My journey to Kuala Lumpur could get a post all to itself! I was supposed to fly from Singapore, but *someone* booked their ticket for December 29 instead of November 29 and didn’t discover this fact until after getting up at four am and taking a taxi to the airport. So, I ended up taking a bus instead, which was roughly a seven hour journey. The bus was quite nice though — my seat reclined and had a foot rest, and they served snacks and hot drinks! The boarder crossing was an interesting cultural experience. There was a massive line to get stamped out of Singapore. I chatted with two nice Malaysian ladies from my bus while we waited for an hour. There were hundreds (or more??) of Chinese tourists crossing the boarder by bus. My bus was all Malaysians and me, so when it was time to cross the Malaysian boarder, they all got in the local line and flew right through, and I had to get in the hours-long line with all the Chinese tourists! The bus has a helper to get you through the boarder crossing, and she wasn’t having any of that. First she tried to get me in the locals line by appealing to three different boarder control agents, and when that didn’t work, she just moved me to the front of the line! I felt a little bad (I think we all know I’m a rule follower) but I was also glad, since I didn’t want to hold up the entire bus for hours! 

On my first evening in town I had an experience that was one of the highlights of my trip… a food tour! A local foodie took us around KL to a bunch of popular street food stands to try some Malay foods. Some of the more normal things we ate were rice with toasted coconut, chicken satay, roti with banana inside, and beef rendang. Some of the more outrageous things were dessert squid (squid stuffed with sweet rice in a sweet sauce), cow stomach satay, and cow tongue satay. The dessert squid was one of the most disgusting things I have ever tasted in my life. But the experience was awesome. He also took us to the market. We got to try all kinds of fruits (my favorite part of the tour, of course). I loved the mangosteen! We also ate durian — we each had to take two bites because he said it tastes different on the second bite. That was true, but I still wasn’t a fan even after the second bite. It wasn’t as bad as the squid though! We also tried some vegetables, including dog fruit, which is eaten raw and looks and tastes a bit like garlic, and stink bean. He told us everyone will know if you eat a lot of stink bean because it makes your gas have a certain smell! We also tried cashew leaf, which made your whole mouth go dry when you chewed it! We went to the meat market too, and that was the most challenging part of the experience for me. Seeing the animal parts was difficult (we saw a man pushing a cart full of cow’s heads), but that wasn’t actually the hardest part. It was the hygiene conditions! Everything was just sitting out with no refrigeration and the scraps and run-off just poured into channels on the ground to flow out into the street. Apparently I have a hang up about food being clean. Who knew. The food tour was a fun and interesting experience and I loved it, even though I ate meat. 

Another highlight from my time in Kuala Lumpur was my trip to the Batu caves, which is a Hindu temple set in a natural cave. The site was under construction and everything was wrapped in scaffolding, so that took something away from the experience. But we decided to visit Dark Cave, which is a conservation site nearby, and that was really cool. We saw bats and insects in the cave and I learned a lot. I did some Christmas shopping at the Central Market (mostly tourist junk but I found a few gems), and visted the Textile Museum, which I loved for all the traditional embroidery and beautiful hand-made fabric on display there. I also took a walk in Old Little India, an area where locals do their shopping. I enjoyed seeing all the shops and fabrics. I got a lot of attention there. I’m guessing that they don’t see a lot of tourists in that area. I met two sweet girls who were visiting from Sabah (another part of Malaysia) for a school competition and they tried out their English skills with me. There were lots of giggles involved. 

Singapore was quite a change from Australia. On my first day in town I visited Chinatown. Why is it that Chinatowns around the world are all filled with tacky cheap souvenirs aimed at tourists? I ate lunch at the Chinatown Complex, which has a market on the first floor and something like a cafeteria on the second floor, except that it has many stalls, each one run by a different person and selling a different food. This set-up is called hawker stalls. To be honest, I really struggle with eating in places that look less than clean, and this was no exception. A lot of the food was sitting out at room temperature and the place was just generally really filthy. Once I managed to find some food that was being cooked fresh I was alright though. I had some pork dumplings that were being made fresh in the stall — I watched them being made and steamed. And for dessert I had longan and grass jelly with crushed ice! After lunch I went to the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, which houses an incisor that is supposed to have belonged to the Buddha. It was a beautiful temple. I also visited the Tiong Bahru wet market — a wet market sells food like veggies and meat. In the evening I went to a bar called Druggists and had a beer that became my new favorite beer of all time. The beer was Yeastus Christus, which is a farmhouse IPA from Tool, a brewery in Denmark. Good thing I loved it, because it was S$19 per pint! I chatted with the bartender a bit and he said it is so expensive because it is heavily taxed. 

The next day I visited Little India and the Arabian neighborhood Kampong Glam. I loved Little India — it was quite busy and chaotic, with loud music blaring from many of the shops. I visited the Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple, an Indian Hindu temple. There were so many people all over the place inside doing all kinds of things I didn’t understand. I really wanted to know what was going on and what the significance of everything was! I also visited the Abdul Gafoor Mosque, a mainly Indian mosque. I had an amazing conversation with a volunteer there that lasted at least an hour. I asked him lots of questions about what the muslim faith says about violence and women’s rights, and he invited me to stay to watch the afternoon prayers. It was a brilliant cultural experience. I visited the National Gallery, a great art museum in the beautiful old Supreme Court and City Hall buildings. The museum showcases Asian art and does a great job providing context with sinage. In the evening I went to the Gardens by the Bay, a city garden which has two massive domes with gardens inside. There is the Flower Dome, which is a more traditional botanical garden with different types of plants in different areas. I loved the succulents (of course). The Cloud Forest dome was really spectacular. It has a mountain covered in plants that recreates the cloud forest ecosystem, with each level being held at the correct temperature and humidity for the types of plants there. Then finally I went to see the evening light show at the Supertrees, which are these massive tree sculptures covered in plants that light up at night. The sculptures were cool, but the light show was underwhelming. This was an exhausting day. I slept really well!

My third day I spent mostly in the hostel, making some phone calls and doing some bookings. I did get out for lunch and I tried curry laksa, an important local dish. I loved the broth but couldn’t bring myself to eat some questionable looking meaty things that were in there (maybe some kind of organ??). 

I liked Singapore. It has mix of cultures, and I enjoyed exploring the different neighborhoods and sampling the different cuisine (when I wasn’t worrying about getting sick). The main problem I had there was the heat and humidity. It felt like Florida in August! I’m a northerner now and I can’t take that kind of heat! I really liked the hostel I stayed in while I was there. It was pod style, so I had a tiny little room roughly the size of a twin bed all to myself! It was so nice to have some personal space after months of staying in hostels. Also the sleeping room had AMAZING air conditioning. Singapore has an incredibly nice airport and excellent, reliable, clean public transit. It was strange knowing how restrictive and severe the government is there. When you enter the country, there are signs warning you that you that they have the death penalty for drug trafficing. I don’t agree with their methods, but things certainly are orderly there. 

So…ummmm… I just figured out how to manage the comments on my blog. In my defense, I’ve never had a blog before. On the other hand, turns out all I had to do was click on the button that says comments. *facepalm*

Anyway, if you’d like to leave a comment, it will actually get seen and appreciated and approved now. Sorry about that for those of you that commented two months ago and your comments disappeared into the void of the internet. I loved reading all the comments and look forward to more of them!!

I loved my time in New Zealand. It is truly a beautiful country and so easy to travel in since it is so small in size. I loved all the natural features of the country — beaches, glaciers, waterfalls, mountains, thermal pools. There is so much diversity there. The people were incredibly kind and open as well. Local people talked to me everywhere I went. The accent was crazy to get used to– they pronounce their ‘e’s as ‘i’s and their ‘a’s as ‘e’s. It was much more challenging than I expected it to be. I had a friend from Germany who told me a story about meeting someone who introduced her to a young son, telling her his name was Bin. She was so confused, because in Europe, the bin is the trash can! She wondered, why would anyone name their son Bin? Then she realized the kid’s name was actually Ben! After a while I was able to understand people really clearly and sometimes helped to ‘translate’ for other travlers who were having trouble communicating. I found this fun little article about the New Zealand accent — check it out if you aren’t familiar with it. 

New Zealand kind of felt like the United States from 20-30 years ago. Things seemed more, I don’t know, relaxed? But not in a beachy, chill kind of way. Just in a less stressed out, more common sense kind of way. For example, kids still go places by themselves there. It is common to see kids as young as maybe 8 or 10 out on their own, heading to or from school or just hanging out. They ride bikes around and take the busses. I loved seeing this. I had forgotten that it used to be like that in the US too. In my opinion it is a huge loss that kids can’t do this anymore. Doing things on their own (in an age appropriate way) is so important for building independence and life skills. I think now even if parents would like to allow their kids to do this, they feel like they can’t because someone might report them to the authorities for negligence. Another example is that you see kids in bare feet. Even out in town, walking around with their parents. Customer service in shops is better too, like how I remember from years ago. There are more people around to help you. People bring dogs into shops and restaurants. It just seemed like they have less of the regulations and safety type rules or norms that we have developed in the US. One negative thing was that the wifi was TERRIBLE. It was usually limited — you’d get a password that would allow you to use some ridiculously low amount of data (50MB??). Not that we had wifi 30 years ago, but you know what I mean. It was kind of like going back in time, being there. I liked it (even with the bad wifi).

If I am going to be totally honest, I wasn’t the biggest fan of traveling in Australia. I think it was just too similar to the US for me to really feel like I was having a new experience. I also think maybe I didn’t go to the right places. I stuck mainly to the big cities and didn’t get out in nature very much, which, as my sister rightly pointed out, is what I tend to really enjoy when I’m traveling. I liked the laid back vibe, though it was strange to me to see adults walking around in bare feet and all the midriff shirts and beach wear! The people were very friendly in Australia too, though I didn’t meet as many locals there as I did in New Zealand. The Australian accent was easier for me to understand (but I still had some communication breakdowns of course). Aussies really love to shorten words and make them cuter by adding an ‘ie’ at the end…mozzie for mosquito, brekkie for breakfast, chrissie for christmas, footie for football, schoolie for high-school graduates. They even do this to place names, like Brissie for Brisbane and Tassie for Tasmania… and of course, Aussie for Australian. Actually, I’m not sure if this is an Aussie thing or a Brittish English thing. Does anyone know if they do this in the UK? 

I actually really liked hearing the British English in both New Zealand and Australia. I’m not sure why, but the British spelling of curb — kerb — totally made my day when I learned it. I know some people think the two accents sound the same, but I can definitely tell them apart now!

As much as I enjoyed my time in New Zealand, now that I’m in Asia (I’ve been in Singapore for the last three days), I’m wishing I had more time to spend here. I have decided to go home sooner than I was planning, so I’m cutting my time in Asia short, at least for now. I’m going to go to Florida for Christmas and more than likely I’ll be staying in the US while I look for a job for the 2017 school year. I’m still sorting out exactly what I want to do, but I’m defintely excited to be headed home to see my family. 

I flew from Melbourne up to Brisbane and drove up the coast to Hervey Bay. From there, I took a day tour out to Fraser Island or K’Gari (which means paradise). It is the largest sand island in the world. The sand is constantly being moved across the island by the wind in big sand blows that cover over the forest and everything! I got to see them when I took a ride in a tiny little plane that took off and landed right on the beach (one of only two places in the world where you can do that!) I had never been in a tiny plane like that before, but I wasn’t too scared like I thought I’d be. It was very bumpy flying over the island though! We also visited the Maheno shipwreck, went swimming at Lake Mackenzie which had gorgeous clear water and a pure white sand beach, and took a short hike through the rainforest. The ride around the island was pretty crazy. The bus was a four wheel drive with huge wheels, and it was specially made for use on Fraser Island. The inland tracks are all sand and they have tons of holes and bumps so we bounced all over the place. Fortunately the driver offered me the very front seat, so I didn’t get sick from the motion. Then we also drove up the beach right along the water line because that’s where the sand was packed down. That was less bumpy but more wet!

After Fraser Island I traveled down the Sunshine Coast. I stayed in Noosa Heads and from there I went to a huge market, visited several beaches along the coast (not as spectacular as I was expecting), and saw some of Australia’s Big Things. In case you aren’t familiar with the Big Things, these are roadside stops with giant sculptures of…things. There are tons of them all over Australia. I visited the Big Pelican and the Big Pineapple. They made me smile! On my way back to Brisbane I drove the inland route and stopped at a few towns that were supposed to be cute (they weren’t — they were just touristy). 

I really liked Melbourne. It is just a really cool city and I was glad I planned to spend 6 days there. I visited the National Gallery of Victoria for some awesome art exhibits, saw Federation Square, and did a walking tour of Melbourne’s little back alleyways of shopping arcades and lanes full of street art. I will do another post of all the amazing street are I found. I went to the Royal Botanical Gardens, and paid way too much to see an exhibit of Banksy works (he’s a famous street artist). I also went to the Australian Center for the Moving Image, a neat little museum and center about movies, TV, and video games. There were lots of interactive exhibits showing the past and present of the moving image and they were showing all kinds of movies there. I went to the Queen Victoria Market, which had a food section that reminded me of the market Scott and Lucy took me to in Cleveland, with all different kinds of meat fish, and produce, but the rest was all tacky junk and I didn’t spend much time there. I wandered around in Fitzroy, which reminded me of Brooklyn, and went to an awesome artist market there where I had fun buying christmas presents. And I went to St. Kilda which is a beach town suburb of Melbourne. There was a little boardwalk type fair there and I had fun practicing taking photos of all the rides while they were in motion.

From Sydney I flew to Melbourne. I met up with my friend India again in Melbourne and we spent five days driving along the Great Ocean Road and through the Grampians. Our first day we drove to Apollo Bay. We stopped at Bell’s Beach, which is famous for great surfing, at a nice waterfall called Erskine Falls, and in the town of Kenneth River, where we saw koalas sleeping in the trees and lots of parrots and cockatoos!

From Apollo Bay we drove to Port Fairy. We got to see the 12 Apostles which are beautiful (and famous) rock formations. There aren’t actually 12 though. Someone just thought apostles should come in sets of 12, so that’s what they got named. We also saw a bunch of other cool rock formations along the coast.

After Port Fairy we went to the Tower Hill Reserve. We saw emus and koalas with their babies! From there we headed to Dunkeld. When we got there, we noticed that pretty much everyone in town was very dressed up. When we asked what was going on, we discovered we had arrived on the day of the Dunkeld Races, the local horse races that are held once a year! So, we went to the races and I placed my first bet on a horse race, on a horse called Toodle Pip (I didn’t win). We felt very underdressed but we had fun! We drove through Grampians National Park and stopped at the Brambuk Cultural Center which is an educational center about the aboriginal people of the area. I learned that within 60 years of the arrival of the white settlers, 98% of the aboriginal people had been wiped out. So horrible. But I think it is really good that now the aboriginal people are given control of their own artifacts and the education campaigns are presented in their own words. After we checked into our (crappy and unheated) hostel, India and I got dinner in town and we saw a kangaroo run by while we were eating!! So cool!

We had planned to spend the next day hiking in Grampians National Park, but it was very rainy, so we headed on to Ballarat instead. I went to the art gallery where I saw an exhibition of the nominees for the Archibald Prize, an annual award for the best portrait painting in Australia. I had a walk around town as well. Ballarat is famous for its many victorian buildings which were built during with money from the gold rush. We stayed in ANOTHER crappy hostel with no heat! We were so cold!!

The next day was the last day of our road trip. We went to Sovereign Hill, an open-air museum that depicts life in Ballarat after gold was discovered there in 1851. It reminded me of Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. There were people dressed in costume and lots of recreated buildings from that time. We went on a tour of the gold mine and saw someone heat and pour $100,000 worth of gold. I really enjoyed it.

Sorry for the long delay with no posts. The places I have been staying lately haven’t had wifi good enough to upload pictures. 

On my third day in Sydney, I went with Conny to Featherdale Wildlife Park. We saw koala bears, wallabies, kangaroos, emus, wombats, echidnas, dingos, a crocodile, and tons of native birds. It was cool to see all the animals and I especially liked petting the tame wallabies, but, as usual when I visit a zoo, I found it troubling too. Some of the enclosures were very small, and I was worried about the kangaroos and wallabies getting food from guests that was given to them in ice cream cones, which certainly seems like it would be junk food for them. In the evening I cooked dinner with my friends Conny, Eeva, and India and we hung out on the hostel’s roof deck which has a beautiful view of the harbor.
For my last full day in Sydney, I went for a walk on the harbor bridge, visited the State Library of New South Wales, and walked in the botanical gardens. Eeva and I had dinner together and played some Scrabble and Scattergories. And we tried Vegemite!! It was very salty. I enjoyed Sydney and especially liked spending time with the nice friends I made in my hostel 🙂

My hostel in Sydney was a huge YHA (again!) in the Rocks neighborhood. This hostel was built directly over an archaeological site called the Big Dig where over 1 million artifacts were found from the time when this area was first settled by the British. The hostel is elevated so you can see the ruins underneath it! On my first day in Sydney I went for a walk around the Rocks neighborhood, which was the first area settled when Europeans first arrived here. I learned a lot at The Rocks Discovery Museum, which covers the history of the Rocks area from pre-European times until the present. Of course the British took the land from aboriginal people. It is so upsetting to me how ubiquitous colonization was. I appreciate that in New Zealand and Australia the history I have seen presented in museums is very direct in acknowledging the damage done to indigenous peoples by the white settlers. That seems to me to be one of many important components in moving toward equality.

There was a sweet little craft market that rambled around the neighborhood, and I walked under the harbor bridge. From there I wandered down to Circular Quay and the waterfront (tourist central!). I saw the harbor bridge and the Sydney Opera House, which really was stunning. In the evening, I went to an opera at the Opera House! It was a performance of The Eighth Wonder, an opera about the building of the Sydney Opera House, which has quite the history. Turns out the design was selected in an international competition in 1956, but the building wasn’t completed until 1973. The opera was performed on the steps of the opera house, and it was a silent opera, meaning everyone in the audience wore headphones to hear the sound. The music was so beautiful! I think I prefer the standard, headphone-free way of listening though.

The next day I went to Bondi beach. It was a beautiful day for the beach and there were tons of surfers out. There was a special event happening called Sculpture by the Sea where there is an art exhibit along a 6 km hiking path by the coast. Unfortunately I went on the last day and it was PACKED. I liked seeing the art, but gave up after a bit because of the crowd. I went to Icebergs, a pool right next to the sea. Because the ocean was so rough the day I was there, the waves were crashing up over the wall and into the pool. I tried to swim for a bit but it was so cold!  In the evening I went with some girls I met in my hostel to the Opera Bar at the Sydney Opera House and we had a great night together.