

Loud shirts are, as in Hawaii, a big thing here. People watching can be quite an amusing activity :) A note about sellers - I've noticed how many people call to you from the street trying to sell you stuff (most notably trishaw rides, camera accessories and food). I'm amazed how hardened I've become to it all after Istanbul - I even say "hi" to some of them and keep on moving at the same speed. A guy over the road from my hotel this morning was trying to sell me a wide-angle lens for my camera for S$199 (A$180) and seemed offended and dismissive of me when I said I didn't know the market and wanted to find out more about lenses before buying. At least I got to try it out - but it seemed to distort the image a bit?

Anyway, off to enjoy the town. I've been to the Arab Street and Sultan Mosque, and right now am in a pleasant net cafe in Little India. More to report later.

Day 75-77 - Istanbul

2004-10-04T17:23:00.000+08:00

Monday 4 October 2004, 12:00 Turkey time

This is the biggest city I've ever been in, and I'm under no illusions that, firstly, while there's certainly a lot of money floating around this place, this is for the most part a third-world city with corresponding infrastructure, and secondly, I'm well outside my comfort zone.

After the Kaçkar experience (see Day 61), I decided it was safest not to chance it on the local food where it doesn't come specifically recommended. At times, I have survived on Diet Coke (called Coca-Cola Light in Europe and Turkey), which you can buy out of a fridge even in small shops, and potato chips in a sealed packet. I have, however, eaten at two decent restaurants in the last few days. The first is Lale (The Pudding Shop), on Divan Yolu pretty close to the Blue Mosque, a restaurant established in 1958 and still owned by the same family, which used to be the start of the "hippy trail" to Kathmandu. Nowadays, while the service and food are excellent, it is quite pricy. The second is Orban (Anatolia) Restaurant on Piyerloti Caddesi near my hotel. The staff are extremely friendly, the food is excellent (I recommend the Adana Kebab if you like spicy and Urfa if you don't) and well within my budget, and when I was stuck for money the guy even shouted me an apple tea while I chatted with some British tourists. While I doubt his real name is actually Nigel, he's provided most of my enjoyable dining experiences in this city. There's a free bellydancing show in the evenings, I'm thinking of checking it out tonight - my last night in Istanbul.

Let me offer you an insight through my eyes of the city in which I presently find myself. This part, Sultanahmet/Eminönü, is full of small, steep streets with traffic that probably would run you over. Traffic in general in Istanbul is completely insane, and often ignores traffic lights and other road signals. As with most places, the worst are the taxi drivers. Many footpaths are dangerous to use by way of being broken up or under maintenance, so most locals walk on the road and ignore horns, diving for cover only when they're about to get hit. The horns get annoying after a while, but I don't mind some busdrivers who have installed almost cartoonish ones (including the Fez bus driver).

The lack of hygiene here is palpable. You don't have to walk far to find a pool of offputtingly smelly water on a road (or just wet patches), or a pile of rubbish. Abandoned cats exist everywhere - some barely the size of my shoe or even smaller - and get very territorial with each other about rubbish piles. However, they're timid with humans and most probably will walk or run away from you. The oddest bit for me is that some of the food shops and street merchants operate next to the most smelly bits. You wonder how they sell anything!

A few safety tips. Firstly, if someone is trying to get you to come into their shop or is trying to get your attention (even just saying hi), act like they don't exist and walk on. Even saying "no" to them is taken as encouragement, and they will hassle you. It is hard to completely ignore them, but you just have to do it. This applies as much for 6-year-olds as for adults - I've had kids try to sell me stuff and get very insistent. Also, if you don't have a watch on and someone who is clearly not a lost tourist asks you the time, they're most likely trying to find out what pocket you keep your valuables in. Treat them like the others.

Another thing to watch when crossing bridges is that they are congested with fishermen trying for their daily catch, and they don't watch behind them. Just make sure that when you're passing them by, that you don't get hit when they withdraw their line.

Also, don't venture out of known areas without a map. I recommend the map from HI-Cordial House for 3 million, and although not all streets are marked, most streets don't have signs anyway. If you're looking for signs, turn down any road and look for little blue signs on the sides of buildings which have the street number, street name and neighbourhood - but you have to be really close to them to see them at all.

Finally, there are a number of scams which operate. I had read Tom Brosnahan's excellent Turkey Travel Planner website (which offers a wide range of useful and interesting information), but I'll draw your attention to this page and its links as I agree with all of it. Yesterday evening, I got a bit lost coming out of Taksim/Beyoglu district and kept on walking anyway as I knew I was headed in the right direction. A boy of about 19 came up to me and started a conversation with me. He said he was from Cyprus and was going to work with his uncle. He seemed friendly but I was wary. Among other things, he started asking where I was from, also questions which were designed to determine my financial status and credit cards, whether I wanted to see Turkish women, or even men, and started recommending hamams (Turkish baths) to me. My experience the other day in the Turkish bath revealed you put your valuables in safe locking facilities. This was fine in Cappadocia, but I'd imagine this guy would have had arrangements with the particular establishment. I handled it by answering everything vaguely, implying that I was basically poor, and that I had a group I was part of who were expecting me back at a given time. He followed me onto the Ataturk Bridge, at which point I picked up the phone, dialled a friend back in Australia and started speaking in a mix of Polish, Hungarian and random syllables, making sure to recite each of the streets, bridges and suburbs clearly in English. The kid got scared and parted ways with me. I was a bit freaked out but as usual, I survived without losing a penny.

I've been potentially scammed so many times around the world, and every time, it's stayed in the potential territory. I think this goes back to the fact that I'm an eternally suspicious and untrusting person and, although I'm a nice guy who at times finds it hard to be assertive, when it comes to the crunch I can do it. I think it's just a matter of remembering that you owe this person nothing, that merely their being friendly to you entitles them to nothing, and that walking away and/or being rude to them does not cost you anything and you'll be gone in a few days anyway.

What I've done in the past few days

- On Saturday, I walked up Babiali/Ankara Caddesi, the university/publishers' quarter, and checked out many small bookshops and such. While most of the books were in Turkish, it was an interesting way to kill a bit of time. Afterwards, it was on to Eminönü, the port of call for the boats and ferries, where one could check out the street sellers, the nearby Galata Bridge, and the mosques nearby. You get an excellent view of the Galata Tower and Dolmabahçe from here. A word of warning - avoid the WC under Galata Bridge. Don't ask why - just avoid it. At night, I headed off around the back of the Sultanahmet Mosque to Akbiyik Caddesi, a slightly more happening spot full of young backpackers, pubs, Fez's head office and the HI-Orient Hostel, which seemed decent. There's a bar under it with bellydancing shows (almost ubiquitous in Turkey, it seems) and drinks at the sorts of prices one would usually expect to pay. I got lost on the way back, but found my way out of it eventually.

- Yesterday, I went up Fualpasa past Beyazit Mosque and the University and around Suleymaniye Mosque, which is in quite a hard-to-get-to location if you're walking. Near the mosque is a pleasant botanical garden with no entrance charge - great place to stop for lunch or a water if you've brought some. Then wound down the zigzaggy little streets into the sort of area that Turkish people actually live, before crossing the Atatürk Bridge into Beyoglu. The Galata Tower (7 million entrance charge), a 13th-century Genoese tower in excellent condition which overlooks the city, reminded me of some of the other observation towers I've been up. The outside viewing galleries give you an overview of the entire Golden Horn region, the Istanbul bit of the Bosphorus, the Asian side, the mosques and Topkapi Palace, and the bridges. After getting lost briefly, I found my way to Istiklal Caddesi, the main shopping street of Istanbul. This is like Hay Street Mall, but 2.5km long and twice as wide with tramlines going up the middle of it, and impossibly crowded for its entire length. I found that the crowds actually detracted from my ability to shop in it as the pedestrians were as crazy as the motorists. At its end is Taksim Square, where various political events in past times have occurred.

- Today I haven't really done much at all. Today is my last day in the Turkish Republic - there is so much to do in Istanbul, but I'm not in an ideal location for getting to many of the attractions. I'm hoping to see the Kariye mosaic museum today, though - it's a bit out of the city and I am hoping it'll shake my present feeling of claustrophobia just a little bit.

Day 73-74 - Cappadocia, Ankara, End of tour

2004-10-01T01:35:00.000+08:00

Thursday 30 September 2004, 19:30 Turkey time

Today was our free day, so we went firstly to the former Greek town of Mustafapasa, formerly known as Sinasos. Like many of the Greek towns in Turkey the town had been built in typical Greek architecture style into the side of a hill, and is now largely populated by Turks who are trying to restore some of the old buildings to use as B&Bs and hotels for exploring the nearby region. I hope it works out - it definitely has potential as an idea.

Next stop was the town of Göreme, where I checked out the small shopping area. I got the chance to properly weigh myself and am 95.3kg - i.e. I have lost approximately 3.2kg net since leaving Perth, and about 7kg since my peak on the journey. I also spent some time in a music shop surveying a range of Turkish traditional and modern music.

Next was Avanos, a somewhat less touristy town where animals still roam the streets, the traffic on the narrow streets is completely mental, and everyone is selling either carpets or pottery. It was good fun but I didn't want to spend too long there.

Finally was the Turkish bath just out of Avanos, which was an experience in itself - I will try to explain it. First, you put your valuables in safe storage, then change out of your clothes and, wearing only swimmers, go into a steam room. This is one hell of a full on steam room - you can't see, your lips and eyes start doing funny things and you sweat like crazy. Next is the cold pool which you bathe in for 5 minutes or so, before going into a less steamy, less hot steam room for about another 5. Then you come out, lie on a hot slab of marble and wait for the (male) staff to call you for a massage and scrub with something only slightly more subtle than sandpaper. After the massage, you lie on another table and another staff member soaps you all over and massages you a different way. After this, you shower, then get a quick neck massage and exfoliation, then shower again. At the end of it all you get dressed and they give you Turkish tea. At the end, despite several somewhat harrowing stages, I was (and still am several hours later) incredibly relaxed.

One final note about Ürgüp. Hotel internet sucks - I paid bigtime for shared 56k and could barely use the net. Go to Campus Internet Cafe at the eastern end of Ataturk Bulvari near the tourist information and they charge you A$2 an hour, the access is fast, computers are modern (and even took my camera), the staff are friendly and if you're lucky you even score a tea for your trouble. I don't normally recommend specific businesses but this one deserved it, I think.

One day left with the tour group. To be honest, I'll be glad to be on my own again, although the tour guide (Ayhan) has been excellent, informative and possesses a great sense of humour, and I will miss his insights. I have whinged and whined about various things along the way, but overall, the tour has been good and I have seen a lot of stuff I wouldn't have seen otherwise. I guess my priorities are just different to a lot of people, though, and this sort of thing brings out an ugly side of me where I look down on people (in this case, some of my fellow travellers) for being so dreadfully normal and predictable. I never have been either, and mediocrity so annoys me in ways which it really shouldn't.

Friday 1 October 2004, 23:45 Turkey time

Back in Istanbul - after most of the day in a bus. I am staying in a room with a broken TV, a broken phone, and a smoke problem. Yes, welcome to Istanbul. :)

Today, we drove from Cappadocia to Istanbul via Ankara - some of the group went up in hot air balloons to see Cappadocia from another angle, but I'd already bought a picture book anyway, and $200-$300 on my present budget was completely out of the question. In Göreme I saw some places charging less than half those rates, but the tour guide pointed to the small print - they only have one balloon, there's no guarantee of the reservation and there's no insurance once you're up there. On the way, we stopped at a petrol station where I enjoyed yet more tea and watched an armoured personnel carrier filling up at the pump. I suppose they've got to fuel up somewhere...

On that note, something I haven't actually mentioned before. The number of military (jandarma) sites here at just random unexpected places, often just out of the city centre, with young guards carrying full-on weaponry who will happily chat to you in English if you say hi to them, is just incredible. The police carry guns here, and I'm not just talking a pistol either. Just before the turnoff to Gallipoli from Tekirdag, almost every intersection was being manned by armed military personnel. It's quite intimidating until you get used to it. Most of the people in question would, at a guess, be young people doing their compulsory national service.

Anyway, to Ankara, the capital city of Turkey and a very modern city completely unlike Istanbul with shiny buildings, good and generally straight roads, leafy suburbs with small mosques, shopping centres, the world-renowned Museum of Civilisations (not part of the tour, but reportedly one of the world's best museums of its kind, considering the sort of stuff that's in Turkey already) and the thing we'd come to see, the Atatürk Mausoleum - the final resting place of modern Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and the site of a museum dedicated to Atatürk memorabilia (clothes, cigarette cases, photos, his actual office complete with a stuffed cast of his favourite dog), World War I, the Independence War of 1919-1923, where Atatürk led the Turkish people against the Ottomans, and against the Entente powers who'd extracted huge sections of Turkey through the armistice agreement in 1918, and Turkey's post-independence history up until Atatürk's death from cirrhosis in 1938. It was a very moving experience - they'd done the museum extremely well with background sounds and music in some of the rooms, letters and memos written by the man himself, etc. The thing which struck me was how this guy could have had absolute power if he'd wanted it in 1923, but preferred to create a modern, secular democracy and use his power and influence to force Turkey into each of those three aims. Outside was a detachment of soldiers performing a ceremony not unlike the changing of the guard.

The Ankara experience was capped off with a visit to its biggest shopping centre, Migros, to enjoy fast food. While most opted for Burger King or KFC, I found a nice restaurant completely devoted to the Iskender kebab, the original kebab as perfected in Bursa (a city to the south of Istanbul). I finally got to try one, and it was really nice.

Next was the 6-hour drive to Istanbul. At first, we were somewhat hampered by the fact that all of the freeways out of Ankara were dug up for construction, but by guesswork and a bit of cheating, we made it onto a freeway further up. After travelling through the mountains and stopping in Bolu just before sunset, we finally hit the outskirts of Istanbul. At this point, the traffic came to a complete standstill, and we were treated to free entertainment of drivers cutting each other off, driving in four lanes when only two were drawn, etc. Finally, we got over the Bosphorus Bridge and into Istanbul by about 10pm. This was the end of the Fez tour, and we bid farewell to Ayhan, our guide for the past 2 weeks. They say a guide can make or break a tour, and with his sense of humour, intelligence, passion for his home country, excellent English skills, his width of interests leading to a range of interesting discussions, and his local knowledge of places to eat, I think we got an excellent deal.

I'm kind of relieved to be on my own again, but am so far outside my comfort zone in Istanbul that I think the two almost cancel each other out. More later...

Day 70-72 - Fethiye, Cappadocia

2004-09-29T23:28:00.000+08:00

Day 10 - Fethiye to Antalya
This morning we drive further south for Saklikent Gorge. A natural mountain split in half by an earthquake years ago. You may wish to trek through the massive canyon, tripping and scrambling over the rocks whilst submerged in icy cold water fresh from the hilltops. Afterwards, there is time to have lunch at the river bar and café. Today we also visit a carpet village and learn how carpets are made by hand, what determines their value and the historical and cultural context in which this folk art has blossomed.

Before I continue, in response to a couple of questions, people going to the site I linked earlier will see that the descriptions are different. I have pieced together from a number of new and old Fez sites an actual description of what we did, so the descriptions are more useful here than on the site.

I was feeling considerably better by this stage but not so much that wading up to my bum in ice-cold water really appealed to me as an idea so soon after a flu, so I amused myself watching the others, walking around the nearby mountains and getting chased by a goat. Saklıkent Gorge is definitely amazing, but having seen the Cataract Gorge in Launceston TAS and having seen the Great Ocean Road in Vıctoria, I guess that I was a bit underawed.

Afterwards, we went to a government-licenced carpet factory just out of Saklikent, where we were entertained with Turkish tea, shown a variety of carpets and learned to tell between different types, and then spent a further two or three hours there. As with most of the purchase opportunities on this tour, while I could recognise that prices were lower than I had seen elsewhere in Turkey, they were still way beyond my price range.

It was late when we left and the sun set on the way to Antalya, a tourist city and the birthplace of our tour guide. Due to various circumstances, I was now in single-room accommodation even though I'd paid for twin-share.

Whinge alert: Hotel Sunset in Antalya was dreadful. It is not Fez's usual hotel of choice, it's in an odd location and the rooms are not in acceptable condition. My 1st floor room was full of smoke and the ancient AC unit was broken and jammed full of dust. As an asthmatic, this posed an unacceptable risk. Apparently, all rooms were full that night and none were non-smoking. The tour guide graciously offered to trade with me - his 3rd floor room was better in that it had a modern AC.

Day 11: Antalya to Cappadocia via Konya
Follow the ancient silk trade route, while heading north- east via Konya to Cappadocia. Along the way to Cappadocia we visit the 13th-century caravanseray at Sultanhani. Tonight there is the option of a traditional Turkish folklore evening, with the famous whirling dervishes and belly-dancing.

Day 12: Cappadocia
This morning we marvel at the surreal and bizarre landscape that
is Cappadocia. Enjoy a fully guided tour of this fascinating region.
We will be visiting an underground city, the old Greek village of Mustafa Pasa with its fairy chimneys and Pigeon Valley and Göreme Valley. We return to the hotel late afternoon.

Due to the unseasonal hot weather (about 35°C) and our group, the above was our slightly non-standard tour itinerary. The first day was nearly entirely one long (9 hour) drive from Southwest Turkey to Central Turkey.

Quick note about geography - Cappadocia is a fairly large historical region, mostly located in the Aksaray, Nevsehir and Kayseri regions. Just north of Nevsehir are the small cities of Ürgüp (where most hotels/motels are located), Göreme (where most tourist attractions are) and Avanos.

We briefly got to see Göreme, the main attraction of this area, before going to the Turkish evening at a fairly new establishment. This basically consisted of - unlimited food and drinks, the whirling dervishes of the Mevlani order, who are basically a group of men clad in whıte who bow to each other lots then spin around and around at impossible speeds in harmony wıth each other - amazing to watch - and the dancing, where Attila from our group managed to strut his stuff in style, plus some folklore with a simulated courtship and wedding done entirely via music and dance. We got back to the hotel at around 12:30am tired but happy. It's one of the few times on the tour that we've all had a chance to do something together as a group rather than a series of individuals.

Today we explored the Göreme Valley region, took lots of amazing and entirely weird pictures, explored an underground city built here by Christians in 7th century AD to defend against the Muslims, visited a small pottery shop and factory in Avanos (another blatant shoppıng opportunity conveniently scheduled by the tour), checked out some old Greek Orthodox churches in Göreme literally carved out of the rocks, and saw the fairy chimneys. Very full day.

What's next?
Tomorrow - free day and Turkish bath.
Friday - driving back to Istanbul (10hrs) via Ankara.
Saturday - tour ends.
Tuesday - I leave Istanbul bound for Singapore.

Day 69 - Fethiye

2004-09-27T01:36:00.000+08:00

Sunday 26 September 2004, 19:30 Turkey time

I really do like Fethiye as a place. It's got the natural scenery and hasn't completely sold out to tourism with the shopping experience despite the abundance of tourists around the place. The interesting thing is that most of the tourists seem to be from other parts of Turkey rather than international.

I went out on a boat trip (12 Adalar aboard 'Prenses Cansu') today around the islands. I couldn't tell you what exactly I saw, as there was no commentary, but the whole area is absolutely beautiful. Blue water to distance, turquoise water up close (did you know that turquoise is a French word originating from "turkuaz"?) and mountains and islands everywhere.

In the three days I've been away from the group, I have managed to:
- see and enjoy Lake Koycegiz, Turtle Beach and all they have to offer
- consume with the locals and a few fellow backpackers at a traditional stone gathering-house
- explore Kayaköy, the ghost town, and Fethiye
- get in a fair bit of walking
- tour the islands in the Fethiye harbour area
- spend more money on global roaming charges
- recover from (most of) my ailments

On the way into the net cafe to update this I ran into two people from the group - was good to see them again. This point marks both the halfway point on the Fez tour and the halfway point on my time in Turkey, which is slightly longer.

Turkey has a lot of interesting music of its own. If you want to hear the one that's been stuck in my head all day, get Şappur Şuppur by İsmail-YK (YK is short for Yurtseven Kardesler, the name of the singer.) For more info, check out http://english.alternatifim.com. Other music which for better or worse I will probably end up associating with this country when I hear it includes:

Mario Winans/P Diddy - I Don't Wanna Know
Britney Spears - Toxic
Beyonce - Crazy In Love
Panjabi MC - Beware Of The Boys (Mundian To Bach Ke) - heard everywhere here
O-Zone - Dragostea Din Tei (do not download this, not only does it totally suck, but it'll stick in your head for weeks)

Day 67-68 - Touring Turkey

2004-09-26T02:58:00.000+08:00

Day 7: Köycegiz Boat Trip
Board a boat and cruise around lake Köycegiz. Pass the Kings' Tombs, swim at Turtle Beach or cover yourself in mud and take a dip in the thermal springs.

Day 8: Köycegiz to Fethiye
Leaving Köycegiz, we drive to the ghost town of Kayaköyü, a Greek village that was given up at the beginning of the 20th Century in accordance with the treaty of Lausanne, which saw an exchange of people between Turkey and Greece.

I bid a farewell to the rest of the tour, and then got ready for my boat trip (Sahin Daily Tour) around Lake Köycegiz. A great 9 hours (with included lunch!) checking out fabulous lake-mountain scenery, a wonderful white, sandy Mediterranean beach with straw hut restaurants and a long line of large old people lying on recliners. The other people - especially a Dutch guy called Gijs (try pronouncing that!), a British couple and the young staff onboard the boat (one of whom should be in dance music videos) - made the journey exciting and fun. The Lycian mud baths were fun to watch, but I wasn't game to go in (I think the sulfur smell made my mind up) - instead enjoying a fabulous Turkish apple tea for a ridiculously low price. Overall, the Sahin boat trip was fantastic and I'd happily recommend it. Even the water bottles were cheap.

On return to Köycegiz I accepted an earlier invitation from several 20-something Canadians I had met earlier who seemed to appreciate my Canada-liking, English-speaking ways. This was an interesting experience in getting to see the real Turkey. While the tourists all crowd into bars and nightclubs playing bad 80s music and techno in the Mediterranean and Aegean resort towns, the locals in the smaller towns sit around in dimly-lit stone buildings dating back to the 18th century and drink raki, the local drink, and talk over the day's events. I wouldn't call them bars because I didn't get the impression that selling alcohol was their main objective. Although we couldn't speak much Turkish, the locals seemed to accept us quite happily, although we ended up mostly talking to each other. We were given small gifts by an elderly man before our departure. After good wishes all around and staggering back to my hotel at 12:30am, both the hotel management and tour guide seemed surprised I was out so late, although I noted plenty of establishments (including at least one playing bad 80s music) were still open.

Today, our one-person tour came to Fethiye, the coastal resort closest to the well-known beach of Ölüdeniz. Karaköy was a really harrowing experience - just think of thousands of houses all clearly visible on a hillside that you can walk through and around, slowly passing into ruin through abandonment. At least the Turkish tourism authorities have seen to it that this process will not continue and the area is undergoing preservation and restoration. I think in general, actually, that the Turkish tourism and antiquities authorities actually do an amazing job looking after the wealth of past treasures they have been bequeathed.

Day 63-66 - Touring Turkey with Fez Travel

2004-09-26T01:45:00.000+08:00

The tour is proceeding according to this tour plan from Fez Bus. I have crossposted the entries to use as headings, using better descriptions where available.

Day 3: Istanbul to Gallipoli
An early start as we head down to the Gallipoli peninsula, the site of the ill-fated World War I campaign that shaped young commonwealth nations such as Australia and New Zealand. We take the tour at the Kabatepe Museum and partake in the tour of areas such as Lone Pine and Chunuk Bair Memorials, Anzac Cove, Johnston's Jolly, the Nek and Allied and Turkish trenches. After the tour, you cross the Dardenelles and stay in Çanakkale.

We left Istanbul early in the morning for the long drive via Tekirdag - not the most exciting bit of Turkey, to be honest - to the Gallipoli (Gelibolu) Peninsula. First stop was the Kabatepe museum, where in a fairly small, hushed room, we got the opportunity to view medals, coins, uniforms, bullets, guns, poignant letters and even some partial skeletons. The other sites are all fairly well-known, so I'll focus more on interpretation.

For those who don't know, the British and Anzac (Aust & NZ Army Corps) landed at Anzac Cove on the peninsula on 25 April 1915 in an attempt to capture the Dardanelles, which connect the Black Sea with the Mediterranean and hence were vital from a shipping perspective. To cut a long story short, the initiative failed, mainly because the choice of landing spot appears to have been a mistake. The Anzacs pulled out in late 1915-early 1916, having suffered massive casualties. To this day, Australia celebrates Anzac Day as its national war memorial day, starting with a dawn service in every capital and at Gallipoli itself. It was our first major loss in battle, and gave rise to a national spirit quite separate from our previous connections with Britain for perhaps the first time.

Within a few years of World War I, the Ottoman empire which had led Turkey for 7 centuries crumbled and Turkey, after a war of independence, became a republic in 1923 with war hero and independence leader, General Mustafa Kemal, as its first president. He believed Turkey needed to modernise, secularise and democratise - and achieved much towards this goal without sacrificing Turkey's independence to Western powers. He is revered as a national hero in every corner of Turkey, and has been given the title Ataturk - father of the Turks. He also normalised relations with Turkey's enemies in WWI, partly because of a strongly-held respect for British and Anzac forces he had himself fought, and facilitated the building of peace parks and international memorial sites.

As a "New Australian", it was a very weird experience for me - while I was born elsewhere, it is like growing up with an adopted parent. That culture has become my culture, and I was deeply moved by what I saw. Two of the most striking things for me were the gravesites, especially those believed to be of two 18-year-olds who had died in battle. Back in that day, people forged their ages to get into the fighting, so it's quite likely they were high-school-age kids. The other thing was just looking at some of the now eerily peaceful scenery that these guys had to negotiate during the fighting - it was sobering. As I look back over my photos tonight, I believe I have managed to accurately capture some of what I saw at least.

We finished by getting a ferry to Çanakkale, the city of about 500,000 where Turks talk with a broad Australian accent even though they really can't speak English - I find it amusing and the American tourists, by all web reports, find it irritating.

Day 4: Gallipoli to Kusadasi via Troy & Pergamon
Step back in time today as we head south and visit the ancient city of Troy, the site of the famed Trojan war, and its Trojan Horse. After Troy, we continue along the Aegean Coast for a lunch stop at Bergama. This afternoon sees us on a tour of the ruined Pergamon, a magnificent acropolis with one of the steepest amphitheatres in the world. Its impressive temples, library and medical facilities made it a renowned cultural and political centre in its time. We continue driving south for our night stop at Kusadasi.

Day 5: Ephesus Tour
Absorb yourself in history today with a guided tour of Ephesus. Walk down Marble Road towards the Celcus Library and Grand Theatre and immerse yourself into the mystical atmosphere of the city halls and stadium where chariot and horse races were once held. We also visit the site of the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Also visit the former Greek village of Sirince, famous for it's fruit wines, before a leather goods show. Turkey produces some of the finest leather goods in the world and many are made here before branding in Italy.

While ancient cities of this kind are extremely fascinating, one thing that started to grate on me after a while is that the sheer dilapidation of most of the sites caused by millennia of wear and tear and earthquakes and the sorts of things that happen (and some measure of 19th-century treasure-hunting and looting) means that you basically walk from site to site with a few half-columns, pillars or scattered artefacts on levels of hilly, weed-covered earth, and have to basically use your imagination to try and reconstruct what was actually there based on the historical information. There are actually 9 cities of Troy, with the one of legend believed to be the 6th city standing on that site, and the others above or below it in layers. (The Trojan Horse, by the way, is basically a tourist trap, but is great for photographs.)

The Fez tour, in one respect, actually manages this extremely well - by going from Troy to Pergamon and then to Ephesus, one is going from worst- to best-preserved over the sequence - in Ephesus, many of the everyday parts of the city are still reasonably intact and you feel like you are walking around a city, and can get some idea for how the people of the time lived, even if only through the tour guide's commentary. Pergamon is more mixed in that some bits are excellently preserved (eg the theatre and its entrance, the agora etc) but most is not.

We stayed for two nights in Kusadasi (Kush-a-Dar-suh), a tourist town with a permanent population of about 50,000. The place is absolutely beautiful and great for shopping, although I didn't get to enjoy it much as my time there was marred by my various ailments.

Near Ephesus is a delightful bit of the country where one can wander around hillsides, see the alleged home of the Virgin Mary after Jesus's ascension to heaven and eat pancakes in a traditional Turkish pancake house sitting on cushions in a tent, surrounded by Turkish rugs and watching old women with headscarves rolling out and cooking your pancake to order on the hearth for about A$2. In the time I've been in Turkey, these pancakes (which you do find around the place) together with Turkish tea have become personal favourites.

Afterwards, we went to a leather shop and watched a fashion show, which two more flamboyant members of our group assisted wıth, and then we spent a couple of hours in the shop amusing ourselves and trying to avoid the nice but incredibly patient staff who wished to sell us stuff. I did, however, buy a really nice leather jacket.

Day 6: Kusadasi to Köycegiz
Tour the magnificent white calcium formations of Pamukkale, followed by the ancient city of Hierapolis and a dip in the hot springs, which were used in Roman times for their therapeutic powers.

Hierapolis is an interesting place compared to the other three in that it has been adopted by modernity for its original purpose. One can still see sarcophagi and ruins from the Roman period, as well as its excellently preserved theatre, but the attraction (and some might say tourist trap) is the thermal hot springs. While they were meant to cure everything from skin afflictions to flus to cancers, I wasn't actually game to go in and have a dip along with the thousands of Turkish and European tourists who were, but it was great all the same. The view from the bus from Kusadasi to Koycegiz (Koh-jiz, with a Queens English accent) through the mountains was actually the highlight of my day - I love this sort of nature stuff, with steep gorges and rivers and mountains and greenery, as Daniel can attest from my time in Western Canada. It was unexpected and it was great. Koycegiz is a mountain town of about 8,000 and so far is the friendliest place I've been in through all of Turkey.

This last day with the rest of the tour group was strangely emotional. This tour has two options - one which proceeds as follows, and the other spends the next 3 days (Friday to Sunday in this case) on a gulet cruising the Mediterranean. I was the only one who picked the land option in this particular group - and was given a number of chances to change my mind, but in the end didn't. The deciding factor in the end was my health - I felt I needed to recover, and I do that best by myself. But I probably would have done it anyway - I've always been a bit of a lone adventurer, and the thought of relaxing on a boat for 3 days actually sounded a bit boring to me.

Thoughts on travelling and time distortion issues

2004-09-25T01:22:00.000+08:00

Friday 24 September 2004, 20:00 Turkey time

It's interesting how much evolution can occur in a few short days. It's been enough time for me to form one opinion of a country, get really sick with two different ailments (first the food poisoning, then a cold/flu), lose several kilograms, form a contrary opinion of the same country, and even fall out with people then reconcile differences, all while wasting hundreds of dollars on global roaming charges. Five days is, indeed, a long time.

On the subject of time, since I am still sick and hence procrastinating on launching into a full description of the last few days, it is interesting how time warps when you are travelling.

- 10 weeks ago, I was at home listening to MP3s and reading travel sites.
- Two months ago, I was in Hawaii, just arrived from Auckland.
- One month ago, I was in Quebec City.
- Two weeks ago, I was ın Vienna.
- One week ago, I had just arrived in Istanbul from Beograd.

The first three seem like sometime last year! I'm not even sure that I remember what my room looks like. In two weeks and two days time, that won't matter anyway. In twelve weeks of travelling, I will have seen a fairly wide swathe of the world, and more importantly met my original goal of not only seeing a place but developing an understanding of the people and cultures that I meet. I hope that my blog has perhaps, for some people, helped to shatter a few stereotypes - be they positive or negative - about some of the countries I have been in. I am thinking particularly of Serbia as I write this, but when I get around to it, I hope it may also apply to Turkey. This really is a great country with a rich cultural heritage and a great sense of humour, but you really do have to leave Istanbul to find it.

Travelling has given me a sense of independence that I never had even when living by myself and managing my own affairs. I needed something to give me self confidence. Surviving this hectic and at times crazy journey was the affirmation I needed. I am capable of things that I hadn't even considered before, and in seeing how I survive so far outside my comfort zone, I know I can do so much better when back in it again in Perth.

Final thought for the night is on who you travel with. You can either travel by yourself, with friends, with family or with a random tour group. To each their own - I do manage best by myself. Even with friends, I feel that it somehow limits me, even if only psychologically, as I need to take their preferences and limits into account. With a tour group, you always feel under pressure to get on with people, and those people may not feel any need to get on with you, especially if they have made friends elsewhere in the group who are easier to understand, whether because of commonality or circumstance. Even in a group of 11 there are times when one can feel intense loneliness - even more so than when by yourself in a country where noone speaks your language.

I will update properly in the next couple of days. This Turkish language keyboard is pissing me off and on Win98 you need an OS disk to add the option for Ingilizce.

Day 62 - Istanbul ; Thoughts

2004-09-20T01:49:00.000+08:00

Sunday 19 September 2004, 21:00 Turkey time

I'm still recovering, but I am now very sure I'll be fine.

The tour started today - I have now met my tour guide, Ayhan (I-haan), and several of the other people travelling with us - including Trent from Melbourne, my roommate, and his friends Brent and Attila the Hungarian. It looks like it's going to be an excellent time. In my travels around Victoria and Tasmania, I got used to tour groups where I had nothing in common with anyone else, so this is a big improvement :)

Today we did the Istanbul city tour, and I got some good photographs. All the downsides happened in the first hour, and the rest was great and more than made up for it. I hope I never have to wrestle another "businessman" such as that one outside the Blue Mosque trying to sell me a picture book of Istanbul for A$27 and pulling my money out of my hands and hanging around me like a fly for over 10 minutes, and I hope I never urgently require a WC right when we are passing by a carpet shop.

The list of destinations was:
- The old Hippodrome, most of which was not visible
- The Blue Mosque
- The Agia Sophia
- The Basilica Cistern
- Topkapi Palace

Rather than trying to review them, I'll just say they were all amazing places, and that you can read about them on any tourist website of Istanbul. The tour guide was excellent and provided us with an insight into the very mixed history of Istanbul, with Roman, Greek Orthodox and Ottoman Muslim traditions, while being very careful to paint the Turkish Ottomans in a (generally) good light. He also covered the basics of Greek Orthodox and Turkish (Sunni) Muslim tradition very well, although I was already familiar with it. We also learned something that never occurred to me before - the "harem" where the concubines lived is the same root word as "haram", the Arabic word for ritually unclean which is the opposite to "halal" (and I'm sure everyone knows that one!)

One tip for any travellers coming through - There is an excellent Hostelling International here located at the Cordial House located just off Piyerloti Caddesi (Look on hihostels.com for more info). A single room costs just A$34 and dorm bed about $15. Even if you're not staying there, it is the safest and cheapest place to buy a map and four postcards (A$3.80). This should be remembered when being harangued by numerous shady individuals trying to sell you postcards - I've learned to treat them like the homeless of Canada and purposefully ignore them without even looking at them. It's a sad way to have to do things, and I often wonder if my travelling has made me a better or worse person, but it's reality and I'm not in Australia, I'm in Turkey and have to deal with the reality here. Most people I've talked to emphasise that these problems are primarily problems within Istanbul and will cease to bedevil me out in the countryside where we go tomorrow.

I mention the HI primarily because my room at the Grand Yavuz for $57 a night is just a tad dodgy. The remote on the TV doesn't work without fiddling the batteries, and the volume and program buttons are missing. The bath has no plugs, and the bathroom door doesn't lock. There's not even a hook to hang up a jacket. The one good thing I can rave about is the breakfast - it's a small buffet, and isn't bad. (I've been spoiled by both relatives and the Hotel Imperial in Ostrava, so my standards are probably too high)

Anyway, I'm off now. See you all later - it may be a bit later, depending on what standard of Internet access exists in rural Turkey. Wish me luck!

Day 60-61 - Leaving Beograd; Istanbul

2004-09-19T01:36:00.000+08:00

Saturday 18 September 2004, 19:30 Turkish time (GMT+3; Perth-5)

I've crossed another border, another time zone and, it feels like, another world. How many cities can you be woken up in the morning by an Islamic call to prayer clearly audible through your window and then go off and watch Turkish Idol (Arabic-style singing over techno by charismatic-looking 20-somethings)?

Not much to write about leaving Beograd yesterday. I will miss the city and its people, and there is only a handful of places (Auckland, Vancouver, Vienna) before that that I could really say that about. I will be back one day ... (You've probably got sick of reading that line about various cities by now from me)

The bus no.72 slowly chugged into the airport 1h40m before my flight (it took an hour from Beograd, only 18-20km away). Despite the security cordon being 4 layers thick and full of really large, unfriendly looking people, I had no problems clearing it in under 10 minutes. I've gotten so used to dumping my camera, coins, keys and mobile in a bucket, taking off my jacket and backpack and putting it all through scanners every few days that it comes almost automatically now.

JAT Airlines were really nice, good-quality friendly service and decent airline food - it was similar to LOT Polish Airlines, except the staff spoke perfect English on JAT. On arrival in Turkey, I presented myself as an Australian, competed with the often quite pushy crowds in lines, paid the US$20 entry fee, and Salih from Fez Travel was there to greet me and escort me to the van which would get me to my hotel.

Istanbul is the first city in which I've felt genuinely intimidated by the place. The hotel itself is nice, but the moment you leave it, you have to deal with the locals at very close quarters owing to the very narrow streets in the Sultanahmet district where I'm staying. I've already been practically pushed into one restaurant (Kaçkar) and charged Australian prices for a three-course meal last night - reminded me of certain dodgy Chinese eateries in Perth whose English suddenly fails when you try to do anything outside of the plan. I suffered for that meal too - have been all but inactive today due to mild diarrhoea. (I've had worse, though).

To be honest, I can't wait for the tour to start tomorrow. Firstly, it will be an adventure. Secondly, I will actually feel safe. Thirdly, they can tell me decent places to eat. I've spent most of the day trying to sleep off the health problems.

One side note - after thinking about my general lack of food in Eastern Europe, I'm probably weighing less now than when I left Perth for the first time. The sheer decadence with which Daniel and I hit most Canadian cities left me a bit out of shape, as did staying with rellies in Belfast and Vienna (although I am so not complaining - the food was top-class) and then managing the rather manual, escalator-free atmosphere in Eastern cities (sometimes with 20kg+ of luggage in tow) probably improved my figure a bit.

And finally, it's amazing how much better a home-cooked meal is than something you pay $16 for in a proper restaurant with trained culinary staff. Certainly food for thought - pardon the pun.

Wrap-up - Day 48-60 - Central/Eastern Europe

2004-09-18T01:07:00.000+08:00

After having spent time in Krakow, Ostrava, Budapest and Beograd, I'm thinking back on my time spent in this region and trying to make sense of my experience for future reference. Overall, I have really enjoyed my time here, although it's been something of a culture shock.

Practical and general observations
* In Eastern Europe, the euro is not widely recognised despite the fact three of the four cities I stayed in are members of the European Union.
* Food tends to be sold outdoor in small makeshift facilities, but is by and large really cheap. You can find modern supermarkets in all of the above cities without looking too hard.
* Contrasting Krakow and Budapest on one hand, and Ostrava and Beograd on the other,
the former two have a highly developed tourist infrastructure, while the latter two do not. As a tourist you can find information easily even so, but you just have to look harder for it.
* In Krakow and Budapest, English is limited. In Ostrava it is non-existent - get a good quality phrasebook (the Lonely Planet one was insufficient for my needs). In Beograd it is widely understood.
* The sort of people you'd expect to help you - bank staff, tourist advisers and the like - are the least friendly people you'll meet in this part of the world. Some have been downright rude to me. Yet the majority of the population is friendly and welcoming - even if they can't understand you. One interesting note - body language is a little (although not hugely) different here, and it's not customary to greet people you don't already know.
* Crime is a lot less of a problem than the international media makes out. I saw worse districts in Honolulu and parts of Canada than in general exist over here. I've been told Warszawa and Bucuresti are more of a problem in that regard, but I can't comment as I've yet to see them.
* Navigation is a bit of a problem as street signs are fixed onto buildings on that street rather than being pointer signs as one gets in Australia, New Zealand, the US or Canada. There'll often only be one sign (and sometimes none) and you just have to either go on faith or get used to missing streets, looking behind you to find the street sign, then finding ways around them.
* Traffic is by and large nuts, crossings are clearly marked everywhere but are not always observed by drivers. Budapest had the worst traffic of the cities I saw, although Beograd rates an honourable mention for being simply crazy. In Budapest and Beograd, stairway underpasses are often the only way to cross major streets.
* I had no problems taking photographs. Just be sensible and don't take photos of lots of police or of security buildings and you'll be fine. I was warned this would be a real problem in Eastern Europe and found it not to be, so thought I'd put it here. I have taken approximately 325 photos across the four cities.

Pointless observations
* Toilet bowls are really weird here - the hole is right at the front and you sit on this large basin. Public toilets are marked "WC" but often cost money to use - usually about 40-60c Australian. If you can't find the flush, look on the right hand side, there is usually either a pull-chain or lever.
* Shower-bath units are available, but the preference is clearly baths in this part of the world. The showers are a bit odd to work as there is only one set of taps and you have to turn the tap on then pull a lever up to get the water to come through the shower.
* Most of the younger generation here are ridiculously good-looking. Don't stare - it's rude. The septuagenarian generation, meanwhile, especially old ladies selling stuff, tend to look more like characters out of Monty Python.

Useful things to know - Language
* Hello is:
Dzien dobry (jen-DOH-bree) in Polish
Dobry den in Czech
Dobar dan in Serbian
Guten Tag or Hallo in German
(don't need it in Hungary, say "Hi" with an accent)

* Goodbye is:
Do vidzenia (do-vi-JEN-yah) in Polish
Na shledanou (nah-sCHleh-da-noh) in Czech (CH as in Scottish loch)
Do vid'enja (similar to Polish) in Serbian
Auf wiedersehen (ow-VEE-dehr-sayn) in German
Viszontlatasra (vi-sont-LAH-tosh-rah) in Hungarian

* Please is:
Prosze (praw-shah) in Polish
Prosim (praw-SEEM) in Czech (point at things and say this)
Bitte (bit-teh) in German

* Thank you is:
Dziekuje (je-KOO-yeh) in Polish (oo as in foot)
De'kuji (je-KOO-yee) in Czech
Hvala (huh-VAH-lah) in Serbian
Danke schön (Dank-eh shern) in German
Köszönöm (ker-ser-nerm) in Hungarian

Day 58-59 - Budapest, Beograd

2004-09-17T01:42:00.000+08:00

Wednesday 15 September 2004, 16:00 CET

I'm now on the train from Budapest to Beograd. It's definitely been an interesting time seeing Budapest - I have probably been too harsh on it in the last few entries, but it is a bit rundown in a way which could not be described as charmingly decadent. It wasn't without its showpieces though - the walk up to the Buda Citadel, the Parliament building, some of the churches, the bridges and the waterfront were really nice. The accommodation in these sorts of situations can make or break a place for a traveller like me - my Halifax experience is a testament to that.

Anyway, off to Beograd now. The normally-20-minute walk to Keleti station with all my luggage in tow in 24° and high humidity is not something I would generally recommend. The Hungarian old couple who got off in Kiskoros seemed to find my water-satched state extremely amusing (even more so than my attempts to speak Hungarian).

So far it's been very boring - flat farmland on one side and...flat farmland on the other.

Wednesday 15 September 2004, 23:45 CET

Dobro vece from Beograd, Srbija (better known as Serbia).

Well, a bit of adventure indeed getting here. As I mentioned earlier, my hotel disappeared off the face of the earth (edit: it turned out it hadn't, just they don't answer their phone. I watched the receptionist studiously ignore the phone when I went there today) and the Budapest guys got me a reservation for Three Black Catz in Beograd. A few Serbian teenagers got on the train at Novi Sad and were practising their English on me, to much amusement all around. Once we arrived in Beograd, I found myself arguing with an incomprehensible taxi driver with a cart on the platform and trying to help a German tourist who couldn't read Cyrillic alphabet both at the same time. I was supposed to meet some German travellers from the Budapest hostel there but after getting out of there, I couldn't find them anywhere.

Interesting point - I've since found out (and guessed correctly at the time) that many tourists get ripped off by these aggressive taxi drivers who either just charge them 5-10 times the going rate, or even drive them as far away as Skopje, Macedonia or Novi Sad as a "shortcut" to Beograd and then demand hefty fees in euro to get people back to where they're supposed to be. If you're coming to Beograd and need a taxi, find out the phone numbers in advance and order one.

I found the hostel after getting lost several times - let's say the official site has some glaring geographical misconceptions on it. "One block" from the train station means across, down one block on a main street (Nemanjina), up an at-times-steep hill for approximately 500m, under an underpass, left into a confusing array of shops which turns into a street (not identified as such unless you know Cyrillic alphabet and look carefully). Once you find No.8, it is in fact an apartment building and the hostel is an apartment on the 6th (top) floor. Only the locals can tell you where it is - there are no signs or directions. (A number of the other things on that site are also wrong.) One aside - in Budapest and Belgrade, it is usual to have to use an underpass (stairs only) to cross a major street as crossings are often not provided.

Once I got there, though, it was a very nice atmosphere. It turns out two of the Three Black Catz are not actually black - although I don't normally like cats, I developed quite an affinity for the ginger one. The hostel is easily the most relaxed one I have stayed in - the only rules were to take off your shoes and to leave the toilet door open after you've finished as it's also the cat litter area. The other people here seem pretty friendly and relaxed, which is always good.

Thursday 16 September 2004, 22:00 CET

Beograd is a city which, despite being rundown, has a charm to its decadence. It has suffered much in its long history and sometimes, rebuilding and cleaning everything just doesn't rate alongside other priorities when money is tight. Even the national airline's magazine describes SCG (Serbia & Montenegro/Srbija i Crna Gora) as one of the poorer parts of Europe. However, the people are unbelievably friendly and unlike many somewhat wealthier Eastern cities, many here speak at least some English. I have felt safe the whole time I've been in Beograd and, taking only basic precautions like not flashing my money around, have had nothing happen to me - and this seems to be the opinion of most Western travellers here. Honestly, too, it's also an excellent city for people-watching. The Serbian people are very proud of their identity and their country - and I can actually understand their pride, they do have a lot to offer. It's sad that they have got such a bad rap from the world media.

After staying around the hostel for a while, I decided I should really explore the place even though I was still sans map. I found the fortress (Kalemegdan) and a really ornate Serbian Orthodox church almost by accident, and spent several hours exploring Kalemegdan for a few hours. I then wandered around the shopping districts for a while - the shopping culture here is very different even to other Eastern European cities.

On arrival at Trg Republike (Republic Square), I overheard a Canadian tourist discussing a "war tour" of Beograd with a taxi driver called Predrag, who for just 100 dinar ($2.50) took us around some of the more notorious sites of Beograd's recent history, on the condition we didn't get out or take photos. I felt a bit uneasy putting my camera in a safe, but Predrag assured us we would get it back at the end. Half an hour later, we had seen Slobodan Milosevic's rather luxurious former residence in Dedinje, the sites of the revolution in October 2000 which ousted Milosevic from power, the place where Zoran Djindjic was killed in 2002, numerous badly-bombed apartment buildings (some just one block from the train station) and a few other harrowing sites. It was almost a relief afterwards to walk in a nice green park just next to one of the buildings where the kids were playing basketball, the birds were hopping around, the lunching workers were eating on the grass and one could almost believe things had always been so normal.

After this, I went back to the hostel. They're currently playing a drinking game, while the not-so-subtle tension between the two people who run this place mushrooms. I've been amusing myself with the cats and with chatting to some of the other guests and to Nikolas, a Serb boy who came over and has been providing his thoughts on recent and not-so-recent events in Serbia and the surrounding region. Not feeling too well at the moment - Beograd's smog problems (the worst I've seen while away from Perth) and the indoor smokers may account for some of that.

Oh, yeah, and there was an impromptu fireworks display from the HVB Bank behind the hostel - was quite an impressive show for about 5 minutes. I'm told it has something to do with corrupt local politicians celebrating their own achievements, but it doesn't take away from the fact it was fun to watch.

Day 56-57 - In transit; Budapest

2004-09-15T05:40:00.000+08:00

Monday 13 September 2004, 17:45 CET

This place feels just nuts. I'm in Budapest, and everything I've seen on the way to the hostel is either being replaced, being repaired or being badly in need of it. There's a very decadent feel to many of the buildings. I'm a wreck after walking 30 minutes with my luggage and having to cross the street every minute because alternate lengths of the footpath have been dug up and/or fenced off.

(Update from Istanbul: I've since met a Hungarian traveller who has informed me this used to be a red-light district, which probably explains its state of being, and why they'd be replacing everything.)

Firstly, to today. I was thinking about things I will miss in Vienna - there is an abundance of really cute, well-behaved dogs, sometimes with shaggy fur and those sort of eyes that just look up at you. As those who know me would know, I usually have a problem with dogs up close, so this came as a surprise even to me. Then there's the look and feel of the place - it's one of the few places I've been where you can actually 'feel' the culture; Quebec City was possibly the only other city that fitted this category. The other thing is of course the home comforts, cooking and hospitality I've enjoyed courtesy of Christine, George and Catrin. I've certainly not gone without anything in the last few days.

George (my aunt's boyfriend) gave me a lift to the boat station at Reichsbrucke where I was to depart for Budapest. After the usual paperwork, tickets, passport control etc that I'm now starting to just accept as standard issue for travelling, I was surprised by a friend and reader, Julie, who came out to meet me based solely on information contained within this blog! It was a great, but very short, time spent, and was prematurely terminated by the boarding of the last passenger in the line.

The boat journey itself was probably not as amazing as I expected. It was good however - there isn't much that beats going down the Danube in a ferry, given its fame and reputation, and we saw some great sights, including Bratislava and the ancient cathedral at Esztergom. The staff were incredibly friendly and knowledgeable and provided us with something of a running commentary as we passed a place in both English and German. The food was also good (and if you didn't mind waiting until an hour before docking, it was free too).

However my gripes were - firstly, the boat was quite low and the windows were dirty, so I didn't get to see a great deal unless I went out to one of the open doors and looked outside. Unfortunately, these prime viewing locations were usually being hogged by one of maybe two or three individuals. The smoking section was not detached from the main section, which made some things a bit unpleasant. I also came to learn on this trip that whiny middle-aged Canadian package tourists can be just as obnoxious, annoying and rude as their south of the border counterparts. However, I did enjoy the company of a judge and lawyer from Iceland and his wife, who made for interesting conversation.

On arrival in Budapest, things were a bit chaotic - I had been given a free map, but I had no idea where I actually was. When I figured this out, it turned out to be quite a distance away - not fun when you're towing 22kg of luggage along narrow streets with people coming the other way on occasion. The street the hostel is in was in a terrible shape, and most of the buildings seemed on the brink of ruination.

The hostel itself, however, is amazing. It's the smallest I've stayed in, having only three bedrooms, but the staff are very friendly and with a great sense of humour and I've met interesting people from all over the world, including several bits of Australia I didn't even know existed. (Well, not quite, but you get the idea.) There's an atmosphere here which is hard to describe but it's a very warm, social sort of place. It's in an old building with a Communist-era lift (elevator for you Canadians :) with red manual doors and wooden interior - henceforth called "the Communist lift". I've had great fun playing with it, even if it doesn't entirely work (it goes from first to ground but not from ground to first.)

Tuesday 14 September 2004, 23:40 CET

My activities in Budapest sadly haven't been many. Didn't really get the chance to see much as I was here such a short time, ended up socialising with other hostellers and had to take care of admin stuff. I walked up to the Buda citadel today (quite a tiring one-hour walk) via the Elisabeth Bridge and saw an overview of the whole city. My impression of Budapest is considerably more positive than it was earlier. In some ways it is like Vienna but just doesn't have the charm screaming out at you like the former does, but it is definitely there if you look for it. It isn't as cheap as Krakow and Ostrava were - I've spent $25-$30 without even realising, not counting the ticket to Belgrade and the hostel, and I really have not eaten much at all. Thankfully the tap water here is drinkable.

I'm going to Beograd tomorrow - staying at a hostel that came recommended from the guys here. It sounds really good - it's on the main square and everything. One final tip before I leave - Eurail passes, unless you travel lots and lots, are a waste of money. I was quoted $749 for one and my total train travel has yet to exceed $150. This is considering I went from Poland to Austria and am now travelling the same distance again down into the heart of Serbia.

Update - Budapest

2004-09-14T18:30:00.000+08:00

Just a quickie - It seems the first planning hurdle has hit. The hotel in Belgrade which has my credit card number and a reservation may be no longer in business. It is impossible to find out, all I know is that their website (hotelroyal-bg.com) has vanished and their two listed numbers ring out. The people here in Budapest are trying to help me find new accommodation. Anyway, off to the train station to get my ticket. I'll post a more informative update later.

Day 53-55 - Vienna (Wien)

2004-09-14T18:08:00.000+08:00

Sunday 12 September 2004, 19:30 CET

I've had an amazing time in Vienna. It's an interesting place - it's truly an international city (with all the good and bad implications of that designation) and is full of historical buildings, green parks and little cobblestone-paved streets to explore. The people are really nice in this corner of the world, and traffic is pretty much as orderly as most parts of Canada I visited. The transport is amazingly efficient and cheap - even on a Sunday I had no problem getting around on the metro (U-Bahn) and buses.

The place to go here is definitely the area bordered by the Ringstrasse - the "Innere Stadt" (Inner City) - and in particular the west and southwest sections of it. In that, you will find the Kunsthistorische (art and history museum), the Hofburg (a massive web of old buildings which formerly served as a palace and fortress), Stefansdom (the massive church at the heart of the city), the Rathaus (City Hall), the Parliament building with the Athena Statue at the front (currently closed for about a year for maintenance), and the list goes on.

From there, you can easily explore the inner suburbs by tram. Plenty of shopping opportunities but also a random scattering of amazing-looking historic buildings and churches. There's also Schönbrunn, a few U-Bahn stations away from the city, which was the main palace used by the Habsburg dynasty from the 1700s onwards. I spent a half-day just at this one place alone - for about €8, you can explore the inner rooms of the Schönbrunn where Maria Theresa and her descendants lived. It's an amazing insight into the lives of the old royal families in Europe - even some of their individual personalities come across somewhat in the rooms they inhabited.

One tip for any travellers to Vienna - at most major train stations, you can buy a "Vienna Card" (Wien-Karte in German) at the ticket office for €16.90. This gives you 72 hours (from validation, not from purchase) of unlimited travel, discounts to museums (including but definitely not limited to the Kunsthistorische, the Albertina which I wanted to visit but didn't, and Schönbrunn) and some other goodies.

For me personally, I've managed to see the places where my mother and grandfather spent their childhoods, put flowers on the family grave, and see what those same places looked like 50-70 years ago (in many cases, not very different). It's weird seeing photos of my mum as a young girl of maybe 3 or 4 in front of buildings I've now actually been to. We also went up into the Vienna Woods (Wienerwald) where the city ends (quite literally - you see a sign with "Wien" stroked out as you enter the area) and the forests and mountains begin. While most roads in Vienna are just like roads anywhere else, the one going up to Kahlenberg was cobblestone-paved - it was a pretty wild drive :) The other weird bit is Grinzing where you get wineries right in the middle of the suburb.

Anyway, off to Budapest tomorrow. It's almost like a measure of degrees where each section of the journey is a step further into the fire - first Canada, then Europe, and now towards the not-so-well-off southeastern parts of Europe and Turkey. the pattern is, of course, broken by a luxury holiday in Singapore at budget rates, immediately prior to my return to Perth. I am getting to the stage where I'm enjoying what I'm doing but am starting to miss my homeland a bit and am keen to get back, but not before having some more adventures. I'll keep you all posted as I go.

Day 50-52 - Kraków, Ostrava

2004-09-13T01:38:00.000+08:00

Tuesday 7 September 2004, 14:40 CET

I've had an awesome day in Krakow. To complete last night's entry - After leaving the net cafe last night and having a three-course meal for under A$10, I took in a little of Kraków by night. It's almost magical seeing the old buildings all lit up and hearing the live accordion music and milling crowds around the tiny cafes in the main square (Rynek Glowno).

Today, I went through the east side of the city centre and down to Kazimierz (kah-zee-Myezh), the old Jewish quarter, and Wawel Castle, built 1000 years ago. Apart from the odd person (seemingly tolerated by castle management) trying to sell me gilded antiquities that are most likely illegal, I was pretty much undisturbed in my exploration of the castle walls and for a small fee was able to go down a spiral staircase into the heart of it.

I have to go now - enjoying some quick food before hopping on the train to Ostrava. I have no idea what to expect with European trains, I've heard both good and bad stories.

Tuesday 7 September 2004, 23:30 CET

Wow! I can't believe how good this place is.

I'm at the Hotel Imperial in Ostrava, Czech Republic, watching BBC and CNN in alternating half hours and amusing myself with their radically different coverage of exactly the same stories. This is a real luxury hotel, with porters to take your bags to your room, a beautiful clean double bed, a detached bathroom, and a nice view over the south end of the centre.

To backtrack a bit - Before getting on the 15:40 train, I made sure to get another obwarzanki (hand-baked, ring-shaped bread) before leaving - sort of a final souvenir of Kraków. The station was a bit like an airport and the train itself wasn't too bad - apart from having to lift 15kg of baggage above my head - and was airconditioned. There was six seats in each section, but mine was mostly empty - a Polish girl living in Vienna and a Japanese girl from Kyoto were my travelling companions for this journey.

Ostrava was unexpected at first. I arrived on the platform with only a massive set of stairs for company, and when I got to the top, I realised that the "central station" (hlavni nadrazi) was about as central and convenient as Vancouver's - i.e. not very. I hauled my luggage onto a tram, had an incoherent argument in two languages with the oversized tram driver, who finally conceded and let me on, and the rest was easy.

I'm going to get a well-earned night's rest here, I think. It's nice staying in a place where the locks work, the door handles don't come off in your hand, the curtains don't fall on you while you're sleeping and the bathroom isn't under 2 inches of slowly stagnating water.

Thursday 9 September 2004, 10:40 CET

I am going to miss this place when I leave it, I think. Ostrava has been good to me. Well, I had a good time anyway. I can even speak phrasebook Czech - sort of. I kind of had to, as no-one here understands even the most basic English outside the hotel. My theory, though, is that communication is the most important bit and as long as I can buy things, buy tickets, go places, get home from places and so on, my linguistic incompatibility with the local population isn't actually an issue.

After enjoying the free buffet breakfast at the hotel's restaurant, I spent yesterday basically in two parts - the first exploring Ostrava itself, and the second going to the area my ancestors came from, which was the real reason for my being in this rather unusual location. Ostrava is a beautiful old European city completely unspoiled by tourism. It has about 300,000 people and used to be the industrial hub of the (Austrian) Habsburg empire in late 19th century. Nowadays much of the industry has moved out, allowing the city to clean up a bit and show off its baroque beauty. Masaryk Square and the Old City, the Ostravice river, and the Moravska Ostrava (Mährisch Ostrau) region including the town hall and central bank near the train station had plenty to keep me occupied until mid-afternoon. Amusing diversions included the graffiti-filled underground city, not designed so much for comfort as for getting from one place to another in the minus-40 temperatures this place sometimes gets.

I then managed to buy a bus ticket for just $3 to Ostravice, about 36km from Ostrava beyond the town of Frydek-Mistek. What took me by surprise was how the bus went from just 5 people to unsanitarily overcrowded over just 4 bus stops (most of which were in the shoulder lane on the freeway!) and I nearly missed my stop but for a helpful old couple who shouted something in Czech at the people between me and the door.

Ostravice is a one-highway town with about 80 locals, most of whom, by the looks of it, either practice farming or run B&B's. The view is breathtaking - fields, farms, and thickly forested mountains which form the border with Slovakia just 15km away. My great-grandfather, Karl Freud, built a hotel there - strangely enough, called the Hotel Freud - but my family had moved to Vienna, the hotel was taken by Nazis during the war, and I'd always wanted to see the place. As it turned out, it was only 50m from the bus/train station. Although the exterior was exactly as it was in the old photos, the interior had now been converted to a typical pub/restaurant and wasn't very exciting. Nevertheless, I had this amazing feeling walking around this place that I'd heard of so much that I had ancestral ties to. All the people there only spoke Czech, but I managed to tell them who I was and they did seem excited about a descendant of the founder visiting them.

I wisely realised that I was going to be in a better situation if I walked 5km to the nearest town, Frydlant, as Ostravice wasn't exactly teeming with public transport alternatives and Frydlant was, at least, on the major southwest freeway (56) out of Ostrava. After an hour and a quarter, and realising my map wasn't exactly to scale, I reached the town, and with some effort found the train station. With my extremely poor skills in Czech, I managed to buy a ticket to Ostrava-Str'ed. The ticket officials laughed hysterically when I pronounced the train station correctly as the middle character is notoriously hard to pronounce (like a rolled 'r' AND a 's' as in measure at the same time) and I got my ticket back for A$2.20.

Dinner that night was free as the staff at the hotel had had some kind of function and it was over and they gave me and a pair of Americans the leftovers. I certainly wasn't complaining - prawns, cheese, bits of chicken, small Czech biscuits and even red wine was on offer.

This hotel has been exceptional. The place is clean and safe, the staff are all friendly and helpful, and even the laundry service was top quality and amazingly cheap.

Thursday 9 September 2004, 23:30 CET

Servus from Wien (Vienna)! I'm staying at my aunt Christine's place with my cousin, Catrin, and my aunt's boyfriend George. They've let me use an entire apartment for the time I'm here - the luxury definitely didn't stop in Ostrava - and I've discovered my aunt is an excellent cook.

The train from Ostrava to Wien was a bit more harrowing than the one the other day. After getting my luggage up four flights of stairs and down one, then up onto the train (the steps are narrow and steep), I found out I was in the wrong section of the train - they divide the train in two at the Czech-Austrian border and one bit goes to Bratislava, the other Wien.

Once in the right section, I found out three things - I was in a full carriage, my luggage didn't quite fit, and there was no airconditioning in this carriage. Furthermore, while three were extremely friendly poles, the old gentleman next to me was a crabby septuagenarian Brit who complained about just about everything and everyone. He lives in Canada, yet hates Canada and its people and complains they're too American - and then turns around and complains about people who hold anti-American attitudes. I went off him quickly after finding out he was a Nazi sympathiser. The Poles had resorted to conversing in Polish, and my train went straight past my stop, so I had to navigate through Vienna to get to the right place. Thankfully, although you have to get used to not having much personal space and standing on most trams and trains, Vienna's transit system is easily the best I've seen anywhere since Vancouver, so this wasn't a difficult undertaking.

Anyway, off to explore Vienna tomorrow. Should be fun. :)

Day 49 - Kraków, Poland

2004-09-06T21:43:00.000+08:00

Monday 6 September 2004, 16:00 CET

Dzien dobry!

I've survived my first few hours out on the streets in Kraków, and it really is a nice place. This includes buying raspberries at market, buying water and Coke, and going to the home of Wawel chocolates on the main square (Rynek Glowno) and buying a block for old-time's sake.

Here are some prices of things here to stun you all. The local currency is the zloty (pronounced exactly as it looks), each containing 100 groszy, and there's about 2.5-2.7 zloty in an Australian or Canadian dollar. (What's with the Australian dollar against the Euro at the moment?)

Big bucket of raspberries - $1.20

Tomatoes                  - 80c/kg

Internet cafe             - 80c/hour

Bottle of water (1.5L)    - 40c

Small bottle of Coke      - 40c

Block of chocolate        - $1

Krakow seems to me to be a medium-sized, friendly city with a lot of old buildings where knowing Polish would help, but the locals don't mind if you don't as long as you can point to things, have the right change and say "dzien dobry" before and "dziekuje, dobrze" after purchasing. I like the place - hope to come back one day. Now I have to find out about the upcoming Australian election so I can arrange to vote - probably from Istanbul or Singapore.

Day 47-48 - Dublin - In transit - Krakow arrival

2004-09-06T18:48:00.000+08:00

Saturday 4 September, 23:00 BST

I'm in Dublin, the home of Guinness. It's an interesting place with its terraced houses, old Catholic churches, chaotic streets and happy-drunk pedestrians. And yes, the average pedestrian on a Saturday night here is pretty much blind drunk.

Everyone's told me how easy Dublin is to get lost in. I don't know about them, but I've found it fairly easy to navigate - then again, I did survive Quebec City, which would be impossible to manage without a map. O'Connell Street is huge (three lanes each way with a big median strip) and you can always find your way back to it. As soon as I got here, I headed off to Temple Bar, the cobblestone-paved streets just south of the River Liffey (which honestly looks more like a canal), and walked around the 1600s-era pubs lining the streets and watched the taxis trying to compete with pedestrians and horses. Dublin generally is a great place for people-watching, and it's a pity that this one trip to Temple Bar is about the limit of my Dublin experience this time around. The main reason for coming here was to connect with the big European flights - I was initially going to go to Manchester - but it's hardly the worst place you could connect in.

I'm sharing the room back at the Dublin hostel with two Swiss boys, an Australian, an Englishman and a Spaniard. The middle mentioned spent most of their time either drinking or sleeping it off - which I guess one could expect. The Guinness place here actually offers a certificate saying the holder has "pulled the perfect pint" at the home of Guinness - apparently there's a technique and they teach you how to do it. The hostel is modern and well-equipped but, once again, without elevators.

Sunday 5 September, 22:30 Central European time (GMT+2; Perth-6)

Dzien dobry (good day) from Kraków! I'm now officially in the non-English-speaking world, having journeyed through New Zealand, US, Canada, Britain and Ireland to get here.

I thought Dublin airport was rather large, but that one was rewritten and thrown out when I went to Frankfurt. Flip! More gates, floors, passenger tunnels, inter-terminal buses and overpriced duty free stores than you could shake a stick at. This is one bit of Germany where you don't need to know any German - every announcement is bilingual, and every staff member at the airport seemed to speak it. I now know how to say Kapstadt (KARP-shtart; Cape Town) and acht (eight) like a real German though. I was there for just over three hours before my flight to Poland. I feel kind of bad for expecting a second-rate airline now - the Polish hospitality and food on the plane was really good, and they did appreciate my efforts to speak their language.

Polish words I now know:

dzien dobry (jen Doh-bree) - Hi
dziekuje (je-Koo-yeh) - Thanks
prosze (Pro-sheh) - Please
pan/pani/panstwo - Mr/Ms/All of youse
toalety (toh-ah-Lay-tee) - Toilets
przepraszam (psheh-Prah-sham or psheh-pra-Tsahm) - Sorry/Excuse me/You're welcome

Arrival in Kraków (Krah-kohv) was a bit more chaotic. The shuttle bus I'd been told about was actually a public bus, and I had no idea where my hostel was, even with the 8-zloty ($3) map I'd bought. I ended up a bit east of it and got a taxi back to it for 9zl. Not bad. :) Krakow looks more organised than Dublin - there are marked pedestrian crossings everywhere - every place you ever have to cross a road, there's a marked zebra crossing.

The hostel's cool, a bit old, but I get my own bedroom with shared facilities for 11 euro a night.

Anyway, do vidzenia (doh-vi-Jen-yah) for now.

Day 44-47 - Belfast

2004-09-06T18:06:00.000+08:00

Wednesday 1 September, 14:00 BST

I'm now in Belfast, my birthplace and the place where I spent my first 6 years of life, at the home of my uncle Jim, aunt Jean and cousin Jonathan in nearby Bangor. It looks like I'm going to be well-fed and well-travelled by the end of my time here.

Quick introduction for those unfamiliar with Northern Ireland - Belfast is a city of about 300,000 and is surprisingly small in size - the suburbs only go about 4-6km in any direction - but it is surrounded by a range of small and medium sized towns. It's got a lot of history going back into the triple digits AD, but most of it was built around the time when the Protestant faith was big on erecting giant monuments to their faith in the form of beautiful old (and often quite grandiose) churches you see everywhere, as well as castles, forts and other buildings.

Its modern-day people came from intermarriage between the local Irish people and Scottish and northern English people who migrated centuries ago. In 1690, William of Orange conquered the whole of Ireland for the British, and in 1949, after much fighting there (especially around 1916 or so), what is now known as the Republic of Ireland emerged. Ulster, or Northern Ireland, stayed as part of Britain.

Unfortunately in the 20th century, and particularly since 1968 when the Troubles began, Belfast's become most well-known for sectarian violence and the division between its dominant Protestant and minority Catholic populations (which has more to do with land and history than with religion, as with most world conflicts). Even now that there has been serious talks of peace and the widescale bombing ceased years ago, the tension is still there and there are certain areas in the western suburbs (particularly Falls and Shankill) that you just wouldn't go to, unless you're a camera-laden Chinese tourist looking for "the place of the fight". (Such macabre tours are in fact run by less ethical tour operators)

Around Belfast and even in some of the estates in places like Bangor, there are big murals depicting various historical events (eg 1 July 1916) or making statements like "Free the POWs" and so on. Most of them are pretty tame and are quite incomprehensible to those like me who don't know a great deal about what happened when.

Belfast's near neighbours are Carrickfergus and Newtownabbey to the north, Holywood, Bangor and Newtownards to the east and Lisburn and Dunmurry to the south-west. Each has their own distinct identity despite each being less than 15km from Belfast and connected to it by dual carriageways. Newtownards nowadays has a historic city centre and modern shopping centres and sprawling suburbs - the one I lived in as a child has a big historic abbey next to it. Bangor is Belfast's seaside, basically - it's where people come to get away from the big smoke and it's even got a fun park (Pickie Park) right at the water's edge.

My early observations of Belfast

Given that, due to my age when I left, I am more of a tourist here than a local returning home, a lot of this is as new to me as it would be to any visitor.

1. People here are very friendly by and large.

2. Things look very familiar once you're out of Belfast. Apart from using upside down give-way signs as junction/warning signs instead of the yellow diamond, the roads remind me a little of suburban Adelaide. Each suburb or estate has its own architectural look and almost every house in it looks the same. Each major journey (eg Belfast-Bangor, Bangor-Newtownards etc) has two ways to get there - one using the dual carriageway with suburbs at either side, and the other using windy country roads going through farms and hills. It's funny seeing cows on one side and the chimneys of Belfast on the other.

3. Traffic is chaotic - I'm amazed there are not more accidents. Cars are smaller here so the lanes are smaller too - but due to most homes having negligible space between the front of the house and the road, people actually park in the road, often in the only lane available for driving, so people routinely go to the wrong side of the road to overtake. Pedestrian lights are available but usually ignored as pedestrians basically go when they can.

4. I mentioned about the small cars. When I first arrived in Belfast, we passed a fuel station with prices posted at around 83.9. This looked familiar too until I realised that this was in British pence, about 2.5 times the value of the 83.9 Canadian cents it cost in Halifax. This explains the absence of SUVs. A typical CD here is about $43 Aus, a DVD somewhat more. I've strongly encouraged Jonathan to stock up on CDs if he ever comes to Australia.

Saturday 4 September, 09:00 BST

There isn't much to update with as I've pretty much written it all before. My relatives are cool - I've indeed been eating excellent Northern Irish fare (soda bread, potato bread, bacon, Wiener schnitzel... OK, that comes more from the Viennese origins of our family, but yeah :) and Jonathan and I have been exchanging music and he's been a great tour guide.

On Thursday morning we went to Newtownards and walked around for a bit, before going off to Belfast and seeing my mum's family home. It's belonged to someone else for 20 years since my grandad died, but she must get a few visits from our family as she was quite happy to meet me and talk to me. Afterwards we walked around Belfast and took in the interesting buildings street by street. I wonder how this place looked 100 years ago - probably not a great deal different, except they probably didn't have Westfield Centrecourt back then.

On Friday we went to my dad's old house (my grandparents moved out of it even before we moved to Australia), and then came up the long way through Holywood to Bangor, walked around Bangor, before exploring the area to the east.

I've enjoyed my stay in Northern Ireland. It's not "home" to me in the way many young migrants seem to identify with their home country - but it's still a nice place and I'd like to come back one day.

Day 43 - In transit

2004-09-05T02:11:00.000+08:00

Wednesday 1 September 2004, 08:10 BST (GMT+1, Perth-7)

I am now in Heathrow Airport, London, England! What a journey that was.

I'll pick up firstly where I left off last time. The last couple of hours in Halifax were very wet, and I spent most of them running from bank to bank trying to change my remaining Canadian dollars to something I can actually use elsewhere, posting stuff back home and getting myself fed for just $7 at an excellent Filipino buffet restaurant just over the road from the net cafe in Blowers Street. By some miracle I managed to catch the Zinck's Airport Express bus and was back in the airport well before the 2 hours one is normally suggested to arrive at.

Unfortunately this did not help me a great deal, as due to a computer failure somewhere, the queue took nearly 2 hours to process and I was amazed I didn't miss the flight. One woman with a dog took nearly 30 minutes to process! It's sad that my last experience of Air Canada's airport management has been a mildly negative one as (apart from Daniel's being left behind in Toronto for several hours) they have been excellent to us for my entire time with them.

We stopped in St John's, Newfoundland, on the way here, so I can now say, "The last time I was in Newfoundland" (noo-fnd-LAND) even though I didn't get out of the plane. I don't think that counts, but hell, who cares :P

Heathrow is so massive that they actually have a free bus to get you from Terminal 3 where you arrive to Terminal 1 where the UK/Ireland flights leave from.

More later...

Day 43 - Leaving Canada

2004-08-31T23:45:00.000+08:00

Tuesday 31 August 2004

Summed up as: rain, humidity, packing, repacking, and flying. I haven't done the flying yet though.

Hostels in Canada

I wish to have a whinge at this point. I've been hostelling for over a month, and have seen varying qualities of hostel on my stay.

The best was without question Quebec City - beautiful wooden finish, comfy beds, clean and modern shared facilities, and all in a quaint old building that is very well located. Vancouver would come a very close standard, and easily has the best service of any of the HI's I have visited anywhere.

The worst would be Halifax. It came across to me as slightly rundown, and the service standard just wasn't up to the other places I have visited (the office was often unattended or people there couldn't help). As far as the hostel itself, there was no concept whatsoever of personal space, even in the common rooms and relaxation areas. It was, however, well located and a comfy bed.

I should temper my whinge by saying that all HI hostels would get at least a 5/10 score, through being in an association which has standards. There are hostels in Canada which are not HI hostels that you would not keep a dog in.

Best and worst in Canada

After touring the entire country, my favourite places to be so far have been Greater Vancouver, Quebec City and Saint John. I would gladly visit all of these places again, and hope to do so as soon as I can get money to do so.

Edmonton would get my bottom vote, but it actually wasn't a bad place. I just felt somewhat bored there. Kind of the same with Halifax - although there's a lot more happening here than I got the chance to see. To be honest, I will be looking at different accommodation options for Halifax next time.

Things that I'll probably miss when leaving Canada

- The local obsession with hockey and Tim Horton's coffee
- My friend Daniel, who has been an amazing travelling companion
- Yellow-box traffic lights and uniform traffic rules (and generally orderly traffic) throughout the country
- Friendliness overall of Canadians
- The amazing amount of green everywhere, even in cities
- The smell of the local forest - different from home, and quite nice
- The accents, most of which are quite pleasant, and the local language
- Bilingual signs and products (even if noone can speak one of the languages on the sign or product)
- The cool looking coins (I won't actually miss those as I've kept a few)
- The ruthlessly efficient way by which most things work in cities here
- Canadian and provincial flags flying everywhere (does any Australian my age know what their state's flag looks like?)
- Running lights on cars in full sunshine in the middle of the day.

Things I probably won't miss

- Homeless people begging on city streets (this is No.1 for a reason)
- The ruthlessly efficient way by which most things work in cities here
- Being completely lost when confronted with French-only Quebecois
- The world-aware-yet-unaware thing one often has to confront in attitudes to Australia and NZ (it's different to the States, but still hell annoying)
- The lack of seating options and restrooms in public places (although the restrooms here are almost without exception clean and well maintained)

* To respond to two emails, yes, one item is in both lists, and deliberately so.

What would I do next time?

Vancouver
Banff National Park (not just Lake Louise) probably with Moose or another tour
Calgary
Winnipeg
Toronto as a base for the region
Montreal, Quebec, possibly some of the region (learn French first)
Saint John (Acadian/Orleans goes Quebec -> Moncton)
Halifax region via Digby
(Cape Breton? Lunenburg?)

Summary of Day 8-43

I have had an amazing time in this country. I've had opportunity to whinge at times, but that's because I've thrown myself wholeheartedly into an environment to which I had no exposure prior to my trip, and decided to go hostelling for most of the way which comes with its own unique set of problems and frustrations no matter where one does it. But I have no regrets (other than possibly not checking that taxi in Toronto before getting out sans camera) and am already looking forward to my next visit. My departure is bitter-sweet - I'm eagerly looking forward to new experiences in Ireland, Eastern Europe and Turkey, but am sad to leave this country that has treated me so well behind. Canadians are in many ways a lot like Australians so many times I have not felt that far from home here. I will be curious to review this entry after I've finished Eastern Europe.

(Edit from Poland:) I pretty much agree with what I said above.

Day 39-42 - Saint John, Digby, Wolfville, Halifax

2004-08-31T23:30:00.000+08:00

Friday 27 August 2004, 23:30 AT (GMT-3, Perth-11)

I have arrived in Saint John - a city of about 100,000 and, as I found out once I got there, the second foggiest city in Canada after St John's, Newfoundland. The scenery on the way here (from Halifax, up through Nova Scotia, via Truro and Moncton) reminded me a lot once again of Tasmania - farms, very green trees, and the occasional distant mountain range.

The place I'm staying at, Carleton House, is positively amazing. I am treated like a guest in a friend's home rather than a paying holiday-maker, and the room is the best I've stayed in this trip with a nice comfy bed - great for recovering from 30+ days of hostelling. Stan and his wife Nancy have gone to great trouble to make my stay as enjoyable as possible.

Saturday 28 August 2004, AT

Breakfast (french toast, maple syrup, crispy bacon and tea, all prepared by the hosts) was served, and then I decided to go do some sightseeing. The fog hung around until about 11am, so I checked out the Inside Connection (Saint John's version of PATH, but above ground instead of underground), scored myself some CD/DVD bargains (and more paperwork for Tuesday) and then went sightseeing. Saint John is Canada's oldest incorporated city - it's been around since the 1600s - and the beautiful old buildings are everywhere. Saint John is also home to the Reversing Falls, created by the tides of the Bay of Fundy (which can be up to 14m) as they force the Saint John River to flow upstream towards its source for several hours every day around high tide. It truly screws with your mind to watch it for any length of time. A note for later - there is a basic, but good, public transport system which runs well into the night - I didn't use it but good to know it exists.

Sunday 29 August 2004, AT

I was offered an extra serving of breakfast as the ferry food is expensive, and then got the grand tour of Greater Saint John from Stan, where we went to some places that were a little too far away to walk to. After that, I was off walking again - the fog had completely disappeared so I went around to photograph some things I'd missed on Saturday and rephotograph some of Saturday's shots. I had to be careful with the time though as I had a 4:45pm departure on the ferry across the Bay of Fundy to Digby, and had to be there an hour before departure.

The ferry was similar to other ferries I've been on - probably most like the Vancouver-Victoria ferry, or the ones that carry passengers from Perth to Rottnest. I sat with some goth kids and their older sister, who made passing the time quite easy. I think the quote I'll take a while to forget is "But I just don't feel right going out without things dangling from my hands!"

One thing someone forgot to mention somewhere along the line is that the Digby ferry marina is not the marina on the map of Digby. It is, in fact, the end of the 303 highway some 9km away. After walking nearly half of it, I came to a Nova Scotia Tourism office, and was offered a lift the rest of the way into town. I still cannot get over the friendliness of people in the Maritimes (as Atlantic Canada is usually called).

The Bayside Inn is more like a motel than a B&B, but I didn't mind the creature comforts offered at all. You have no idea how much you get used to a lack of personal space and shared facilities in hostels, and how much of a welcome change something like this place is.

Monday 30 August 2004

I was leaving Digby at 8am on the bus, but I really wanted to stay longer. I made the best of it by taking a walk at sunrise to see the place (which includes Canada's biggest scallop fleet) and getting back to the B&B for a home cooked breakfast. The service and quality of this place is good, and I do hope to return someday.

Left on Acadian to go to Wolfville. Wolfville was actually really nice, although the bus stop is really badly located if you're carrying half your life with you as I was - especially if it is over 30 degrees and humid, as it was. I still got a good meal at a place called Acton's on the main street, which does an awesome local buffet, and got in a bit of sightseeing including the Waterfront Park where one can see the place twice in two hours and the tides have completely transformed the way the place looks. After several hours of sweating, I got CJ's Taxi back to the bus stop and then went back to Halifax.

Day 38-39 - In transit, via Halifax

2004-08-27T23:21:00.000+08:00

Thursday 26 August (jeudi 26 août) 2004, 11am ET

Back in Montreal - or rather, Dorval Airport. The worst part about transfer flights is fatigue, two sets of security checks, etc... I had to unpack part of my baggage this time, as I have a radio, CD player and other stuff in there that fails their security check unless it's isolated. Quebec Airport's a bit out of town and costs $27 for a taxi as there is no shuttle - next time I'll have to see if I can get to Sainte-Foy on public transport and get a taxi from there. Daniel was amused by my attempts, using 'dictionnaire Français', to communicate with a woman (non-English-speaking) sitting next to me. I couldn't understand a word she said (except when she grabbed my dictionary and started speaking 'dictionary English', as she called it) but she could understand me and seemed quite amused by the whole thing.

Friday 27 August 2004, AT (GMT-3h, Perth-11h)

Halifax is an interesting place - one of the oldest cities in Canada, it contains a lot of old buildings and green spaces and a beautiful waterfront area with some islands, but is ridiculously small for a city of 300,000 (it reminds me a bit of both Launceston and Hobart) and can only be explained by the apparent contradiction of "slow and chaotic". Once you get off the multitude of freeways coming in and going out of Halifax, the traffic is very slow - there are traffic jams regularly in the two-lane main street in the city, and I've even seen drivers stop in the middle of an intersection for up to 30 seconds to negotiate it. Service is very slow here, but friendly. One odd observation is people here seem to have a much stronger Canadian accent than I'm used to - the 'a's are even flatter than Vancouver's, the 'ay's are shriller, and the 'ou' in 'about' is meticulously pronounced.

Not much really to say other than that. I'm going by bus to Saint John, New Brunswick, today and staying in a nice B&B there for a couple of days. It'll probably be a while (Tuesday maybe?) before I can update this again.

Day 36-37 - Québec City

2004-08-27T22:43:00.000+08:00

Tuesday 24 August (mardi 24 août) 2004, approx 9pm ET

Have arrived safely in Quebec City. The place looks amazing so far, but I've got a few admin things to do so that I can go out all tomorrow and explore the place.

My final thoughts on Montréal - It'll be better when I learn French. It is truly an amazing place and I love the architecture and the green spaces there. I am definitely coming back. (This list so far includes Auckland, Vancouver, Calgary and London) In particular I want to explore Longueuil and Parc Jean-Drapeau a bit.

I spent the day after writing the last entry photographing the stuff I saw the previous day in Montréal - and went into the Marie Reine de Monde church and was stunned at the scope and intricacy of the 2nd biggest church in North America. The bus trip (we ended up on the 4pm one) was fairly uneventful but we got to see some nice Quebec scenery. The place reminds me a little of Tasmania. Some absolutely massive

Wednesday 25 August (mercredi 25 août) 2004, ET

Wow, this place just rocks. I don't know how to describe it, but it's the only walled city north of Mexico in North America, and is full of old European architecture and vibe. Obviously lots of other people like it too - UNESCO gave it accreditation as a site in the 80s. I've never been anywhere like this, and I definitely intend to come back.

The hostel here is really good too - nice modern interior in a historic building. People here speak less English than in Montréal but are very friendly and will help you no matter what. The place has a lot of tourists - mostly American and French - but has not sold out like some of the places I've been to. It's quite funny seeing the horses and carts trying to compete with the cars on the narrow steep streets.

One interesting view of this place is from the St Lawrence Seaway. The name of the city (and province) come from an Algonquian word meaning "narrows", and at this point and for 80km northeast, you still get almost 100% fresh water. We went out on the Louis Jolliet, a boat named for an 18th-century French explorer, and had a guided tour in English and French of the district, including Levis, Beauport, the shipyards (2nd largest in North America) and of course Chute Montmorency, the waterfall 12km east of Quebec which is taller than Niagara (but nowhere near as impressive - still nice though)

It's amazing too how just outside the city you're instantly back in modernity - although, in much the same spirit as Montréal, a lot of the architecture is still comfortably old.

So yeah, I am kind of in love with the place. Too bad I have to leave tomorrow.

Day 34-36 - Montréal

2004-08-26T08:01:00.000+08:00

Sunday 22 August 2004 (dimanche 22 août), ET (GMT-4; Perth-12)

We left early on Sunday morning for Montreal. Unfortunately, the Airport Express shuttle in Toronto does not go anywhere near the hostel, so I had to haul my baggage across about five city blocks to the nearest stop. This proved too much, so I hailed a taxi.

This led to the first actual disaster which has happened on this trip - I left my camera behind in the taxi. The last day or so has not been good as I have been pining after it and worried that I may never see it again. I guess as the day has worn on, while I am still upset/sad about it, I realise that it is replaceable (albeit expensively so) and that if people don't do the right thing and hand in my poor, worse-for-wear camera to somewhere where it can get back to its rightful owner (i.e. me), then it will only come back on them - I'll have a brand new camera and all my old shots, and they will have their conscience.

The next few hours was a bit of a blur - travelled to the airport, waited at the airport, found out I had a seat but Daniel didn't, flew to Montreal sans Daniel and camera, completed the police report at both ends of my journey, and got the airport shuttle to my accommodation in Montreal.

I found out on a quick walk around Rue Sainte-Catherine, one of the main shopping areas, that French is somewhat more mandatory than I had presumed in these parts. Several people had told me it was possible to survive with just English. It appears that while this is possible, you don't get nearly as good service (and indeed I have been ripped off a few times). Montreal is a very green, beautiful city rich with history and culture, and there isn't a huge number of highrises here, although it seems many people do live in quaint three-storey apartments with stairs up the front.

Daniel arrived at around 10:30pm due to a mix-up at the airport, and we've been inseparable since. The hostel is actually really nice and the room has its own bathroom - something we've kind of lacked since - well, we've just lacked it full stop, I think.

Early observations about Montreal

1. This place is in Quebec, one almost has to pinch themselves to remember that this is the same country I have been in for the last month or so. The roads are wide boulevards with big black traffic lights, not the yellow box ones almost ubiquitous in most of Canada, people just look different, sound different and even the food is in a category all of its own. Not that any of these things are bad - I have actually done quite well for food in Montreal. It's a very international city and you can literally name your cuisine, walk around a few city streets and find it in no more than 20 minutes.

2. While the drivers here border on insane, it's a remarkably easy city for a pedestrian to navigate. I'd hate to drive here, though.

3. Once you get used to written French and get to know a few common words, you can mentally translate back into English fairly easily. Sometimes the French even makes more literal sense than the often-euphemised English and can even be quite fun. One example mentioned possible removal of limbs as a safety hazard, whereas the English version just mentioned injury.

4. There's a unique smell to this place that is hard to define. It's sweet, faintly smoky, faintly perfumey.

5. While this is French Canada, despite what I said in (1), it is still Canada. French-Canadian teenagers zipping about on skateboards listening to Sum 41 and Millencolin (even if they can't understand many of the words) dressed in black t-shirts and Nikes are proof of this, in my opinion.

Music memories

I usually record the music that reminds me of each place I visit. Here is the list so far:

Auckland - Maroon 5 "This Love"
Honolulu - Chevelle "Send The Pain Below"
Vancouver - Pete Townshend "Open The Door To Your Heart"
Toronto - Hoobastank "The Reason"
Montreal - Morcheeba (find name of song)

Songs I've heard in almost every city (usually in hostels or shops):

Delta Goodrem "Born To Try"
Abba "Mamma Mia"
Beastie Boys "Paul Revere"

Tuesday 24 August (mardi 24 août) 2004, Montréal, 12 midday ET

Yay! I got me a camera! Thanks very much to Image Point in Rue Ste-Catherine, with their friendly bilingual staff.

I spent all of Monday just getting around Montréal. It's a very interesting city and is great to explore. One warning though - if you're British or Australian and have my levels of French speaking ability (i.e. negligible) it's worth saying Bonjour and Merci (or Merci beaucoup) whenever appropriate, and clearly emphasising your nationality. They don't mind the tourists, but if they think you are English-Canadian, you will possibly get crappy service or even ripped off.

Examples:
- A guy insisting my $20 note was counterfeit and trying to make me use a credit card for the purchase. (I got the bank to check it later, it definitely was kosher). I had a second note though, and he would have looked an idiot claiming both were.
- A shopowner Daniel encountered who, when given $14 for a $13 purchase, said "Thanks for the tip", smirked and shut the till without giving change.
- A cafe staffer who attempted to pass me off a no-longer-legal-tender old-style $10 note. I realised immediately and only got a correct note when a Swiss-French guy intervened and said lots of stuff very quickly in French. Conspicuously, the guy put the old $10 note back in the till - presumably for a less assertive English-speaking victim.

That being said however, most people here are very friendly, even if English is not widely spoken. Anyone who speaks it fluently usually turns out to be from another province.

As I now have a camera, I'm going off to photograph centre-ville (downtown) Montréal before bussing off to Québec City.

Added section: Survival French

There are variants to all of the below, but these work:

à or au = to
de = of, from
sur = over
sous = (under?)
-er or -ez is usually a verb
bonjour = good day, hello etc
merci = thank you
beaucoup (bu-ku) = very much or a lot
excusez-moi (skew-zay-mwah) = sorry, excuse me
bon, mal = good, bad. While you sound pidgin saying these before nouns, who cares, they do understand you.
monde = world

Doors - Poussez=Push, Tirez=Pull
Shops - Ouvert=Open, Ferme=Closed
Signs - Arrêt=Stop

Days:
Lundi/Monday
Mardi/Tuesday
Mercredi/Wednesday
Jeudi/Thursday
Vendredi/Friday
Samedi/Saturday
Dimanche/Sunday

Lun à Ven=Mon to Fri

* Pronounce en, ent, on, an, ant etc as a nasal "on", without quite pronouncing the "n"
* Pronounce in, ain as a nasal "an" as above
* Unless a word ends with an e or the next word starts with a vowel, don't pronounce the last consonant(s) - eg dix (ten) is "dee". Exception is words ending with c.
* Pronounce "u" and "ue" by saying "ee" with an "o" mouth shape.

Day 32-33 - London ON, Toronto

2004-08-22T11:33:00.000+08:00

(Second go at writing this - the first entry got simply lost.)

Friday 20 August 2004, ET

Our destination today, London, a city of 300,000 people just 199km away from Toronto or 2 hours by Greyhound, turned out to be a really good choice. It's perched on the forks of the Thames River and has plenty of green areas and parks for walking. In addition, the city's done a great job at preserving many of its old buildings and houses in the forks area near downtown. A newer addition is the Covent Garden Market where we had a very English Canadian meal - eggplant kebab and burek.

I even managed to pick up the new Tea Party album (Seven Circles) two weeks before its Australian release at a store in Dundas Street - while it's not that exciting, you may be happy to know that Bob Rock only got his hands on three tracks.

The weather could have been better - was raining (also experienced by Toronto and Niagara, as we heard later), but not that hard and I find that sort of soft rain atmosphere is excellent for walking around foresty types of areas as it brings out the smells in a big way. I always remember walking around Star Swamp at sunrise back in Perth when the dew really brought out the eucalyptus and you could just breathe it - this is similar, but it's primarily maple and conifers.

Overall I was quite impressed with London and I do intend to be back sometime :)

Saturday 21 August 2004, ET

Today, we tried to pack as much as possible into one day, it being our last in Toronto.

Firstly, we had heard about an eccentric millionaire, rich from the Niagara Falls hydroelectricity scheme in the early 1900s, who built himself a castle on a hill in Toronto. Unfortunately, he ended up bankrupt less than 10 years later, in no small part due to the maintenance required for his castle. We went early but it seems the tourists had discovered it in droves and there was a steep entry price on the castle itself - but the grounds were free, so we wandered those for a bit.

A bit up the road, but away from the tourists, we found another castle - this one, it turned out, was the Casa Loma Stables. Evidently, his horses deserved the best too. I was let in by a caretaker who allowed me to take some closeup photographs. He was keen to point out to me that the guy was the culprit behind the introduction of grey squirrels to Ontario from Britain - not only do they compete with the native black squirrels, but they also hunt and kill them sometimes. In parts of Vancouver, you only actually see grey ones, although the black ones are in abundance in parks and gardens here.

The area around Casa Loma and Dupont/St Clair West seems to be where the wealthy people really live - it looked just like some of the similarly-priced suburbs in Perth I wandered around in early July. I hope the tourist guides don't discover it, though, as it will probably become just as rundown as Yorkville has.

Next stop in our whistlestop tour was the Queens Park area. It is a garden with a very English feel to it, and near a statue of a mounted horseman, we realised we'd walked in on some weird music festival. We quietly shuffled off towards the Ontario Legislature - seeing as we'd seen the BC (Victoria) and AB (Edmonton) ones, we thought we'd compare. The western ones are far more stylish, but this one just oozes grand. (It turns out it was built in the last century after an inconclusive open competition - ultimately one of the adjudicators got the contract amid much protest!)

Enough of the west - we jumped on a subway and went off east to Greektown on Danforth (near Chester station). Before getting there I was expecting it to be very tacky, and was surprised to find it was the sort of place you'd actually find Greek people who speak Greek eating at the local cafes and tavernas. Even the English street names nearby (Logan Ave, Danforth etc) had been translated into Greek on street signs. We tried out some of the local gyros before going up the road a bit to one of the many hidden attractions listed by this site (which I recommend to anyone, even if just for the pictures) - Leaside Bridge, with amazing views over the Don Valley. These amazing views, however, like many other things in Toronto, were framed by a freeway - namely the Don Valley Parkway.

As it was now 4pm, we decided to head off pronto to the CN Tower as we had tickets ($16 each). The tickets saved us a long wait at one counter but didn't save us from the next - between security checks and just plain out waiting, it was 37 minutes until we got to the top. On getting there, it turned out the place was not just crowded but a swarming mass of tourists and very little could be seen. All the good views of downtown had been fenced off and made into a cafe, so you couldn't see them from the observation points. Even the famed glass floor, which turned out to be only a tiny area much smaller than that at the Sky Tower in Auckland, was so covered in people that you'd barely have known it was there. At over twice the price of its Southern Hemisphere rival, I didn't end up concluding I'd gotten value for money. However, I can now say I've stood 346m from the ground on a man-made structure.

After that, we needed to get away from people, and I'd seen the Western Beaches on a map (and the boldts site recommended them too) so we thought we'd go there for the closing hours of the evening and, after 45 sweaty minutes in a streetcar, we were there, just off Lakeshore Blvd near the Humber Bay area. Now, I should make one point clear. These are beaches purely in the sense that they are where land meets water. Most of them are reclaimed land, and none of them could be described as a beach by traditional standards. However, it was a beautiful place to see out our last evening in Toronto, and I got some awesome pictures.

Toronto is very different to what I expected. I guess I expected something more like Melbourne - and indeed, superficially, it bears some resemblance. But it is a big city in all the ways a big city can be. It's cleaner and better organised than, say, Sydney, and it's got its own charms, but you have to look for them. I guess time and more travelling will decide my views on this part of the world.

Last night in English Canada for a few days.

Day 29-31 - Toronto

2004-08-20T10:16:00.000+08:00

Tuesday to Thursday have all been fairly quiet days. These entries sound very brief because we basically went somewhere, looked around for a short period of time, did basically nothing, then came back.

Tuesday 17th August 2004, ET

Very quiet day due to lingering weak-knee syndrome after our day at Niagara Falls. We went up to North York and took a few photos, then came back via Yonge Street and Church/Wellesley, known here as the gay district. That was pretty much all.

Wednesday 18th August 2004, ET

Decided to explore the subway system a bit, so went firstly to Yorkville, allegedly Toronto's upmarket suburb (but it looked pretty rundown), then all the way out to Scarborough, an eastern residential/commercial suburb (about 12km E) and spent a while in the local mall, as neither of us had spent time in a Wal-Mart before. :P After getting bored with this, we came back via Danforth, India Bazaar and Chinatown.

Thursday 19th August 2004, ET

Daniel decided he didn't really want to explore Toronto any more, not helped by the not-so-fine weather - but I managed to persuade him to come out as we're here for just a few more days (we depart on Sunday morning). He agreed, on the condition we spent one of the days away from Toronto. So London was decided upon for tomorrow, and we spent all afternoon around the Front St and Bay St areas (basically the financial district and the more blatantly touristy bits). We walked around the base of the CN tower but the size of the queue put us off until another day. One odd feature of Front Street is the sheer number of hot dog vendors operating from vans parked at the side of the road - there's about 2 or 3 per block and some have been there since 1984!

We then went on a tour of CBC's Broadcasting Centre, where we got to see the sets for some Canadian news, comedy and variety shows, and were able to appreciate the finer aspects of this one-block-wide, 10-storey-tall building from the inside.

After that, we went through bits of the underground city and the Eaton Centre, only coming up to see thousands of old people on walking frames and in wheelchairs herding out into masses of accumulated buses covering two lanes on an entire block outside Roy Thomson Theatre.

Then it was off to buy the Greyhound tickets and that was pretty much the end of the night.

Day 28 - Niagara Falls

2004-08-20T09:26:00.001+08:00

Monday 16 August 2004, ET (GMT-4, Perth-12)

Before arriving in Canada, my travel agent set me up with a Moose Pass tour to Niagara Falls, and I was able to get Daniel on surprisingly easily. He'd seen it when he was 8, but didn't really remember much, so it was a good catch-up.

This tour was amazing. Friendly group of just 14 people from all over the world plus a knowledgeable driver, and a lot of interesting stops along the way that a lot of the major tours simply don't do - and for just $62 ($50 + $12 for Maid of the Mist). We went to a winery and learned about Canadian ice wine, made from frozen grapes picked at -10 to -12 degrees in February, went to a lovely town called Niagara on the Lake which was full of old shops, flower displays and green parks, climbed up a monument to a hero of the 1812 war, Sir Isaac Brock (my knees took two days to recover unfortunately), and then went to the Falls itself. It was weird being at yet another border crossing to the US, but this time I didn't have to cross it, so there was no worries.

Not that I needed to cross it. The Falls themselves are divided in two - the American Falls, which are pretty much straight down from near the Maid's launching point near the Rainbow Bridge connecting the two countries, and the Canadian (or Horseshoe) Falls. You can only really see either from the Canadian side as you'd just be looking straight down onto the top of them from the US side - so the Canadian side has a very developed tourist infrastructure centred around Falls Avenue and Clifton Hill - things such as Coke machines that only accept US$1 bills, all manner of amusement arcades and theme shops, hotels, observation towers, expensive restaurants, fast food stores, casinos, toy shops selling made-in-China moose (the correct plural for moose according to Oxford) and the compulsory Planet Hollywood and Hard Rock Cafe. In short, a tacky tourist town that tries to capitalise on its location.

The first hour was taken up with just taking in the Falls themselves and then going on the Maid of the Mist boat ride right into them. The "mist" is more like something barely short of torrential rainfall, and they do issue blue cellophane raincoats as part of the entry process. Even standing on the shore I had to dry my distance glasses about four or five times.

The journey itself was incredible. It reminded me of those shipwreck disaster movies where you couldn't see anything, heard the falling water all around you, and were being thrown all about a ship with a whole bunch of people. This was at least partly as I chose to stand on the front deck rather than up top. Daniel wimped out and went right to the back of the boat, only getting to see the real Falls when the boat turned around and started heading back.

After this, I listened to some guy murdering Hotel California in a mock-country style on an acoustic guitar and bought some rather-too-rich fudge for dinner before going into the city centre. I'd never been in such a place so did take the time to look around a bit before deciding it really was far too commercial for my tastes. I did however find a nice garden which was a good escape from the city, but my time to go came when I overheard an American woman on a cellphone saying that she wanted to send an email but Canada doesn't have the Internet. (Who owns .ca then - a moose maybe?)

The Falls is one thing by day and another by night. Much like Kings Park back in Perth, the lighting experts have set up this changing arrangement of coloured illumination for the Falls which is just spectacular. The mist isn't quite so "in-your-face" at night, so you can just sit there about 50m from the Falls and watch the vast volume of moving water as it tumbles into the light. It is just awesome.

The return trip was pretty straightforward - Queen Elizabeth Way express back to Toronto and everyone's hostels or let-off points. All in all, a great trip and definitely the highlight of our time in Toronto.

Day 25-27 - Toronto

2004-08-18T05:19:00.000+08:00

Firstly, a comment - on Friday 20 August, I will have been away for one month. It seems like an eon ago that I left Perth, and even Auckland and Hawaii are quite distant memories. When I get back, Canada will not just be a place on the map - it will be an experience that I've had, and have shared with many people (not least of all Daniel). It's bizarre that, despite the many similarities between Canada and Australia, one rarely features on the news of the other, and only mutual visitors actually know much about the other's country. It's not for a lack of interest either - I find many Canadians actually are keen to know more about Australia and ask me plenty of questions, as there is this general understanding that Canada, Australia and NZ are the only members of a hard-to-define group with shared lifestyles, attitudes and sensibilities.

Onto the journal...

Friday 13 August 2004
Friday was a day pretty much spent travelling:
- 8am - enjoyed the rest of the bison and tomatoes.
- 9am - left the hostel via the Sky Shuttle (465-9515; $13)
- 10am - arrived and checked in at Edmonton International Airport, nearer to the next town, Leduc, than to Edmonton itself
- 11am - after some waiting, both of us had boarding passes but neither of us had seat numbers, and despite the fact boarding had apparently commenced, our names hadn't been called yet.

I got a business class seat! Yay! It even had massage features built into the base - I didn't even know about them but a somewhat more travelled person sitting next to me showed me how it all worked. The smoked chicken lunch went down well too. Unfortunately, Daniel was almost at the back of the plane.

The inflight movie, Mean Girls, compensated for 3.75 hours of boring scenery (endless squares of green farmland are not excitement plus). It was almost like flying Perth to Melbourne.

- 5:41pm EST - Arrived in Lester B. Pearson International Airport near Toronto. It is a HUGE airport, and I actually sort of got lost trying to find the baggage counter. Not that it mattered, as the baggage took half an hour to materialise.

An Airport Express Shuttle and a short taxi ride later, Daniel and I were at HI-Toronto at Church Street, Toronto. For the Toronto-aware, this isn't actually the gay part of the street - that's about 14 blocks further north at the intersection of Wellesley Street. This part is right over the road from St James Anglican Cathedral, and you can hear the quarter-hour chimes in the room. HI-Toronto is a little dingier than we have gotten used to in other cities (the paintwork has a decidedly artistic/alternative feel to it), but the service is very friendly.

Saturday 14 August 2004

We had tickets to the Vans Warped Tour in Barrie, 100km north of Toronto. Before I get to that, I'll mention the transport situation. I'm not sure if this classifies as a Torrid Tale(TM) as I haven't ratified the copyright with Lucas yet, and we did actually get there fairly easily in the end.

However, the ticket didn't include transport - we had to get a bus (see Parking and Transportation) from Yorkdale bus terminal, which is on the subway line. No problems, we thought, so we headed to Yorkdale, paid our $25 each, and then found out people had been waiting for 6 hours, there'd been a handful of buses, and the crowd of approximately 400 had concluded Greyhound (for whom PMCL is an agent) sucked. Two hours later, and two cancelled buses later (1:30pm and 3:00pm) and the crowd was about ready for a riot. The sight of a crowd of punk rockers and alternative people booing and hissing and mobbing any incoming bus was starting to scare arriving tourists and elderly people, and the security contingent of just four (who couldn't get in touch with any of their superiors) was hopelessly outmatched in the event a full riot did occur. It seems Greyhound did not even try to get other operators to pitch in with buses.

Groups of the quieter/more conservative people started banding together at the edges of the group and making collective arrangements for taxis - I ended up in a group of 12 which ended up in 3 taxis at a cost of $20 per person. The poor GO Transit people had to handle all the one-way ticket refunds ($10) for the taxi people - they were remarkably patient considering it wasn't even their company's problem and that they were dealing with hundreds of refunds.

I got to Barrie at 4pm and Daniel at 4:25pm in a separate group. Not knowing any of the bands bar about one or two (and having missed one of those), I hung around mostly the smaller stages and listened to a variety of bands including Alexis on Fire, Mêlée, International Noise Conspiracy, Army of Freshmen, Subb, Thursday, Taking Back Sunday, and of course Bad Religion. (There was also a session of Punk Rock-a-oke which was going on somewhere which was quite amusing) It was fun seeing some of the smaller bands and getting to talk to their members, who were very surprised to find someone from Australia at the gig and were keen to know more about my place of origin. I gave a few of them details about the Big Day Out annual concert series, and at least one is going to follow it up.

Transport on the way back ended up being by bus - evidently Greyhound were trying to make up for what we heard actually became a riot by about 4:30pm at Yorkdale, and were hiring buses (even the evil Gray Line empire) from just about everybody to get us all back. Our original group of 12, now down to 10, managed to meet up and hold together and we only had to wait 45 minutes for a bus back.

Sunday 15 August 2004

A quiet rest day. Almost nothing to report.

Day 21-24 - In transit - Lake Louise, Calgary, Edmonton

2004-08-13T13:18:00.000+08:00

I'm wrapping this all up into one entry as there seems little point in elaborating more.

We left Vancouver on Monday at 6:30am, exactly 24 hours later than the original itinerary - but this change has been a blessing in disguise. We have had excellent weather ever since Sunday. On the way out we got a last glimpse of Nanaimo Street, of Burnaby Lake and of outer Langley before heading off into the Coast Mountains. After Chilliwack, the view was absolutely awesome. The poor bus was struggling with the grades, but it made it eventually. We basically followed the TransCanada Highway 1 (mostly freeway grade) and stopped in Kamloops, Revelstoke and Golden on the way through to Lake Louise and went right up into the Rocky Mountains and crossed the Rogers Pass - I got about 75 photos on the way through.

One side note is that the timezone jump from GMT-7 to GMT-6 is well inside BC (before Golden), rather than the provincial border.

Lake Louise, though, was a bit of a shock. On arriving in Lake Louise, there was no directions to the hostel, and no-one around seemed to know where it was. It was 8:20pm and most things were closed in the village. So here was the two of us walking around with all our luggage not knowing where to go and walking in some direction hoping it was that way (we turned out to be fairly lucky in our guess). In the midst of all this, my camera fell out of its pouch to the ground and rolled, and the shutter button was all but destroyed. This really darkened the mood for the night, even though I saw one of the most beautiful sunsets ever, all I wanted to do was cry.

Thankfully, I thought of the idea of using a paper clip for a shutter button, so I was able to take photos after that although with some effort (edit 17/8 - I'm quite good at it now!). The hostel was clean and secure, but food in the village was very expensive - we spent $30 each on food in one day yet really didn't eat that much. The views, however, around the lake (4km from the hostel) and the surrounding mountains were amazing and we managed to get in about 5 hours walking, and explored the nearby Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise hotel, which was like a mini-shopping centre (someone told us that CP Rail built all the luxury hotels along the railway line, then Fairmont bought them - hence why they've got so many nice ones). The CP Rail train thundered past the village every now and again, giving a certain vibe to the whole experience.

On Wednesday we woke up early again as we had to be on a bus at 8am to Calgary. The first part of this ride was good - but I was kind of glad I didn't stay in Banff as the scenery didn't seem quite so accessible as at Lake Louise. Banff (inside the national park) is forbidden from exceeding its present town limits by Parks Canada, so the town of Canmore (22km away and just outside the Banff NP) has emerged as a residential and commercial hub for Banff. We arrived in Calgary at 10:30am.

Calgary has a very nice skyline and a lot of greenery surrounding the Bow River, and we found plenty of things to explore. They have a free tram running up most of 7th Avenue which is handy for getting from West End (just east of the Greyhound terminal) to the centre. Daniel shouted me a meal in a steakhouse, and we went up the Calgary Tower (kind of like a mini-Sky Tower) and up to Chinatown and over to Fort Calgary, where we spotted some cute gophers doing their thing (In retrospect, I'm glad I don't have a house and garden in Calgary, the garden would be full of gopher holes. You should see those things dig!) We ran back to the terminal via Shaw Millennium Park where we saw heaps of young skaters and cyclists on the biggest skate park either of us had ever seen (edit: it is in fact the biggest in North America), with a punk rock and hiphop soundtrack being cut by a local DJ. Unfortunately, while I made the 3pm bus, Daniel did not - the next bus was 3 hours later.

Calgary to Edmonton is a 299km drive across flat green country on what is for the most part a straight freeway with signs to small towns just off it. It counts as one of the most boring drives I've ever been part of, apart from possibly the Sydney-Canberra run via the Hume Freeway in 1998. Unlike other Greyhound services, this one actually showed movies - we saw Chicken Run (in French, but it's such a visual movie that you don't actually need an audio track) and some army movie which seemed to involve betrayal, shooting and killing - great for the kids on board, even if it had been cut for airline audiences.

Edmonton reminds me a lot of Adelaide, although it has its own character. Like Adelaide, it is a flat city with few prominent buildings - although the Alberta Provincial Legislature building is really nice. At the Saskatchewan River, though, which separates downtown from Old Strathcona where I am staying, there are some really nasty bends and slopes as the river is a good 30-40m below the downtown, and yet whoever designed the city still tried to keep with a grid layout. Edmonton's public transit system operates just like Honolulu's in that you pay $2 per ride and get a transfer ticket for onward travel, rather than a 2-hour or daypass ticket. The system is mostly bus but they have a light rail transit system (with just one line) which goes from the university through downtown to the inner north-eastern suburbs. Daniel has proposed that Edmonton adopt the motto "City of Stairs" - the university LRT station has no less than EIGHT flights of stairs to get from the surface to the station, and most LRT stations have at least 2 flights. There are hints that despite today's 34 degree highs, this city can get almost as far below zero in winter - there are road signs indicating snow routes where parking is banned, and entire sections of the city can only be accessed from underground (often by use of aforementioned staircases).

A visit to Edmonton cannot go without a visit to the ridiculously-sized West Edmonton Mall, which contains a waterslide park, live flamingoes running around, a mini-theme park for the kids, submarine rides (for $12.95), and of course oodles of shops. It's actually about 20 minutes drive from the centre (the city is between 97 and 110 St and WEM is at 170-178 St)

Edmonton has heaps of really amazing acoustic guitarists - I met and talked to one called Cal in the Legislature gardens, and another called Matt downtown. Whyte Avenue (near the hostel) is a bit of an artsy hangout, and was the centre of the Fringe Festival which was starting just as we were leaving - we kept hearing about it (many people thought we had arrived for it!)

What's surprising is that there's no real competition for beds in the hostel at Edmonton even though it is still peak season - being August and the end of the North American school holidays. It's the one place in Canada I've been that has not been practically booked out - although it's still busy.

As for us, we bought bison in the local IGA supermarket - it tastes really nice. Got eaten with loads of local cherry tomatoes and 2 full potatoes :)

Off to Toronto tomorrow... The sad part is I don't feel any emotional connection with Edmonton whatsoever. So far, Auckland and Vancouver have been the two places to manage that. Other than that it'll be my last day in Western Canada for quite a while, tomorrow will be quite unimportant in many ways.

Day 20 - Vancouver

2004-08-09T23:52:00.000+08:00

Sunday 8th August 2004, Vancouver time (GMT-7, Perth-15)

This was the day that wasn't meant to be in Vancouver, but just as well it was - it probably ranks alongside Burnaby Lake as my best day in Vancouver, aided somewhat by the 28°C, fairly non-humid fine weather. Daniel took me to all his favourite spots around the City of Vancouver (I should explain that the City is just one part of Greater Vancouver and includes the downtown and a fair slab of land south and east from it).

Firstly, the grand tour of UBC, where I got to see a very nice campus that is twice the size of the downtown, and is actually a really nice place. Not too many campuses in the world that have their own rainforest - and a naturally-growing one at that. He took me down the perilously steep path to Wreck Beach, Vancouver's clothing-optional beach. It was an experience trying not to see exactly the sort of people you would never want to see naked flashing their bits at the world at large. I did manage to get some good photos though (not of the people, of the scenery.)

Then it was to Granville Island, which Daniel assured me was nothing special and was all hype, so we decided to eat at a sushi place just outside it that he sometimes goes to, then walk through the middle and catch the ferry at the end back to the city. This was all done in roughly that order - Granville Island was sort of like a cross between Fremantle and Sorrento Quay, but busier than both.

Then finally around the city itself and back out to Queen Elizabeth Park. He showed me his favourite view there and I got a picture from it. Some Swedish ladies saw us in the bushes and decided to join it, and after we left we enjoyed a bottle of delightfully expensive French lemonade which we got at 60% off in a bookshop.

Finally, we went to Trout Lake - we went separately as Daniel wanted me to meet Cass again before I left. We went to the lake but some sort of children's sports event was happening but we still had a great sunset there before returning by car to the city. It's funny how when you catch the bus all the time you just don't see a lot of the stuff out the windows yet you do when in a car.

Packing was of the essence, though, as we had to be at Pacific Central station at 6:30am, which meant waking up at 5am. (In the end this proved unachievable but for my mother who managed to get me woken up about 5:15am) - but not before downloading my pictures at the net cafe and visiting Casablanca Kebabs on Davie Street for one last time.

I realised I was really going to miss Vancouver. Four people who had lived elsewhere had talked to me about how they came to stay in Vancouver as it was the most beautiful city they had seen, and I knew Perth, Melbourne and Vancouver have repeatedly been rated most livable cities in the world, so I realised a high point was kind of over.

Reflecting on Vancouver after 2 weeks there, here are my observations. Vancouver is an excellent city with the best transport system I've seen anywhere, although I would hate to own a car here (although traffic is orderly here, it is very slow) or live in the City, as double-digit-floor apartment living just isn't me. There's plenty of green here and many attractive and colourful distractions from the lifestyle though, and the cafes provide cheap and fresh authentic food from all over the world. Vancouver reminds me a lot of Melbourne and is not unlike Auckland as well in some ways.

Canada has transformed the way I think about my own country, and I have no doubt when I see Eastern Europe and Turkey that I'll look back and say it was the first stage in a process. I have realised how good we do have it. I have realised that for all we complain about problems in our cities, with crime, traffic, etc, we really don't have problems in the way other countries - even this one - do. We need to work on race relations, and on reconciling with the Aboriginal people as a nation, and there's never too much that can be done to help reduce the gap between rich and poor and on trying to harm the environment less, but apart from that, we have done amazingly well in creating a country for people to live and work in peaceably. And we need to stop whinging and putting ourselves down.

Day 16-19 - Vancouver

2004-08-09T15:49:00.000+08:00

Sorry that this has taken so long to post - I've been a busy boy.

Tuesday was a very quiet day as the weather had 'turned'. I spent it mostly in the hostel, although I got out a bit around the city centre. I was supposed to go on a free hostel tour to UBC but it got cancelled - I ended up going to the UBC Museum of Anthropology - it's free on Tuesdays and I tacked on the back of a tour where I learned a lot about First Nations totem poles and the ideas that go into constructing them. The museum itself is awesome - they've got everything. Rogers have suddenly decided to stop accepting international (i.e. non-Canadian) credit cards so I now have to go to 7-11's and buy topup cards the manual way. Not fun, especially when you're trying to meet someone on a large campus and don't have any contact with them.

Wednesday was to be my last free day in Vancouver, so I went off with my camera on the Skytrain network, taking pictures of interesting bits of the network (Broadway-Nanaimo, Joyce-Patterson and 22nd St-New Westminster are the best bits). Went to New Westminster and checked out the quays there - would be better on a better day as I could have walked around more. Ended up coming straight back, cooking dinner, going to the net cafe and then going to see the Spain fireworks - they were awesome but I still thought China's was better as they kept up the momentum the whole way through and not just at the end.

Thursday was set aside for Whistler - however both Daniel and I proved totally unequal to the task of waking up at 7:00 - we managed closer to 10:00. Having missed the 11:00 Greyhound to Whistler, we wandered around the Cambie Bridge and eastern False Creek areas and took nifty pictures of Science World before enjoying a Jugo Juice (kind of like Java Juice) and then finally catching the 12:30. It takes about 2 hours to get to Whistler. The Whistler Village is all hype and no substance - it's basically a heap of expensive tourist oriented pubs and shops, but there is a free shuttle from the back to a walk trail called Lost Lake. It was nice getting into forest again and seeing lots of wildlife - I counted 5 things (including a couple of chipmunks, which were really cute) but couldn't identify most of them due to a lack of acquaintance with the wildlife up here. We were going to take the ski lift to Whistler Mountain (which was snow-free) but it cost $23, which seemed exorbitant to our tiny budgets ($31 return bus ticket, $23 per night accommodation, $7 for food etc) so we didn't do it. The view going back to Vancouver along Sea & Sky Highway was amazing - even better than Whistler in my opinion. It would probably be better to visit in March than in July/August though.

Friday was our Victoria day. We tried to wake up at 5:30am - again without success. We got out at 8am and Daniel wanted me to see the Queen Elizabeth Park. However, by the time we got there it was pelting with rain and we were sort of running between things and photographing gardens and then running to the next one. From the point we left there to the time we arrived in Victoria 137km away, it took us 7 hours.

9:20am - Boarded 15 (after 15 min wait) to end of Cambie St
10:08am - Boarded 100 (after 20 min wait in rain) to Airport Station
10:28am - Boarded 620 (after 10 min wait) to Tsawwassen ferry. It missed the on-the-hour ferry by just a few minutes.
12:00pm - Boarded ferry to Swartz Bay.
2:15pm - Poor visibility slowed us down so the normally 1.5 hour ferry took 2.25 hours.
2:30pm - Boarded 70 to Victoria.
3:55pm - Arrived in Victoria after seeing just about every street on the Saanich Peninsula.

I'd gotten into the sort of mood where I was just pissed off with everything and had no patience or motivation - Victoria was interesting but not that interesting, and very touristy. A lot of the "old charm" struck me as being for the tourists' benefit, and everywhere you looked or tried to go, hordes of people fresh off Pacific Coach Lines or Gray Line buses were blocking your way. Daniel and I retreated to the safety of Beacon Hill Park, some 500m south of downtown, which was indeed much nicer - forests, lakes, ducks and a rare (native) black squirrel which I actually managed to photograph (Daniel had been teasing me for days about my low hit rate for photographing wildlife).

After checking that out and walking along the beach on the south end of the park (which looked a bit like the far northern Perth suburbs if not for the offshore mountains in Washington state) we were exhausted and needed food and drink, and we ended up finding the Siam Thai restaurant in Fort Street near the harbour, which turned out to be surprisingly good.

We left at 7:30pm and I ended up talking to a family from Montreal who ended up giving me a lift back to Burrard Street from the ferry - which saved me time, money and hassle (Daniel was with friends by this point as he won't be seeing them for a few weeks).

On Saturday, it was Erik's City and Canyon Tour - a special one held to mark the grand finale of the HSBC Celebration of Light fireworks. This tour was thoroughly awesome - for just $9.99, we travelled on every mode of public transport, walked for over 9km in total in both city and forest environments, saw city landmarks and secrets, rainforests, waterways and even a couple of coffee shops, and had a great, very mixed group with a lively and interesting tour guide who clearly has a passion not only for Vancouver but for sharing his love and passion with anyone he can. Over 6,000 people have taken this tour since he started it 10 years ago after retiring. At the end we saw the grand finale - I'm not sure yet who won, but all three countries put on brilliant shows. After that, we went back to Erik's apartment and had icecream, talked and eventually said our goodbyes.

We were meant to go to Lake Louise on Sunday morning, but due to mishaps on both Daniel's part and mine (namely, leaving important items behind when leaving establishments) we were forced to delay by one day. More later...

(A better update will be provided when I have more time and am not so tired)

Day 15 - Peace Arch/Blaine and Torrid Tale

2004-08-03T15:21:00.000+08:00

Peace Arch and Blaine
It is truly weird walking down the road to a land border and actually seeing all the weird contraptions set up to handle the thousands of motorists who cross this point every day, and also to look on beaches just a couple of km away and realise they're in a different country. Coming from Australia, where no other nation is visible, this is just bizarre.

The Peace Arch Provincial Park (BC) and Peace Arch State Park (Washington) span the border, and are basically a big green recreational area with forest on two sides, and the Peace Arch, a big white structure which one can actually walk through, in the middle next to the freeway, which has by this point been separated out and slowed down to 30km/h (or 20mph on the US side). The Peace Arch has several inscriptions on it like "Children of a Common Mother" and "Brothers Dwelling Together in Unity". On the inside is a gate (which couldn't serve any purpose as the entire space on both sides is open), jammed open, with the words "Let This Gate Never Be Closed" above it. Each year, there's a big get-together of kids from both sides for the purpose of engendering communication.

About 400m from it on each country's side is that country's customs and immigration centre, which has about 5 or 6 lanes for cars to pass through, and separate duty free areas for each. I noticed Canada's was far busier than the US's. Near them is a flower plantation made up of each country's flag, and not far from the Peace Arch are the actual survey points marking the border.

Now for...

My Adventure in the USA

I walked across the border marvelling at the structures, and followed the path to the US Customs, noting the instructions for pedestrians to go to the east side. I entered a small, functional room at 17:09 whose only welcoming words were that there were no, zero, zip restrooms. In this room was a counter, behind which sat many black-uniformed police and customs officials, and some seats. I was grilled first by a lady who insisted I leave all my bags on the counter, took my passport and told me to sit down and not leave the building. The grilling seemed to focus mostly on the fact that I was crossing a US-Canadian land border on foot with an Australian passport, and despite having a valid 90-day visa-waiver dated July 24 from Honolulu, this was a very strange thing to do. She didn't seem to like the fact that I wanted to visit Blaine, and seemed suspicious of my reasons for wanting to go there. (I put it together credibly at the time, but "mere curiosity and novelty" was the real reason). She even asked if I had specific friends in Vancouver and asked for names (but not addresses) and for my occupation in Australia.

I didn't hear anything for 25 minutes, and when I briefly stood up to stretch my legs, I was told by another officer to sit down.

Finally, I heard my name called and yet another officer called me to the far end of the counter. He asked me many of the same questions as the first lady, except he also asked me where I was staying in Vancouver. He seemed suspicious (but not so much as the first) that someone would want to visit a border city, take scenery photos and then leave. I even offered to show him my White Rock photos to give him some idea, but he said that was fine.

10 minutes later, he called me over and said everything was fine and I could go. He wrote "SOUTH" crudely on a 1/4-A4 torn out sheet that looked like recycle paper, and asked me to give it to the officers in the carpark. After some searching, I found said officers, gave the piece of paper to them and they accepted it and wished me to have a nice day. This was at 17:51.

So I wandered around Peace Portal Drive and Marine Drive, noting that apart from the nice harbour scenery and green-themed roads, it had that very different feel that Honolulu had - definitely not like an Australian or Canadian city. Blaine has American flags draped from almost every lamppost as well, which is quite visible (four lampposts at one intersection = four American flags).

After wandering around the town and taking a few shots, I decided to head for the border again. As I was trying to find it, I noticed two US Customs officers sitting in the emergency stopping lane of the freeway sliproad viewing me through binoculars (the town was pretty much closed up except for Subway) as I moved up D Street looking for the pedestrian exit (as the freeway clearly said "no pedestrians", unlike the Canadian side where pedestrians were directed to use the bike lane).

I found an awesome Mexican restaurant (south of the border :P) called Paso del Norte on 2nd St, where I decided I was actually hungry and would eat. I went in and ordered Arroz de Pollo (which seemed to be a huge dish with bits of chicken, capsicum, tomato, avocado and sauce on rice - and not deep-fried!) and pineapple juice, and sat down in expectation of my meal. The service was fabulous, and the food was authentic. Just as I was getting into the starters, two more Customs officials walked into the restaurant and straight up to me (to some surprise from the staff) and asked me for ID. When I provided it, they asked me how long I proposed to stay, and how long I'd been there. I said I'd been there 40 minutes since crossing at the Peace Arch, and intended to finish my meal before returning. The guy seemed a tad embarrassed when I pointed this out, and said that was fine, and left. I could hear an engine running outside the restaurant the whole time I was there, though, and it was stressful and took away from my enjoyment of the otherwise excellent meal.

After paying, I left the restaurant and realised I was a bit disoriented (the stress probably didn't help) and I didn't have a map of Blaine (my Greater Vancouver street map stopped at 8th Avenue, White Rock). Just then, I realised that the two customs guys and a third guy, this one with "US Border Police" on his sleeve, were sitting there in a car watching me. I signalled them and asked them where the exit to Canada was for pedestrians. The guy told me, and I went up to the end of the street, left at the park... and suddenly realised I was back in Canada. Douglas, BC, starts at 0 (Zero) Av and only a crude little ditch with the odd sign indicated the end of the Peace Arch Park was even a border at all. I could have walked off into suburban Vancouver without even trying, most probably.

When I got to Canada Customs, I walked round the side - to find out they were waiting for me and had my name! I showed my ID, explained that I was staying in Vancouver, gave the address, and 2 minutes later (after efficient, reasonably friendly service not unlike when I arrived in Vancouver on the 26th), I was back on Highway 99 going to a bus stop I'd found on the walk there. The guy suggested I surrender my US visa waiver. I didn't argue. I think Point Roberts is something I'll do when I feel a bit more brave.

My two run-ins with the US - the first with the state of Hawaii, which was more a culture clash, and the second in Blaine, which was more like a Nazi police state type run-in, have left me somewhat disillusioned. I actually saluted the first Canadian flag I could see on a home just off the highway between 8th and 9th Av - sure, Canada has its problems and isn't perfect, and same could be said for Australia (I'd happily have hugged an Australian flag right about then), but it is a tolerant, accepting country, and it has accepted me.

Day 14-15 - Vancouver

2004-08-03T13:59:00.000+08:00

Sadly, I missed the Sweden fireworks. I'm going to see Spain on Wednesday night and the grand finale on Saturday night though.

Sunday (Day 14) was the quietest single day since my holiday began. I wandered around the city idly for most of the day, and then went up the Harbour Centre tower, which is a lookout over Vancouver not unlike the Sky Tower in Auckland. The only downside is that the observation tower is actually lower than some of the surrounding buildings, meaning that you can't see entire sections of the city, but it was an awesome experience and well worth doing - on a clear day such as Sunday was, you can clearly see a snowy peak in the distance, that being Mt Baker in Washington State, 145km ESE of Vancouver, and Stanley Park in particular looks lovely. The lady told me that my ticket was valid all day, and to come back at sunset as it was supposed to be really good. She wasn't wrong. I spent most of the time with a couple of Australian girls off a cruise ship and a couple of Canadian Chinese who had a similar camera to me and we were trying to get the best shots.

Monday was BC Day, the "foundation day" for the province of British Columbia. Before I go on, I'm going to introduce this with some oddities about BC and Vancouver:

1. Nearly all traffic lights have a yellow frame rather than a black frame, and are like a big rectangular box with the lights "hanging" out the front. This seems to be a uniquely Canadian thing, and can be seen all over Canada. (There are yellow frame lights in the US too but they look more like ours, just painted yellow).

2. Vancouver, the city, is not on Vancouver Island. Some people call it Victoria Island, which is confusing as there is a Victoria Island off the northwest of the province.

3. The top half of the province's flag is a squished British flag, the bottom half is blue-and-white stripes with a sun rising onto it. This flag appears on all route number signs and numberplates.

4. Vancouver is a very young city even by Australian standards. It was incorporated in 1886, and before that existed only as a series of small settlements (including Langley, Daniel's home) and a rail terminus for the Canadian Pacific line. The city's first bill passed was to create Stanley Park as a defence against any future American attack. Click here for a much more indepth summary.

Anyway, I'll divide the day into two distinct parts:

White Rock
On a whim, rather than going to Lynn Canyon as was my plan (but I missed the bus), I headed to White Rock and Crescent Beach (getting to see South Granville and Delta on the way - the former is very classy and I may yet walk it, and the latter is entirely farmland). White Rock is almost right on the US border, about 38km SE of Vancouver (50 by the road system) and not dreadfully far from Langley, so Daniel was able to meet me at Crescent Beach.

Now, in White Rock, the idea of "beach" means quite different than the normal - it's more like a series of mud flats up to 400-500m wide, parts covered in seaweed and divided by little streams and populated by crabs and shellfish. It was still pretty cool, but neither of us particularly wanted to get our shoes dirty, so we moved on to White Rock proper, about a 7km walk away. By this stage, poor Daniel was exhausted, and his initial idea of crossing the border at Douglas-Blaine had basically wilted, so he ended up going home. I came down onto Marine Drive and walked the coast, getting some awesome photos - the place looked a tiny bit like Cottesloe or Manly, except for the totem poles and the odd-looking beaches. One thing we both noticed was the sheer number of Canada and BC flags hung from shops and homes - Canadians are certainly nationalistic, especially when close to the US border, but it's not the "in-your-face" kind of nationalism that usually grates when other countries do it. I have no idea why.

About another 6km later, after walking through the forested 8th Avenue (parallel to the border) near the Semiahmoo (SEM-ee-AH-moo) First Nation lands (translation: lots of forest and a big big caravan park) and down Highway 99, I was within view of the goal.

See next entry for the rest.

Day 11-13 - Vancouver

2004-08-01T11:22:00.000+08:00

I have had a great time here the last few days, although there's surprisingly little to report.

- Went out to Port Moody (21km E of Vancouver) on Thursday, and spent time on small community shuttle buses (which look hilarious - I'll post a pic soon) going through steep hills and thick forests, and chatting to busdrivers and other locals. It was a great time. :)

- On Friday, we slept in, and ended up going to Langley (43km SE of Vancouver), Daniel's home district, with him, but not before finding an excellent street musician outside Burrard Skytrain station named Matt who played Ben Harper and other such acoustic stuff. During my time in Langley, I actually got to sit down and spend time with Daniel (which is a rare thing when we're in the city), learned that the Trans-Canada Highway 1 is a ridiculously busy road, that Langley has a lot of interesting wood sculptures and far too many skate parks, that you can eat blackberries straight off bushes in the woods out there, and that the local markets are very good value. I had my first experience, on returning, of cooking in the hostel's communal kitchen. The meal was a bit experimental, but noone who tried it seemed to mind.

- Saturday was one of those random sort of days. Went up to Squamish (64km north of Vancouver) to see, believe it or not, a logging competition! Everyone knows I am a greenie at heart, but every year, these guys compete with each other for titles in events such as axe-throwing, climbing up and down 80m poles, chainsawing logs while standing on them, etc. It was great :) Saw some awesome mountain and ocean views on the way there and back, too. I had some great company for the trip too in a new friend, a professional photographer named Peter. We parted ways near Lions Gate Bridge and I spent about 2 hours on and around it before coming here.

The fireworks are tonight - tonight it's Sweden's turn. I wonder if they can outperform China? It'll be a tough call, but many here believe they're up to the task. This weekend will be busy in Vancouver as the gay pride parade is tomorrow, and this is a public holiday weekend as BC Day (the province's foundation day) is on Monday. I'm going to try and get out as much as possible.

Day 8-10 - Vancouver

2004-07-30T04:21:00.000+08:00

Monday 26 July 2004, CWST (GMT-7, Hawaii +3hrs, Perth -15hrs)

As we enjoyed a wonderful Air Canada breakfast, I got to chat with a guy from Victoria BC who explained some of the cultural nuances to me and some of the things I might come to expect in Canada. After a spectacular overview of Tofino, central Vancouver Island and finally Vancouver itself (which is, confusingly, neither the capital of British Columbia despite being Canada's third-largest city, nor is it on Vancouver Island), we landed. As we walked onto the gate, the guy from the plane said to me "Welcome to Canada". Some incredible First Nations wood carvings and a "Welcome to Vancouver/Bienvenue a Vancouver" sign later, I was at Canada Customs, which took literally 5 minutes before I was off looking for more spring water and the Airporter bus (C$12 one way) to get me to the city. The Airporter basically went straight up Granville Street and over the Granville Bridge, then wove and wound around the city dropping people off at hotels.

This is a beautiful city - well-maintained roads, lots of green around the place, trolley-buses running on electric cables overhead, two beautiful harbours - False Creek (south) and Burrard Inlet (north) - and mountains just behind the northern suburbs providing an amazing backdrop. For those not familiar with Vancouver's geography, the shape of the city (on the west coast of Canada) is not unlike an outstretched hand with the Vancouver CBD being the thumb and North/West Vancouver, Vancouver midtown, Richmond (and the airport) and White Rock being fingers. Each is separated by a river or waterway and there is some amazing bridges, including the Burrard and Granville bridges to the south, Annacis Bridge further south, Pattullo Bridge near New Westminster (about 8km SE and the former provincial capital), and of course the Lions Gate Bridge which crosses from Stanley Park to West Vancouver and is probably the most famous. Vancouver itself has 600,000 people and is one of the most densely populated areas in North America, but the Greater Vancouver region has 1.8 million. Not far away to the west is Vancouver Island, a mountainous island about 450km NW-SE x 100km wide, running parallel to the coast. The provincial capital, Victoria, a city of about 300,000, is on the south coast, and is 1.5 hours from Vancouver by ferry (which costs about $10). To the north and east of Vancouver are the Coast Mountains (the Rockies are another 600km inland). These mountains have spectacular peaks and lakes, hot springs, and Whistler and its ski slopes, about 100km north of Vancouver, which will be the the home of the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The Vancouver Downtown hostel is my accommodation for this 2-week stay, and it is definitely a much nicer place than I expected, and is centrally located, has full facilities, friendly staff, and is in a nice part of the prestigious West End district only 200-300m from the False Creek beaches. My only complaint is that the dorms are a bit stuffy so you wouldn't want to use them for much more than sleeping.

After walking around the city and getting my mobile prepaid SIM card (apparently a novelty in Canada) and a beautiful Persian meal for under C$12, and meeting my friend Daniel who was a large part of the reason why I came here, I ended up sleeping for most of the day, exhausted after 3 days with basically no meaningful sleep or good food.

Tuesday 27 July 2004, CWST (GMT-7)

Woke up just after midnight and walked up Davie Street looking for lunch. This is the heart of the gay district in town (evidenced by the pride flags on every - and I mean every - window) and I was amazed to find a range of supermarkets and cafes open. I ended up getting a tuna subway and water (I was still dehydrated from Hawaii!)

Came back to the hostel then went out again to explore the city. I saw the harbour by night, Granville Street (well and truly happening even at 3am) and spent part of the morning with two homeless people who were telling jokes to earn quarters from the public. (Canada has the same denominations and coin sizes as the US for 1c, 5c, 10c and 25c, but has a $1 coin shaped approximately like the Aus 50c coin, and a bimetallic $2 which looks really cool)

After we parted ways, I walked over the Granville Bridge and into the inner southern suburbs of Fairview and Kitsilano. Houses around here are really nice and elaborate, and the streets look quiet and well-landscaped. Saw in sunrise at Hadden Park, with some awesome views over the city, and then decided to go properly exploring on the SkyTrain. The SkyTrain is a Vancouver institution built for the 1986 World Expo, and more information can be found here. They're actually really cute (at least I think so :) - much smaller than Perth trains, but way more frequent as well.

Saw a green area on the map near Lougheed station in the Burnaby region so decided to get off and explore it. To get there, catch the Millennium line to Lougheed, then catch a 101 bus about 5 stops and get off on Cariboo Road, and walk down Avalon Avenue. About 400m later you should come to an info kiosk with brochures and information. Burnaby Lake took up the rest of my morning, with its flat walkways and stunning forest smells and views. It's weird seeing really green vegetation again - you see it in Tasmania and in some parts of Victoria, but Australia generally doesn't have deep greens, more blue/aqua and brownish greens.

Although I bushwalk whenever I can in Australia, I'd never been in a northern forest before and the trees are very different - generally quite straight trees such as conifers, maples, firs and oaks, with a lot of interesting ferns and other vegetation with names like red huckleberries, butterfly weed, policemen's helmets, etc. I do warn you, though - if you go there, there are plenty of mosquitos. I was unprepared, so got a few bites. Towards the end of the walk, I saw some Canada geese rather humorously arranged on a sports field almost as if they were going to play ball.

Found my exit onto Kensington Avenue and, together with a little guy from the Netherlands Antilles who asked me for directions, walked up to the nearest SkyTrain station. As I said before, one thing I love about travelling is the interesting people I get to meet.

Hungry and tired, I went on the prowl for food in central Vancouver, and soon discovered Samba's Brazilian restaurant on Burrard and Alberni. The way this place works - you have an all you can eat salad bar (with items like mushrooms cooked in wine, cauliflower, broccoli, chickpeas, caesar salads sans-bacon, etc) for $6.95, but if you want to, you pay an additional $6 and they give you a green card. While the green card (Sim! Por Favor with a bull on it) is up, the Brazilian meat chefs, looking somewhat like toreadors with their red napkins, cut off bits of meat from a skewer in front of you. When you're full (I was staggering out of the place), you turn the green card over to display a red card which says "I Give Up!" and a sad-looking bull on it. I have never been so full for $13 in my life before.

Not needing dinner, I continued my wanderings around the city, looking at the steam clock in Gastown (something of a tourist trap with myopic old people trying to hug the thing, etc) and then heading off to North Vancouver aboard the Seabus, part of Translink BC's public transport system. Came back to the hostel at sunset and met up with Daniel again, who has just moved into the hostel so I can see him a bit more.

Wednesday 28 July 2004, CWST (GMT-7)

Got up early and had breakfast at The Dish ($4.37 for a full breakfast - not bad! - discount with YHA/HI membership) on Davie St (Burrard/Thurlow), then went out to buy some DEET-containing mosquito repellent before going up to Stanley Park for a free tour (public transport charges apply to get there with the group though) with HI-Vancouver Central's expert guide Walter and about 15 others, most of whom were British and Australian. Stanley Park is a huge park which juts out on a peninsula into the ocean immediately north-west of the city centre - we spent about 3 hours amongst its rainforest trails and being educated on northern-style temperate rainforest ecology. It was a great opportunity for me to learn about some of the stuff I'd seen at Burnaby Lake, and if you're staying at either Downtown or Central this tour is pretty much a must given its short duration and its cost (or lack thereof).

After the tour I went into the city for a bit and did some more exploring (I've touched barely one-quarter of the city centre - it's huge!) before heading off to Pacific Central Station to buy my Greyhound tickets for later in my trip (you get a discount on some of them for buying in advance, and a 10% discount for YHA/HI membership). On the way back, I went to Chinatown and spent most of the evening at Dr Sun Yat-sen's Classical Chinese Garden and the adjoining Sun Yat-sen Park on Carrall Street with Daniel. This was the first Chinese garden of its type built outside China, and was completed just in time for the 1986 Expo with help from the Chinese government and 52 local artisans. The Chinese are very holistic in their approach to everything, and this Ming Dynasty styled garden, usually found in the houses of civil servants and town mayors and the like, was fascinating in its yin-yang contrasts and the fact that, despite being only 80m x 100m, there was design features which made it look much larger, such as an artificial mountain with a "ting" pagoda on it, sharp bends, Chinese/Japanese trees creatively placed to block views on one side and enhance them on the other, etc. It is free to enter the park, and $8.95 to enter the garden - and if you get in at the right time you get a free tour of the garden, which explains a lot of the subtleties you'd otherwise miss. It was a great experience to behold - a little oasis of calm in the middle of this very busy city.

Afterwards I walked back to the hostel, mostly to clean up my mosquito bites and get my newly-charged camera batteries before going off to watch the 10pm fireworks which had all but stopped the city with security and police from as early as 8pm. These fireworks are the first of four being held over two weeks, a kind of mini-Olympics for pyrotechnicians from China, Sweden and Spain to strut their stuff from English Bay on the southern coast of the city centre. Tonight it was China's turn, and they turned it on in style - I got to watch it from the beach down the bottom of Thurlow Street near my hostel. I did manage to take a video of a couple of mins of it (15mb, so dunno how I'll post it), but the above site has some good-quality stills.

Came back to Davie Street, got a kebab for $2.99 (yes, you heard right) in this awesome place called Casablanca that was playing Arabic techno music, and then found the cheap net cafe next door and downloaded my shots (from Hawaii and here) and movies.

This morning has been a bit boring to report, but I finally have time today to spend with Daniel rather than running off doing or exploring something. It'll be my only quiet day in the itinerary most probably - I have a heap of plans and you'll get to hear of them as I do the things on there. :)

Hope all my readers are doing well and I look forward to your feedback!

Day 6-7 - Honolulu (Log)

2004-07-30T03:49:00.000+08:00

With the whinging out of the way (on looking back, I was probably a bit harsh), I'm going to quickly summarise my last 29 hours in Hawaii, from where I left off.

20:00 Sat - Found good sushi at the 7/11 about 5 blocks from my hotel (the Ohana Maile Sky Court, the tallest hotel in Waikiki at 44 storeys) and then turned in for the night, watching a couple of US TV shows and chatting to my parents and friends before doing so.

Sun morning - Slept in so missed the Pearl Harbor tour I had booked and paid for. While I couldn't get a refund, the helpful lady downstairs informed me entry was actually free and I could get The Bus to it. After breakfast I did exactly that.

10:30 - Reached Pearl Harbor and entered the visitors centre. Was given a ticket for the 1:30pm boarding of the Arizona Memorial.

11:30 - Decided not to wait, but got some good shots and read all the displays in the visitors centre. It was quite stunning seeing the actual Japanese missile which downed the USS Arizona, the original anchor, reading about not just the story about what happened on the American side, and the personal stories and letters of many of those who died as well as survivors, but information from the Japanese side about how the attack was planned and coordinated. The place itself is quite scenic and it's horrifying to think such a beautiful spot was the site of over 1,100 deaths.

12:00 - Went back to Ala Moana, and checked out the Abercrombie & Fitch store. Although the last week has reduced my build a little, I sadly do not fit their XL t-shirt size and the XXL is way too big. The music and staff in this store are very young and hip - even compared to the Gap store next door - and it was one of the few places I encountered genuine friendliness (especially when the girls found out I was Australian). Walked around window-shopping for a while, went to a food supermarket and ended up with a (hard, non-juicy) nectarine, a lump of (stale) bread and a very nice blackcurrant mineral water. The Vitamin Water (click top right circle, then Vitamin Water, then a bottle down bottom to see the labels) had cute, silly labels that reminded me a lot of Nudie juice back home.

13:45 - Got the Route 52 Wahiawa Circle Route, which basically follows the Kamehameha (KAM-ay-ham-AY-ha) highway up the centre then along the North Shore and down the east coast. For information's sake (it confused the hell out of me until the driver explained it), the 52 and 55 are the same route but the 52 goes clockwise and the 55 goes anticlockwise.

The first part of the journey was a bit strange as an old black guy from Cincinnati who lives on the North Shore was trying to give us all rum, beer and peanuts and even weed, and he had a habit of talking very loudly. There was a couple of loud, middle-aged tourists in our section as well. After what seemed an eternity getting out the west side of Honolulu via Dillingham Blvd and the freeway, we passed over some very beautiful spots but I couldn't photograph them due to the bus's speed. The towns of Mililani and Wahiawa are pretty much urban residential, although looked nicer than Honolulu.

15:15 - Got out at the Dole Plantation. I was told this was a must-see, but when I got there it was full of tourbuses and very expensive merchandise. As I planned to be back in Honolulu by sunset (~7pm), I could only spend half an hour there, so didn't get to do the pineapple maze, but I did photograph some pineapples and some landscape shots nearby on the road.

15:45 - Onward to Haleiwa (which looked a lot like both Margaret River, WA and Lorne, VIC - surf towns for the non-Australian-initiated) and then to Waimea, which another tourist had told me was a must-see. This time, they were right about something. For probably the first time since arriving in Hawaii, I've found a place which is genuinely enjoyable and fascinating, split between the awesome surf beach on Waimea Bay and the river and rainforest starting very close inland and working outwards. I got some amazing shots - was an excellent way to wrap up my Hawaii trip.

17:45 - Left Waimea Bay, which had started to heat up quite suddenly, and we drove down the east coast of Oahu, which reminded me of the Great Ocean Road from Anglesea to Apollo Bay back home, except the vegetation was greener and lush and the path was neither as windy nor as hilly.

19:45 - Arrived back in Honolulu, bussed back to Waikiki and ate at the 7/11 again. I made a point of getting a 2L bottle of spring water as I was completely dehydrated.

20:35 - I arrived back at the hotel, where they let me use a courtesy room for 30 minutes to shower and go to the loo. From then until 22:30, I sat in the hotel lobby repacking my baggage, attending to my many and varied insect bites, and frantically trying to locate my Canadian currency which I appeared to have lost, but had just hidden rather too well as it turned out.

22:30 - Got the Airport Island Shuttle back to the airport. The airport is an amazingly open building with little airconditioning - a bit strange for a tourist resort with so much money. Considering how paranoid the US are about security, I was able to view my Air Canada plane as it was loading, with 10m and no glass whatsoever separating me from it. I finished the night talking to some other travellers from Australia and Canada and enjoying a Kauai icecream courtesy of the icecream bar, the only thing still open in the airport.

It is hard to explain, but as I was sitting on the plane waiting to take off, this feeling of intense happiness and excitement grabbed me. I was actually on a plane to Vancouver! I had been planning this for over a year, and now it is but hours away.

01:20 Mon 26th - Left Honolulu Airport aboard Air Canada flight AC034. We drove nearly 5km along various runways and the like before we finally took off - in the meantime having to endure the safety video in both English and French. I slept for the first part of the flight after watching CBC Inflight News.

**Note** About the times on my entries - the times I type in in bold are local times as indicated, but the time and date on the blog itself is ALWAYS GMT+8, i.e. Perth time. Sorry to any people this has confused.

Day 6-7 - Honolulu (Whine)

2004-07-26T09:48:00.000+08:00

Sunday 23 July 2004, 19:30 Hawaii time (GMT-10)

(Edited 29/7/04, to take a bit of the 'sting' out of it)

Can someone please get me out of this island paradise?

I feel really bad saying this in a way, but I promised at the start that this would be an honest summary of how I feel about my holiday as well as just a summary of what I did, and to say I am enjoying myself would be wrong. This is a bit of a rant and rave, because I can't honestly see now why everyone rants and raves about Hawaii and the beach at Waikiki. Maybe I'm just trying to set the record straight, or just building a bridge and getting over it by writing about it so I can get on and enjoy the rest of my holiday. If I sound too whiney, don't worry, I'll be over it in a day or two :)

Eating and drinking
The 7-11 is the best place to eat in Waikiki. You can get fresh sushi (when they have it), cheap spring water and other goodies. Fresh food is hard to get elsewhere and is usually imported from the mainland, so is not fresh at all.

Restaurants - apart from the breakfast I have had each morning (which is still fried), most food here is expensive. Even Subway costs more here than back in Australia. They don't have Cadbury's chocolate, and the US alternative, Hersheys, just doesn't cut it - it honestly tastes like the cooking chocolate back home. Fast food is in. Deep fried is in. Fresh is out.

Sometimes I am forced to realise how lucky we have it.

Climate
Coming here in the middle of summer was not my brightest idea. It has been consistently hot and consistently humid. My health is suffering for it, as I've lost so much fluid and even drinking lots of water hasn't helped much. Also, in this sort of weather, your head goes a little bit, and I've lost my mobile phone twice (found it again both times) and my Oahu map (sadly didn't find it). The mozzies are having a field day with my legs - I've now got about 25 bites in different places - although I think they are biting at night in my hotel room.

People and Language
People here are Hawaiian - only the tourists are American. Quite a few Hawaiians don't speak very good English, yet work in jobs where they're basically expected to. This isn't their fault, but it still annoys me when I can't communicate with the person I'm trying to buy from. As for the Americans, they can't understand me either. I have to speak with an American accent sometimes in order to be understood. And that's not to mention all the language differences between US English and Australian/most of rest of world English that causes problems. (Note this is not a critique of Americans generally, more the middle-aged package tourist types who come to Hawaii dressed in wild shirts).

Also, in Hawaii, despite the above, it's very clear you're in a bit of America. The food is middle-class American, the language is American, the people possess very little understanding of any kind of world outside America (and, often, only their part of America), and I needn't labour the point as others have extensively. I get the feeling that some older Americans, most likely there on package tours their travel agent arranged for them, look down on me because I am Australian and get around in my own clothes and in my own way. With service people, I've had to put on an American accent at times as they don't understand me - even though Canadians, who have a similar accent, understand me clearly. I also have to speak in Fahrenheit and miles, which gets annoying after converting about 4 different things.

Day 5 - In transit

2004-07-25T12:27:00.000+08:00

Saturday 24 July 2004, 14:30 NZST (GMT+12)
Current view: A nice, but very stationary, mountain and harbour outside my plane window.

I certainly hope that events like today's don't recur during my trip, although I guess there's almost a certainty they will at least once. I got up at 6am, had a lovely motel breakfast, then left at 8:20am aboard the Airbus. I arrived at 9:02am at the airport, got my boarding pass at 9:57am after a long queue.

I should add here that Auckland International Airport charges a NZ$25 departure tax per person which cannot be paid overseas or by a travel agent, and you can't depart without paying it. They put a sticker on the back of your boarding pass. Just as well I had $30 in my pocket :P

Anyway, the board said boarding at 11:05, which for a flight departing at 11:50, was fair enough. This then changed to 12:25, and then 13:05. By 13:05, the passengers were getting restless - and I'd bought myself an oversized thin-base pizza slice and a Diet Coke for prices not atypical of airports - and there was still no sign of anything happening. Several announcements apologised for delays, but gave no details. I phoned the taxi I'd arranged in Hawaii to let them know of the delay. Finally at 13:55, boarding commenced. 20 mins later, we were all ready to leave and the announcement was made that the captain was doing final documentation and we'd be given clearance for takeoff soon. However, that was not to be - the little loader loading our luggage onto the plane has apparently spilled fluid (water or oil? not sure) onto the tarmac and they reckon it will take 25 minutes to clean. Grr. It's a beautiful day outside, too.

Saturday 24 July 2004, 03:30 Hawaii time (GMT-10)

I am now in my hotel room in Hawaii sweating like anything. It is apparently 31°C at the moment (I'm getting used to all these Fahrenheit conversions).

The plane took off at 14:55. We had two really nice meals - chicken cordon bleu and calzone, each with salad, cheese and dessert - and watched three movies. My partner in crime for the 8.5 hour flight was Logan, a boy from Aspen, Colorado, who I exchanged info about Hawaii, NZ and Australia with. A flight of this length would be miserable without interesting company, and usually I've scored lucky on my national and international haulage. For movies, we got Hidalgo, 10 minutes of Mooseport dubbed into Japanese (ended by demand from passengers), 50 First Dates and Jersey Girl (again).

Arrival at US Customs took a while because of the queue but was both friendlier and easier than I expected. Walking outside, though, was an experience - from 13 in Auckland to 31 and humid in Honolulu in a jacket and trackpants (both necessary both in Auckland weather and for transporting small items safely) was quite a shock to the system. I'd got some insect bites in Auckland and these now really started to itch. My taxi arrived, but the security guy (who was apparently new) was hassling him over some registration issue, which turned out to be a non-issue, and I felt a bit caught in the middle. Honolulu's H1 freeway is a really nicely maintained road, and the driver seemed amused by my fascination with right-side driving and all the weird disappearing lanes.

My hotel in Waikiki is huge (and cheap, thanks to PlacesToStay.com) - 44 storeys in all. I'm paying about the same for this hotel room as you would for a decent Perth or Melbourne motel room. I arrived at 3:00am and after 10 minutes waiting, was sent to an 11th floor room that turned out (on one whiff) to be a smoking room. I came down and reminded them of my non-smoking stipulation on the booking, and got a 7th floor room which is really nice and is on a corner so has both a south and east view. Despite being only 3 blocks from the beach, though, there's that many skyscraper hotels here that you can't see beyond the next two or three.

I'm going to have a shower with aloe vera and aqueous cream, plug the bath while doing so, then have a nice relaxing bath before bed.

Saturday 24 July 2004, 18:50 Hawaii time

Sitting in a cool, airconditioned net cafe not that far from Waikiki - just returned from walking from Honolulu downtown. In order, the events of today:

4:00 - Bath.
4:45 - Abandoned plan to sleep and went out exploring the hotels of Waikiki looking for a decent map. Found a semi-decent one.
5:30 - Watched the sunrise on Waikiki Beach.
6:15 - Had a quick nasty breakfast for US$3.39 at a fast food outlet called Jack In The Box which, judging from the number of outlets here, is more popular here than McDonalds (I have yet to see a Burger King, and have seen one (1) KFC, near Ala Moana shops).
8:00 - Got a Hersheys bar, a Tootsie Roll and a decent map of Oahu at a small discount supermarket 3 blocks from my hotel. The roads are chronically dug up around here.
9:00 - After a walk around the Ala Wai Canal and neighbouring boulevard (reminds me of some of the riverside drives around inner Melbourne, and Riverside Drive in Perth), I had a proper breakfast at my hotel for just US$8, went to bed for a while.

13:00 - Woke up and walked to Ala Moana Shopping Centre. It is big, quite open, and not particularly well air-conditioned, but the shops are awesome. I checked out The Gap and Abercrombie & Fitch - and the food court is just enormous beyond belief. Saw a local band called Mixed Nutz playing live in the middle of the centre - they did a fantastic cover of Chevelle's "Send The Pain Below" as well as some of their own songs. I talked to some band members and their manager after the event, and even scored a free CD :D They deserve to do well, I hope they do.15:20 - Got a bus to Honolulu Downtown. It's actually quite beautiful, if somewhat ignored - the place looked empty when I was there, and most things were closed. I took a few awesome photos - hope they work out! Had Subway for dinner - US$3.99.
16:20 - Started walking back to Waikiki. At present I'm about 9 blocks from it.

Couple of notes about this place:

1. The right-side driving is very confusing for me, as I've never been out of left-side drive countries. I've created a rule for checking that I'll try to keep in mind - Near Left, Far Right (it's exactly the opposite in Australia, where you'd first look right when crossing). At least with four words in a logical processing order, I should be able to survive the next 9 weeks :P The weirdest thing for me was seeing cars turning left on roads with no median strip - it looked almost like the Melbourne hook turns until I realised it's just a mirror image of our own roads.

2. Money.

(a) I ALWAYS convert in my head back to AU$ to determine whether a deal is a good deal or not.

(b) They add 4% or so tax onto the displayed price - it's a great way of getting rid of cent change that builds up though.

(c) Change is exact here - they have 1c, 5c, 10c and 25c pieces, and $1, $5, $10, $20 and $100 notes:
- 1c (One Cent) is copper and about the size of our (Aus/NZ) 5c.
- 5c (One Nickel) is silver and a bit bigger.
- 10c (One Dime) is silver and almost exactly the same size as the 1c. Confusing!
- 25c (Quarter Dollar) is silver and slightly larger than our (Aus/NZ) 10c.

(d) Most things are sold by the pound. Multiply by 2.2 to get kg. Petrol is sold by the gallon - around here about 246c/gal seems about right. Aus$1/L ~= NZ$1.10/L ~= US$2.65/gal.

3. Newspapers cost about 50c here - far less than in Australia.

4. As in NZ where I observed Maori in most service occupations, here you see big Hawaiian dudes all over the place keeping the economy and security industry going. I had trouble initially telling Japanese and some of the Hawaiians apart, but I've learned how to tell the difference in facial features/eye shape - it is subtle.

Anyway, enough writing for now. I'm going to go watch the sunset.

Day 3-4 - Auckland

2004-07-23T18:43:00.000+08:00

Friday 23 July, 10:47pm NZST

What a busy couple of days it's been! I'm writing this just before I go back to my B&B, sleep, and then leave for my plane. Last 12 hours in the Southern Hemisphere until October...

I couldn't sleep after finishing my last post on Wed night, so took a long walk at about 2am (Thursday morning) around the city, basically following Customs Street to the harbour bridge (which has no pedestrian access, sadly), up Jacob's Ladder (nowhere near as long as Perth's at Cliff Street or Burt Way, but still tiring nonetheless!) and back along Victoria Street. I was amazed at how many things in the city were still open. Ended up eating a quite diverse combination for $8 at an Arab kebab shop in Customs Street with some British backpackers.

Woke up late on Thursday, and had decided to go on a volcano tour of Auckland with a geologist at 1pm, so didn't do much other than get wet while trying to find food. I have, however, now acquired a sling bag! This has greatly assisted me in getting around.

The approximately four-hour tour, run by Murray Baker of GeoTours, would have to be one of the best tours in value for money terms that I've ever had. I hope to get up some of my pics soon but there is some good ones and a review on this page. Auckland's metropolitan area is literally built on a field of volcanoes, many of which are still in a technical sense active, and there's plenty to see - but it's easy to just see these things and entirely miss the significance of what they mean. It's also easy to forget that volcanos aren't just mountains with craters in them (although plenty exist and this tour took me to a fair few of them) - there are all kinds of craters and formations which are just as important. I would highly recommend this tour to anyone, especially if you like being an independent traveller like myself and find yourself in a place where you can study up close the incredible power lying just underneath our earth's crust.

After the tour's conclusion I met up with Mark, who I also met on the net in 1994. Unlike Shannon, however, we haven't been in contact in the time in between, so it was a wide-scale catch-up. We have both spent considerable periods in the IT industry and had great fun trading stories about our experiences.

On the way home, I met a busker named James who plays acoustic guitar and sings across the road on Queen Street near Wellesley, just outside the Civic Theatre. First busker I'd come across in my time in Auckland - surprising as Melbourne, Perth and Sydney all have heaps - but he was seriously good. Any of us around at the time got to hear acoustic versions of RATM's "Killing In The Name", Metallica's "Wherever I May Roam", and songs by Pearl Jam, Sepultura, Simon & Garfunkel, Weezer, Incubus, and a range of others. After he was finished we walked back to Britomart and had a good chat.

One thing I have always loved about travelling is the opportunity to meet a range of people, and I've certainly done that here. Auckland is a very friendly and outgoing city, and I do hope to come here again soon - it's so easy to thanks to the new airlines opening up between Australia and NZ, and the fact NZ Immigration treats me like a local here.

Today was boring from the blog-report point of view - I wanted to get some information from the library while here, and spent some time doing that. Afterwards, I went up the Sky Tower, stopping on the way to watch some gravity-defying bungying on Albert Street. They had these two pylons mounted at about 80-100m with these straps coming down, and this ball thing which two people could sit in. It was psycho - especially in the middle of the city!

The Sky Tower observation area reminded me a great deal of the Rialto Towers in Melbourne. It was great - I'd waited for a clear day to do this, and was glad I did, as the views were fantastic. I got some great shots of One Tree Hill and the Devonport area. One slightly different thing the shape of the building allowed them to do was to put some small areas of glass flooring in at the edges. I do not recommend standing on these and looking down if your stomach is at all delicate.

After this, it was back to the B&B (Aspen House), where I socialised with some other travellers - some people from northern NSW and a guy from Florida - watched an episode of the Simpsons, and ate microwaved Watties vegies and the remains of a baguette I'd bought earlier at Foodtown - a fitting closing dinner to my Auckland experience.

Despite the traffic and the steep hills, I am going to miss this place when I fly away tomorrow. It's been an adventure and I've enjoyed nearly all of it. Honolulu, here I come...

Andy's Survival Guide to Auckland

2004-07-21T19:10:00.000+08:00

Following up from my successful (!?) guides to Sydney and Launceston, here's my tips for surviving the biggest city of our near neighbour.

1. Never assume anything with traffic. Be on watch always, particularly at five-way intersections where you can't even see two of the entrances because they're on a steep incline, don't jaywalk (it can get you killed), and in particular watch trucks. Three safe rules are:

i. If a truck is turning and looks like it'll end up rolling over you, it probably will.
ii. If a car has a green light or arrow to go (this is often the case even when you have a green man), it probably will, even if it *should* stop for you.
iii. If in doubt, run quickly enough that no car is likely to hit you.

(EDIT) How to manage at traffic lights - If you hear a long buzzing sound with the green man, just go anyway. This buzz means the light has stopped all traffic going in your direction. But be quick!

2. Food and water are safe here, but buy them from places where people speak English. Auckland has many Asian migrants who, due to the wholesale absorption of their culture, have never found a need to learn English. If an Asian shopkeeper asks you "Um wuh, huh?", it's sort of like "May I help you?" If you point at things, they will tell you what they cost, but they could be different to the marked price.

3. Learn to eat sushi and/or kebabs if you don't already. You will be hungry or out of pocket otherwise. :P

Day 1-2 - Auckland

2004-07-21T18:30:00.000+08:00

Well, I've been here just 39 hours but it feels like a hell of a lot longer - mainly because I've been so busy! My impressions of Auckland are evolving as my experience does. At first, I felt completely lost and was wondering why on earth I'd come here. This wasn't helped by the bitterly cold, humid and overcast weather for most of yesterday. However, over the two days, I've seen a lot of amazing stuff and the weather has drastically improved. Oh, and I'd now recognise the Auckland skyline and in particular the Sky Tower if I saw it anywhere. The Sky Tower rather over-features in the photos I've taken. I hope to go up it sometime in the next couple of days.

Photos are still to come - I got them off my digital camera tonight, but am not able to do much with them until I can shrink them a bit and do some editing on them.

Wednesday 21 July, 10:30pm (NZST)

Since writing the last post, I wandered aimlessly around Auckland, assisted greatly once I acquired the Kiwi Minimap 2005 street directory for Auckland for just $15 at Dymocks. I've personally found it invaluable and it's still the cheapest directory I've seen anywhere. My only complaint is that the scale's a bit confusing - a few millimetres on the map is about 100m, so something that looks only a short distance ends up being a half hour walk. Still, I shouldn't complain - there's no question that my getting around is improving my fitness.

My wanderings ended me up at Karangahape Road (K Road to the locals), which apparently used to be a red light district but has become something of a Chinatown. My general observation of Auckland is that, unlike Australian cities which have absorbed and adapted European culture, Auckland has actually done the same with Asian and Polynesian culture. There is no shortage of sushi bars, Korean restaurants and kebab bazars - in fact, more of them than anything else, even in the more working-class areas.

Hearing somewhere that travelling extensively on public transport in the first day gives you more of an overview of a place, and feeling tired anyway, I decided to go to Otahuhu (even the locals disagree on pronunciation), a station in southeast Auckland which is on both the east and south train lines, by the east (scenic) line and return by the south (motorway) line. City centres are often quite sanitised places and this would give me an opportunity to see the suburbs.

This excursion led to at least two additions to my Survival Guide (see next entry) and exploring a working-class suburb. Think big containers piled up everywhere, and trucks that act as if the road laws do not exist. One thing I have observed about Auckland is that people are generally very friendly, and this place was no exception. I walked the Portage Road, a 0.9km road over which a group of Maori at some stage dragged their canoes from one waterway to another opposite.

On travelling back via train, we got stuck just out of Newmarket station as a signal was broken, and ended up waiting more than 30 minutes in total across 3 stops to get back to Britomart (the central station). I was somewhat concerned that no-one else seemed to think this was even odd or anything more than a minor inconvenience. I suspect that these sort of oddities are not unusual - it's a pity, considering they are actually really nice trains comparable with the Perth/Brisbane ones. The train stations, apart from the central ones, reminded me of country airstrips, with rocks sprayed on and a small concrete edifice sufficing as the platform. They were spectacularly badly located - the train journeys seemed to go through industrial areas rather than areas where people actually live, work and shop. Britomart, a nice, modern, multilevel station that reminds me of a couple in Melbourne, was completely empty when we arrived back. When I told several Aucklanders of my experience, I got quizzical looks and was asked why on earth I didn't use the bus.

Feeling a bit dispirited, I decided to try out the Auckland ferry system, apparently one of the best in the world. Auckland doesn't have a river - it has harbours, and many people work on one side and live on the other, and the Auckland Harbour Bridge kind of goes to a different bit (the Northern Motorway joins Northcote and Birkenhead with central Auckland - a bit hard if you live in Devonport, just 4km from Auckland but at least 15km from Birkenhead). For ferries that are just public transport, they were incredibly luxurious - the top level contained a bar selling soft drinks and potato chips and had two outside viewing areas, and the bottom level had a coke machine. They even had toilets! Not bad for a ferry where the average journey length is 10 minutes. My idea once arriving in Devonport was to catch a bus to Takapuna (a major urban centre in the North Shore) and see Lake Pupuke, which I'd heard somewhere on the net was good.

However, Auckland's weather stepped in to make sure this would not be. It started raining on the bus journey, and was so miserable by the time I reached Takapuna that I just ran across the road and caught the same bus back! From what little I saw though, I decided that I was definitely coming back on a better day to see it. It's amazing comparing Otahuhu with Devonport. The North Shore is a lot more like its equivalent in Sydney, or with the Stirling Highway suburbs in Perth (Mosman Park, Claremont, Nedlands). It is amazing to think just a week ago I walked from Claremont to Perth and did Jacob's Ladder - it already seems way longer than that. On the bus, I met a friendly local boy who chatted with me about music, Australia vs New Zealand, his acting and musical aspirations, and uni life. I think often it is easy to look at and see what is different and forget about what is basically the same.

A note about language here. NZ English is often stereotyped by Australians - my observation has been that while working-class and rural people do speak that way, it's a lot less noticeable in Auckland, the biggest Polynesian city in the world. In fact, some people here are very difficult to tell from Australians. Word-use wise, though, NZ English does differ in some ways - calling the central area (what we call 'town' or 'CBD') 'downtown', for example, or calling a mobile phone a 'cellphone' as Canadians and Americans do, but calling the freeway a motorway as the British do. We're still understood here if we speak our language though :)

Finished off the rather rainy evening by meeting my friend Shannon, who I first met on the net way back in 1994. We had a great time looking for somewhere to eat, eating and then driving around various regions of Auckland checking out the sights while trying not to get wet, and lots of catching up. Was great. :) Got back at 1am and went to bed pretty much straight away.

Slept in, unfortunately - two nights of almost no sleep followed by a busy day caught up with me. Hence I missed the B&B's breakfast menu, and ended up going to a nearby Foodtown to buy tempura and bread rolls, which I ate on the Devonport ferry while enjoying a spectacular view of Waitemata Harbour. The sushi counters at Auckland supermarkets actually sell real sushi that you see the sushi guy freshly making before your eyes - it's quite something. Foodtown (the retail arm of giant Foodland) is the only major supermarket after buying out rival Woolworths NZ (not related to the Australian one), although you see New World stores (are these ex-Coles New World? anyone know?) in a few places.

As for the rest of the day, I went to:

- North Head, a dormant volcano near Devonport which was formerly a navy defence post (as per most volcanoes in Auckland) and had active guns as recently as 1996. Was great fun climbing all over the place and down tunnels, and the views of Rangitoto Island (one of Auckland's dominant features) and the city and Mt Victoria were great.
- Bayswater, a harbour suburb a bit further up, where houses sell for close to NZ$1 million. Like many suburbs of its kind, as referenced previously, the landscaping and house design is excessive, but the end result doesn't look bad. Despite this, as in many parts of Auckland, the roads are poorly maintained.
- Takapuna, a small city in itself with some great Asian cafes, traffic snarls, a pretty cool shell beach, and, of course, Lake Pupuke. It was quite impressive and I ended up spending sunset there. I got chased away by an entire flock of birds, however, who decided that as I had no food, I was of no use to them. :P

Spent the evening talking to a few people who rang me (I have a prepaid number for NZ by the way - if you get a weird SMS from a number starting +6421036, it's probably it) and processing my photos and typing these entries at the net cafe.

Food, budget and other stuff

So far, I have spent NZ$199 in general expenses (about A$180, not including bank fees). This includes food, water, net cafes, souvenirs, the prepaid phone and calling cards, street directory, transport, and the Airbus. Some of these are one-off, the transport is a set cost, and the Airbus actually includes the return ticket. Identified ways of saving money include getting a "sling bag" which I can take out with me, which would allow me to take up to 2.4L of tap water on my journeys, as Auckland tap water is quite drinkable.

Food so far:

19 Jul - Dinner - Plane dinner
20 Jul - Breakfast - At the B&B
20 Jul - Lunch - Subway @ K Road
20 Jul - Dinner - Happy Hippo (Chinese pick-by-numbers in Wellesley Street) with Shannon
21 Jul - Lunch - Tempura and bread rolls from Foodtown supermarket
21 Jul - Dinner - Japanese meal at Mansun restaurant, Takapuna

Day 1 - Auckland

2004-07-20T05:34:00.000+08:00

Tuesday 20 July, 1am (some timezone somewhere)

Now flying from Perth to Auckland aboard Air NZ flight NZ176 (departs 19:30, arrives 05:50). This is a 6hr 20min flight with a 4 hour timezone jump, and feels every bit of it. Various bits of me are already feeling dreadful. We are watching Laws of Attraction and Jersey Girl. I can't say I'd watch either if I had the choice, but they're not the worst I've seen on a trip (I think "Race the Sun" starring Corey Affleck, Ben's younger brother, on a bus from Bunbury to Perth in 1998 would be it - his acting was the saving grace, but the plot sucked!)

A few notes about the last few days. On Sunday, Dad's car broke down chronically, which hampered things considerably. I basically had several things to take care of - buying a shaver (mine broke ages ago), banking a heap of money so I'd have accessible money on my trip, hassling Global Plus in Fitzgerald Street about my Belgrade-Istanbul ticket, renewing my YHA/HI membership and getting the vouchers for the Singapore Stopover package. I did all except the last in 45 minutes, and entirely on foot. I'm glad it was a beautiful fine day and I was fit. :P

Dad got a loan car at the last minute (quite a nice one too) so we managed to get to the airport, albeit somewhat later than expected - only 1hr 15min before the plane left! Thankfully, everything was very routine - I was an Australian citizen going to New Zealand and had nothing to declare, and everyone was very friendly at the three or so desks I had to go through. I'm glad that I don't buy duty free in airports though. The flat trapezoid box of Lindt chocolates you can buy in any Target or Kmart store for $2.99 cost $5.30 tax free, the alcohol looked expensive, and I don't see anyone paying $125 for a heap of chocolate macadamia nuts, even if a "free" $30 cabin bag is included in the deal.

The Air NZ plane was a little old/dilapidated, but still quite comfortable. I got a window seat and have seen an awesome skyline of Perth, a view over Hobart as we went over that, and some awesome stars on a clear sky. According to the information displayed on the monitors between the movies, we maintained an average altitude of 11,300m, the avg temperature outside was -53 deg C, and avg speed was 925 km/h. At takeoff, the speed was 327km/h.

I tried to sleep on the plane, but not very successfully - I did get some sleep but I hope I get much more tonight to make up for it.

9:53am, NZST (5:53am Perth time)

I've arrived safely in Auckland - the adventure has well and truly started. Arrived on time at 5:50am - it was pitch black and 5C. After ages of going through one counter after another, I got my luggage almost immediately, then got the bus outside (NZ$22 return).

Side note - New Zealand has really nice looking currency - if I get time and a suitable range of notes I'll try to get a picture of it. They have $1 and $2 coins like Australia do, but the $2 is about the size of our 20c coin, and they're made out of a lighter material.

The bus took us up a pretty non-interesting motorway, then through the inner southern suburbs into the city centre, and then all around it. Auckland feels like an Australian city, yet just isn't for reasons that are hard to pin down. The roads look very similar, although some signs are different. Thing that hit me immediately is that Auckland is a lot more cosmopolitan than other cities that I've been to - most notably, I notice Maori in just about every service occupation here, and "sushi and sake" cafes everywhere. Fuel is more expensive (it is weird seeing 121.5 on a fuel station, but keep in mind to divide by 1.1 for the currency conversion). As for getting around, the city centre seems REALLY busy, and a disproportionate amount of it is built on completely unlikely hills.

My accommodation, Aspen Lodge ($50 a night inc breakfast and shared facilities) is actually really nice. My stay in NZ definitely isn't going to be wanting in the comfort department :P

This city is too hard to navigate without a street directory, so I've acquired one. Hopefully getting lost every time I leave Queen Street (the main drag in Auckland) won't be too hard.

I'll update again in a few days.

To resolve any confusion...

2004-06-21T18:05:00.000+08:00

Hi All :)

Welcome to my new blog! Everything before this point has been imported from other electronic diaries and journals that I've maintained. I am still cleaning up a lot of them, and intend to scan in pics I have referenced, or upload those already scanned.

In 28 days, I'm off for an 80-day long around-the-world trip. You would have no idea what I intend to title it :P Itinerary is as follows.

Arrive	Nights	Arrival Method	City	Country		Accom
19.07.04	4	Air NZ	Auckland	NZ		B&B
23.07.04*	2	Air NZ	Honolulu	US	HI	Hotel
26.07.04	13	Air Canada	Vancouver	Canada	BC	YHA
08.08.04	2	Bus Greyhd	Lake Louise	Canada	AB	YHA
10.08.04		Bus Greyhd	Calgary	Canada	AB
10.08.04	2	Bus Greyhd	Edmonton	Canada	AB	YHA
12.08.04	10	Air Canada	Toronto	Canada	ON	YHA
22.08.04	2	Air Canada	Montréal	Canada	QC	YHA
24.08.04	2	Bus	Québec	Canada	QC	YHA
26.08.04	1	Air Canada	Halifax	Canada	NS	YHA
27.08.04	2	Air Canada	Saint John	Canada	NB	B&B
29.08.04	1	Boat	Digby	Canada	NS	B&B
30.08.04		Bus Acadia	Wolfville	Canada	NS
30.08.04	1	Bus Acadia	Halifax	Canada	NS	YHA
31.08.04	1	Air Canada	London	UK
01.09.04	3	Air - BMI	Belfast	UK		YHA
04.09.04	1	Bus	Dublin	Ireland		YHA
05.09.04	2	Air - LOT	Kraków	Poland		Hostel
07.09.04	2	Train	Ostrava	Czech R		Hostel
09.09.04	4	Train	Wien (Vienna)	Austria		Hostel
13.09.04	2	Boat	Budapest	Hungary		Hostel
15.09.04	2	Train	Beograd	Serbia		Hotel
17.09.04	1	Air - JAT	Istanbul	Turkey		Hotel
18.09.04	14	Tour	(W. Turkey)	Turkey
03.10.04	2		Istanbul	Turkey		Hotel
05.10.04	4	Air - SIA	Singapore	Sing.		Hotel
10.10.04		Air - SIA	PERTH	Australia	WA

Day 19-21 - The end!

2003-12-18T14:42:00.000+08:00

Last day of holiday today :/

There is really not very much to report at all. I've had a quiet few days in Melbourne, and am kind of glad to be going home, but I've had a great time as I always do.

I look forward to returning to some of these places and exploring new ones (such as the Grampian Mountains), and going to Canada in 2004.

Andy's Tour Music

2003-12-17T11:56:00.000+08:00

The following list of songs are those which I believe will remind me of my holidays in 2003 in times to come. I'll probably edit it at some point in the future.

Charlton Hill "Don't Sail"
George "Release"
Jack Johnson "Horizon Has Been Defeated"
Maroon 5 "Harder To Breathe"
Massive Attack "One Love"
Powderfinger "Waiting For The Sun"
Puddle of Mudd "Away From Me"
RHCP "Fortune Faded"
Sloan "Rest Of My Life"

Andy's Survival Guide to Launceston (1st ed.)

2003-12-16T21:07:00.000+08:00

1. You may have the right of way, but don't assume side traffic actually knows this. They will assume you are not there and drive out anyway without looking. This applies even on foot, as people leaving shops act in the same fashion. Having 360° vision is a necessity.

2. Driving speeds are generally and widely ignored in Launceston, although speed cameras exist at some intersections.

3. When you see a sign in Launceston indicating a hill is steep, they really mean it. If a handrail is provided up a footpath and you can see the roofs of cars that are straight in front of you, these are also good indications. Howick Street in South Launceston and Duke Street in West Launceston are particularly worth noting, as they start off very moderate and then change suddenly.

4. Wear sunscreen. 15 mins in Launceston is like 45 mins in Perth, even though it's further south. I have no idea why, but everyone seems to know this down there.

5. Asking locals for directions is where the city suddenly becomes a small town again. People actually assume you know where the place is, or that it is not hard to navigate to, and give you directions that are anything but clear. Requests to clarify the instructions often reveal that the people don't actually know themselves. This phenomenon exhibits itself even worse in smaller towns.

6. Get to know where payphones are and always have 40c handy. If you get stuck and need a taxi, ringing the taxi number (131008/132227) from a mobile phone will get you a Hobart taxi, which is useless to you.

7. Once you leave Launceston suburban area (eg Perth, Longford), mobile coverage is non-existent. Keep this in mind when planning excursions.

An endnote

The locals are pretty friendly, and it doesn't hurt to talk to them. However, Launceston people see Hobart as the source of most of their woes, and the statistics even seem to bear this out - most major crimes committed in Launceston do in fact seem to be committed by Hobart suburbanites, and they are overrepresented in both the crash statistics and the road toll. Launceston does not see itself as the second city in Tasmania, and points out (again correctly) that Hobart is shrinking and Launceston is growing. It's also common of locals to overestimate the population of their city by up to 50%. Also, Launceston isn't quite as anti-mainland as Hobart is, but you're more tolerated if you come from Queensland or WA than the other states.

Day 14 - 18 - Launceston, Tasmania

2003-12-16T20:41:00.000+08:00

Thursday 11 December - Arrived in Launceston, which despite what a lot of mainland Australians think of it, is a great place, even if the pace is somewhat slower than, say, Melbourne or Perth. Like Mt Gambier, it's a city and a town at the same time and seems to have found the balance without turning it into a contradiction. Unlike most other cities, they haven't ripped up their heritage and so there's a lot of beautiful old buildings and houses to see there, and all with the backdrop of the hills and forests around Launceston and which intrude on its suburbs. I spent a while watching the Japanese snow monkeys in City Park (a park which is so green I have trouble explaining it to those back home) and admiring the 1932 John Hart Conservatory in the middle of the park which has both rainforest and alpine settings just metres apart. And I don't know many cities you can stay in a place (North Lodge Motel) twice the size of my last apartment with a complete kitchen for $60 a night.

Friday 12 December - Got the Metro 80 'Shopper Stopper' around Launceston and explored its suburbs from the window of a bus. It was interesting seeing how much you miss when you just stay in the city centre - a mix of nice but rundown houses, stately English-style houses on Hobart Road (which used to be the main highway) and more modern houses in Prospect which reminded me of Perth suburbs like Padbury and Craigie. Later on I tried to walk up Invermay Road in the northern suburbs but driving rain prevented me from doing so. Invermay reminded me a bit of Adelaide.

Saturday 13 December - Spent about 7 or 8 hours walking right around most of the 'Shopper Stopper' suburbs on a beautiful fine day, talked to heaps of locals, and had a great time with the camera (and my thigh muscles got plenty of exercise walking up suburban streets with 35-40° inclines!). However, I managed to get myself chronically sunburnt. The day sounds boring without the photos, so I won't elaborate further.

Sunday 14 December - Walked around Invermay again, and then went on a Tigerline bus tour up the Tamar Valley. There was only three of us on it as it's low season (the high season starts just after Christmas), but I have to admit I was unimpressed with the lack of stops. We went through Grindelwald, one of the area's major attractions, without actually stopping there, yet managed to stop at a vineyard down the road for 15 minutes. One big highlight was Seahorse World at Beauty Point, where we got to check out tonnes of seahorses, sea dragons, sea monkeys and other unusual creatures in both natural and artificial settings - it's an amazing lesson in a bit of nature you don't normally get to see and is well worth a visit. Then it was off to another winery (via the Batman Bridge, the only bridge across the 6km-wide Tamar River) before returning home. That evening was the Carols by Candlelight in City Park, and while initially enjoying the fact I could hear the entire thing with my doors and windows closed in my motel without having to pay to get in, it started to seriously annoy me when the doors rattled with the bass drum, so I ended up going for a late-night walk to Cataract Gorge to check out the floodlights.

Monday 15 December - The late-night walk led to me sleeping at 1:00am, just after finding out about Saddam's capture from ABC NewsRadio. Let us just say that waking up at 8:55am for a 9:30am bus departing 20 mins from you, while needing to have breakfast and get dressed and ready, is not a good start to a morning. However getting to Perth (the Tasmanian one), a peaceful country town of about 1,500 people just 20km from Launceston, was well worth it. I freely admit my main reason for wanting to go to the town was a curiosity to see what the other Perth was like. After amusing myself taking photos of the Perth Roadhouse and such things, I discovered the South Esk River and some really beautiful picnic spots. I ate and gathered supplies at the Perth Roadhouse before moving onto Highway B52 to walk to Longford, about 8km away by the route I took. Because of the savage sunburn I got on the 13th, I decided to wrap a towel around my head to cover my neck, and this evidently amused and/or shocked quite a few of the highwaygoers (I got a few toots from excited teenagers though). I later found out (after taking off the towel) that some Longford residents had reported to local shopkeepers that an Arab was walking along the highway.

I spent the afternoon on a $35 cruise (Afternoon Discovery) of the Tamar River in a ferry, which I'd strongly recommend to anyone, if not for the fantastic views, but for the interesting bits of history and trivia one finds out on the way. The story of Bruno, the large bull who somehow ended up living by himself on an island for 23 years, was quite entertaining. It's strange to think the founders of Melbourne, the pioneers of the Australian airline industry and the cousin of Alfred Nobel all came from this little region of the world.

My final view of Launceston wasn't that interesting, but this was my own fault. I'd prepared an itinerary for my parents' benefit and noted the air flights in Perth time. So at 8:30am I dutifully turned up to the airport ... 4 hours early for my flight. I spent the time with a pair of teenagers who'd missed the 6am flight, and at 2pm we were all happily in Melbourne, where I wrote this update from. :P

Day 12 - 13 - Wilson's Promontory

2003-12-12T12:44:00.000+08:00

9-10 December - I departed Melbourne and walked all around Wilson's Promontory with Bunyip Tours. It was a great tour and I saw a lot of amazing stuff, but I have to admit I jumped in the deep end and was ill-prepared - I spent most of the time trying to keep pace with 2/3 of the group and had to look down to avoid tripping over roots on the rocky terrain, so did not really get to see much of the forest and mountains and stunning backdrop - although I saw enough to be seriously impressed.

Furthermore, it was 32°C and approximately 90% humidity, with a minimum of 27°C - the sort of conditions for which there's never enough drinking water. This is *very* atypical weather for the region - more like North Queensland! Anyway, we slept in tents. Each of me and the non-English-speaking guy I shared it with insisted the other snored. So at the end of the trip I was absolutely exhausted, a bit sick, and seriously underslept.

On the upsides, we got to play beach cricket, saw a lot of wildlife after dark, and had a great organic dinner and got to hear the tour guide playing the didgeridoo.

10-11 December - After a bit of drama getting to Port Melbourne by tram, and forgetting to get my ticket from check-in (the staff were very friendly though), I climbed aboard the Spirit of Tasmania. This is not a boat, this is an experience! Imagine the Hyatt Hotel and your state capital's casino mixed together, and that's kind of like what it was like. The beds were comfortable and in rooms that actually reminded me of some motels I've been in. The restaurants were pretty good. If not for the amazing view off the sides, one wouldn't even know one was floating. But if you wanted to be reminded, you could go outside and see the sea and experience a bit of spray and so on if you wished to. It's something I've got to do again - and intend to one day.

Day 5 - 11 - Melbourne, Phillip Island

2003-12-08T22:26:00.000+08:00

I have fallen behind with the updates so here goes.

2 December - I caught the V-Line (state-owned country rail and bus service) to Melbourne to see the spectacular Australian band George live in concert at Federation Square (a new complex which still manages to remind me of a failed university art project). When I get back to Perth I'll make a full posting about the concert, but it was absolutely awesome to see them again. They're one of those few bands I'd drop anything (or cut short a visit to Apollo Bay) to see. En route to Melbourne, we went through Geelong, which is much bigger and busier than I expected. I'll have to check it out at some point.

I stayed at the Queensberry Hill YHA, which was like a large motel but with dorm beds instead of your standard motel room layout. It was extremely clean, and actually quite nice for an inner city hostel - I hope it preludes what I'm going to experience in Canada. Walking home from the concert provided the most amazing show of lightning (about 3 a second for about half an hour) - I later heard some eastern suburbs were completely flooded and it was the biggest storm Melbourne had had in 100 years.

3 December - Moved into the Miami Motor Inn and found the same level of friendly customer service I'm accustomed to there after 3 visits in 3 years, but sadly suffered from a flu I'd caught somewhere in around Apollo Bay.

5 December - Off to Phillip Island, about 130km SE of Melbourne and home of the famous Penguin Parade, aboard Duck Truck Tours, run by the Amaroo YHA on the island. This tour, for A$70, is one of the best I've ever been on anywhere and I would not hesitate to recommend it. I think the local, knowledgeable guides have a lot to do with it. We got to see a lot of wildlife (koalas, wombats, dingoes, penguins) up close during the course of the day and the group of people was also great. (After doing many tours, I can say for sure that the group you're with can really make or break the tour). I found out while on the tour that my proposal to line it up with the Wilson's Promontory tour was not going to happen as that tour had been cancelled, but I was able to book onto one on 9-10 December.

6 December - I stayed overnight at Amaroo YHA after the penguin parade, and spent most of the morning walking around the township of Cowes and its beaches, which for a town of 3,000 is very well equipped to handle the millions of tourists it gets every year. I enjoyed some fresh treats from the bakery before returning to Melbourne.

Now I'd like a Melbournite to explain to me what is so amazing about St Kilda that everybody raves about it and insists I must see it. After spending an hour on Fitzroy Street, I concluded that it was a nice looking street with a tram line down the middle, lots of cafes on either side and a beach at the end of it. This is not unlike many areas in Melbourne, including one or two near where I am staying. Even the English backpackers I talked to, when I asked them, could only think to recommend its profusion of pubs.

8 December - In what turned out to be a 36°C day (the weather predicted 23°C - not bad going!), I walked up Lygon Street in Carlton and right around the Royal Park/University areas north of the city. Lygon Street is somewhere I'll have to go back to one day to explore what it offers - plenty of cafes and a great range of them, but no tram line down the middle.

Day 4 - Great Ocean Road

2003-12-01T22:35:00.000+08:00

I wrapped up Sunday with a visit to the mutton bird colony on Griffiths Island where I couldn't help being impressed with the birds as they swooped in from the ocean to find their burrows by the thousands.

Woke up to a breakfast of homemade pancakes courtesy of the driver, Shane, and then we headed off to check out Tower Hill wildlife reserve. Rule number one of running a tour like this - any unexpected wildlife WILL make the tour fall behind time. :P We saw quite a few koalas at Tower Hill, including a young one climbing down a tree, looking at our camera-laden busload of tourists with that kind of facial expression meaning "What the hell are you looking at?" It was quite amusing :)

Next stop, Allansdale cheese factory, where you can buy authentic Australian cheese. Then we turned onto the Great Ocean Road, which doesn't actually hit the ocean for its first 50km, but when it does so, it does so with style. As it was maxing at about 17°C temperature-wise, I was actually starting to come down with a bit of a cold, so I took it fairly easy around the attractions.

From here on, we did the standard Great Ocean Road thing - basically look at a very impressive bunch of big limestone rocks sticking out of the ocean in improbable ways and marvel and take lots of photos. In order, we visited Bay of Islands, Bay of Martyrs (or Massacre Bay), London Bridge (no longer a bridge), the town of Port Campbell, Loch Ard Gorge, the 12 Apostles and Gibson's Steps. We got surprisingly fine (although cold) weather for the entire afternoon so hopefully my photos will have turned out OK. I had the opportunity once again to meet heaps of interesting people at each of the attractions (and usually take their photo with their camera for them).

After a rainforest walk at Mait's Rest (as per last year), we stopped for the night at Apollo Bay. This was the point where I left the Wayward tour, having made a few new friends, and stayed at the Apollo Bay Backpackers - which was an excellent, very informal establishment with TV, internet and so much local information it wasn't funny. The room was clean and had a great view of rolling hills and the surrounding country-style houses. I had a nice shower in their well-maintained bathrooms.

My main complaint about Apollo Bay (which is a great town which I do intend to spend more time in later) is that once you leave the touristy bit on the front street (Great Ocean Road), the roads have no kerbs, no footpaths, no lights, and these crudely dug tunnels at the side of the road for drainage purposes which are easy to fall into at night. But it would be easy to live there for a while - surf culture rules the place.

Day 3 - Port Fairy

2003-12-01T01:12:00.000+08:00

Settled into the backpacker accommodation - we have a dorm and shared accommodation. It's very clean compared to some backpacker type places I have seen. I'm going to explore the town as soon as the rain stops - it was originally called Belfast, is about as old as Melbourne, and is home to the world's biggest mutton bird (short-tailed shearwater) community.

(Added later:) I wrapped up Sunday with a visit to the mutton bird colony on Griffiths Island where I couldn't help being impressed with the birds as they swooped in from the ocean to find their burrows by the thousands. It was a very cold, rainy walk around the coast - if you ever plan to do this I hope you have better than suitable rain gear!

A pop-blaring van full of Israeli young people was my transport home. I owe them one. :)

Day 3 - Leaving Mt Gambier

2003-11-30T15:30:00.000+08:00

I'm currently at Cape Bridgewater, 17km W of Portland, Victoria.

Awoke at 3:48am and took advantage of the early hour to see some of Mt Gambier's main attractions by night. First to Cave Gardens which was beautifully lit up for the occasion. It really did need more colours though, I think - the lights were just lights, and mixed-colour lighting like that in Fraser Avenue, Kings Park (see here or here) back home in Perth).

On the way back up, I was called over by two intoxicated teenagers to adjudicate a dispute between them (which I did seemingly to almost everybody's satisfaction). I don't know why they always choose me for these kind of things! :P

At 4:50am - it is a 6km walk with some uphill through residential streets, a fact not entirely clear from the tourist guides - I finally arrived at Umpherston Sinkhole. This is basically a cave whose roof collapsed at some point and it's basically a big hole in the ground with a lot of vegetation growing at the bottom and up the sides as the volcanic rock is very fertile. I stayed there through sunrise and listened to the birds' morning chorus and the dragonflies while looking at the lush gardens and the odd possum. I bailed on the way back, though, and got a taxi.

It's sad leaving Mt Gambier. I like it, which is odd given my general distaste for the state capital, Adelaide. But I seem to have this thing for small regional cities (Launceston, Katoomba, Mt Gambier) - I'd never want to live in one as I like my city creature comforts too much, but they're great for holidays.

At 10:30am I left Mt Gambier aboard Wayward Bus on a beautiful fine day - 26°C and clear skies, a nice change from the oppressive humidity yesterday. We crossed the border and headed for Nelson, just 3km inside Victoria, where we had lunch. Shane, our driver, provided an excellent salad lunch which was all gone by the time we finished.

Then we were off to Cape Bridgewater. I didn't go on the Seals by Sea boatride this time round (I ended up in the water last time!) and am enjoying an R&R break at the Beach Cafe, which sells unexpectedly good gourmet food, with a stunning cliff scenery backdrop.

I've feasted on smoked salmon sandwiches and pancakes/icecream/maple syrup, so I won't need dinner tonight. It's just 15°C here!

Day 2 - Mt Gambier - Walking!

2003-11-29T20:40:00.000+08:00

What a long day! I've walked somewhere in the region of 23km today around Mt Gambier. Although the hiphop-blasting P-platers and their antics on the roads make walking here a hazard, I've really come to like this place and one day I will be back.

I spent the morning discovering the central city area and the Lady Nelson information centre. I guess it'd be of more use if I was either much older or much younger and/or had a car, but it was worth going.

The Jail YHA's shower was the next stop, followed by the long walk trail around the back of Valley Lake and Brownes Lake. Some spectacular scenery and great views of Mt Gambier and also got to talk with tourists from all over Australia, although quite an arduous walk!

Next was the much more famous Blue Lake - which turns a brilliant blue every November due to unknown volcanic factors (it is one of the handful of active volcanoes in Australia - apparently this region is the third-biggest and sixth most important volcanic region in the world). The fairly easy 3.6km circular walk around the top of it was excellent - I spent quite some time amusing myself with some tiny superb wrens which were about the length of my little finger and were busily hopping around looking for water and squeezing through holes in the wire mesh fence.

Returned to the YHA and talked to some Year 11s from Adelaide (450km away!) who'd come to compete in an athletics carnival. Also the owner, Gary, whose hyperactive dog Milka and its ball-fetching activities provided some cheap entertainment.

I'm exhausted.

Day 2 - Mt Gambier - Morning

2003-11-29T11:15:00.000+08:00

It cooled down alright - from 25° at 1am to 14° at 8am (although it felt colder). Was weird waking up in a real jail cell! I got my chance to wander around the grounds and take some photos before discovering the friendly local butcher.

I've just been to Cave Gardens (a vertical cave right in the middle of the city) and am using the local library's internet connection at the moment. It's still humid here, but I intend to check out the visitor centre and Blue Lake etc before day's end. I still can't get over how busy this place is for a city of its size.

Day 2 - Mt Gambier - Observations

2003-11-29T00:45:00.000+08:00

I'm in jail! I even have my own cell. Unlike past occupants, however, my only crime was to pay $30 a night for accommodation at The Jail YHA here in Mt Gambier. My twin cell, er, room has a functioning sink and toilet, and even a copy of the jail rules from when this place was a functioning jail up until the mid-1990s. Free self-serve breakfast and a local butcher 2 buildings away - what more could one ask for?

Mt Gambier itself has a population of 27,000 and is SA's 2nd or 3rd largest city, depending on who you believe. My observations of it so far are of a modern, well-serviced city with largely psychotic young drivers (reflected in its road toll, 9 times that of Adelaide in relative terms). Even at 9:30pm the main street, Commercial Street East, was still quite busy - the place was reminiscent of Rokeby Road in Subiaco. At 12:00am, the pubs were still going, as were the young motorists.

It's VERY humid here and I hope it cools down soon.

Day 1 - In transit

2003-11-28T19:35:00.000+08:00

Arrived Adelaide at 14:08 ACDT. Got stopped by quarantine because of my Chinese meal in a lunchbox, but the guy approved it and they moved on. The little dog was actually quite cute and not at all noisy.

Boarding of Rex ("Welcome to Regional Express, but you can call us Rex") flight ZL688 to Mt Gambier was an interesting experience. As per the flight to Canberra in Dec 2001 we got a small 42-seater plane with shiny propellers, and there was quite a bit of turbulence on it. We got amazing views of the Coorong Peninsula and massive radiata pine plantations west of Mt Gambier.

Day 1 - In transit (Per -> Adl)

2003-11-28T13:45:00.000+08:00

28/11/03, 10:45 Nullarbor time (GMT+8.75)
On Virgin 737-700 east of Esperance, WA.

The takeoff from Perth was pretty normal on a fine, beautiful Perth day aboard Virgin flight DJ354 to Adelaide. On this flight, one can buy, amongst other things, an autobiography of Richard Branson (described as "interesting and inspirational reading"), a Virgin Blue card deck or even a model of the plane - All this while gliding 10km above endless kilometres of salinity-addled farmland and cloud-covered ocean. (To be fair, though, WA's Wheatbelt region surrounding Perth is WAY greener than last year).

Forecast for Adelaide - 34°C (92°F) - Cloud/Late storms
Forecast for Mt Gambier - 32°C (90°F) - Humid

28/11/03, 13:45 Central time (GMT+10.5)

Watching a lightning storm from about 8km above it is an odd experience, as is flying between clouds.

Current Mood: Bored
Current Music: Terrible 80s-pop cover of Strokes "Last Night"

Yay!

2003-11-27T19:44:00.001+08:00

15.25 hours to takeoff. I think it's when everyone at work suddenly turns all nice and starts wishing you happy holidays that it starts to sink in that you're actually about to go on a big adventure of sorts.

I'm foregoing the comfort factor a little (but not much) this time in favour of cost, just to see how I manage in time for Canada when I'll be spending practically all my time in YHAs and on the road. I've been on two annual holidays now - in 2001, I didn't really leave my comfort zone, and was in nice motels and at a friend's home. In 2002, I went on a few backpacker tours but still paid for the upgrade option.

In 2003 I'll spend the first 4 nights or so at YHAs and hostels and even get to sleep in a tent for a night, travel on a big boat and use public transport to get me and my stuff from A to B. In 2004 (Canada, US etc), only a total of 9 of the 60 days are *not* in hostel accommodation, and Greyhound and public transport feature even more than air travel. So there's sort of a pattern here.

Anyway, I fly tomorrow. An update on Saturday hopefully :)

Planned holiday, SE Australia

2003-10-21T01:06:00.000+08:00

Current plan is as follows. When I finish my webpage, each of the below will be linked to the correct page on the site.

South-Eastern Australia




28/11/03 - 30/11/03 - Mount Gambier, South Australia

30/11/03 - 01/12/03 - Wayward Bus to Apollo Bay via Port Fairy/Great Ocean Road

01/12/03 - 02/12/03 - Apollo Bay, Victoria

02/12/03 - 04/12/03 - Melbourne, Victoria

05/12/03            - Phillip Island, Victoria (Penguin Parade etc)

06/12/03            - Wilson's Promontory, Victoria (southern tip of Australia)

07/12/03 - 10/12/03 - Melbourne, Victoria

10/12/03 - 11/12/03 - Spirit of Tasmania ferry from Melbourne to Devonport

11/12/03 - 16/12/03 - Launceston, Tasmania

16/12/03 - 18/12/03 - Melbourne, Victoria

Total length: 21 days

George concert - Change of plans

2003-10-10T22:22:00.000+08:00

Found out George are playing in Melbourne (2nd Dec) before they come to Perth, so a bit of jiggling my timetable around and I am seeing them live and only paying the actual ticket cost itself as extra :P If you're in Perth, they're playing 6th Dec at Fly By Night, which btw is a non-smoking nightclub (yes, there is such things in Perth!) Ticket price for Melb is $35.80 including all fees so I expect it'd be the same here. More info: http://www.george.net.au

More future planning.

2003-08-20T19:39:00.000+08:00

After nearly a week, I've booked most of my accommodation and resolved
a near nightmare in one part of my itinerary and turned it into
something quite nice :)

Atlantic Canada was starting to turn
into a major headache. My initial choice would have resulted in seeing
almost nothing, doing long-haul bus journeys and exiting quickly. From
everything I've read, this would not do justice to the region, even if
it is so hard to get to and there's only one bus a day between some
places and they don't connect.

However, with two days' hard
work, I've found a way to do it that involves a lot of small, pleasant
towns, B&B establishments and fairly short bus journeys and even a
bit of time on the water. I still wonder how on earth people went on
holiday before the Net came about - maybe they were lazy and went
through travel agents or tour companies. :P

(Note: C$1 = A$1.10)

Day 1
Arrive Halifax by air 3pm
Arrange US currency/travel docs

Day 2
1:30pm Halifax -> 3:00pm Wolfville, NS (C$16, Acadian/SMT)
8:10pm Wolfville -> 10:35pm Digby, NS (C$23, Acadian/SMT)
Stay at B&B in Digby, NS (3 options)

Day 3
Spend day in Digby
4:30pm Digby, NS -> 7:30pm Saint John, NB (C$20, Bay Ferry)
Stay at B&B in Saint John (5 options, 3 budget)

Day 4
9:45pm (5:40pm) Saint John -> 11:15am (7:10pm) Fredericton (C$20, Acadian/SMT)
Stay at HI/YHA in Fredericton (621 Churchill Row, ~C$16)

Day 5
11:30am Fredericton -> 5:40pm* Bangor, ME ($39, Acadian/SMT)
- Set watch back one hour
- Cross US border

6:15pm Bangor -> 8:45pm Portland, ME (US$20, Vermont Transit)
Stay at Inn @ St John (939 Congress St, Portland) 2 nights

Day 7
Portland -> Boston, MA (Greyhound)

End sub-trip

I'm leaving on a jet plane...

2003-08-17T23:26:00.000+08:00

For those who haven't heard from me in the past 2 weeks or so, I've been planning a round-the-world trip and now the flights have been paid for. It's one of those things that came about almost purely on impulse - but I'm glad I've had something to get me through my recent illness. I'm sick of being sick, so to speak. Oh, and my parents having no life, and being stuck in a house with them. *sigh*

This holiday has been planned in typical Andrew fashion - i.e. it's madcap, busy and independent. Probably the main difference between this and other holidays I've had is the budget factor - I normally value my comfort quite highly, but this time, for the most part, it's budget accommodation all the way.

The basic plan is:

14/04/2004 - 22/05/2004 - Canada
22/05/2004 - 02/06/2004 - United States (north-east)
03/06/2004 - 06/06/2004 - Northern Ireland
07/06/2004 - 08/06/2004 - England (Liverpool, Manchester)
09/06/2004 - 12/06/2004 - Singapore

The eastern states trip at the end of the year (Mt Gambier, Apollo Bay, Melbourne, Launceston, Melbourne) is still going ahead. So my budget will look terrible come mid-next year :)

Anyway, back to being sick and bored. Oh and if you're a local of one of the above areas or have been there, feel free to provide any advice you think could be helpful to me - it will be appreciated. :)

Pictures of Perth plus New Holiday Plans (Dec 03)

2003-05-27T17:16:00.000+08:00

We've been getting some really nice weather in Perth, so on Saturday, Steven and I went around the southern suburbs photographing some nice spots - South Perth foreshore, Narrows Bridge, Mt Henry Bridge, etc on a disposable camera left over from my last interstate trip... One real surprise (shock?) was going back to the place I lived in for my first 3 months in Australia, which I do have fond memories of. What used to be known as Noalimba Migrant Centre in Bateman (which later became a temporary home for visiting athletes and conference centre) has now (as of Oct 2002) been simply abandoned - it was a good facility and it seems almost a tragedy to see it so rundown.

On Sunday morning, I went for a big long walk to North Beach (the suburb, not the beach itself) and Star Swamp Reserve. On a beautiful fine morning, I can't think of a better place to go at sunrise... Considering they're probably able to be considered as borderline inner suburban, one is a village with associated ambience (and a happening cafe culture at 8am on a Sunday!) and the other is a misty eucalypt forest. The only downside of said big long walk is that I have a burst blister on my big toe, making the likelihood of any walking in the next few days rather low...

In brighter news...

Following the successful annual tradition of traipsing around south-eastern Australia for a number of weeks in early-mid December, I'm officially doing it all again! :)

1/12/01 - 16/12/01

    (1-5)   Adelaide

    (6-10)  Melbourne

    (10-16) Canberra



29/11/02 - 20/12/02

    (29-1)  Adelaide

    (2-4)   Wayward ADL-MEL coastal tour

    (5-9)   Melbourne

    (10-16) Tasmania

    (17-19) Melbourne

My 2003 holiday continues the eclectic trend of the last one. In fact, it's slightly more eclectic, because the last one didn't have contingencies on it like "if this company goes out of business, here's plan B, and just to be sure, plan C."

27/11/03 or 28/11/03 - Leave Perth for Adelaide. This will be booked after my exams are more certain, as a 27/11 exam will mean my time in Adelaide will be reduced to a mere airport stopover.

28/11/03 7:40pm - Arrive in Mt Gambier, South Australia, aboard an airline that calls itself "Rex". It's a thriving town of 25,000 whose major attractions are a blue lake (as in, REALLY blue), caves and ex-volcanic mountains, and the highest motor vehicle accident rate in Australia.

30/11/03 or 1/12/03 - Leave Mt Gambier. How exactly I get to Apollo Bay is anyone's guess (the company who originally was to do this is having some, ahem, "troubles"), but it's beginning to look like a 3am departure time by public transport. There is, however, the option of spending 3 times as much and repeating part of last year's Wayward trip.

1/12/03 - Arrive in Apollo Bay, VIC, 200km SW of Melbourne, and spend a couple of days there. Nice coastal town, the sort with a population of 1,000 but teeming with tourists that seems to exist about that distance from any major city anywhere you go :)

3/12/03 - Experience the virtues and vices of Victorian (the place, not the times) public transport and arrive in Melbourne at my friendly, affordable hotel/motel, the Miami.

10/12/03 - Hit the water on the Spirit of Tasmania luxury ferry for an overnight trip across the Bass Strait to Devonport, en route to Launceston.

11/12/03 - Bed down at the North Lodge Motel and start exploring Tasmania with my 7-day travel pass (haven't decided on which company will get my business for that yet). For the non-car-enabled like myself, Tasmania is probably the least friendly state for non-urban travel - it's inexpensive to travel, but there's only like one or two services a day each way even on major routes. But it's such a nice place that I consider it to be worth the trouble :P

16/12/03 - Return to Melbourne by the more commonly accepted method of air travel - my first flight since November :P It almost seems not worth it for a 45-minute flight.

19/12/03 - Thanks to Virgin putting on more convenient routes, I depart Melbourne for home at a slightly later time of the morning (last time it was a 7:10am flight - keeping in mind Melb is 3 hours ahead, it was 8:30am when I arrived in Perth and I still had a whole day to go!)

just luck or what?

2003-01-03T17:44:00.000+08:00

On 6 December 2002 I arrived at the bottom of Arthur's Seat on the Mornington Peninsula south of Melbourne, after walking from one of the Dromana stops on Nepean Highway, to get the chairlift ... and was 2 minutes too late to go on it, it had closed for the day. Unperturbed, I followed the line underneath the chairlift across the road, stood up alongside a large pylon and took a photo. When I get home I'll scan this photo in and post it here.

And on today's news... I'll let it speak for itself actually. Note this appeared as one of the only two Australian stories on the BBC today.

The pylon that collapsed, if the info the news has contained so far is correct, was the one I was standing against, and the bit of road was the same one I crossed.

I think sometimes the universe just steps in to keep us safe. Who really knows?

2002 Day 11-15 - Tasmania so far

2002-12-13T21:59:00.000+08:00

I'm now in Hobart, having come through a lot of places.

I had to rush into Melb to get a backpack and on impulse I also got for myself an aromatherapy calming candle and back of paper notepads from a place called "The Reject Shop" (what a cool name for a discount store!) both turned out to be useful later.

Flight to Launceston was uneventful - but I was surprised to note it has a bigger airport than Adelaide. Not bad for a city of 70,000... Got a ride into the city on one of the freeways which was quite scenic and the next surprise was my room at North Lodge Motel. It was HUGE! For $60.50 I'd managed to score a double ensuite room with a central room bigger than my games room, a fully operational kitchen, an ensuite bedroom which was equally large and a considerably nice balcony.

Launceston for a city of its size was the next surprise. It is a real city, not like Bunbury or somewhere. City centre was quite happening if a bit slow and it took ages to walk around it all. I even got a nice iced chocolate at a Viennese coffee shop. Just 2 minutes after leaving the west end of the CBD, I reached Cataract Gorge - a 150ft high cliff face with forests all over it, majestic rocks and a river flowing down the bottom. Stopping and listening you'd never believe it was 500m from the heart of a city. Dinner was local salmon and vegies, cooked by yours truly :P

Link to my photos for the Tasmania trip

I've spent the last 4 days in the west and north west of Tasmania and have been amazed by both how green it is and how large - from seeing it on a map you wouldn't think hours in a bus just going a little way along the coast would be possible. However I will add I am so over a number of things:

* Van Morrison
* Bob Marley
* Smokers spoiling my airspace
* Roads with tight windy bends every 100m for over 40km at a time
* My joints playing up

Oh and seeing signs all over the island in front of opium poppy farms saying "WARNING! Trespassers prosecuted. Illegal use of crops may cause death." is quite amusing.

This is being written from a dodgy Net terminal in Hobart, and I'm out of cash. Bye. :)

2002 Day 8-10 - Melbourne

2002-12-08T20:25:00.000+08:00

Not much to update so I'll do it all in one post. By the way, I stayed at Miami Motor Inn during my stay in Melbourne - close to the city, convenient to public transport, and probably the best consistent service standard I've seen anywhere in a motel. I've been there three times now and have sent friends there, without any complaints.

Friday - Went to Mornington Peninsula (a southern coastal extension of the Melbourne metropolitan area) via Frankston. Frankston is psycho city central :) Basically mix retirement village type scene with lots of young unemployed people and a few families thrown into the mix, with narrow streets and lots of cars. End result? The old people hold everyone else up and there's a lot of aggro and horns honking :P It was funny to watch but I wouldn't want to live there.

Photo 1 - Wells Street, Frankston.
Photo 2 - Canal near Nepean Highway, Frankston.

This visit was more of a "get to see and know the area so when I come next time I know which are the good bits". The original plan had been to visit Rosebud because I once knew of someone from there, but it turned out to be quite ordinary - just a big shopping centre. A surprisingly high number of attractive people living there though :P The stopping points ended up being Dromana and Sorrento. Both nice places, got to walk around them a bit.

Photo 3 - Dromana Beach.
Photo 4 - Beach huts at Dromana Beach (you find these all along the Port Phillip Bay).

I wanted to do Arthur's Seat (a chairlift going right up a mountain) but I was literally 2 minutes too late by the time I got there. (EDIT: This chairlift collapsed in January 2003.) On coming back to Melbourne and after a sumptuous meal at the motel, I went down and saw Chris the busker (refer to entries from Dec 2001) - he recognised me immediately and he now seems to have a band - they look quite odd but sound amazingly good (they were doing Cat Stevens covers).

Yesterday I thought I was doing a tour of Melbourne and when I looked at my notes it turned out I was doing Phillip Island, where thousands of penguins run up the beach at sunset to their burrows every night. It was an APT tour, which was a bit dry for my liking although we had a good and knowledgeable driver. This time, I didn't get eaten alive at the koala conservation park, and the Seal Rocks exhibition centre I visited last year had been destroyed by a tornado 3 months ago - it was kind of eerie going in there and just seeing the souvenir shop (pretty much as it was last year) with nothing behind it. At the actual penguin parade (which was better than last year's) I met a guide called Damon who I was able to ask for information. I think I'll do his tour next year - it sounds somewhat more fun than the one I was on :)

(Edit: I found an even better one in Dec 2003 - Duck Truck Tours, run by a local company from Phillip Island, for $70.)

On coming back to Melbourne, the fun wasn't over. My friend Lucas had insisted on my doing the Lucas Tour of Melbourne (sadly without a webpage), and even a late start courtesy of the penguins didn't dampen his enthusiasm :P I wasn't really dressed for the occasion, but we saw plenty of pubs and cafes and I got to meet his housemate Carlos, who was a very friendly host. At some unearthly hour of the morning I returned back to my motel.

After breakfast this morning I basically walked around the city all day - I'm trying to lose the weight I've put on and have been living on the hotel breakfasts + fresh filtered water + sushi (which is available at O-Bento sushi bar in Melbourne Central for $2 per hand roll - so one *can* live on it affordably :)

Tomorrow I leave for Launceston. I'm not getting the whole odd "missing Melbourne" feeling I usually get at this point in its fullest strength because I will be back in just over a week. I wish I could spend a lot more time here.

2002 Day 6-7 - Great Ocean Road to Melbourne

2002-12-05T22:38:00.000+08:00

(Refer here for someone's photos. I hope to have my own up shortly.)

Day 6 can be summed up as Great Ocean Road in dreadful weather. After an initial good start at Tower Hill, a national park inside a volcano crater with all sorts of native wildlife (mostly koalas, emus and small cute birds) which is not on any of the tourist itineraries except Wayward's, the really bad weather kicked in. Most people (even the English amongst us) got sick of horizontal rainfall and high winds and decided to throw it in at Port Campbell, where we stopped for what ended up being a 1.5 hour lunch at the local pub. While the wind didn't abate, the rain did, and we got to see Loch Ard Gorge and the surrounding area, and the 12 Apostles. This time I took the western pathway before visiting the gorge (in 2001 I did the eastern pathway). Lots of magnificent scenery, made all the more impressive by the high winds stirring up the oceans. All I can say is no wonder it's nicknamed "The Shipwreck Coast". The 12 Apostles was just too much wind and package tourism for most of us to handle (a lot of people, tourist buses etc) and we only stayed there about 20 mins.

Photo 1 - London Bridge
Photo 2 - The Blowhole at Loch Ard

(Better photos to come when I can get them scanned...)

The better part of the trip was our visit to the Otway Ranges. In 2001 the AAT Kings/Gray Line tour driver literally speeded through this and there's something really unromantic about seeing dense eucalypt forests at 100km/h from a coach-style bus. Wayward took it slower and we stopped for a rainforest walk at a place called Mait's Rest, which has to be one of the highlights of this whole tour. Massive trees and creeks covered in vegetation with a density that is just freaky just has to be seen to be believed. Unfortunately, my poor little Kodak disposable had no chance whatsoever in the poor light conditions.

Now I hear you asking "rainforest? in Victoria, at 39°S?!" There's only 14km² of it in the Otway Ranges, but it is there. It's a cool, temperate rainforest and meets all of the criteria needed to describe rainforests.

We stopped at Apollo Bay overnight. From this point on, I think it hit most of us that we were in our last 17 hours together, and between collaborating to buy group dinner, playing pool, listening to Dutch and Croatian music and talking about relatively normal "home" things like work and families and stuff kind of did bring us closer together. My motel for the night, Coastal Motel, was right on the coast, and had a sliding door leading out to it - all very nice :) I made sure I got to savour and enjoy the room this time.

We left Apollo Bay at 7:30am this morning. It was pelting with rain both there and the whole drive winding tightly around the twists and turns of the Great Ocean Road until we got to Lorne - having seen it in fine weather in 2001, it gave a bit of contrast for me, I guess. At Anglesea we stopped at a golf course and pissed off a load of golfers while acting like typical tourists and photographing kangaroos which were all over the place (including on and next to the holes). On the bus we did a massive email exchange project so we all have each others' email addresses, and at Bells Beach, a famous surfing beach near Torquay where events are regularly held, we stopped for a group photo.

Photo 1 - Kangaroos at Anglesea Golf Course
Photo 2 - The sign greeting visitors to the Great Ocean Road.
Photo 3 - Bells Beach.
Photo 4 - Melbourne from the bus, 10 minutes before arrival.

Arriving in Melbourne was both sad and happy - I am quite tired after 4 days of full on activity and am welcoming the solitude of getting around by myself in a big yet friendly city (any of you who have heard me talk about Melbourne know how much I like the place) but at the same time it meant parting with the group who had become my friends. The goodbyes weren't tearful, but they were emotional and warm.

Photo 5 - First shot in Melbourne, on Latrobe Street facing west.

And that's where I'll stop. This afternoon has just been a big unwind and would sound extremely boring on paper. :P

2002 Day 5 - Wayward Bus - Mt Gambier & Beyond

2002-12-05T22:18:00.000+08:00

(Someone else did this tour a week after me and posted all their photos online. Worth a look.)

After my sunrise on the balcony and mad photographing mission was complete, we were off to our next destination. But first we walked around the Canunda National Park near Beachport with some very stunning scenery. This was our first taste of the Great Ocean Road I guess, although we had a full day yet until we would get to it.

Next major stop was Mt Gambier, population 23,000 - I was expecting a small regional town, but it was as bad as any city traffic-wise - absolutely nuts and several of our party nearly got hit several times in the main streets. I managed to find some nice fresh bananas and send a postcard home before we went off to look at the Blue Lake south of the town. This lake *is* really blue. Apparently it's got something to do with the way it was formed from volcanic ash, but it looks quite trippy in real life.

(EDIT: I came back to Mount Gambier and spent 2 days there in late November 2003 - see entries from that period for more information.)

After that we went to Donovans, a border town, for a picnic lunch (which was truly sumptuous, but I seemed to be the only person going for the beans and lentils!) and then crossed the SA/VIC border (at which point we all changed our clocks forward half an hour and photographed the signs just so we could say we'd done it :P )

It was quite a while until our first stop - Cape Bridgewater, near Portland, where an optional tour was available to see the seals in their native environment. I was already starting to feel muscle pains and fatigue from all the activity (which did include that long walk to West Terrace in Adelaide where I posted from on early Monday morning) but I convinced myself I'd only get this opportunity to go. So 8 of us headed off on what turned out to be a very arduous walk over some of the highest coastal cliffs in Australia (about 1.5km of them to be exact) to get to the jetty where the boat left from. We went out at quite high speed into the ocean and round some more cliffs to get to the seal colony.

I'd always imagined seals being pretty relaxed creatures, but after seeing them up close I've figured out they spend most of their time fighting and arguing and the rest playing in the water. We went into a cave and got some pretty cool views of seals just sitting there watching us - a couple even lunged for our little boat :) Eventually it was time to head back and we did so. However, once nearly back at the jetty, the guy driving the boat put it in full gear and drove it in circles. Unfortunately for me a wave came through on my side at the same time and I found myself fully clothed and completely underwater for several seconds. It took a while to rescue me, and when we did, several things that had been in my pocket (disposable camera, credit cards etc) had drifted away and/or sunk (and that's not to speak of the fact I was soaked through)

I think the guy (who was only about 21-22) panicked a bit and decided to take me back to the beach in the boat. The next 45 minutes were spent changing into new clothes, attempting to manually dry my old ones, while the entire bus waited for the owner of the boat company to dive for (and successfully retrieve) my credit cards.

We got into Port Fairy at 7pm, that little action drama over ... but my evening in what was really quite a nice town indeed was mostly spent washing and drying waterlogged clothing, eating in an overpriced and unfriendly Chinese restaurant (Four Seasons) and suffering from temporary back pain. The room was nice and I'm now regretting the fact I really didn't have the chance to lay back and enjoy it. But it's life ... and the whole situation did seem to provide amusement for most people on the bus (although they were also sympathetic and gave me good advice with relation to drying out the clothing).

2002 Day 4 - Wayward Bus (SA)

2002-12-05T21:32:00.000+08:00

Well, I'm in Melbourne, after 3.5 days on the road. It's been a very fun and interesting time in a way I didn't necessarily expect. I'm not even going to try and explain it - it's something you have to go on a tour with a small group of people (in this case 17 others) to appreciate. You feel like you have connected with a bunch of people over a range of shared experiences, even though you'll probably never see them again and so are more free to be yourself. It was made more interesting by the fact that not one of the other people was Australian, and I spent most of the time with about 3 of the group who spoke only very little English, but who I was able to meaningfully communicate with.

The range of ethnicities was German (2), Swiss (1), Dutch (1), Italian (1), Slovenian (1), French (1), Colombian (2), US (3), Canadian (1) and English (3) - and me, the lone Aussie apart from the tour driver.

We left Adelaide at 8:15am on Monday (CDT = GMT+10.5h, WST+2.5h) aboard Wayward Bus and headed off into the hills. First stop was Hahndorf, a town settled in 1839 by German Lutherans escaping religious persecution in their homeland, and the town still maintains a lot of its German character. I ate at the 1839 Cafe and ordered a "big breakfast" as on the menu. The surprise, I guess, was that they weren't at all kidding. It was big. With bacon, eggs, salad, bits of fruit, toast and all sorts of other interesting goodies behind me, we set off into the Adelaide Hills and beyond. I concluded that most of the south-eastern bit of South Australia is almost as boring as the Wheatbelt of WA - just flat farmland as far as the eye can see for the most part.

The exceptions, however, were glaring. The Murray River was pretty impressive - we had to cross it in a car ferry.

Photo 1 - Wellington, SA.
Photo 2 - Looking east from the ferry.
Photo 3 - Looking west from the ferry.

And the Coorong was stunning - for those who don't know, the Coorong is a mixed salt and fresh water lake about 80km long and only about 2-3km wide, sourced from both the ocean and the Murray. We stopped at a wilderness lodge run by the Ngarrinjiri Aboriginal people, who have been revegetating formerly useless sheep grazing land back to what it was originally. We ate kangaroo and local fish and had a tour of the area from an Aboriginal guide who showed us some of the natural food and medicines the Aboriginals have through history lived on. I won't debate the guy - his cure for mozzie bites does work, as most of us concluded at some point or other during our trip. And some of the edible plants found as far east as Lorne, VIC, served me well the following year in emergencies.

Photo 4 - 90 Mile Beach, Coorong Peninsula.

The next surprise came when we hit the town of Kingston SE - Larry the lobster :) An 18m high lobster outside a shop in the town was the centrepiece of all manner of photographs - unfortunately the shop itself didn't really live up to expectations (they don't believe in change, and overcharged me a dollar for an icecream...) Marine Parade in Kingston SE reminded me a lot of Bunbury for some reason, but it was very nice.

Anyway, at about 7pmish we arrived at a town called Beachport - population 407 - about 400km SE of Adelaide, 80km W of Mt Gambier, and had dinner at our accommodation, Bompa's by the Sea. The "Fisherman's Catch" was quite an interesting (and large) meal and I rather enjoyed it. (This is coming from someone who normally doesn't like fish or seafood, too...)

Despite its size, there was a lot to do on foot, although I seemed to be the only person actually willing to do it. A map of Beachport led to me discovering the Pool of Siloam which is 7 times saltier than the ocean, a Scenic Drive which hugs the coast at some altitude, a jagged and cliffy west coast and a smooth east coast with a nice beach and an 800m long jetty, one of the longest in Australia (the longest is in Busselton WA, incidentally, and is 2km long - I walked it last time I was there in 1998) Getting lost in pitch black climbing up steep hills through bush and falling into brambles wasn't totally fun though, and I came back with an intended mission the following morning to photograph the better bits of what I'd seen (complete with a shortened and bramble-free path to get there). I did just that.

The accommodation was amazingly good. I guess my expectation of backpacker accommodation in small towns was something of a "room with a view" over the top of the pub. While this was in fact entirely correct, it wasn't entirely accurate - the room was quiet, very stylish, and very large - the bathroom has to be the largest I've ever seen in any hotel or motel I've stayed at. I'd gotten a few bites during the day and enjoyed a nice bath before bed :)

(Note about photos - Any separately marked, numbered photos are my own. Any others are scammed off the Web - a couple were from someone's collection taken exactly one week after I was there! I hope to replace these links soon, but I don't have a scanner.)

2002 Day 2-3 - Adelaide - Well, it's life...

2002-12-02T02:27:00.000+08:00

After leaving the cafe, I weaved my way around the streets of the city, taking photos on my Kodak disposable (Hosting courtesy of Webshots:)

Photo 1. North Terrace, facing east, from Morphett Street bridge.
Photo 2. Victoria Square, in the centre of Adelaide.
Photo 3. Light Square - final resting place of Adelaide's founder Colonel William Light. (More info about the statue and a closeup of it)
Photo 4. Eastern Parklands near my motel.
Photo 5. SA Museum, in a historic building in North Terrace.

I also had plenty of chances to observe the near-psychotic behaviour of its drivers and noticing a few unusual things about Adelaide:

1. They have very weird pronunciations for many of their streets and suburbs which are anything but obvious.
2. Adelaide is not pedestrian friendly - you have to go in whatever way the green lights take you and hope you'll eventually reach your destination intact.
3. The city centre and suburbs are two different beasts. The city (although eerily quiet at nights) is quite busy at most times of the day - especially that part of the northern half within about 200m of King William (the central N-S route) and Pulteney Streets (the one east of KW). The suburbs meanwhile maintain a slow and somewhat laidback demeanour.

Let's say the evening was interesting and leave it right there. Although the ending was good - I went to a coffee house called Spatt's on King William Road (bit south of the city) with Andrew, who had been there a number of times before. It was very ambient and intimate and very unlike any other cafe I'd been to - he tried a Gold Wasser which smelled like aftershave, was very potent and had actual little bits of gold leaf in it, and I had a chocolate crunch (kind of like a milkshake with class :P )

On Sunday I walked straight into a picnic in the eastern parklands (Adelaide city centre is completely enveloped by parklands) which all looked very happy and fun, and then wound through the streets again and checked out the State Library (which was in effect a single room with a very dark finish) before meeting up with Andrew. His parents were very sweet and made dinner for me - I don't think they or I wanted me to leave as we were having a very good conversation, but we were to meet a friend of Andrew's who I've gotten to know over ICQ and is very nice. He was as nice in person as I'd thought he would be and it wrapped up an interesting night (we ended up going to Spatt's again :).

Except that I couldn't sleep so I ended up walking all the way to West Terrace (about 6km from the motel) and am now sitting in a net cafe there at 2:40am. :P

So concludes another entry - Tomorrow I leave Adelaide bound for Melbourne, the long way. Don't quite know where we'll go but it should all be nice.

2002 Day 1 - Adelaide

2002-11-30T13:24:00.000+08:00

Left Perth on time at 9:00am aboard Virgin Blue - nice leather seats and stuff, was sitting next to an elderly couple, the guy had been a farmer on the Yorke Peninsula for 50 years and we were discussing salinity in WA. The flight actually took us over some quite sobering areas which were just basically salt plains... very sad to think this was all once pristine forest.

Oh and among the 6 or 7 items other than food you could buy on the plane, Richard Branson's autobiography kind of stood out :) The air captain also had a good sense of humour, which made for a very different safety presentation.

Photo 1 - View from plane over Adelaide.
Postcard - Victoria Square, Adelaide, from the air.

Arrived in Adelaide, got taxi to the hotel and was very impressed indeed with the motel (Royal Coach Motor Inn - check Google for info). The room's more like what you'd expect for a hotel. I headed out almost immediately and did the O-Bahn, which is a guided busway in Adelaide. Was very interesting - looked like a railway line made out of concrete except it was for buses! It's supposed to be the longest of its type in the world and the only one in Australia.

Met my friend Andrew at Tea Tree Plaza and we took the "scenic" route (90km!) back to the city via the Adelaide Hills, went through all sorts of little towns. If I ever do drive in Adelaide, I'll make sure to get a car with very good power steering - windy roads up and down steep hills seem to be the go here. Had a very good Indian dinner at Tandoori King (don't ask me why I went for a beef vindaloo which said "Hot!" on it in a menu written by Indians... but it was nice when I got over the burnt tongue) Got to see a bit of Adelaide nightlife in the city... it's not exactly stellar but I guess it serves the local purpose.

I've just walked through the eastern end of the city and am now at a net cafe.

Fun, fun, fun

2002-11-27T14:27:00.000+08:00

Having lots of fun planning my trip. Only 2 days to go! It's scary how much you can preplan these things. It looks like my time in Melbourne will be very busy - with out-trips to Phillip Island (commercial tour), Mt Dandenongs (on public transport), Mornington Peninsula (on public transport) as well as just getting around Melbourne. Having money is good *nods* I'm also going to get in as much of Launceston as possible in the two days I'm there.

That being said, I think I'll rename this trip from a friend's suggestion of "Andy's tour of the coldest parts of Australia" to "How to spend lots of money on public transport all in the name of having fun". :P

Anyway, cheers. I think this is the first day it's finally hit me that I'm just about to head off into the yonder!

Dec 2002 Trip - Itinerary

2002-11-11T16:53:00.000+08:00

A few people have asked me this, so I thought I'd post it here and people can copy and paste at will :)

(CDT = WST+2.5h, EDT = WST+3h - so 9pm in Perth is 11:30pm in South Australia or 12am in Victoria/Tasmania. Please keep this in mind when phoning me :)


Fri 29 Nov, 09:05 WST - Depart Perth (Virgin Blue Airlines)

Fri 29 Nov, 14:25 CDT - Arrive Adelaide



Mon 02 Dec, 07:05 CDT - Depart Adelaide on Wayward Bus

Thu 05 Dec, 12:00 EDT - Arrive Melbourne



Mon 09 Dec, 11:30 EDT - Depart Melbourne (Virgin Blue Airlines)

Mon 09 Dec, 12:30 EDT - Arrive Launceston, TAS



Tue 10 Dec, 07:05 EDT - Depart Launceston on Under Down Under

Mon 16 Dec, 18:00 EDT - Arrive Launceston



Tue 17 Dec, 13:00 EDT - Depart Launceston (Virgin Blue Airlines)

Tue 17 Dec, 14:00 EDT - Arrive Melbourne



Fri 20 Dec, 07:10 EDT - Depart Melbourne (Virgin Blue Airlines)

Fri 20 Dec, 08:30 WST - Arrive Perth.

It is safe to assume that where there is a space between the lines I am contactable, and when there is no space, I am not contactable - either due to air safety regulations or lack of signal (I will be doing some pretty remote places this time around :)

Hope this helps.

2001 Day 15 - Coming home.

2001-12-16T17:14:00.000+08:00

I haven't updated here for a while as it's been either work or busy since I got back on Sunday night. We're not getting the entire Christmas break, I have to work every working day except Christmas Eve over the period 9-5, except NYE when I managed to negotiate 8-4.

Fun stuff, eh? I have left the parting Canberra side of things aside for a later time, but it was completely mental. I'll give you the 2 minute summary to keep you intrigued:

1. There is no public bus to the airport, and the shuttle does not run weekends. I was parting Canberra at 3:30pm on a Sunday.

2. I got a bus to the city and then another to an "industrial" area called Fyshwick.

3. Everybody on the bus reminded me of the front page of http://batemanimation.com (EDIT: now folded into Scott Bateman's other enterprises, page had deranged idiots bleating at each other randomly), they were all completely mental and had serious issues.

4. Attempting to get a taxi from Fyshwick, 2 suburbs from the airport, to the airport involved:
a. The phone ringing out twice
b. When I finally got through, having to argue with an unfriendly operator.
c. No cab for 10 minutes.
d. Having to use a mobile number for a driver which he'd given me earlier in the week to obtain a taxi, which promptly arrived.

The flight was easy enough, and I got to Perth at 7:50pm local time (10:50pm EDT, 11:50am GMT). Oh, and getting a regional airline when you are right next to the propeller is a bad idea - it's like sitting in front of a stroboscope for 45 minutes and I couldn't see when I got off in Melbourne Airport.

Views of our national capital.

2001-12-14T22:26:00.000+08:00

Before continuing, I'll explain here that Canberra has two city centres, so in order to avoid confusion Canberrans call the seat of Federal Parliament "Capital Hill" on south of Lake Burley Griffin, and the commercial and banking city area "Civic", on the north bank. They are linked by a bridge road called Commonwealth Avenue. Most of the attractions in Canberra are in the Capital Hill region.

I thought I'd use this post to explain some of the oddities one or two of my friends have heard about already by mobile phone. So if this is old ground, you know who you are. :)

1. Conversation on bus yesterday. From back - tall guy in black shirt, about 18, two rough looking guys in their late 30s or early 40s (Man and Other Man), to their right a mid-teen couple (Boy and Girl) who are making out on the seat. I was sitting directly in front of them, and to my left (to the men's front) was a stately looking middle aged lady (Lady). Everyone I've repeated it to thinks it's the funniest yet.

Man: You know what pisses me off?
Other Man: What, mate?
Man: Wankers.
Other Man: Yeah.
Man: They're everywhere. Wankers everywhere you go.
Other Man: Too true, mate.
Man: Wankers, wankers, wankers. Can't get away from them.

[Boy stops making out with Girl just long enough to say]

Boy: Hey, would you mind toning down the language a bit?
Man: Are you offended by "wankers"?
Boy: Yes, I am.
Man: Would "tossers" be better? Would you be offended by "tossers"?

[Guy at back and me laugh softly so as not to attract attention. Men fall silent for about 3-4 mins]

Other Man: We've been on f##king welfare for 20 years.
Man: Yeah, it pisses me off, you know?

Lady: I'm offended too. If you don't stop talking like that, I'm going to have to get a higher authority, and they'll do something about it. Just you see.

[Men shake heads, boy at back and me laugh a little]
[Boy and Girl get off bus]
[Men stay silent all the way to Woden, where Lady gets off. Once she's off:]

Man: F##king wanker.

[Other man shakes head, then they alight from bus.]

2. Christmas carols at Woden shopping centre. In keeping with the fact that most people listen to rap here (apparently there was a riot at a cinema when a recent movie preview with Dr Dre (EDIT: 'Training Day') aired and only a certain number of people could get preview tickets), they have jazzed up the children's choir a bit by adding a boom box. Hearing the children sing in time with the boombox was somewhere between amusing and vastly depressing. The teachers told me they'd been training for 3 weeks. It was apparently supposed to mean Christmas was relevant even in the present day.

3. A certain fast food outlet - I won't say where it was as I perfectly understand the teens' predicament.

Man: I'd like a meal deal.
Female Cashier (about 15): Certainly, sir. Would you like ketchup with that?
Man: No, but I'd like a tomato sauce.
Cashier: Yes, certainly, one ketchup.
Man: No! I said tomato sauce. What part of that don't you understand?
Cashier: We have to call it ketchup, sir. [Quietly - but I was nearby] I hope you understand, but we are not allowed to call it anything other than ketchup, you can get fired for less.
Man: OK. [Spitefully] Ketchup, then. You have lemon squash?
Cashier: Lift or Sprite?
Man: Just lemon squash would be fine.
Cashier: Well, we have Lift, and we have Sprite.
Man: Don't bother. I'll go to KFC where they don't go in for this American crap.

[Man leaves store]

Obviously he doesn't know what that K stands for :)

2001 Day 12-14 - Canberra

2001-12-14T21:50:00.000+08:00

The section of the holiday in Canberra has been substantially more mundane and boring than the previous sections.. In two days, I will be back in Perth, and I won't deny that I view that as something of a positive.

Basic summary of holiday in Canberra to date.

Monday 10th
3:00pm - Arrived in Canberra as previously detailed on Kendell Airlines flight 8528.
4:30pm - Set off for city centre, ended up with National Library, dinner and walk.
9:30pm - Returned to Canberra Central Apartments to spend my night there. Talked with Steven.

Tuesday 11th
8:30am - Breakfast at Canberra Central, and checkout.
10:30am - Went to Belconnen shopping centre. Kmart's passport photography centre dead. Got my Kodak disposables from Melbourne developed at highly overpriced cost. ($16 a piece, and no free folder)
2:30pm - Emerged tired, hungry and annoyed from Belconnen, went to Civic.
4:00pm - Not much joy there, although I had time to post the previous entry. Returned to Belconnen to pick up photos. Thankfully, they worked out.
7:00pm - Left there, arrived at Stuart's place 20km S of the city to nice home-cooked meal. He had to go out so I had a long lost reunion with 2 of my CDs (Stabbing Westward and Manic Street Preachers) which cheered me up no end and then chatted to Jon.

Wednesday 12th
10:30am - Woke up.
12:00pm - Somehow ended up back at Belconnen. Just don't ask.
4:00pm - after concluding service standards at this shopping centre are at an Australia-wide low, not limited to extremely poor service while collecting a refund for passport photos I was very unhappy with, experience great catharsis by filling in a Westfield "How did we serve you?" form. It contained no swearing or abuse, but was in very strong terms. I felt better afterwards.
6:00pm - Back in Civic. I noticed I had a bit of a sore throat and cough, but as I regularly have sinus issues, wrote it off as nothing. Came home to more home cooking - this time a form of spaghetti bolognese. Was nic :)
11:00pm - After chatting with Steven, begun to realise this was no ordinary cough and started drinking large amounts of fluids, taking Vitamin C.

Thursday 13th
8:40pm - After various rather revolting episodes in the dunny overnight, woke up for the last time with a full blown headache and sinus cold (what people call the flu, but it isn't influenza).
12:30pm - Finally made up my mind to leave the house. Went to Civic.
2:00pm - Got ripped off by foreign taxi driver en route to Telstra Tower. The views of the city were beautiful - Canberra is a very spaced out city with lots of green and forested areas throughout its suburbs. I enjoyed a small snack on top of the Tower.
4:30pm - Left tower. Some weird notion possessed me to take a shortcut by walking through the forest instead of catching a cab down the winding road.
6:00pm - Got to bottom, quite exhausted and dehydrated (it was, after all, 27oC) but I was happy I'd done it. Caught cab to Civic, bought drink, went home.
11:30pm - After nice long chat with Stuart, went to bed.

Friday 14th
8:30am - Woke up. Internet down, so decided to go out despite cold/flu and the prevailing humidity that's kicked in today.
12:00pm - After getting my photos done *properly*, I went to New Parliament House intending to stay there maybe half an hour.
2:30pm - Emerged from New Parliament House. OK, the rest of Capital Hill can wait till tomorrow, I guess. Went back to Civic and this time went into the shops there and had a pie and a litre of Solo Lemon Squash. (OK, I was thirsty).
4:00pm - Returned but caught wrong bus! Ended up at Woden shops (6-7km SSW).
5:00pm - After intense levels of boredom and amusement, left for Tuggeranong shops (15km S).
7:00pm - Returned home. Tuggeranong's a nice place, just strange.
9:30pm - The present time. Stuart will return later, he's out role-playing. I'm amusing myself by playing with my LJ style and drinking lots of water to combat the humidity and my headache.

2001 Day 10-11 - Canberra

2001-12-10T15:26:00.000+08:00

Monday 10 December 2001, Melbourne

Spent my final hours in Melbourne in the city, the weather changed at least four times while I was there. Got back and had missed the Skybus, so had to get a taxi for $40 to the airport. When I got there, the flight had been so delayed that I could have caught the Skybus anyway. Damn. I also failed the security check as I have so many coins, keys, and god knows what else on my person that I had to take them all out and put them in trays then pick them up again. The guards, thankfully, were very sympathetic, treating it as some kind of machine anomaly and they apologised a few times.

The flight to Canberra, a city of barely 300,000 - well, my first ever time on a regional airline. 42 seater, with sheepskin seats. No safety video with a column of female attendants performing in synchronicity what I call the "Emergency Exit Macarena" - there was just one guy reading a transcript of the video. It was noisy as we were close to the motor, and when they told us there'd be turbulence coming into Canberra it would be nice if they had warned us we could pick yesterday's breakfast up on the way down. Eugh.

A friend unexpectedly met me at Canberra and drove me to the city, I hadn't seen him in 4 years so it was a good experience all round :) hopefully I'll be going to a cafe or something with him later in the week. My apartment was beautiful - shame I only got 1 night in it. It had balcony views of parts of the city and the mountains tracing the outline of the city.

I then went for a long walk, during which I discovered the following things:
(1) The average speed on main roads in Canberra is 80km/h, rather than the usual 60.
(2) Drivers in Canberra are completely mental.
(3) The people employed to help us tourists know less about the city than their own brochures contain.
(4) Ignore any signs indicating costs or closing times - "till late" on a cafe means about 7pm and something advertised at one price could be much higher or lower than advertised. Furthermore, the locals seem to know this and regard you as somewhat silly for not guessing/knowing.

I got some beautiful photos too in the Commonwealth Avenue region of the city overlooking Lake Burley Griffin.

Tuesday 11 December 2001, Canberra

I checked out of my room and headed off to Belconnen, about 6km NW of the city, and got completely lost in a huge shopping centre, then caught the wrong bus and found myself on the NSW border at the far north of the metro area rather than in the city (the driver, thankfully, took pity on me and drove me back).

This place is starting to annoy me. Contrary to expectation, most things are expensive here (sometimes up to twice the price of Per/Adl/Mel), and I don't even get a free presentation folder with my photos. Oh well.

Oh and the Snowy Mountains are too inconvenient to do - it seems none of the tourist companies here have realised the potential in tourism in having people stay in Canberra and go to the Snowies. I'd have to stay there 2 nights and pay an absolute bomb. There are no guided tours whatsoever.

I'd better get off this net terminal and go back to Belconnen to pick up my photos actually, because unlike anywhere else I've been in, "Express 1 Hour" means 4.5 hours. I still can't get over the fact they charge $16.60 to develop a roll.

Hopefully my holiday in Canberra will improve from here. It is a nice city, and maybe my annoyance with its daily norms will subside in a day or so :)

2001 Day 9 - Melbourne, Great Ocean Road

2001-12-09T22:31:00.000+08:00

Tonight is my last night in my second favourite city in Australia, after my own city, Perth. I really am going to miss this place and it's with some sadness that I realise I may not get to come here again for another couple of years. Melbourne's a big city with a soul, unlike Sydney which just comes across to me as lifeless and somehow having lost its way amidst the hustle and bustle. This is my 2nd time in Melbourne - the first being in 1997 living with my ex - and it's probably the only other city where I've genuinely felt at home.

To complete last night's entry, I went down to the Flinders Street station and listened to Chris the busker for around 2 hours, then walked home. This must be one of the few cities where you can walk home at 1am without having to seriously worry about your personal safety (that being said, I did take precautions anyway)

Today was the Great Ocean Road, which runs all the way from Torquay (about 100km SW of Melbourne) to Warrnambool (around 350km west). We didn't go all the way to Warrnambool - we went only to Port Campbell. But the views were magnificent. Huge limestone natural monuments formed by the relentless Bass Strait (between Victoria and Tasmania) and the Southern Ocean (which goes to Antarctica), coloured with the minerals in Australia's soils, meant there was some real sites to see.

I don't really have time to go through all of them, but it was mindblowing, that is for sure. If you want to have a look, go look on Google for pictures of the London Bridge, Loch Ard Gorge, 12 Apostles, Otley Ranges, or the Surf Coast.

Tomorrow at 1:25pm local time, I am off to Canberra. I really wish I'd had more time in Melbourne now - due to the way the flights work I spend one day more in Canberra than either of the other cities, but there is less to do there.

2001 Day 8 - Melbourne, Dandenongs

2001-12-09T21:52:00.000+08:00

Enjoyed a real cooked breakfast (as per previous day, and I forgot to mention a beef stroganov dinner I had at the Miami on Thursday night - which was yummy) and then headed off into the city. Today's tour started with a river cruise on the Yarra River, going through from the City of Melbourne through to the port area about 1/2 way up to Port Phillip Bay. We then did a bus tour of the city, seeing some of the tourist attractions of Melbourne itself, before heading off to the Mount Dandenongs (I still don't know why they're not called the Dandenong Mountains, or why they're nowhere near the urban centre of Dandenong). They are simply beautiful - they're like many other forests I've seen but much greener. The mountain ash trees (a member of the eucalypt family common in Australian native forests - there's over 600 of them) remind me a little of the karri trees in Pemberton south of Perth. Unfortunately, I felt the tour rushed through the Dandenongs - I hope to come up here and spend a decent amount of time on them someday.

I've so far spent the evening in the city after having a buffet at the All Seasons Welcome Hotel - wasn't brilliant but was decent (and budget - around $30) and I'm more than overfull :) I should really find something to do - seeing if Chris is playing down at Flinders Street sounds good right about now.

2001 Day 7 - Phillip Island

2001-12-09T21:50:00.000+08:00

Friday 7 December 2000, Melbourne - Nearly all of today was spent on a Gray Line tour. None of the pics you see in this section are mine - I have no access to a scanner, and simply looked for good quality representative ones on Google.

12:20 - Picked up from hotel by coach

12:50 - Arrived in city by roundabout route

13:30 - Left Melbourne - went down St Kilda Road (this road is simply phenomenal - two roadways each direction each of two lanes, a big multi-tramway in the middle, and median strips between each, and tree-lined on both sides - it is huge!) and drove down the bayside suburbs with a full commentary.

15:15 - After going somewhat inland, our first stop - Warrook Farm. Apparently it's too wet for the sheep, but there's plenty of kangaroos and wombats (for those of you who think everywhere in Australia has them, it's in fact quite rare to see them without going to a place like this).

16:15 - After a considerable drive (including a causeway), we got to Phillip Island's Koala Conservation Park and got to see real life koalas as well as some information displays.

17:00 - Went to Cowes (the main town of Phillip Island) and, despite the tour guide's recommendations of expensive restaurants, bought a yiro souvlaki at a local fish & chips shop for $5.50, and loved it. I agree with the person who said Cowes is blatantly cashing in on the tourists rather than providing a meaningful gateway to the island, but even so, it was still nice :) I hung around some fishermen and got to meet a couple of other tourists, including Yoko, from Japan, and Joe, from Italy. I'm still stunned at the lack of Australians on the tours I've been on.

19:00 - Seal Rocks, and I wasn't going to pay the $10.50 entry fee, so hung around the free area (shop, binoculars, beach areas). Bought a few soft toys too :) (EDIT 2002 - This centre was destroyed by a tornado 8 months after my visit.)

20:00 - Penguin Parade information centre - saw some of the computerised displays and shops - the centre was busier than some shopping centres I've seen given the time and day.

20:51 - The penguin parade itself. A single shout and everyone was generally heading towards the seated area, but I'd been tipped off to check the boardwalk instead.
The penguins are like nothing I've ever seen. They're about 30cm high and they kind of waddle like a duck, and they're just adorably cute :) Basically they all run up from the water onto the beach at sunset in a huge group every night, then once onshore, preen themselves and, in smaller groups, run up to their burrows in the hills surrounding the beach where the chicks are waiting for their nightly feed. The viewing area is floodlit so you can see them pretty easily.

22:00 - It's all over (the penguins haven't stopped running up, but the floodlights are switched off and the boardwalk is closed by the rangers). I should note that any photography or video is banned due to the effect that flashes have on the penguins, however I was easily able to obtain professionally done photos of them taken some years ago relatively easily.

Searching for "phillip island penguin parade pictures" in Google will return a number of links you can look at, and you can look at the official site. This so far has definitely been the highlight of my little tour, alongside the Wayward tour I took on Day 4.

2001 Day 5-6 - Adelaide, Melbourne

2001-12-07T01:05:00.000+08:00

Checkout time at the hotel was 10am, so it was a rush to meet it. One of my Net friends, Jamie from Melbourne, was, oddly enough, in Adelaide, so we spent most of the day together ... we've known each other nearly 6 years but we hadn't managed to meet until now! :) But it worked out great, and I went practically straight from Jamie's car to the airport, where I sweltered in totally un-Adelaide-like humidity waiting for my plane.

The plane flight was just over an hour, was really weird, like taking off into the clouds then coming down almost no time later. There was a lot of turbulence due to the aforementioned weather - when I got into Melbourne it was humid but fine. (It is now even more humid, cold and pelting with rain too - yes, this is a Melbourne summer.) Took the Skybus to Spencer Strete before getting a taxi to the hotel (Hotel Claremont, South Yarra) which I'd booked about a month before for my 5-day stay in Melbourne. The taxi driver told me he wouldn't stay there even if he was paid to, and said I was to receive a shock. I ignored his ramblings as that of a disgruntled taxi driver.

Anyway, I got there and paid in advance as per their policy and got to my room and ... Well, that was entirely another story. When I get home, I'll scan in the pics so you can see it, but the double bed took up 3/4 of the room. There was a bit to the left and front of the bed you could *just* squeeze through. The room looked nothing like the photos on their website. There was no fridge, no power point, communal bathroom/toilet down the corridor that stank of chlorine and smoke (the hotel is non-smoking), and the "wardrobe" was this metal wire thing. No telephone, either - they said they might have telephones by mid-2002. It was positively claustrophobic. At least I had my mobile.

So I went down and told the duty manager I was unhappy with the room - he basically said (politely) that it was budget accommodation in Melbourne and my $68 a night was an amazing bargain for the room I did get.

Thanks to my parents who looked diligently on the net (oh yeah, no phone or yellow pages either) I negotiated my way through a city of 3.5 million on public transport (with considerable help from passengers, one of whom missed two trains to find me my tram!) to find two hotels to check out. The first had no free rooms, the second, Miami Motor Inn, was amazingly good. The room which I was taken to was $70 and fully kitted out - and even a cooked breakfast chucked in. I was also impressed with the hospitality they showed to someone who had literally wandered in off the street at 11pm.

I ambled back to the Claremont one as they said I had to pay a night, so I thought I might as well use it up. The bed was comfortable enough, so it wasn't a problem. (My exotic view, by the way, was that of a truck loading zone, considering I was in the heart of the best cafe and shopping district in Melbourne).

Woke up to a cereal breakfast - the saving grace of Hotel Claremont was the overabundance of extremely good looking teenagers staying there. (Am I really that snobbish at 23 that I insist on a fully serviced twin/double room when I go to a city for a few days? :)

Had fun with the luggage, as I had to cart it by train and tram to the new place in West Melbourne. I should mention at this point that Melbourne is one of the few cities in the world to not only have maintained a tram system (most cities, including my own, abandoned it decades ago) but have made it a modern and efficient mode of transport.

The new hotel room wasn't ready yet so I went back into the city. Melbourne's weather is unpredictable at the best of times, but it was humid and/or wet for most of it. I found the 5-storey Melbourne Central/Daimaru centre in the northern CBD, but couldn't find my way out. I ended up buying a Chinese meal and 2x600mL drinks to keep me happy, and then went back to the hotel and had a well-deserved shower.

I also found the State Library of Victoria (the state of Australia which Melbourne is the capital of) which is actually really decent, and booked a couple of tours for myself (see Day 7 & 8). I spent the evening eating a nice Thai meal and standing in the subway under Flinders Street train station listening to an incredible acoustic guitar player called Chris who also had a decent voice... I might wander back there tonight and see if he's playing tonight.

Then I came back to my hotel and tried to have a conversation with Jon, however it seems to have become a rather unstable phone connection - either Orange (UK) or Optus (Aus) has issues with international bandwidth, I'd say.

2001 Day 4 - Adelaide

2001-12-06T12:44:00.000+08:00

Finally got into a netcafe, so here goes ...

I woke up late, and in the rush managed to miss my bus, so had the Adelaide taxi experience. It was fun - the driver was a nice guy and it wasn't too expensive (it was $11 from where I was into the city).

So I get to the tour company, and there's like a minivan outside. I was kind of surprised, but yeah ... it turned out to be amazingly good, with only two others, myself and the driver/tour guide, Bruce. We got around the entire south of Fleurieu Peninsula in it, and it didn't have the limitations of a larger vehicle so we went into quite a lot of nice places. I saw lots of rolling countryside, nice big forested areas (very different to others I've seen as Adelaide is a much drier climate than both Perth and Sydney) and huge, undulating beaches. I had a brilliant meal in the town of Victor Harbor (it was started as a US whaling post, hence the spelling), and had a ride on Australia's only horse-drawn tram. The driver had a great sense of humour and at times quite jokingly turned on the whole Russell Coight touring guide voice. More later... I found out that Wayward also have an Adelaide-Melbourne tour via the Great Ocean Road, might be interesting for a future point in time.

Then I got back to Adelaide (the tour guide deposited me right at Najjar's Cafe in North Adelaide) and I had a great evening out with my Adelaide friend Andrew L, was a great chat and good food too.

When I got back I phoned Jon but the mobile network kept playing up so the convo was very fragmented towards the end... I then had my last night's sleep in Adelaide.

2001 Day 1-3 - Adelaide

2001-12-03T19:42:00.000+08:00

Sat 1 Dec, 11:15am Perth time (GMT +8.0h) - Boarded Ansett Mark II plane AN342 to Adelaide.

4pm Adelaide time (GMT +10.5h) (written on plane) While the nice white fluffy clouds are great to look at, they become something of a drag after about two hours of nothing but clouds. En route to Adelaide. Ansett Mk II has been an interesting experience. The friendly lady doing regular rounds with plastic cups and bottled water is a relief, although I can't say much for the donated cricket and music videos. We got a cute little snack pack thingy too. After reading the Adelaide Advertiser onboard, I get the impression I'm making for a large country town, but who knows until I land. I'm Bored!!!

6:30pm - At Adelaide International Motel in Anzac Highway, Glenelg North, where I will be spending my next 5 days. We got off the plane *onto the tarmac*, which I thought bizarre and mildly comical. We're only 8-9km from the CBD but looks almost like a cleaned-up version of a Perth outer suburb (like Gosnells or something). I'm about to check out the sights around Glenelg. The motel room looks really nice, but has an old (i.e. 70s era) dial phone and an old TV.

10pm - Back from my trip all over the place. Went to Glenelg (which is basically a quite nice beach with a paved square at the top, and a long street coming out of it with restaurants and shops the way down) and tried to find an affordable restaurant, but failing to do so, bought a steak burger and chips at an overpriced cafe. An identified problem here is getting drinks at an affordable price - I seem to get dehydrated easily. The steak burger and chips was nice but didn't really thrill me, and a random person on the street told me to check out Chinatown in the city (one block from Victoria Square). I'm now glad I did, as I now have special fried rice and beef in black bean in two little containers. I got to check out the Glenelg tram, which is a restored 1929 tram and is actually an integral part of the public transport here (Note 3/12/01 - I found out today they used to be all over Adelaide but now only this one route remains).

I have two disposable cameras (one flash, one non-flash) with me at all times. God knows how the photos will turn out, but we can only hope.

Sun 2/12/01, 8pm Adelaide time (GMT +10.5h) - Well, I had a fun day. I only got 4 hours sleep, because they had a wedding downstairs with nightclub type music until 11pm, then at 3am the most spectacular lightning storm I've ever seen hit Adelaide. I wish I had better cameras - this was just awesome.

I got bored of being awake at such an early hour and phoned a friend in Northern Ireland, we chatted for a while and it was good hearing a familiar voice again. :) I went into the city fairly early on, checked out Rundle Mall (apparently Australia's oldest shopping mall) and found another good Chinese restaurant there in a food court. Checked out the State Library in North Tce and found out that in the parklands just outside, they have live local music all weekend. I wish they had that in Perth.

(Adelaide is surrounded by a belt of parklands about 800m wide - it's most obvious in this photo I took the following year from the west.)

For my own amusement I then caught an Adelaide train, which reminds me of the Melbourne ones except that they're much cleaner, much more comfy seats and only one carriage. That is to say (for those not familiar with Melbourne trains) that they're about 35 years old and only travel at like 40-50km/h, and have door handles so you manually open the doors to get on. The train stations were also reminiscent of Melbourne. Was going to go to Noarlunga Centre but was advised by several passengers it was a waste of time, so I got off at Brighton beach, south of Glenelg, and ate aforementioned Chinese meal. It was nice, and the weather was even good for the time. (Not for long, but at least I got a good photo of Brighton). I then headed back into the city, and caught up with another friend (Steven) on the phone, he was at the WACA watching Aust vs NZ and it was kind of fun hearing things at the time they happened. I got back to my hotel with very stiff knees and a headache, mostly due to walking a lot and the humidity.

Adelaide is a paradox. Its suburbs are like a reminder of some past point in time, clean, distinctly dated, and a lot of very old cars. The city centre (CBD) on the other hand has wide streets and is fairly bustling. I've almost been hit by cars a few times. They also have weird laws here about pedestrian crossings so it's possible for cars to come in your direction even if you have a little green man - this phenomenon only seems to occur in the city centre.

Mon 3/12/2001 - The main news is that I went to Hahndorf, the entirely German town 24km SE of Adelaide. Those in other Australian cities may be astounded that in Adelaide, once you get 4.5km East of the city centre you're in rolling hills and bushland on roads with hairpin bends in them (one called Devil's Elbow even) ... It was a very nice trip with an informative tour guide, and we got 2 hours in Hahndorf. I learned a lot about Adelaide and Hahndorf and the surrounding areas from him - however the stiff knee thing has become a real problem. I also got real strawberries from Beerenberg farm, which supplies Qantas as well as a number of major hotels with jams, sauces and other things. They even rode me right back to my motel (a big thing considering how far out it is).

I decided to leave the Adelaide Casino buffet for another night - I'm too full up to really get any value out of it, thanks to the wonderful food in Hahndorf (free scones, a chocolate eclair of the cake variety, and handmade chocolates - what more could one ask for?) I'm having an early night, then checking out Victor Harbor later (More on that later :) I've been told by everyone that I'll enjoy it, it will be more relaxing than the last two days.

Melbourne on Wednesday night ...

I'm leaving on a jet plane...

2001-12-01T02:52:00.000+08:00

..today at 11:35am on Ansett Mark II, flight AN342, to Adelaide. It's amazing to think I can travel that far in just 3 hours - the wonders of modern flight.

For those who wish to know, the distance between Perth and Adelaide is not dissimilar to that between Belfast, N.Ireland, and Istanbul, Turkey, or between Los Angeles CA and Birmingham AL - it's about 2,600 km.

My itinerary is as follows:
1 Jan - 5 Jan Adelaide (staying in Adelaide Int'l Motel, Glenelg)
5 Jan - 10 Jan Melbourne (staying at Hotel Claremont, South Yarra)
10 Jan - 16 Jan Canberra

Will keep you posted with updates from netcafes wherever I go :P

wheee!

2001-11-05T17:14:00.000+08:00

OK, if you got a call from me today on your messaging services, I was not on drugs. That's just sleep deprivation mixed with joy. I hate insomnia *sigh*

My holiday's back on! YAY! If you're reading this, you may remember from an earlier entry that the collapse of Ansett Airlines in Australia (Australia's second biggest airline) resulted in me losing my holiday that I'd booked last year.

Well, Ansett Mark II (yes, that's the name of the company!) were able to arrange it all for me. So if you're in Adelaide, Melbourne or Canberra I should be in your neighbourhood sometime next month :) I'll be staying in a nice motel/B&B in the South Yarra area in Melbourne, arrangements have yet to be pinned down for the other two.

I am so happy!! Oh, and in my semi-weird state this morning I phoned The Met, Melbourne's public transport company, and ended up on the phone for nearly an hour to a really nice CSO ... She reckoned I was the nicest person to have called her all year, and liked my insights on customer service from the inside (she could relate to nearly all of them :)

Anyway, time to leave this aside. I'm at work, and plenty of work to be done, and I doubt I'll be awake at the end of my shift. But oh well ...