Leaving Australia :( (6 flights, 5 days), Perth & Singa

Went through Perth and Singa on the way back to BKK. Heres some pics:

Freo in Perth
Tower thing in Perth
Lots of gardens in Perth

Singa

Merlion

Bay of Fires and Lonnie

The Bay of Fires was magnificent, even though the weather was crap.  Its actually 5 bays that stretch for a good 30 miles up the coast, not one bay.  We just drove around for a few hours, getting out now and again to scramble out on the rocks and whatnot.  We also mistakenly took our poor car on what ended up being a pretty bad unsealed road for an hour before we realized that we were going to slow to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time.  If you wanted to do Tas right you would definitely need a four wheel- high off the ground - good suspension car, none of which we had.  

We had an awesome lunch at a restaurant jake had recommended to us ( he used to be the chef) and I can solidly say it was one of the best meals of my life.  This was the view from our table: 

Delish bay of fires wine..

Porccini Riosotto..yummm

Other Pictures from the BOF:

LONNIE:

Lonnie is just a cute little town, not really much going on; the town revolves around the Boags Brewery.. which is aaaa-mazing.  They have a house as part of the brewery that is called : "Boags Center For Beer Lovers" - basically the coolest name ever.   I did a tour of the brewery.. which was magnificent - you actually get to see the process in action unlike on tours for any of the big brewers such as Heineken.   It was probably the bet 40 minutes of my life - we got to wear yellow vests that said VIP Beer Lover on the back, I tried to by one but they wouldn't let me. 

Boags Center for Beer Lovers

My idea of heaven... look at all that beer..

Walabys, Didge and Dinner Parties

From Hobart we got in our trusty car Tessie (we're so clever) and drove up the coast to Coles Bay stopping along the way for Jam and dessert at a berry farm..yummm.   There luckily was vacancy in the ONE hostel in Coles bay, its not a very big  place, so we were able to stay for two nights. 

Coles Bay

While exploring the town (it was too late to go hiking by the time we got there) we heard a band playing in a garage and so, not ones to be shy, we poked our head in the window to check it out since it was literally the ONLY noise in the town.   Turned out to be only one guy, playing the guitar, harmonica, didge, and keeping time on the drums with his feet. Impressive.   Without knowing us at all he invited us to come grill with him and his friends, rob and dan the fisherman, for dinner (love the tassie hospitality), .. so we chilled with them, grilled some snags, had some beers, and heard about the crazy party they threw the night before on their boat.. too bad we got there a day too late!

Wineglass Bay

The next day we hiked to wineglass bay which is pretty much the main attraction in tassie.  It was be-ea-uutiful, but I actually liked the beech on the other side of the bay better: 

V. Pretty water; we went swimming, everyone thought we were crazy..but it was pretty warm

Rob and Dan had been out fishing all day and had brought back a big haul of abalone and some sort of whitefish, so we were invited to help them eat all of it! 

         Abalone grilled with garlic, lemon and butter. Yummmy (thats for you alice)

               Master Chiefs Rob and Dan the Fishermen prepare the abalone for us

Cooking up a storm in the kitchen

Our finished product: fish boulibaisse, cous couse, two salads, abalone, and stuffed        potatoes...and the fish had been caught less than four hours before...love life

After dinner music Sesh

Friendly Wallaby

TasCOLD

Arrived in tasmania to find myself in a freezer locker. Thats a huge exaggeration, but it was pretty cold, even after I had been freezing in melbourne for a week.  of course, a week later when I was back in the actually miserable whether of seattle I was thinking of my time in tassie as 'mild' as well. 

I ended up staying with the Italian girl, Alice, who saved my ass on the plane, at the hostel she was at, the something frog, which was a pretty good hostel. We ended up renting a car for the next week and driving around, so it was very opportune for both of us that we met someone to split car rental fees with..  the more time I spent in tassie the more I realized that you need to have a car, otherwise you're pretty screwed and would miss some of the main attraction, such as the winerys, and the Bar in the Paddock, which has a beer-drinking pig, a definite highlight of anyones time.  

Our route was: Hobart for one night, then a drive up to Coles Bay (Red) to go to the famous wineglass bay beach, along with the 20 other tourists in tassie.  Next stop was Bay of Fires (Green), which was increible, then on to lonnie (Magenta), the real name of which I could never pronounce, and finally back to Hobart (Blue).   Tassie is so small none of these drives took more than 2 hours!

 The things that amazed me about tassie were:

A. The quality of the food, wine and beer (I LOVE Boags)

B. How green it was / the amount and quality of the national parks and hikes

C. The friendly-nes of the people

Hobart was cool, a very small seaside port town, kind of reminding me of a much less touristy Victoria with better food (although victoria has some badass food..tea at the Empress anyone?). Being the first settlement in Australia, it has the most well preserved victorian era architecture

Salamanca Street, theres a v famous market here every saturday

Old shipping buildings on the waterfront

We randomly wandered into a parking lot full of bagpipers, just a typical day...

Dan the Fisherman randomly pulls a shark head our of their freezer...lots of shark stories in Tassie. they showed me a picture of a HUGE shark that was caught by two boys with a gill net right outside their house..where they regularly surf and dive for Abalone....

On our way back from Lonnie Dan and Rob put us up at their place and showed us around the town... I would have to say, for a small town we had a pretty good night, and some delicious Souvalaki at the end of it! Everyone was going to a big party out at the oyster farm on Bruny but I had to go home :(  Alice told me it was awesome though...

Steve Irwin!! Haha.. thats for you Ali!

Melb

Melbourne: 

Lots of rain......

Made a few bad decisions in melb...buuut we'll just gloss over that for now.   Overal it was nice, esp since the wine and cheese fest was going on so I guzzled some quality food during the week.   

The best thing I did was go camping on the great ocean road for two nights, which was beautiful (almost on par with the ocean here), mostly because the majority of the beaches were pretty deserted.   We just camped in the car and BBQ'd which was really fun, and I discovered another type of meat I can eat: Snags! although I'm a little scared now since a friend told me he wound up in the hospital for a week after eating one. 

Yummy snags, potatoes and red peppers

12 Apostles.. mandatory tourist stop

People surfing..I have a sweet ass camera, I know I know..

Pretty purple shells that were everywhere (art shot)

Johanna Beach
Gorgeous sunset...

One of the many times we had to quickly swerve to the side of the road then bushwack for twenty minutes to try and find some elusive wave liam was looking for. 

Also went to a "grunge" party where I'm pretty sure 95 percent of the attendees didn't know what grunge was or misinterpreted it to mean vegas clothes... but I guess theme parties must not be as big outside the US.   Loose time though, woke up on the floor surrounded by the remnants of a bowl of potato chips, classy, so it must have been a good night, CMC style...Now they must think that all americans are shit shows.

I'll pass on an australian drinking game: Vodka Water Challenge.
As effective as rock, paper, scissors, drink (bomb, cockroach, evolution); or playing war for shots and the bonus is that it makes you seem like a little less of an alcoholic since its more of a legit game and not just take-as-many-shots-as-possible-while-pretending-its-a-legit-game.  They really need to discover beruit though..

ok, so, vodka water challenge: You just stick 10 shot glasses on a tray and have a random person fill 5 with water and 5 with vodka and then the two people playing have to take turns picking one to throw back...so you can either get all the shots or none of the shots depending on your luck

oh.. and then I fell asleep in the waiting room at the airport since I was still highly wearing it and almost missed my plane, typ.  I was only saved by a very nice italian girl, Alice, who woke me up.  Very reminiscent of leaving the pink palace and falling asleep in the terminal at Corfu. 

BrisvegAAS

 On to Australia now, can get loose!   

Had a bitch of a time getting there, my flight from Perth to Melb was four hours late, so needless to say I missed my flight to Brissy.  Luckily, Donz was able to find a reasonably* priced flight the same day so I was able to get on that and still make it to brisbane the same day.  On a side note, my cell phone is registered to some random saudi guy I met in the airport because I needed am australian address to register it to....random, hopefully he won't get billed or anything.  

Oh, and I don't really have any pictures from brissy since I was so bucketed the whole time, compliments of the big boys. 

I showed up at Donz's apt sleep deprived, completely messed up, just a total train wreck, still used to thinking air conditioning / bedding was a luxury..and then I got to donz's apt....

Holy shit,  maybe it was because I had been living for the past month in a ten by ten box full of mosquittos with a sarong as my only sheet on a one inch mattress, but I was pretty sure I had walked into a palace -- A gleaming kitchen, balcony with a perfect view of the city, computers and TVs everywhere, glass doors etc.. all the things that I'm already considering normal again since I'm back in the US, but at the time they seemed like unheard of extravagance.  

anyway, I had probably my favorite time in Oz while I was in brisbane, even though I did jack shit the whole time except for eat food from morning till night.  I think I gained at least ten pounds.. no joke.   Donz's apt is kind of the central meeting point for everyone since its right downtown and they never lock their door, so any hour of the day/night people just show up to party or crash on their couches so there were always people around getting loose or crashing on their couches. 

The day after I got there we went to Future music fest which was a BIG party, the little I remember of it.    At night we moved the party over to joey's who lives in a sick house right on the river and his parents were throwing a huge party, I think donz told me it was 10 grand on booze alone.   Anyway, we smashed it there for the rest of the night, donz DJd and everyone got mohammed; even Joe's parents who kept turning the volume up on the stereo even after the cops came and were pouring drinks for people the whole time.    

Pretty late in the night people lost the plot completely and one of Joey's friends got his dirtbike off his car up in the driveway, drove it down the stairs, into the kitchen and then out on the aptio where he stared doing wheelies. The only reproach we got from the adults was, can you guys settle down a bit. Oh, and also a bunch of the guys hadn't been able to get a cab after future since they were all booked out so they decided it would be a good idea to call a stretch hummer to take them from future to Joey's and rolled up in that.  Classy. 

The rest of the week we just continued to smash it, but in a slightly* more low key manner since Donz and Hodgey had to work.   I had so much fun that I'm heavily considering moving back for 6 months while its cold and miserable here, and nice and warm there.   Also was nice enough to make everyone a delicious chocolate cake...which resulted in Hodgy missing work the next day because his limbs hadn't remarbled. 

We also went to a Rugby game.. which was tons of fun since I haven't gotten to go to any sporting event since the olympics..  We printed out a mistakenly large copy of Deon's ticket, which he immediately made a cape out of.    He tried to scan it at the stadium and convince the security guard that it was a real ticket, but apparently they don't accept big boy tickets there.   The rugers was awesome, kind of like football but without the stops. 

Stadium..

Deon trying to convince the guard that his ticket is indeed legitimate

Cape

Big Boy ticket

Cebu - Jeepney's, Honduraw, butterfly knives and PUMP

Cebu is the place that I spent the longest in for the whole time I traveled, so I think it merits a post about why its cool, why I left, etc. 

Just to play some word association, Cebu:

-Hot /Humid

-Jeepnys

-Tanduay / Being really drunk

-Jullianas / PUMP

-Manok

-Brown Cup breakfast

-Ferrys

-Nurses

-Pancit

-Reggae

Cebu was really good and really bad all at the same time,  Fun, but horribly humid; Chaotic, but also pretty dirty.  On the whole I liked it, but mostly because of the people I met there.  Had I met a different group of people I would have probably just passed through and not given it a second thought.    I think I was lucky that I found it good and don't think other people would find it as amazing as I did. 

Cebu to me is streets jammed with jeepneys carrying loads of nursing students into the city under a smokey haze from the numerous manok stands, fumes from the jeepneys and debris from the factories. 

Its meeting friends at Brown cup for the 2 dollar coffee, pancake, bacon, and egg breakfast at 11 pm to start the night off before going to Jullianas and then finishing off the night dancing on the bar at PUMP. 

Its trying every method possible to keep the ants, mosquitos and cockroaches at least confined to the floor so they don't crawl over you at night, and falling asleep listening to the sometimes horrible and sometimes melodious sounds from the karaoke machine down below that is constantly in demand, from 9 am till midnight. 

Its being offered the customary beer glass everywhere you go, by old men, young kids, etc sometimes even in the morning. 

Its spending the whole day in Ayala doing absolutely nothing since its just TOO hot to be outside and nothing else has air conditioning. 

I eventually left because I needed a break from the heat, was sick of eating pancit for every meal and kinda just wanted to go somewhere else, I have the curse of not being able to keep my feet planted in one spot for more than two months apparently. 

Cebu sunset taken from the boat back from Bohol

Cebu 'culture' park
I think this is supposed to be Lapu Lapu, the leader who 'killed' Magellan.   A lot of people think he was killed by his crew

Beach near cebu

My neighborhood Manok stand

Nurses on the way home from school

Fort San Pedro, the first fort in the Philippines

The main church in Cebu, which is very famous in the philippines because it has never burned down unlike every other church there it seemed.