Month: June 2008

Singapore

It was not by choice that we got up at 4:30 am this morning, but after the debacle over our flights we were just pleased to still have one to Singapore, even if it was hideously early.
By now we are becoming somewhat connoisseurs of flying and with our flight to Singapore we have now sampled the last of the airlines that we are scheduled to fly with on this trip. So how does Singapore Airlines compare? Well, we were a little disappointed with their inflight entertainment which Virgin Airlines still holds the top spot for. See how we research these important things for you! It’s not all one big holiday you know 🙂
After almost ten months down under in Australia / New Zealand, Singapore was the culture shock we expected. The first thing to hit us as we stepped off the plane was the humidity which I’m not sure we will ever get used to. Then during our taxi ride to our hostel the heavens opened and the torrential downpour began. In just a few short seconds whilst running from the taxi into the door of our hostel we were drenched. Guess we will have to get used to this since we have come to this part of the world during monsoon season!
Our hostel is in the Little India area of town which as you can imagine has lots of character. But I’ll get to that in a minute, first: the hostel. We chose it because it had good reviews and I can see why, it is clean and in a good location. However, the best way to describe our room would be bijou! There are two single mattresses on the floor and then just the tiniest space beside them to prop up our rucksacks. The toilet / shower combo is described as a Singapore special. Just imagine a toilet cubicle on an airplane, complete with the concertina door plus a shower over the toilet. Hindsight may be playing tricks on me but I’d almost say the shower toilet in our first NZ campervan was bigger. However small room and toilet aside, all is forgiven because our room has air-conditioning. Bliss.
We collapsed on our beds for awhile waiting for the rain to stop. When it soon became apparent that it had no intention of stopping, we braved an outing. We managed to duck and dive under shop awnings until we found an umbrella stand and then we ventured off towards Mustapha’s, a famous shopping centre in Little India, known for stocking everything you can possibly think of at bargain prices. We managed to dodge the crowds and buy a few bits and pieces, the most exciting being Tiger balm (just in case we ever get a headache or an insect bite – hopefully not!)
My aunt had advised us to go in search of a banana leaf curry in Little India but unfortunately we failed on that mission. Although not for the lack of trying, in fact I think some of the restaurantuers that we asked if they had banana leaf currys were quite offended. One response was; No banana leafs, we have plates!! To absolve him of his indignation we felt obliged to eat at his restaurant and it was very yummy even if there was not a banana leaf in sight.

Minted

The pressure was on for me to do something crazy, leap off something or generally scare myself somehow for my 30th birthday, but I’m getting old and need to slow it down. So we went to Perth Mint, watched them pour gold bullion and had the official commemorative coin made for our World Tour. That’s more like it, much more mature. (ok, we couldn’t actually find anything to jump off, we’ll keep looking!)
I’d also like to say a big thanks to Mel, my little big sister who compiled an album of photos of my life and stories from friends and family, along with getting it hand delivered to me here in Australia – it really made my birthday special. Thanks as well to everyone who wrote something, and I hope Mel gets reinstated on Facebook after being flagged as a spammer for sending too many anonymous messages!

Wet kangaroos!

Well we’ve gone north, so it’d be rude not to go south. A combination of the weather turning wet, and the fact there’s not too much to do in the area when it’s off season, wet and cold (even the tourist information manager was stumped…) meant that the highlight of our day was spotting some rain drenched kangaroos. Better still, one had a joey squirming around in her pouch, but it was still a slow day.

Look who we found

We may be on the other side of the world but recently we seem to be having a pretty good run of meeting up with people we know, mum and dad, my aunt and uncle, Dirk the campervan man and today the Oldhams. I worked with John O at school in Southampton but since then he and has family have emigrated out here. We met up with John and his boys at the aquarium (good job since it was bucketing down with rain!) They may only have been down under since Christmas but already I would say they are well on their way to being authentic Aussies. Jack and George have almost got the surfer dude hairstyle (it’s growing in nicely), they know all about the many dangerous animals down here and they’ve even had a few visit them in their garden. They maybe haven’t quite got the accent just yet but John’s got a ute and the boys love fishing (you can’t get more Australian than that!) They certainly seem to be enjoying the lifestyle down here and it was fab to see them so well settled. Of course I was completely smitten with little cheeky chappie Oscar again and wanted to steal him (I did try but he cried so I gave him back!)
Like the locals that they are they left us with a reccomendation to check out the cheesecake shop. Now usually Si loves his cheesecake but we have not been impressed with the Australian’s take on it. However, tonight all that changed, turns out that cheesecake from the cheesecake shop is to die for delicious. What a shame we are leaving Australia for good in a just a few short days (I wonder how much cheescake we could fit in before then).

Freo

Fremantle looked like a nice market town as we’d caught the ferry to Rottnest, so for Caroline’s parents last day, we explored what the markets had to offer. The town square could easily have been in Italy or France, dominated by the two old churches and smell of coffee being drunk by old men on a bench with caps on. We had a little trouble finding the markets themselves, and there wasn’t much else apart from the usual Australiana on offer. Not that we could actually buy anything as we’re trying to travel light and reduce our load, not increase it!

The Pinnacles

We’d been warned by Caroline’s uncle that they weren’t impressive, but we took the detour to see the Pinnacle rocks anyway, well we’ve got to do something to write in here haven’t we?
The rocks stand upright in the patch of sandy desert, looking like a cross between termite mounds and a henge created by a very hyperactive druid. A convenient driveway weaved through the sandstone rocks and meant we didn’t need to get out of the car, but we were glad to be out of it really. With our photos taken from every possible angle, we drove on to Perth, our little northern excursion complete and looking forward to the comfortable abode of Caroline’s aunt and uncle (and of course her aunt’s cooking!).

Dugongs and dolphins

Monkey Mia is famous for the pod of dolphins that frequent it’s shores, in no doubt encouraged by the fish fed to them 3 times a day. We’d fed dolphins on the East Coast, so were happy to avoid the crowd getting wet, cold feet in the sea and instead watch from the pier (the dolphins only got a couple of fish anyway), as well as catch a glimpse of a sea turtle swimming about. The bay is also world heritage listed for the huge sea grass fields, which means dugongs (sea cows) live here, and we just had to catch a boat to try and see them. By now we’re 1000km north of Perth and although the sun is warm, the sea is not, which makes me agreeing to be the only one on the boat to sit and be dragged along the cold water in the boom net a little odd. The trip was worth it in the end, dugong were spotted munching on the sea grass in the distance, and although we couldn’t get close because of the shallow water, it’s another wild animal crossed off the list.

Shark Bay

The little (150km+) peninsula surounding Shark Bay has quite a bit going for it. To begin with, there are a colony of stromatolites, bacteria that has hardly changed for the past 3 billion (yes, billion) years, and are responsible for changing the atmosphere to 20% oxygen so that life as we know it could start. Or, as Caroline put it, a bunch of rocks in the sea.
The bay is also the first landing site for the Europeans, the Dutch who landed here 300 years before Cook. Neither they nor the French who followed showed much interest in the land, and as soon as they did, Britain was quick to claim it as their own.
Just to contrast my ramblings of how big a place Australia is, today we bumped into Dirk, the guy who rented our first camper from Sydney. So not only did we meet one of the few Australians we know in one of the remotest places in the country, it’s also about as far as you can get from Sydney. Maybe the world is quite small after all.

Long straight roads

Western Australia is big – a third of Australia, and many times the size of the UK. There’s hardly anyone living there either, and nearly all of them are in Perth. So as we drove north, we were quickly in farming country with huge fields, then that disappeared and there’s just the road, red soil and bushes stretching off forever into the flat distance. Given all that, it’s surprising to see quite a few caravans and the huge road trains (think articulated lorry plus an extra couple of trailers) plowing up the road, it’s a good job the roads are long and straight so that we can actually overtake.
500km later we reached Kalbarri, the first interesting place since Perth and the only place for the last 200km that was more than a petrol station. The huge waves of the Indian Ocean crashed onto the rocks whilst they dwarfed the surfers stupid/brave enough to be towed out by jetski to tackle them. Feeling bored of the car, we took a walk to look at the coastal cliffs, where the flat land abruptly stops and falls into the sea. The clouds stretched off into the interior of Australia until they met the horizon, just another sign of how big this place is.

Planes, no trains, and automobiles

Not a particularily interesting day today, but an eventful one nonetheless. Realising that we were booked on an exceptionally early flight out of Perth, we tried to change to a later, more civilised time. However, it turned out we weren’t booked on any flight out of Perth, or technically we were but 2 months ago and were no shows on that flight as I was carrying a couple of mountain bikes up a hill in New Zealand. A few phone calls later and it turns out that the airline who had rescheduled our flights thought we were on the right flight, but the airline actually flying us didn’t. You’d think they have some sort of computer system to do these sort of things without hassle ;-). At least we managed to have our tickets reinstated without much fuss, good job we tried to move the flight, although in the end we were just glad to be able to fly at all.
The only job left to do was pick up the hire car in preparation for our big drive north. It was almost tempting to get another campervan, but those days are over, and the lure of a car with cruise control was too much!
Unsurprisingly I didn’t take any photos today, so instead here’s one of the manta ray from Rottnest Island, the thing was huge (that’s my shadow next to it!) and effortlessly swam around the shallows, it was definitely worth risking attack by pelican to see it.