Will has left the building

Well, actually, he's left the whole country. On Tuesday I walked him to the subway station and sent him off to the States. And, believe it or not, because of the time difference and the direction he's flying, he arrives in San Francisco just a few short hours later, even with a layover in Fiji and another in LA. :-)


I don't know if I lost a bet or what, but I somehow managed to promise Will that I'd write up a glowing post about him and how great it is to travel with him. Oh, and how he was the only person from home who managed to meet up with me on the road (I think that's supposed to make him better than the rest of you? lol) (But there's still time to change that! I'm not home yet! Any takers??)


Ah, wait. I remember now. I insisted on having permission to post this picture of him and he agreed, but only with the above conditions:

(Will ironing his tie. While he's wearing it.)


Oh man. This makes me giggle every. single. time. I see it. This wasn't even taken in Australia, but rather in Vegas when he was driving cross country from Philly to San Fran with his friends right before he came here.


Yes. So. We had a lot of fun. Will and I both agree that the Oz highlights were diving in the Great Barrier Reef and petting 'roos at the Perth Zoo. Actually, we both liked the west coast of Australia (what little we saw of it) better than the east coast and wish that we'd spent more time there instead (Perth is on the west coast). All of the pictures of "Serious" Will were fun to take and a great running joke to have (one example can be seen here). Having an open ended game of rummy kept my competitive little heart going. For the record, I won - 7230 to 6905 (and we only started keeping score in, Airlie Beach, was it?). Four weeks and one day of traveling together and I only barely wanted to kill him - that's something he already knows, so don't feel bad that he'll be reading it here for the first time, btw.


I guess that about covers it. I was really glad to have a travel buddy and even gladder that it was a buddy from home. If it weren't for Will, I'd be feeling SUPER homesick right about now because Australia is so similar to the States and yet I'm so very far away still. Ah, but that's a whole 'nother topic and one I'll write about soon.


How'd I do with "your" post, Will? :-) I miss you already. See you in San Francisco!

Laziness reigns

So, I'm really loving Sydney. In a lot of ways it reminds me of the Pacific Northwest, an area that I would move to in a heartbeat. I've been enjoying walking around, checking out the neighborhoods of Kings Cross, Chinatown, Darling Harbour, and others that I don't remember the names of. We've really just been taking it kind of easy. After a month of traveling, Will seems to be growing weary of it and has been happy doing a whole lot of nothing for his last few days here before he heads to San Francisco to start his new job. 

(Not a great shot of the Sydney Harbour, but I was digging the way the clouds looked.)

(The Sydney Tower there in the middle.)

There hasn't been much to talk about since our day of symphony and soccer. We've gone to the grocery store so that we could save money by not eating out and I've really enjoyed being in the kitchen and cooking again (even with the bare bones facilities that the hostel offers). And, actually, just doing a whole lot of nothing saves money, too. Besides the neighborhood wandering, we're also doing a lot of reading, card playing, travel related research online, movie watching, and Nintendo DS playing (well, Will is anyway). 

So that's about it. On Tuesday the 29th Will heads to San Fran and the day after that I head to Melbourne. I'm also finalizing plans to move on from Australia, but more on that later.

Sydney Day One: Symphony and Soccer!

We arrived in Sydney a bit late on the 22nd. There'd been a mistake with the reservation, so rather than being in the dorm room that we booked, they gave us a private room with two single beds instead. Being in a private room was a nice treat, but it meant that we had to check out the next morning and move into the dorm. Not a huge deal, it just ended up meaning that we were kind of stuck at the hostel. Then it ended up really not being a huge deal because it started raining with a vengeance and Will and I decided to turn lemons into lemonade by doing laundry and soaking up as much free internet as we could.

The rain eventually stopped which worked out perfectly for us because Will had surprised me with tickets to the Sydney Opera House. He's as good at keeping a secret as my sister which is to say that he's not, lol. They both get so excited about the surprise that they can't help but tell you all about it. So I actually knew about the tickets a couple of weeks ago.

Will didn't own a suit so we went shopping for one during our whirlwind tour of Brisbane. And I didn't really have appropriate symphony attire either (I sent the little black dress that I got in Dubai home ages ago), but Rhian had given me a dress that I thought might work. I just needed to get something to wear over it since warm weather wear isn't working so well in Sydney's 12C/55F temps. Getting dressed up to go to the symphony was really fun; I put on makeup and everything! :-) Even Will got into the idea of dressing up and most guys don't usually go for that.

The symphony was fun, but I almost liked taking pictures of the Opera House more than the concert itself. Will and I were hamming it up and totally marking ourselves as tourists by taking cheesy picture after cheesy picture. I particularly like that we both wore Chuck Taylors to the symphony. Sydney is just laid back enough that it worked.

After the concert we made our way back to our hostel's neighborhood to a sports bar that we'd looked up earlier in the day. You see, with the time difference we haven't been able to watch any of the World Cup soccer games live - the USA games have been airing here at 4:30am. But last night they played against Algeria and it aired at midnight. We figured we were already out so why not? We made a pit stop at a 24 hour pie shop called Pie Face where I pretty much was in heaven and wanted to eat every sweet and savory thing in sight. We settled for a shared slice of cheesecake instead. :-) The England/Slovenia game was airing at the same time as the USA/Algeria game so it was a divided sports bar, especially since the outcome of each game could affect who moved on. Every time we heard the England fans cheering we had to quickly glance over at their screen to see what was going on (and maybe boo just a little bit). Eventually we were just too tired and decided not to watch the rest of the game. Unfortunately, that meant that, like ToadMama, we also missed the US game winning goal. Grrr, so frustrating. We found out the score this morning when we woke up.

If you ask me, not a bad start to Sydney. . .

Sand and more sand

(Female dingo on the beach at Fraser Island)

Have you ever driven a car on a beach before? I don't think it's something most people get a chance to do because most beaches frown on that kind of thing. I still haven't driven myself across a beach, but the driver of the tour that Will and I joined did a lot of beach driving particularly since Fraser Island is the world's largest sand island.
 
And there was definitely a lot of it. We saw soft sand, hard sand, yellow sand, orange sand, red sand, black sand, and sand that was so fine and mineral laden that could use it to polish your skin AND your jewelry. For two days we were driven around the island, stopping at different spots along the way for pictures or a walk through a rainforest or a break by a lake. There were only six of us in our group, plus the driver, and that was kind of nice because in the peak season there could have been as many as 28. Rather than being in a huge bus, we were in a Land Cruiser and we were able to tailor the trip to the things we wanted to see and do.
 
The first night we stayed at a place called Happy Valley which is also where we had all of our meals. After dinner we played Scrabble with some of the others in our group and then called it an early night because we wanted to get up to see the sunrise. Come time for actually getting up, though, and I decided that my bed was warm and it was cold outside and I'd rather sleep in. Besides, I'd seen the sunrise during our overnight trip from Airlie Beach to Hervey Bay. I guess I never mentioned that, but then again, I also never mentioned that I finally crossed the equator into the southern hemisphere back during my overnight trip from Lake Toba to Bukittinggi, either. Details.
 
Highlights of the trip: We saw a handful of dingoes and that was pretty cool. They can be dangerous and there's signs all over the island about dingo safety, but the ones we saw just kind of glanced at us, saw that we weren't going to feed them, and moved on. Indian Head, in the north of the island, was one of my favorite spots. You had to walk up a 60m hill and from there you could look out and see for quite a distance, or you could look down into the ocean and see what kind of marine life you could spot. We saw dolphins and another woman in our group saw a stingray. Walking back down from Indian Head, we saw our driver pointing out to the ocean and we realized he'd spotted whales. Humpback whales have started their migration, so we stood watching for awhile to see if we'd spot them, too. We did, but to be honest, it was mostly blowhole splashes and a flicker of a whale tail. They were pretty far out so it wasn't as exciting as you might expect. But at least I can say I saw a humpback whale!

(The view from Indian Head)

We spent another night in Hervey Bay when we returned from Fraser Island and then left the next morning for Brisbane. Brisbane gets the whirlwind treatment as we're we were only here there for about 24 hours before we have had to catch our flight to Sydney. I think I would have really liked Brisbane - I'll have to explore it more another time if I have a chance - but we decided that since we'll have a week in Sydney, a huge city, we'd spend our time on Fraser instead of Brisbane, a much smaller city.

Happy Father's Day

Way back when I decided to take this trip, I held off on telling family at first and only told friends and colleagues. When I finally went to Dad with my plan, I expected at least some push back from him. But he surprised me by throwing his full support behind me. I even found out that that kind of world travel appealed to him, something I'd never known about him before.

The point is that today, on Father's Day, I want to thank my Dad for being supportive and encouraging and understanding. Of course he was all of those things when it came to this little trip o'mine, but he's always been those things. All fathers and daughters go through phases or periods of difficulty over the years, as we did, but I'm glad to say that today I'm closer to Dad than ever before. 

Dad, I miss you and our conversations at the island in the kitchen as you start dinner and I keep you company. I'm so excited that you're getting to do some world travel of your own (right now!) and I can't wait to join you at the island to hear all about it. I love you!

Overnight bus trips are the same no matter what country you're in

I said goodbye to Rhian and Marina yesterday (so sad!) as they took off north up the coast, going the direction we just came from. After we checked out of our hostel, there wasn't a whole lot for me and Will to do, so we decided to play cards, have a couple of beers, and just hang out until 8pm when we'd board the bus for Hervey Bay.

It turned out to be a good way to spend the day, especially since we sat on the balcony out in the sunshine. There was a tiny little wrench thrown into things at the first restaurant where we stopped. I'd ordered a chicken caesar salad. It wasn't good. At all. It was swimming in enough dressing for three salads and the bacon wasn't cooked all the way (yes, I know, bacon doesn't even belong in a caesar salad, but I was willing to forgive it since maybe Australians don't know that, lol). I asked the server if I could have another salad instead, she complied, but then turned back to say that she was still going to charge me for half of the caesar salad (that I hadn't eaten), plus the full cost of the second salad. At first I agreed because I was starving, but by the time she came back, I realized that was crazy. I again told her that I didn't think I should have to pay for a salad that I hadn't eaten and that I couldn't eat anyway because of the half-cooked bacon. She disagreed and said that since I ordered it, I had to pay for it and she cleared dishes and walked away. I realized that she'd taken my beer bottle even though I hadn't finished with it yet. When I asked her about it, she commented that she thought it was empty. She brought me a beer, but it clearly wasn't my original beer. For one thing, the bottle was icy cold, but it was strange because there was more beer than I'd had. The only thing Will and I could figure was that she opened a new beer and poured some of it out to approximate how much I had before she mistakenly took it off our table. Here's where it gets really weird. She came back to our table to pick up the check she'd dropped off, but we hadn't paid it yet. She told us that she wanted us to pay immediately and then leave because she didn't like my attitude. Wha?!?! Oh man, there's so many wrong things about this whole experience, but I think you all can probably figure it out on your own. I was so freakin' annoyed (and hungry! still!) at that point that I wanted to leave anyway. The whole thing was strange and had me shaking my head in wonderment for the rest of the day. It didn't stop us from our card playing session as we waited out the bus, though. In fact, the next place we went to had an awesome server who was just great.

8pm rolled around and it was time to head south to Hervey Bay. We've now been on four different Greyhound buses as we've traveled down the coast and none of the buses have been even close to capacity. Last night's bus was no different and this was a good thing as we were able to spread out a bit (ghetto upgrade anyone?). Spreading out only works so good, though, so neither of us slept too much (although the codeine I'm still taking probably helped me a little bit). We arrived in Hervey Bay right on time and were picked up by our hostel at the station. Considering how tired Will and I both are, I'm surprised we managed to bicycle around for hours today like we did. Then again, it is only 4pm now and we're like slugs in our room, with barely enough energy to even consider watching a movie. :-)

Tomorrow we are off to Fraser Island for a couple of days. Fraser is the world's largest sand island and can only be driven across with 4WD vehicles. It also has rainforest, lots of lakes, and DINGOES. I'm looking forward to the dingoes! So, just a heads up, I may not be around for a couple of days. . .

Four

Magnetic Island was the prettiest little island ever. There's something really nice about having beaches backed by mountains and that's just what Maggie was like. We stayed long enough to rent bikes and ride around the island a bit; Will got in some fishing and I got in some reading, so it was all perfectly relaxing. I hadn't been feeling better so I saw a doctor before we got to the island. This doctor informed me that since the antibiotics didn't seem to be helping, I most likely had a viral infection and I'd just have to let it do it's thing and go away on its own. I wasn't thrilled to hear that, but he prescribed acetaminophen with codeine for the pain, so that was something. That is, until I realized that since it was Sunday the pharmacy was closed and it was closed the next day because it was the Queen's birthday. Ugh, waiting two days for pills that I knew would make me feel better...

We headed off to Airlie Beach and look who we ran into:

(It wouldn't be Marina and Rhian if we weren't pulling faces.)

Well, we didn't actually run into them, not by chance or anything. It was a good week of figuring out the logistics and then a couple of days of us being on a boat and Rhian and Marina being on an island, but it was all worked out and we got to meet up. That makes four countries now that I've hung out with the British girls that I met way back in Pai. Poor Will, though. He was caught in the middle of a scream when Marina and I saw each other for the first time at the hostel and then he was treated to some serious girl talk as the three of us caught up. :-)

Mission: Incomplete

Will and I arrived in Mission Beach on Friday afternoon after a very pretty two hour drive south from Cairns. There’s not a lot to do in Mission Beach; we mostly chose it as one of two stops between Cairns and Airlie Beach, an 11 hour bus ride. Mission is known for two things, however.
 
The first thing is skydiving. Most people seem to come here for the skydiving. Although this is something I want to do, I’m saving it for New Zealand, so Dad will be happy to know that I haven’t jumped out of any perfectly good airplanes. Yet. If I’d been feeling better, I probably could’ve been talked into skydiving, but unfortunately I seem to be feeling worse. The antibiotics don’t seem to be doing their thing. I have a couple of days worth of doses left and if I’m not better by then, I’ll have to head back to a doctor.
 
The second thing Mission Beach is known for are their cassowaries. Are you familiar with these guys? They are big, flightless birds, kind of similar to emus but supposedly pretty dangerous. Like, one local told us that the government is trying to relocate one cassowary because he’s killed a number of cats and dogs in the neighborhood. They’re a little crazy looking and I’d love to see one. Considering how I feel, though, and how I barely left my room the entire time we were in Mission Beach, the cassowary sighting has been a bust.
 
Actually, since we leave Mission Beach first thing Sunday morning, the whole place has kinda been a bust. But we’re hoping that Magnetic Island will see me feeling better and doing more than sleeping and reading all day. Fingers crossed!

Underwater

So would you like to see more of what I saw while I was here? I thought I'd share some more pictures since they weren't all available to me when I posted last.

(pink anemonefish)

 (giant clam - they come in all kinds of colors, not just this bluish color)

 (Regal angelfish)

 (Hawksbill sea turtle. Although my favorite shot of him is this one.)

 

If you'd like to see even more, they're all up now over at my Flickr page.

GREAT Barrier Reef

We’re back from the liveaboard and Will and I both agree that it was totally worth the money (even though I only did seven of the 11 dives; more on that later). They were long days that went like this: dive, eat, sleep, repeat three more times. Days one and two consisted of four dives, including a night dive on each day, and day three there were three dives.
 
For the first dive, Will and I both ran out of air pretty early, with our dives only lasting about 23 minutes. We had to get our dive feet (flippers?) back on and get used to things. By dive two we were feeling more comfortable and it just kept getting better from there. Our air was lasting longer, our buoyancy control was greater, and we were able to goof off a bit and have some fun. This was the first time that I was diving with a dive buddy that I knew and now I kinda think that I’d prefer a known dive buddy in the future. Particularly on longer dives where we’d seen pretty much all there was to see but we wanted to still make the most of the air left in our tanks, that’s when we’d start chasing each other, doing flips and twirls, and taking out regulators to stick out tongues. You know, general silliness.
 

Eventually it came time for the first night dive. Perhaps you’ll remember that I have a fear of dark water and this was one of the reasons that I wasn’t even sure if I’d be able to scuba dive. Coincidentally, I was feeling a bit feverish just before the night dive on the first day, so I decided to sit out that dive. People asked me why I wasn’t diving and I said that I wasn’t feeling well. Oh, and that I was a little bit terrified. J I figured the fever was the universe’s way of telling me that I wasn’t ready for a night dive yet.
 
How could I possibly detail every dive or everything that we did for the past three days? I couldn’t so you get highlights instead:
 
* Day two, dive three. We rented a digital underwater camera and Will was in charge of taking as many pictures as he could. He got pictures and video of a sea turtle, including a few seconds of video that had me and the turtle in it. I also got some funny shots of Will wearing sunglasses underwater.
 
* Day two, dive four, night dive. Yes, I actually went on a night dive. Can you believe it? Because I can hardly believe it myself and I was there. I made Will promise not to leave my side, whether we were underwater or on the surface. Will saw a lot more on the first night dive – shark, lionfish, turtles, baler shell, huge potato cods – but on the second dive that I was on, we saw a hawksbill sea turtle that the divemaster described as being the largest he’d ever seen. It swam right past us and we got a really good look at him, we didn’t have to search for him sleeping in a cave or anything.
 
* The accommodations and food. The rooms were small but comfortable and we had a nice view of the ocean and sunset every night. As for the food, in addition to three daily meals, there were snacks, coffee, and tea available all the time. There were a couple of misses (the powdered eggs for breakfast one morning comes to mind), but for the most part the food was actually pretty good.
 
* The ProDive staff. I highly recommend this dive shop if anyone has the opportunity to dive or snorkel in the Great Barrier Reef. Everyone was really nice and very helpful. Tim and Dan in particular had awesome personalities and were just fun guys.
 
So I mentioned that I only did seven out of 11 dives. The fever that I had on the first night was back in full force not long after we returned from the night dive on day two. Luckily Will had prescription strength ibuprofen with him so I was sucking those down, but I still decided to opt out of all of the dives on the last day. Will had to find a new dive buddy and I spent the majority of the day sleeping in my cabin.
 
When we got back to Cairns I figured it would probably be a good idea to see a doctor. There’s a 24-hour medical center a block and a half away from the hostel. It was perhaps the best doctor’s office experience I’ve had in a long time, if not ever. I walked in without an appointment and was seen by a doctor less than 15 minutes later. I explained to the doctor that I had a mixed bag of symptoms: a throat/jaw/ear pain that I first felt sometime in March, fever, and sore lower teeth and a numb lower lip that I suspected had something to do with the dive regulator. He checked me over and determined that I had a throat infection and an ear infection, and that diving with these infections made equalizing my ears more difficult and caused trauma to my ears. I actually had bleeding inside my ears. Oops. He prescribed an antibiotic which I was able to pick up on site. In less than 45 minutes I saw a doctor and got a prescription and it only cost me $79AUS. Damn good service, if you ask me.
 
As it usually is with antibiotics, I’m already feeling better after just two doses, but we’ve decided to stay in Cairns an extra day to help me recover a bit. The plan is to take a bus tomorrow to Mission Beach.

Thai flashback

Not too long ago my friend Zach emailed me saying that he FINALLY remembered to send me some of his Thailand pictures. I really liked Zach's shots and his camera is more expensive and fancier than my point-and-click, so he got shots and angles on things that I couldn't manage.

Anyway, I asked him if I could share some of them here and since I'm in the middle of nowhere diving the Great Barrier Reef for a few days, I figured now would be as good a time as any.

 All of these pictures were taken in Ayuthaya, Thailand.

On a liveaboard

Will and I leave this morning for our three day Great Barrier Reef dive adventure, so I'll be out of touch for a couple of days. I hope to have some awesome pictures when I'm back because we've decided to split the costs and rent a digital underwater camera for a day.

Check back tomorrow, though. I have a special picture post planned. Hint: There are no beaches in these pictures, so you know I'm going back a ways for this material.

Not in Asia anymore

Remember when I had Not in America posts way back when? Well, now that I've spent the last six months in Asia, I have to remind myself that I'm not in Asia anymore instead. Things are so very, very different. The weather in Perth was a lot cooler than I've encountered in ages. I actually had to put on jeans and was very happy that I'd asked Will to bring me a hoodie to wear. Once I got over how "cold" it was (50 degrees at night), I remembered that it's fall weather and, oh hey, I love fall! I'm also experiencing sticker shock on a daily basis. Wait, what? The dorm room is $30 instead of the $5-10 that I'm used to. Meals cost $10-20 instead of $1-5. An 11 hour bus trip costs hundreds of dollars rather than tens of dollars.

Crossing the street is easy and you don't doubt that you'll make it to the other side alive. But here, everyone waits for the go ahead from the little green man to cross. I don't have that kind of patience anymore as I'm so used to just crossing when there's a break in traffic. People are so incredibly nice and helpful and they're not just doing it to sell you something, either. I think there must not be too many Americans traveling in Australia because people have stopped us a number of times to chat with us (they hear us talking to each other and recognize our accents). And the food. As much as I loved Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian, and Indonesian foods, I was well sick of noodles and rice after awhile. Eating in Australia is just like eating at home. Meaning, I can get all of the above types of food (passable, but not as good as it was in that country), but I can also get burgers, pizza, sandwiches, salads, sushi, and really anything else my heart desires.

So there's been a bit of an adjustment period, but Will and I are really having fun, too. We've been to the Western Australia Museum and we've met up with local couchsurfers. We took a day trip to Freemantle on the very easy to use train and saw the Freemantle markets and the Western Australia Maritime Museum (well, Will saw it. As a Coastie he's more interested in that kind of thing that I am, so I happily stayed outside in the sunshine and took pictures instead.) And I've been enjoying having someone to watch sports with. Will's beloved Phillie Flyers are in the Stanley Cup, so we've watched a couple of those games, and tonight we'll be cheering for America when they play against Australia in a World Cup warm-up game.

We're in Cairns (pronounced 'cans') now, btw. We took what was quite likely the worst red-eye flight ever. We flew Jetstar, had seats that didn't recline, and had crying children (not even babies which made it worse, I think) behind us. In other words, no sleep at all. Then when we arrived at our hostel, there was no one around to check us in for awhile. Eventually we were checked in, but we were still hours ahead of the official check in time, so we crashed on couches instead of our own beds in a dorm room. We're pretty beat, but the hostel is actually pretty cool. It's very centrally located, there was a free barbecue at lunch today, free dinner is included every night, and we got vouchers to get in free at a local club.

Also, the big news of the day is that we booked ourselves on a liveaboard boat beginning on Monday. A lot of people recommended Pro Dive as a good dive shop in Cairns and our research had us agreeing with what people were saying. For $545 (including all dive equipment and a $50 reef tax) we get three days and two nights on the boat, all meals, and 11 dives. A fantastic deal, if you ask us, and we're really looking forward to it - particularly Will as he's only ever dived in a quarry with 50 degree water before, lol.

Intro to Oz

From the air, Australia looks really flat compared to Indonesia. Indonesia has volcanoes, mountains, and lots of big, green hills. Australia, at least the area over Perth, has none of that.

I made it to Perth with no troubles at all, my flight actually landed earlier than it was supposed to. Will picked me up at the airport and I could see him waiting for me just beyond the customs area. It was so, so great seeing someone from home. You have no idea how much I’ve missed seeing familiar faces.

My first full day in Australia, I was up early and then back to sleep after breakfast. Apparently I needed a nap after all that eating! Ah, ok. In reality, Will is still fighting jet lag after his 20 hour trip here the other day, so I figured I’d nap when he napped. When we were both finally up, showered, and ready to go, we headed out for some sightseeing.

I told him ahead of time that it’s good that he’s here because otherwise I wouldn’t really be feeling up for the sightseeing. After many months of temples, museums, cathedrals, markets, mosques, world’s biggest this, and world’s oldest that, I haven’t been in much of a sightseeing kind of mood recently. Having Will here with me, though, gives me motivation to get out there and see things. He just traveled 8,000 miles and 20 hours after all; he wants to see stuff!

Our first stop was the Perth Mint which, while seriously overpriced (and not just because I have sticker shock after being in Asia for so long), was actually kind of cool. We got to watch a 200 ounce gold boullion being poured and I now know my weight’s value in gold – over $1.8 million!

After the Mint we went to the Perth Zoo, probably the coolest zoo I’ve ever been to before. It’s set up in such a way that most of the exhibits hardly seem like exhibits all, not the kind you’re probably used to with bars and glass and huge dividers between you and the animals. In fact, one exhibit called the Bush Walk allowed us to get seriously up close and personal with birds, wallabies, and kangaroos. So close that I got to pet a kangaroo! At the zoo!

Well, more later since this is already a day late. . .