I'm back in Bris Vegas!
Which everyone now knows about! So much for my big surprise homecoming!
A quick sum up of my last week on the road. I mentioned Macau, which was boring. Hong Kong was okay, but not in any hurry to go back. Did the tram up to the peak, took photos of the crazy skyscrapers (and pollution), saw the Michael Jackson documentary at the cinema and walked up and down Nathan Road quite a bit. On Thursday I flew back to Singapore for the last time, where the people at the bookshop in Terminal 2 know me and we said our goodbyes. Then onto Kuala Lumpur Thursday evening, where I had prebooked a hotel room near the airport for the night. Friday evening I flew from Kuala Lumpur to Bandar Seri Bagawan and arrived at about 8pm, and at 1.30 this morning departed for my flight back to Brisbane, and here I am. Was really concerned with the lack of room left in my passport but just made it back to Australia with no room left in my passport - every single page is covered in stamps and visas! It took me almost sixty countries to fill it over the last four years.
My poor backpack lasted the distance over these last six months with only a small tear in the front "day" pack (in a section I don't use anyway) and a strap has been busted - but thankfully it's a strap I don't need and doesn't affect the harness system. The harness is still operating the same way it did the day I bought it, and none of the external parts ofthe backpack have broken like my last few. My backpack is really dirty, and I plan on hanging it on the clothesline and scrubbing it down with laundry detergent tomorrow, but it has definately gone the distance over other brands, so I would certainly advise people buy Kathmandu gear in the future. I also have Kathmandu storage bags for organising things within my back, the detatchable Gluon packs and multi-sectioned cosmetics bags, and they have all lasted my entire trip.
I have many, many, many photos to upload and share, no doubt I will get started in the next few days! Time to start daydreaming about the next trip...hopefully an actual "holiday" on a P&O cruise ship around the Pacific, maybe sometime around my birthday next year would be great!
Here's a tip: Macau sucks. I had to clear immigration in and out of Hong Kong (and back in again) - normally I would be delighted with another stamp but I am now down to a page and a half left in my passport. Anyway, Macau is meant to be the Las Vegas of the East - lots of casinos. So that didn't interest me much.
However speaking of Las Vegas, I was shocked to hear about my cousin Lindsay running away to get married in Vegas this week! Congratulations Lindsay and Jennifer, see you guys soon!
Just a quick note to say that I won't bother calling home this week. The bank ate my money so I am petty poor and am not wasting time/money trying to figure out Hong Kong payphones. You will all see me soon enough.
Have had such a great few days here, and wish I had more time (but that is always the case!). I arrived in time to have breakfast here at the hotel a few days ago, very jet-lagged but couldn't sleep. Arranged some tours for myself and did some grocery shopping. Thursday my driver drove me to the city of Kandy, stopping along the way at Pinnawale Elephat Orphanage so I could frolick with the elephants roaming free in the mountains, and also at a tea plantation and factory, and also at an Ayurvedic practitioners farm where I learn about all sorts of natural therapies (Mel, you will be so impressed - you should totally go to Sri Lanka!) and got some massages. Kandy itself was beautiful, up in the mountains in the Hill Country of Sri Lanka, a picturesque little city with a huge lake in the centre and British Colonial-style buidlings and best of all, a nice big Buddhist temple for me to run around in barefoot with offerings of purple lotus flowers, pink bouganvilleas, frangipanis and jasmine. Really loved Kandy, and I recommend that everyone who goes to Sri Lanka spend some time there.
Yesterday my driver drove me down to the old city of Galle, a Portugese-then-Dutch fort, with a big lighthouse. Along the way we drove through alot of the area that was badly affected by the tsunami. There's a huge Buddhist statue memorial and lots of cemetaries, and also alot of building that have never been repaired or rebuilt. Also stopped at Kosgoda Turtle Orphanage where a young Aussie guy presumbaly volunteering on his gap year was working there and showed me around. They are currently looking after lots of turtles that they save from being eaten (turtle eggs are a delicacy here) and also a turtle that had his eye busted out in the tsunami and is now blind, poor little guy.
Also went to Unawatuna Beach which is about ten minutes down the road from Galle. It is rated as one of the best beaches in the world and I have to agree. I was going to have lunch at the resort but they were filming for a TV show there so couldn't. On the way back my driver drove me through Colombo and pointed out the major sights, but I am not so interested i Colombo as it is just another big, ugly city. I have been staying at Negombo, which is a beachside area just ten minutes away from the airport, and it has been easy to get to all the places I wanted to see from here.
Here at the hotel they are currently setting up for a wedding in the garden by the pool, with the beach in the backdrop. The weather here hasbeen just beautiful, except for Thursday night when it was stormy, so I just sat on my balcony and watched the storm over the ocean. I am hoping the wedding is a nice big Hindu wedding and that everyone is wearing brightly coloured saris so I can take some sneaky photos from besides the pool.
Very early tomorrow morning I am flying back to Singapore (my first flight with Singapore Airlines, reportedly the nicest in the world to fly with!) and then have five or so hours to waste before I fly onto Hong Kong. I am contemplating going to Hong Kong Disney sometime this week!
Hooray! This is the last time I will have to lie on a cold airport floor and wait for an early morning flight! The rest of my trips' flights all line up quite nicely and accommodation is all sorted. Currently in Singapore, flying onto Kuala Lumpur and have six hours to kill before I fly out to Sri Lanka where naturally it is raining. Flight from Vacnouver to Taipei to Singapore wasn't excruciatingly bad as I manaed to sleep for the first few hours. Then the screaming baby started. And didn't stop until the wheels of the plane hit the runway in Taipei. I cannot comprehend why people take babies on long haul flights except as a form of child abuse or something.
Also very sad to hear about the Israelis bombing those poor Palestinians houses in Jerusalem, one of my favourite cities in the world. God Israelis are bullies.
Sent home a box of stuff today from Singapore, thigs that I have been carrying around since Japan, I may arrive home before the box does!
I am using the elephant theme on my blog currently as there is a well-known elephant orphanage at Pinnewala (I'm sure thats not spelt correctly) on the way out to Kandy (tea plantation country) in Sri Lanka that I am going to try and visit over the next few days!
Over the next two days I will fly from Vancouver to Taipei to Singapore to Kuala Lumpur to Colombo, possibly with no sleep. My flight doesn't leave for another nine hours and my eyes are already stinging and I want to nap. Please, please, please, whatever forces out there exist, let me sleep on the flight to Taipei at least!
Went to see Where The Wild Things Are at the cinema today. I don't go to cinemas very often and when I do its usually to see films that I hear have been beautifully created with great soundtracks, rather than to see a blockbuster. I loved the film, even though I wanted to smack the little boy playing Max. I hope that is not representative of the name. I will have to email Rebecca to see if Maxy has a copy of the book, even though the film was far too scary for kids and Maxy is far too young to read. Or even better, a Max costume, as seen here. How cute is that!
Also, today I was a crowd extra for a very big Hollywood blockbuster film being filmed here in Vancouver! The A-Team film is being remade and I got to stand on the sidewalk while a car scene was being filmed. VERY cool!
Tomorrow is my last day in Canada, I fly out at half past one on Monday morning, then begins two fun days of flying! I hate flying. When I get home I am going to sit down and work out exactly how many hours I have spent on planes this year (including my trip to Hawaii in February). Someone should probably pay for a carbon offset voucher for me for Christmas.
I went to Whistler yesterday! It was beautiful. Everyone there was so friendly and told me I should come live and work there for a season. Very, very tempting. I could become a MASTER SNOWBOARDER. I could have THIGHS OF STEEL. We'll see what sort of shitkicker job I get at home and see how long I last. If not, there's always teaching English in Korea, which makes very good money and you even get flights and accommodation sorted for you. Thanks, Air Asia sales! Saved me a fortune! Also for an extra $100 and a compromise on the accommodation in Sri Lanka, I get to stay an extra day, yay! I so hope to get into travel consultancy at home. I would be awesome at it and since I have travelled to almost sixty countries, I know what I am talking about.
Also Mum please be on the lookout for a parcel from Dorothy Perkins for me, just a few things I ordered online just now. Will send home another parcel of stuff over the next few days once I am back in Asia (no point paying double when I am twice as far away from Australia, but it is more than likely that I will be home before my stuff gets there).
Spent this afternoon booking the final round of flights, accommodation, etc. Called Royal Brunei to change my flight home. Here is a hint, I will be home sometime in November but that is all I am saying. Could be the first, could be the thirtieth. I am not going to India, as the visa thing is a hassle, and I am having huge health problems, no thanks to a small procedure I had done my last week in London. Boooo.
Anyway, five minutes left on the net, so here's a quick wrap-up: I like Canada lots, very "alternative" culture here in Vancouver, also foun dout why one of my credit cards hasn't been working in months - someone in Cuba copied my details when I hande dmy credit card over for a cash advance and tried to use it! Dodgy! All good now.
Made it to Vancouver alive - got to fly out of Taipei on a double decker plane. Sat up the top, where I managed to have three seats to myself and best of all, there were nos creaming babies. Would have liked to sleep, as it was an eleven hour flight, but couldn't, mainly because we encountered the worst turbulence I have ever experienced. Got to Vancouver airport, where I was questioned heavily (I guess there have been Australians come here who tried to do the dodgy thing and work without the correct visa) and an hour later, I was stamped in. I am staying at the Hostelling International Downtown, and of course a fellow Queenslander was working in reception when I checked in.
It's pretty cold here, have managed to get a few things to keep me warm - leg warmers, a new pair of gloves (as I sent mine home), a wooly beret for my head, a pair of tracksuit pants to wear up to Whistler tomorrow (very attractive, I actually think they are yoga pants as they are made out of tracksuit material but thankfully do not have the very flattering gathered cuff at the bottom) but still no shoes, so am wearing my black compression socks with Birkenstocks. It's a pretty good look. I think it will be seen on the catwalks of Milan before too long.
I have booked a Greyhound bus ticket out to Whistler tomorrow, where it's apparently about six degrees Celcius - colder than Vancouver (which is currently 11). I am really looking forward to seeing Whistler, even if I can't go snowboarding.
Vancouver isn't a huge city, have spent the last two days just walking and also took the train out to a shopping centre to buy some warmer clothes. I keep expecting to run into the Twilight cast, there are lots of silly teenage girls stalking them out here as they are filming close by. Vancouver is very user-friendly, also very beautiful at this time of the year as the leaves are changing colour. The red maple trees are stunning, and the city is surrounded by mountains which is very picturesque.
I do have one complaint (not about the city). I have been placed in a room with a few girls (chose the girls only dorm, which I try to do as much as possible, as men are stinky, snore loudly, and are usually more inconsiderate than girls, especially after a few drinks) and one is from Hong Kong. This isn't the first time I have been put in a room with a girl from Hong Kong. I don't know what the hell they teach people from Hong Kong (guess I will find out next weekend when I get there) but I have never met such a stupid bunch of people apart from Americans and fellow Australians. They are incredibly inconsiderate - leave their stuff everywhere for people to trip over, turn the light on when everyone else is sleeping or else are the last ones in the dorm and go to bed and don't turn off the damn light. Yesterdays took the cake. I was napping yesterday afternoon (jet lag - I am wide awake at 6am but eyes are stinging and need to lie down from an hour around 2-3pm) and this girl came in. Alarms started ringing and I realised the fire alarm was going off. I jumped out of bed and started putting on my coat and shoes and grabbing my handbag. She just stands there and asks me if I know of any shopping centres. I said I didn't know (I didn't, I'd only been here for less than 20 hours) and started to leave. She didn't follow, and all this time the alarm was ringing. I had held the door open behind me, expecting her to follow me down to the fire stairs and to leave the building, but she didn't move, so I said, "you have to leave, this is a fire alarm" and she finally made a move and followed me. The fire alarm was so loud so every time I spoke I was yelling. It turned out to be a false alarm and we could go back to our rooms straight away, at which time she decided that even though I wanted to nap again, she wanted to chat, and asked me why I had gotten up so early in the morning. I tried to explain jet lag (and expected her to suffer from it as well). It probably doesn't sound like a big deal but the fact that she wanted to know about a shopping centre when there was a really loud fire alarm going off and wasn't making any move to leave the building - well, it just confirms my theory, that people from Hong Kong are really freaking stupid. I don't know how they have become one of the worlds super production centres. Can't wait to see how my three days there goes. I suppose I am meant to become more tolerant of different races and for the most part I am, and I do know a few people from Hong Kong who aren't retarded, and same goes for Americans, I have made a few really great American friends on this trip. I am just so sick of being in the same space as really stupid people and having to deal with them. I shouldn't have to baby-sit grown adults during fire alarms, ask them to put their stuff away so I won't trip all over it, get out of bed in the middle of the night to turn out the light, etc.
I really thought the flight from Singapore to Vancouver would be much faster. Four hours from Singapore to Taiwan (I like the airport here very much!), a six hour stopover, and ELEVEN hours to Vancouver. I thought it would be much closer. I thought it would be much closer. At some stage I cross the magical mystery International Date Line and yet I STILL arrive in Vancouver this evening. Still have no warm clothes and have found out that I can't go snowboarding at Whistler because Opening Day is a few weeks away (even though they had 16cm snow the other day). Thought about doing the Twilight tour, even though I certainly am no Twihard (hahaha! I think the books are very light reading matter, Robert Pattinson is ugly, Kristen Stewart looks like a miserable old bitch, the character of Edward is creepy and the character of Bella is just so whiny! And the movie was terrible! I bet the next one is bad too!). I heard Vancouver is full of Twihard teenage girls stalking the cast at the hotel they're staying at.
But despite the long wait here in Taipei, there is free internet here which is a big bonus. And also some Hello Kitty kids room which I may go check out. I flew here with EVA Air, and I'm pretty sure they used to have one plane that was completed Hello Kitty decked out, and they would do special flights throughout the year (presumably between here and Tokyo) that are Hello Kitty themed. Even the air hostesses and pilots would dress up like Sanrio characters, the meals would be Hello Kitty themed and everything. Thats dedication.
