ECRadventure

We arrived into Sydney following the freeway up from Goulburn. Along the freeway we learned that the Sydney metropolitan area is very fond of electronic road tolls. After a few detours we were able to steer our way to the few cash tolls. We were running late to get the van back in time but due to the significant amount of coffee and water that we had in the morning, we had to stop before we arrived in Sydney. However, as it turns out that a few of the turn-offs on the freeway that allow access back onto the freeway in one direction. We ended up having to back track 5 km just to get to a road that would let us turn around! We then pulled into the hostel, off loaded our bags and the 2 weeks of goods that we had accumulated because we got used to having a temporary home, which surprisingly enough can be a lot of things. Good for us most of it was food!
Dropping off the van was easy, only a quick clean of the van and we were off. However, another experience in the poor service of Wicked vans was the many hassles trying to get our deposit back. Overall our van was good, it caused us no problems. After talking with many other people who rented with wicked and the general service that we had with them, we would recommend that anyone who is planning on doing the same thing go with one of the other companies, like Juicy, XXX, They may cost 10-30 a day, but we’d say they are probably worth it.
We stayed at the Big hostel just off of Elizabeth street and Hay street. It’s on the South side of Downtown Sydney and East of China town. Great location; right on the free bus line and within walking distance to all of the major sights in downtown Sydney. Nothing in Sydney is cheap, including our accommodation, but we were able to get a private room with a bathroom for $89 a night. For example of some of the other costs, a 2L of coke will set you back ~$4-5, a can of coke can cost up to $3 in some places, coffee is about $4 even at McDonalds, a six pack of beer is $20. All in all we tried to keep our costs down but it wasn’t easy. After getting rid of our van we spent the night just checking out our new neighbourhood and hostel.

Sydney Festival

On day two we went on a four hour walking tour of Sydney, it was a very good way to quickly see most of the sights; Sydney harbour, the opera house, the rocks, century old churches and pubs. Lets just say that walking for 4 hours in the humid summer heat is exhausting – so of course we had to indulge in a restaurant we found right by the hostel called Spice I am. This little gem of a restaurant is a Thai lovers paradise. The food was so amazing. Stuffed, we went back to the hostel for a nap and in the evening went out to see the much hyped Sydney Festival. The festival runs close to 2 weeks and it’s a mix of new theater performances, comedy shows and music concerts. The first night of the festival was free too and we decided to check it out, we were not disappointed. There were 5 stages all over the city that were showing free performances. As soon as we showed up we knew half the city was there as well. The first stage we saw was a variety of acrobatic shows, the second was a huge outdoor music concert and the third which we almost missed was the amazing Indian music box. The last performance was so amazing we both stood in awe, enjoying every moment of the Mangiyar Seduction. You can catch a glimpse of their show on this web link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvKsrqCwyGQ

Walking home after the show, we were thinking that this festival is a lot like the Calgary Stampede in many ways. It draws hundreds of thousands of people in to the events and it is a great excuse for people to let off some steam. As per the Australian norm, things were winding down and people heading home just after 11.
The next day we set aside time to go and visit the travel agents office. We wanted to do some sailing around the Whitsunday islands and also dive on the Great Barrier Reef. Looking at all the information in our Lonely Planet book, we were still a little lost on how we were going to do both of these on our limited time frame and limited budget. However, as we were staying downtown almost everything in the city center was closed as it was Sunday. SO, we continued on our way with a fresh cup of coffee in hand to the Contemporary Arts Museum. The museum is free too, which is always a great plus! You aren’t allowed to bring in any cameras into the museum. There were some interesting pieces on the first two floors, but one of the main exhibits that we both really enjoyed was by an aboriginal woman. She worked in a variety of mediums to show the plight of the Aborigines and she is not afraid to show the darker side of history. One really interesting room was filled with ~4” of corn kernels on the floor. On the walls were a number of photographs of traditional ways of living. To see any of the pictures, you had to take your shoes/flip flops off and walk through the more than ankle deep corn kernels. What she was really trying to say is up to you, but it was very different than any exhibit we have seen yet. That night and like many nights and afternoons for the next few weeks we spent time on the internet doing research for our upcoming trips to India and the Middle East (Jordan/Israel).

Sydney Opera House

One good thing about our hostel is that it has a great kitchen. It’s usually very crowded, but they have a good set-up, several fridges and it’s clean. We managed to take advantage of this and cook a lot of our own meals. We really enjoyed being able to eat veggies and meals how we like. For two people who normally sustain themselves on a diet of 60%+ raw and cooked veggies with no sauces, our world trip has been a constant battle for foods we prefer. After our breakfast we were out the door to the travel agent to get some ideas on how to organize the next stages of our trip. An hour and a half later we came out of the travel office with more information but no more of a clear direction on what to do. We each headed off to get our hair cut and to get our passports from the post office. We sent them off in Perth to the Indian Consulate for a tourist Visa. We picked them up with no hassles and ended up eating lunch in a food-court at the bottom of the post office. The food court was a sight to see. People running frantically to get meals, wolf them down and run away back to work. The tables and anything with a square inch of surface area was filled with garbage and half eaten food. It all seemed much more a scene out of Asia than downtown Sydney. After our late lunch we split up and wandered the city, window shopping and exploring.

Sydney bridge!

We were in bed early that night, so that we would be well rested for our day trip to the zoo! We got up early to catch the first ferry out to Taronga Zoo. It’s definitely one of the best zoos that we’ve seen; after our experiences in Asia with the cruel treatment of animals, we had nearly sworn ourselves off of visiting any other zoos. However, we heard that this zoo is renowned for having lots of open spaces and that it’s on the forefront of nature conservation. Most of the animals have large enclosures with natural vegetation and areas where they can go to get away from the hordes of people. Only the giraffe and gorilla cages were too small and barren. All in all we had a great afternoon. One of the highlights for us was the walk-thru enclosure for the kangaroos. This enclosure has a double set of doors that you walk through and then are hit face-to-face with two dozen or so kangaroos of differing varieties. You could literally reach over and touch them, they are so close. The whole trip across Australia and we had to wait until this zoo to actually get a good glimpse of a kangaroo in the daytime!

After the zoo and for the entire next day we lounged around the city, surfed the internet and booked a trip from Airlie beach to sail the Whitsunday islands. In the evening we were off for a cinematic adventure! We made reservations at the GoVinda’s Restaurant and cinema. There was a vegetarian buffet (why does vegetarian often translate to ‘covered in butter/oil or cream sauce”?) followed by a movie. The movie is shown in a theater upstairs from the restaurant. The seats are big comfy beds. We watched a funny movie called “The invention of lying”. It’s definitely worth watching.

Sydney Fish Market

We spent the next day exploring the darling harbour and the Sydney fish market. We wanted to see this iconic Sydney market as it is world renowned for the quantity of seafood that is sold here each year. It is a customary Sydney-sider tradition at Christmas to come down to the market and stock up on all of the fruits of the sea. We wandered from store to store, amazed at the variety and size of some of the creatures. There was even seafood we had never heard of or seen called sea bugs, looks pretty much the same as it sounds, strange. We then settled down to some freshly cooked seafood, a bottle of white wine and some vine Bernard Calibeaut chocolate all for a steal of a price from the local markets. After our feast we were off for our night out at the Opera house. We booked an insider’s tour of the Opera house, followed by a comedy show. It was great to see the inside of such an iconic building (except the carpet which for some reason is purplec .eek… the tour guide said that when Pavarotti came to sing and saw that the reception went through the area with the purple rug he made them change the venue, he stated it was because purple was a bad luck color for Italians…we think it’s because it’s hideous). Right after the tour we got tickets to see an Australian comedian, we didn’t get half the jokes because of the slang or the references to news headlines but even so it was a great night.

We also got tickets the next day for a show called “6 impossible things before dinner” which was a one man illusion show. He challenges what you believe in, whether people can read minds or not and what the rational mind does in the face of an irrefutable demonstration of six very impossible events. Chad even got to be on stage! Each act required audience participation. Random people were chosen to go up on stage, and they were chosen by a foam football that flew around the room. If you caught the ball you got to go up. Three people were chosen, and everyone got to pick their seat and change their seat if they wanted to. Chad sat in seat number 2.Then you had to pick one of three different tests. The illusionist did these tests that the Russians performed during the cold war to see if some people they could recruit were psychic. Chads part in the show was to pick a card, at random. In the end, the performer not only guessed the right card, but also had a piece of paper on the back of the chair that had his guess written on it prior to the show. The guess showed which person would sit in which chair, which of the three tests that person would pick and the results of the test. The last test of the three was to guess a word out of the dictionary, chosen at random! Quite a show! It was an amazing show, the best secrets will stay secrets because if you ever see the show, you should be as amazed and thrilled as we were. We were sad to leave Sydney; it is such an amazing city with so much to offer but on the 17th we flew up up and away to Proserpine to sail and dive in the Whitsundays!

Australian Flag

Australia! A continent that has its own way of doing everything: The animals, plants and customs are different here than anywhere in the world. They have marsupials, the outback aaannd they put Vegemite on toast. Now if anyone has ever tasted Vegemite, you might agree that putting it anywhere near your mouth and enjoying it is pretty unique. We were excited to visit a place neither one of us has been to yet and to experience all the amazing things it has to offer. Beaches, vineyards, seafood, diving the barrier reef and a road trip from Perth to Sydney.
We flew from Singapore via Kuala Lampur in Malaysia to Perth. The first leg of the trip was easy and we landed in Kuala Lampur and had several hours to kill until our next flight left for Oz. Unfortunately for us the airport in KL is a barren waste land. We were in a security area and couldn’t leave because we didn’t want to pay for the visa upon arrival, for only a few hours to leave the airport. So we settled into a restaurant where we had bad overpriced coffees and food. It was so cold in the airport and we couldn’t escape the cold and we didn’t have any of our warmer clothes with us. We were trying to kill as much time as possible by walking around, checking out the shops, the duty free, but there really wasn’t much in this airport. We got so busy trying to find something to do that we almost missed our flight – and we didn’t realize there was a time change between Phuket and Kuala Lampur…the flight was only an hour so we assumed there would be no time change…oops. We just heard “Tiger Airways is calling Passengers Miss Ewwwwa Stolarz and Mr. Shad Radka. Please report to gate A3A for immediate departure”. We ran to the gate and were the last passengers to get on, first time that that’s happened! But we were on and on our way to Perth. It was a five hour flight with no on board entertainment, drinks or food unless you paid. It was official we were leaving Asia where the free airline food and drinks and friendliness were so nice!

WTF? Christmas snowman made out of dirt. AKA the Christmas poo.

We arrived in Perth at night and were surprised that you could buy duty free once you got off the plane, score. Australia is very serious about protecting themselves against all foreign pests and animals that could contaminate their very fragile eco system. Upon arriving we were asked to declare anything that may cause harm to their environment, including items such as wood and straw. Why would anyone bring in wood? We would normally ask that question but before leaving Phuket Ewa bought a wood hair pin…if there were any worms in it could cause huge problems for them. The same goes for food, you cannot bring any food into Australia; none, not even the food you had left over on the airplane which most countries allow. Everyone is interrogated and bags are x-rayed and you have to declare everything, even medication. Since Ewa had a straw hat and an item made of wood security checked her bags. We didn’t think that normally people would bring in food. There was one passenger that we saw who tried to bring in an entire suitcase of food. We heard the authorities tell her she would be fined, heavily, and everything would be confiscated. Turns out we over paid on our visas because the website told us we needed to get a certain type but that information was incorrect and we paid about ten times more. But hey...now if we want to, we can enter Australia multiple times for up to three months for the next 12 months. Our tradition after leaving a city is to take the map from the previous city and tear it when we arrive in the new city. It is a symbolic end of the past and a fresh beginning. After all of our fight and visa troubles, we didn’t even have a Singapore map to rip up when we landed in Perth, so we tried unsuccessfully to rip up a baggage tag. Little did we know that this would be a bad omen for future troubles.

Chad at Lake Thetis

We arrived at our hostel in Perth and went for a bite to eat in the area. The first thing we noticed was that everyone was completely drunk in the streets. It was like a busy weekend night in a bar area on a Thursday night and it wasn’t even 11pm. Then we realized it was Christmas Holidays and we were in a “bar area” of town. Since all the restaurants were closed because it was so “late” (a shock coming from Asia where everything is open all the time!) All we could find to eat was a kebab. It was good ;)

That is one thing that is very strange for us, the fact that Australians like to either go to sleep very early or they don’t like to work very late. Restaurants, internet cafés, shopping centers, grocery stores all close before nine. People disappear from the streets and only the shadies stay out. We think that everyone is either really lamo and has a self-imposed curfew or they’re at the bar because all the Pubs and Bars are usually full.
We were feeling tired the next day so we didn’t do much except go to the grocery store. This was our first “day” in Australia and we realized pretty quickly what people were talking about when they warned us about the Australian Sun. It was 10am and we were cooking! No kidding ozone hole! SPF 45 seems not enough here. We decided that it would be impossible to do anything between 11 am and 4 pm. On the plus side once we reached the grocery store we were so excited to have such a large selection of fresh fruit and veg! Organic food! Local food! Whatever we were craving we could get here. The hostel owner put on a Barbie (BBQ) that night, it was all you can eat and it was delicious, there were steaks, lamb sausages, and Greek salad.

Ewa at Hangover Bay

The following day we finally caught up on some much needed banking and found some really funny charges on our credit card from Winnipeg…don’t remember going to or buying anything in Winnipeg – crap someone stole our credit card number! This is the first time on the trip that we have had this happen to us, we are pretty lucky considering all the countries we’ve been to! We called Visa and went through all of the charges that weren’t ours and they are investigating it. Too bad for us we now don’t have our travel credit card, luckily our debit cards work at the ATM’s and Chad has a backup credit card. What a pain! We also didn’t know where we would have the new credit cards sent to; we don’t really have a permanent address. Next problem we ran into is our computer. We got a bad virus and it crashed our system. After countless hours trying to fix it on our own, we called in a ‘pro’. The pro wasted two of our days (confusion with when he was supposed to show up) and in the end simply wiped the hard drive. Great, there goes all our data! The following day Chad went down to the place where we were renting our road trip van from, a company called Wicked Vans. Basically this van has everything you need for a long term road trip in it; a bed, camping chairs and table, dishes, a sink and we splurged to make sure we had AC. When he got there they needed the credit card he used to make the booking to pay for it…oops yeah we don’t have that because the number was stolen. No worries Mate we take cash, debit or another credit card. Great, do you take American Express? No. Oh ok, I’ll pay debit. Sorry it was declined. That’s impossible, try it again (they tried 4 times until realizing that Australia debit works on Visa debit which is not the same as interact used back home in Canada) All we have left now is cash. Our bank won’t let us take enough money out in one day. So we had to go to the bank a few days in a row and call them to up our limit just so that we could take this van! We were ready to get out of Perth and get on the road. It’s a bit sad but with all the troubles we had, that we didn’t get to actually see much of the city and spent the time instead sorting out issues. Soon enough we were off like turtles, with our shell on our back… across Australia!

Ewa, Chad and 'Root Toot' our home for the next 3 weeks

Finally on December 22nd we were leaving Perth and on a whim went to the Indian Visa office realizing that if we wanted to see India we should maybe send our passports away now before Christmas and New Years. We struggled if we wanted to go out of our way and find the office without all the right information, or just wait and send our applications by mail into Sydney later. We had the applications mostly filled out but were stuck on a few questions we didn’t know how to answer. So even though we were running late leaving the city (as always) we went to the office and it was the fastest most amazing Visa office we have ever been to! We were helped right away, no line and the visa officer helped us answer our questions, essentially telling us to ignore everything we couldn’t fill out! He was so fast! “Write this here, here and here, sign here. Glue your picture here. No you don’t need that. Yes sign here. That’ll be 220 dollars. Thank you and Happy Christmas”. Literally that is how fast we were in and out, and yes here in Australia, or at least Perth they say “Happy Christmas” not “Merry Christmas”. Chad joked he felt violated… that’s just how fast the process was! And we were on our way across Australia! We will be driving over 4000km from Perth all the way to Sydney, it’s sad that we haven’t done this in Canada. We’ve seen more of Australia than we have of our own country and when we get back we really want to see more of our side of the world.

Ewa at the Pinnacles

We travelled north from Perth to check out the amazing pinnacles Ewa had heard about. Imagine Drumheller, but in Australia and in the middle of the desert. A national park in the middle of nowhere, we drove 300 km North to check out this natural beauty. We left from Perth, and travelled as far north as we could in one day, and stopped at the first caravan park we could find after sunset. Apparently it is quite unsafe to travel at night in Aus, with most of the wildlife being nocturnal. On the long drive up we were treated to an amazing sunset and beautiful skylines. The pinnacles and the area was amazing, being surrounded by the dessert, whipping wind and the limestone pillars. The wind was so strong at times that it almost was enough to blow you off of your feet. After leaving the pinnacles we stopped at a little beach called Hangover bay. This bay was amazing. Brilliant blue waters, really soft sand, but super cold water. We didn’t stop much longer than to take a stroll on the beach and snap a few photos but it is certainly worth the side trip from the pinnacles. If only we didn’t have such a strong dislike for cold water, it would have been much better! We also stopped at a ‘primordial’ lake (Lake Thetis), where there is cyanobacteria that is supposed to have been the initial building blocks of life on Earth. It was a lot less interesting than we thought, but hey, that’s what roadtrips are about, just stopping to see things that may be interesting! The after our trip to the pinnacles, we managed to make it all the way back down to Perth for the night, to stay at a caravan park outside of the city before continuing south.

Sunset along the drive from Perth to the pinnacles

Trips:

Shorthand link:

Buddy List

Sydney... festivals and a longing for the city life

Sydney, Australia

Mildura, Wagga Wagga and a total 180

Wagga Wagga, Australia

Port Augusta... prawn cocktail WTF?

Port Augusta, Australia

Caiguna...desert and the long road ahead

Caiguna, Australia

Kalgoolrie... why is the brothel closed???

Kalgoorlie, Australia

Esperance..NYE and champagne!

Esperance, Australia

Bussleton, Margaret River, Augusta... Christmas in Australia

Augusta, Australia

Perth..viruses, theft and lost time

Perth, Australia

Singapore...5 stars all the way!

Singapore, Singapore

Phuket... retreats and time apart

Phuket, Thailand

Heading South?