5 Months Off

Click here to go to the photos from this part of the trip.

I stayed for two nights in a great hostel in Rotorua and I became quite accustomed to, and even fond of (in a weird way), the sulfur smell. The day after I arrived though I drove an hour and a half further northeast to the town of Whakatane on the wide Bay of Plenty to go on a boat in search of dolphins. I was the only observer in the group of about 15 people on the boat, all the rest were wetsuited up in the hopes of being able to swim with the dolphins. We met Doug, the captain of the boat (though with his Kiwi accent, his name sounded more like Dag), and a girl who would help out the people who'd be going in the water. The boat was much smaller and more basic than I thought it'd be, but it was powerful, as we found out when we headed out of the harbour and out to sea. It was a gray, wet day and we had some big waves to fight through to break out into the open water. Doug waited for the right moment and then suddenly we were going full throttle at the waves, like a plane trying to take off. It was a much bumpier ride though. We would come over the top of a wave, go airbourne, and then slam down into the bottom of the swell. It was like a wild, unnerving roller coaster ride and I was completely unprepared for it. I gripped a bar in front of me as tightly as I could and was unable to keep from squealing just about every time we lost contact with the surface of the water. I must have had such a look of absolute fear on my face. I eventually relaxed a bit (in very relative terms), though I was shaking from the adrenaline and fear. We got out into the open water and I could tell after awhile that we were getting no closer to the island offshore that Doug had planned to head towards. He eventually told us that we weren't going to the island; he had spotted a bunch of birds in the distance and the birds usually meant dolphins (the birds try to grab fish from of the dolphins). A short while later we were spotting fins in the distance and soon a pod was swimming with us, the dolphins right alongside the boat.

The next couple of hours followed a pattern: we would spot the pod of dolphins, speed over to catch up with them, pass them, stop, throw some people in the water in the hopes of them getting the swimming experience, have the dolphins all pass by in no time, grab the swimmers out of the water, and then go off to find the pod again. So the whole "swimming with dolphins" thing didn't really happen for our group, which is too bad, but even boating along with them was amazing. It was all exhausting though, especially since every time we stopped, I got queasy from the roll of the sea. I really had to keep my eyes on shore or I would have been sick, I'm sure. I was lucky, others on the boat did get sick, but fortunately Doug was very sympathetic about it and understood that not everyone has their sea legs.

Since I wasn't going to be swimming, Doug said I could sit out on the bow of the boat so I could get an even better view of the dolphins. I sat out there for quite some time, getting rather wet and cold, but it was worth it to see the dolphins darting around in front of the boat when we caught up with the pod. It was a bit freaky though to be out there when we were moving. There were times when we would hit a swell and the boat would drop from beneath me, I was pretty much suddenly standing up, and then I had to tense up my legs to stop from smacking down too hard when I met up with the boat again. Needless to say, I was sore for days in my knees and back and bum. I don't even remember how I managed to take some photos while I was out there, since I was gripping the boat railing with one hand and had the strap of my camera bag wrapped a few times around my other hand. I stupidly only took one video, but at least it was a good one. It's probably my favourite video of my entire trip (you can see a young dolphin a couple of times. It's amazing how they can keep up with the adults, but I guess it's a matter of survival):

Doug finally decided we'd chased the dolphins around long enough and we then headed to the nearby island where he said there was calm water, so those of us with unhappy tummies could finally settle down. It was lovely over there, the sun even started to come out (leaving me with a sunburnt face), and we saw other wildlife, like seals and nesting birds. We stopped for awhile, and Doug and the girl passed around snacks and warm drinks and everyone felt a lot better. We headed back into Whakatane, and after all of the stress I was starving, so I got some fish and chips next to the harbour. Doug boated past, probably on the way to dock the boat, and he saw me and gave a friendly wave.

Amazingly, that same evening (after the 1 1/2 hour drive back to Rotorua, and despite being so exhausted) I went to a Maori dinner called a hangi. I imagine it's quite similar to going to a hula show in Hawaii, it's a way for tourists to learn a bit about the native culture of New Zealand. There's the dinner, but also performances and explanations about traditional weapons and customs. It was on the edge of town, so a bus drove around Rotorua to pick people up. As I waited for the bus, I ended up chatting with a fellow traveller, a guy from Canada. I had guessed he was also waiting to go to the hangi, and we ended up hanging out the rest of the evening. It was always good when travelling alone to have a break from being on your own. The bus showed up, driven by a guy with a rather cheesy sense of humour who was asking us all where we were from and such. He ended up being the host of our group for the dinner; there was another group in another room and we ate separately, but came together for the performances. As we settled into the dining room and had drinks, the host found out what countries were represented by our group. There were 18 different nationalities there and he named us the Tribe of Many Nations. What was also pretty cool was that for each country, he was able to say a few phrases in that country's language, usually "How are you?" with a few other words or phrases thrown in. Amonsgt others, he did French, Spanish, Afrikaans, Dutch (the phrase he threw out then was "dank u voor de bloemen", heh), Japanese, and the one that impressed me, Hungarian. I think even the Hungarians were impressed. I heard the host later tell someone that a guy from Texas was there once and said that if he could learn a few words and phrases in the 80 or so major languages in the world, the Texan would fly him to the US and get him on Letterman. He knows about 40 or 50 now, and that's taken 7-8 years, so it wouldn't take much more to get to 80.

Before we went to see the performances and enter the Maoris' home, we needed a tribe leader to accept their offering and show we were there in peace. An Australian ended up being our leader and representing us when we met up with the Maori tribe. We then headed towards where the performances would take place, which took us on a beautiful walk through a forest. There was a spring there with the clearest water, and then we lined up along the sides of the stream that ran from the spring and watched some of the Maori men arrive on canoe.

We then entered the performance area and the offerings were given, first to our tribe chief, then the other group's chief.

They did a couple of hakas, a traditional dance with a lot of intimidating postures and shouting. Women did a poi dance, which uses balls on strings which are swung around very fast. Then we had dinner and another walk through the forest looking for glowworms, before being taken back to Rotorua.

I'm going to break up the New Zealand story into parts, otherwise it will just be too long. So, part 1...

In early December, my proper travelling started and I left Melbourne behind to spend 2 weeks in New Zealand. Two weeks is barely enough time to scratch the surface, but that's how my plans worked out. I got to see and do some amazing things, so it was still a very memorable trip.

Click here to go to the photos from this part of the trip.

New Zealand is full of unbelievable scenery and wonderful, friendly people. Some people say it's a bit old fashioned there, and it can be, but you can't fault good ol' friendliness and warm natures. New Zealand is made up of two main islands, the North and South Islands. The North Island is more populated and it also has more Maoris, the indigenous people who are similar to people from South Pacific Islands. The country is just a tiny bit larger than Oregon and has only a tiny bit more people. I was often reminded of Oregon when I was there, especially since NZ is part of the Ring of Fire like Oregon is and has been influenced in similar ways by earthquakes and volcanoes. The climate is quite similar, especially on the South Island where it is wet and cool on the west side of the island, but much drier on the east side, due to mountains that catch a lot of the moisture. There are definitely differences though, such as the fern-filled rainforests in the north, and unique animals, such as their iconic kiwi bird.

I flew from Melbourne to Auckland, the largest city in NZ (though not the capital, that's Wellington), where I stayed for a couple of days with a former co-worker of mine and her husband. After Melbourne, Auckland felt rather small. It seemed to miss the vibrancy that Melbourne has. So it was a little disappointing, but it's a beautiful city, surrounded by a lot of water. We went to the Auckland Museum and I started getting more closely acquainted with Maori culture and New Zealand history. The next day we drove to Piha Beach west of Auckland. It's in an area popular with surfers and it's actually a black sand beach, since the rock there is volcanic. It was a quiet, gray day when we were there. Still beautiful though, especially the drive there through thick vegetation, including a lot of fern trees. It looked prehistoric...

Piha Beach

I left Auckland and started my drive south, the beginning of many hours on my own in the car. Fortunately I had tons of CDs of NZ music to listen to, thanks to my co-worker's husband. My first destination was Waitomo Caves, which consisted of a few different caves you could visit. There were also adventure tours you could do, which is very typical of New Zealand. It is the country that invented bungee jumping, after all. These adventures were pretty tame by comparison, things like abseiling down into a cave and then going blackwater rafting. I would have liked to have tried it out actually, but it was bit out of my price range. Instead I did a couple of the normal tours, visiting two different caves. The first, called Aranui, was my favourite, but that was partly because we were a small group of only 6 and we had a wonderful guide who had been working in the caves for about 30 years, so he knew all there was to know about them. The cave is filled with limestone formations. They take some insane number of years to add on just one centimeter of limestone, so it boggles the mind to think how long it's taken a stalactite that's meters long to form.

Stalactites in Aranui Cave

In Aranui Cave

The other cave featured glowworms, which are larvae of bugs that hang sticky strings down to catch other bugs in, then they pull the bug up and eat it. But they glow as well to help catch the bug. This cave had a river in it and we were pulled on a boat through the dark where the glowworms were. The ceiling was full of these glowing blue points of light, like a lot of blue stars. It was absolutely beautiful and we were very quiet because noise makes the worms dim their light, so there was only the sound of the boat a bit and distant dripping water. The tour was marred though by a school group that joined us, a bunch of jaded teenagers who hated being there.

From the caves, I drove to the northeast, towards Rotorua. On the way I drove through a lot of green countryside, filled with sheep-dotted hills. And I stopped at the Orakei Korako thermal area, which I wrote about before in this post. Below are some videos of the thermal features.

Steamy (be glad this isn't in Smell-o-vision, because it was also stinky)

The mud pools (turn up the sound for optimal enjoyment)

Yeah, more mud pools. This one made a particularly slobbery noise, thanks to a bubbling hole at the back to the left.

In part two: the stories of seeing dolphins and going to a Maori dinner.

I've already posted about these two short trips that I took at the end of November and beginning of December, to get out and see some of the amazing nature in Victoria, only hours from Melbourne. I have photos now as well though, which are here.

The day trip to Wilsons Prom was not nearly enough to truly explore the park. I was meant to go on a 3 day trip with two nights of camping, but the tour company cancelled the camping part on me, which was really disappointing. Still, it was an amazing day, we saw lots of wildlife, and I realized how out of shape I was after the first walk to a viewpoint.

I then spent 3 days on the Great Ocean Road, which was all just so beautiful: the ocean, forests, farmland... The main places I visited which the photos show were the nature area at Cape Otway, the most southern point of this part of the coast, with a lighthouse; the Otway Fly Tree Top Walk, which was a pathway suspended amongst a forest, so you had a totally different view of the trees and wildlife; and the western end of the Great Ocean Road, with the famous Twelve Apostles, as well as other formations and blowholes carved from the sandstone that makes up that area.

Some videos...

Walking along the tree top path. You can hear some of the clanging and other weird noises it made as it swayed around. Not for those with a fear of heights, or of clanging, swaying things...

Even bouncier! This is a part of the path that sticks out from the rest. You can see how it bounces around and the guy has a hard time walking straight (at least I think that's the walkway's fault).

The view from the tower that is the highest part of the walk. You can hear some clanging as someone goes down the stairs.

There's not a whole lot I can add to what I've already said about Melbourne. I loved it instantly. On my first morning there, by the time I had walked just a few blocks from my hostel, I felt at home. It reminded me of Portland, though busier and with people speaking in a funny accent. It was what I expected, whatever that was, I just know I wasn't disappointed. And I fell in love with it more the longer I was there.

One of my favorite places in the city was Federation Square. The square is relatively new and everything I had read about it talked about its controversial architecture and whether it fit in with the rest of the city. So before I went there I had the feeling that Melburnians hated the square. Once I was actually there, I didn't have that feeling at all. It felt like the cultural center of the city and so much went on there. The square has a few cafes with outdoor tables, a permanent stage, a huge TV screen, and a lot of space for events, activites, or, on quiet days, just hanging out. There were many times I popped over to Fed Square to see what might be up over there, because there usually was something. It seemed like every weekend there was an ethnic celebration: one week Indian, the next Turkish, one evening a Chinese children's celebration with lanterns and traditional dances. And if nothing happened to be going on, it was enough to pass some time sitting on the warm tiles, reading or people-watching. I thought it was a brilliant place, and I spent my last evening in Melbourne there, watching the final of the Australian Open on the big screen with hundreds of other people who had stuffed into the square to watch as well, while the sun set in front of us next to the city skyline. Talk about making it hard to leave...

I posted some photos before, while I was in Melbourne, but of course I took many more. You can go to my Melbourne album to see the new, and the old, photos I have put online. I ws going to keep them separate, but then you don't get the whole story. I was going to take advantage of Flickr now allowing videos to be uploaded, but all I get when I try to upload a video is a frozen browser. So the videos are included below instead (I hope they work! If not, try again later...).

I tried to take some everyday scene types of photos, especially of some of the beautiful buildings in Melbourne and some of the places I visited most. One day I also walked around part of Ascot Vale, not the area around where I lived, but the area my bus passed through before stopping at the train station, and I took photos of some houses, many of which are typical of Melbourne, or maybe of Australia in general. Some though wouldn't look out of place in Portland. They are in this separate album.

Koalas at the Melbourne Zoo:

Little penguins at the zoo:

Mollydog on the porch (She wasn't being very exciting, though I was trying to get her to run around. She can be a jumpy, excited dog, but it just wasn't happening):

I'm starting my stories with the end of the trip because it was only a couple of days so I have a lot less photos and a lot less to tell. =) Probably after this I'll post things rather chronologically.

Besides what I've posted here, you can find the rest of my photos from Kuala Lumpur on my Flickr page.

Kuala Lumpur was the first Asian city I've been to and I think it was a good one to start out with since the language is relatively easy (not in another alphabet), people (in the cities at least) speak quite good English, it's multicultural, and I found it safe to walk around as a single woman, even at night, as long as you take the usual precautions with your bag and with avoiding dark alleys. It's a very Muslim country (the mosques broadcast their prayers over loudspeakers), but it felt very modern and not too conservative. The 3 main cultures are Malays (who I found similar to Indonesians), Indians, and Chinese, the Chinese, I imagine, being the main non-Muslim population. Despite it feeling at times like any other Western city, with shops you can find anywhere and English being common and shiny new buildings going up everywhere, it still was like what I imagined Asia to be like, especially in the mad traffic. I don't know how you can learn to drive there, maybe you just have to grow up thinking that driving with pretty much no rules is just the norm. It was a bit insane as well to try to cross the street. At first I tried to wait for the pedestrian lights to go green, but I eventually realized they don't always work, so you just have to go when you have the chance. In the beginning I'd often keep my eye on someone native waiting to cross the street with me and go when they went, but I soon got over my fear and learned when it was good to cross.

Malaysia is a very tropical country. It was like being in one of those tropical plant or bird houses at a zoo, but for real, so the middle of the afternoon was rather intolerable and I was just a puddle of sweat. It would eventually rain almost every afternoon because the sky just couldn't hold any more moisture. Fortunately most storms didn't last too long and then it was a bit fresher in the evening.

There were also different customs there for me to get used to, especially related to hygiene. I think it was customary to wash your hands before eating, so almost every restaurant had a little sink in the corner for this. Some people eat with their hands, using rice to scoop up the meat dish they're eating. They don't seem to use knives as a utensil, so you were only ever given a fork and spoon and I would somehow try to cut a piece of chicken with a spoon. Maybe I was meant to use my hands, but that didn't seem right, so I just kept attacking my chicken in various ways with the fork and spoon I had. Some sort of bidet system was common in nearly all of the toilets. The first toilet I went into, in the airport, had a bit of hose coming out of the wall and I guess you used that if you wanted to. Then I found that some places gave you a choice of toilet to use, either a standard Western toilet, or a squat-over-a-hole toilet. I used one of those in a mall before finding out that the other stalls had normal toilets so I just needed to wait for one of those. Ah, the joys of a foreign country...

My first day there, I didn't really know what to do and I was lacking energy, so I didn't do much besides go to the tourist office and get stuff to help me figure out what to see. During my visit, I spent a silly amount of time in the large mall that was not far from my hotel, at the base of the Petronas Towers. It was air conditioned and there was a large bookstore I liked to browse, so it was good to go to when I was too hot to be outside anymore. That afternoon was the worst thunderstorm while I was there, it lasted for about 2 hours; fortunately I was in my hotel room during it. It was bucketing rain and there was a lot of lightning and thunder. I watched it for awhile, but eventually went to take a nap and was still being woken by big rumbles of thunder. It was still raining that evening when I went to find a place to eat dinner so I got a bit soaked.

The next day I finally got out into the city more. I took the metro to the Chinatown area and wandered around, plus I had a look through the Central Market, which was full of little shops selling souvenirs and cheap stuff, so it was rather touristy, not a cool local market with weird produce and meats for sale. (By the way, though they like their durian, I never saw one there, though large supermarkets in Australia had them for sale. I did see durian chocolates once and was very tempted to get those, if only to try to find out what durians smell like.)

Chinatown was really cool, so many wonderful smells from food being cooked by street vendors or in restaurants and all these very Asian shops and mopeds zooming around and all of that. I made it over to Jalan Petaling (Petaling Street), the main street of Chinatown and basically just walked and walked, checking it all out. There were tons of places down alleys selling food and I sometimes walked through these areas, but I was too afraid to actually order anything there.

By now it was the hottest part of the day and I was soaked with sweat, but on my way back to my hotel, I went to a neighbourhood I read about in the Lonely Planet that was supposed to have more the old-style of Malaysian houses. It was pretty much just across the metro tracks from the Petronas Towers, but the feel of it was light years away from the sparkly, modern Kuala Lumpur that was taking over.

I walked around the neighbourhood and felt horribly out of place. I felt like people were looking at me wondering what wrong turn I took to end up there. A few people were lounging in the heat and it felt rather quiet, like everyone was inside taking a siesta. I went down one little street to get back to the metro station and there was laundry hanging everywhere and chickens running around. I passed this building:

and some kids were playing on the raised part at the front of it. Most of them, when they saw me walking by, freaked out and ran away, but one boy showed he wasn't afraid and he came to the edge of the platform and said hello and smiled. I said hello back and waved, and then he called back to his friends all "it's ok, she's not scary!" so they came over and started calling out hello to me as well. It was really sweet.

I went back to the hotel for awhile and then went back to Chinatown in the evening when there's a night market on Jalan Petaling. It was even more crowded and guys in the market kept wanting to sell me cheap knockoffs of designer bags or sunglasses, but they weren't too pushy and would leave me alone when I said no to them. Adding to the atmosphere were the red lanterns hanging everywhere because it was the run up to the Chinese new year on February 7th. I ended up passing one of the main Hindu temples in the city and I went to the door to have a peek, but it was getting late and the people there were all leaving and turning out the lights. What I saw looked interesting though.

My final day was also the day I left, but my flight wasn't until almost midnight. So I had to leave my hotel room, but then I kept my bags at the hotel and spent the day in the city. I decided to see one of the main Chinese temples and you couldn't get there by public transport, so I took a taxi, which is pretty cheap. Apparently though no one knew where this temple was, so my taxi driver was a bit lost for awhile. I fortunately had a basic map with the temple on it, but we still were driving around a neighbourhood and stopping every once in awhile to ask where it was. Thankfully we found it in the end, though I walked the last bit and thought I might still not find it, but I got to it, fortunately, after going through all that trouble. It was mostly worth it in the end.

There were some other tourists there and a few people coming in to give prayers. You have to take off your shoes before entering the main room of the temple, something which I think is common in all of the religious houses there, no matter which religion it is. People were lighting sticks of incense and putting them in a holder outside before going in to pray in front of one of three deities. The main room itself was pretty small in comparision to the size of the whole building. After seeing the main part of the temple, I followed a sign to a tortoise pond, which was pretty much as described, a pond full of tortoises. As I stood there taking some photos and awing at the number of tortoises there were, a guy pulled up on a moped next to the fence bordering the pond. He stopped just long enough to plonk down on the pond side of the fence a poor tortoise with its legs and head pulled in. I guess it had gotten free and the guy was returning it to its home. After the moped zoomed off, the tortoise cautiously poked out its legs and head, then ran around rather aimlessly, probably still feeling freaked out, before running into the water and seeming a bit more calm. At least the guy saved it from being run over. I left the temple and went back to the city and I didn't really do much else that day except wait until it was time to go to the airport.

I will now write about the food I had in Kuala Lumpur, so if food doesn't interest you, you can skip the next few paragraphs... =) First off, the breakfast buffet at the hotel was amazing. There were just so many different types of food, it was quite impressive. I thought the buffet I had in Jamaica was incredible, but this one catered for even more cultures. There was the Western American/British food, like cereal and yogurt and eggs and sausage and pastries, but then also Asian foods such as curries and rice and fried noodles and sushi, which for them is normal breakfast food. I was well taken care of every morning with all the choices available.

For lunch and dinner though at first I only ate at safe places in the mall. On my first day I went to a cafe and had what is pretty much the national dish of Malaysia, nasi lemak. It's rice cooked in coconut milk and usually served with some sort of meat curry (in the one I had there was chicken in a slightly spicy curry), and then condiments like cucumber, roasted peanuts, little fried anchovies, a dab of sambal (spicy chili paste), and hard-boiled egg. Very yummy.

On my second day, I was more adventurous and finally ate at cheaper places around Chinatown. For lunch I ate at an Indian restaurant. A guy helped me order, basically he threw out suggestions and I would be like "that, yeah, I'll have that," heh. So I ordered vegetarian naan with tandoori chicken. I sat down and waited for the food to come. They aren't the most atmospheric places, it's like a kebab place or something with cafeteria tables and fluorescent lighting, but the people working there were all really nice and I never felt really guilty for being a stupid English-speaking tourist. I hadn't ordered a drink, mostly because I didn't know what to ask for, so one server after another kept coming over to ask me what I wanted to drink. I finally ordered something, especially since I was rather hot and thirsty. I saw a woman get something that looked like iced tea, so, though I don't normally like iced tea, I asked for one. What I got didn't look like what the woman had, it was milkier, but it tasted wonderful, it was sweet and and kind of like an iced chai. Then my food came, first the chicken, a few small pieces, along with mint chutney and a small bowl of dal. And then the naan bread, which was round and cut into pieces like a pizza. It had garlic and maybe coriander and some red bits I never identified on it, along with a few raisins. It was all so delicious and it looked so good. I wanted to take a photo but would have felt too silly. The total price of my lunch was 11 ringgit, or just a bit more than 2 euros.

My dinner was even cheaper and just as satisfying. I went to a street vendor near the market in Chinatown that was selling bowls of beef noodle soup and again managed to communicate what I wanted and then waited for them to bring it over. It was simple, just beef ramen essentially, but so filling and good. I asked for iced tea again and this time it was more like I expected, tea, no milk, with ice in it. All of that cost 5.50 ringgit, or just over 1 euro.

During the day I would sometimes stop and buy a drink from vendors on the street selling various iced beverages (for only 1 ringgit), some of which looked a bit scary. One looked black, I was never sure what it was made of and I was afraid to give it a try. The first time I stopped, I asked the guy what a yellow coloured one was. He answered back "cone" and I was like "what?" and he kept saying it and I eventually said "sorry, I'm not sure what you mean..." and just asked for the one that I could tell was orange flavoured. A woman came up in the meantime also to order something and the guy I guess said to her something like "What is [yellow-coloured flavour] in English?" and she said to me "cone" and I just looked back confused and said "sorry, I still don't understand..." But then it finally clicked: corn! And then were like "yes, corn! That's what we said!" Doh. So they have corn drink... I also once tried one that was a sweet milky drink with strips of green tea jelly in it. At least that's what I think it was, I only know that (and dared to try it) because I read about it somewhere. Pretty much anything cold was good though.