Stuff & Things

Well, the flight from Sydney to Bangkok was uneventful except for some really fun turbulence. 11J & 11K for myself ensured that I had lots of space, and I didn’t have any problems falling asleep.

I probably should have stayed awake though.

Getting back on in Bangkok, the flight was almost full, and considering it was a 13-or-so hour flight, I should’ve used that for sleeping.
While I did catch an hour here and there, it was just so difficult sleeping with everyone else around - I need to make sure I fly upper deck in the future

With that said though, someone’s done something to BA.
The snack/sandwich I got when leaving Sydney was ham. AND cheese; and it tasted more or less like Subway! I was greatly confused, and it didn’t quite help that they gave me a few too many bottles of Nottage Hill (a rather nice weekday-wine).

Oh well, I’m not complaining!

Having gotten out of the showers here at Heathrow, it’s time for me to get something to eat - hopefully the places around here don’t insist on serving breakfast until 11 or some such nonsense.

On the other hand, I’m getting a calzone as soon as I get back to my place.

YUM!

So, Friday evening, Sydney, beer, darling harbour, CBD, Casino - yes, I’ve been around.

I went back to James Squire - supposedly”Australia’s first name in beer” or some such nonsense.
The beer IS good, however - their lager is beautiful, their Amber Ale is gorgeous, and their Indian Pale Ale is just amazing.
(In other words, if you get down here, go to James Squire’s, Darling Harbour).

As it is a Friday, and things are  bound to be in a fairly party-ish  mood, I’ll taunt you by telling you what the mood’s like in D H.
Walking from James Squire towards central (and Paddy Maguire’s - remember that one, eh?), I bumped  into a “small” fireworks display.

By small, I mean great.
By great, I mean haunting - eerily so.

The whole display (which, to be honest, was more music and lights than fireworks) felt right out of an old children’s tale or two - Peter Pan (and Per Gothe), hit the wall, why don’tcha.
To be honest, I’m not quite sure how to explain it, other than it was eerily moody, and it was one of these things to make you realize that you’re still far far away from home.

Had I been clever enough, I’dve brought my camera - but no such luck!
I blame YOU.

Thanks

What’s there to do on a unbelievably hot day in Sydney you ask?

Other than strolling around in town, enjoying the beaches or sitting in a pub, you could probably go to Tarronga Zoo (which, if not quite obvious at this point, is what we did).

Koalas are cute and cuddly (except if they get off their Eucalyptus-high, which would turn them into vicious killing-machines), queenslanders look funny, and Giraffes are absolutely hilarious!

Apparently, there are some silverback gorillas and really-poisonous-snakes (hello Mr. Lamy!) there, but we didn’t see any
Anyway, enjoy these pics for now

We’ve all seen Finding Nemo, right?
Well, the Sydney Aquarium is supposed to be world famous, so we figured we’d have a look (and now I’ve been there twice :P).
There are Fisks of every color and shape - unicorn fish, pineapple fish, angel fish, star fish and probably Fisk fish as well.

There’s a really nice Finding Nemo section, but the real highlights of the aquarium are the tunnels underneath the shark tank and the seal tank.There’s a show put on every day when the seals are fed - fast buggers!
They do love a bit of attention though, so they’ll jump around and perform tricks (plus, lolrusses are awesome).

The sharks though. Looking them in the eye, you can see they’re completely devoid of  intelligence.
They’re just mean, vicious, driven-by-instinct killing machines - and I’m glad there’s a two-inch-thick sheet of plastic between me and them

If you go to Sydney, PLEASE go to the Aquarium - you’ll hopefully love it as much as I did! 

Realizing that we haven’t actually spent a lot of time IN Sydney, we figured we’d go do some touristy stuff.
Going to Mark and Los’ place, we dumped our bags for the day and headed off towards the Harbour bridge. Well there, we embarked on a four-hour-adventure across the world’s largest steel-arc-bridge (yay?).

Our guide was slightly amusing at times, and seemed to know his touristy things quite well. All in all, it was money well spent, as you saw a lot of the CBD from the top of the bridge, and it’s one of these you’ll-only-do-it-once-anyway things. 

So, we had our breakfast, we got in the car and we drove to Watarrka - Kings Canyon; a place of soaring cliffs, great views and quite possibly the most welcoming sight a wandering traveler could hope to see - The Garden of Eden (but let’s not get ahead of ourselves).

Everyone was quite tired after the previous day and the previous night-of-not-sleeping-a-lot, so we decided to split up, with some people doing the very easy walk through Kings Creek, and others going through the more insane Kings Canyon rim walk.

I was one of the four people starting off with the Kings Canyon walk, but I quickly got a rather nasty dehydration-related headache when climbing up the first mountain. Knowing that there’d be no more drinking water on the way (except what we had in our bottles, that is), I decided to break off and do the Creek walk instead, and that was probably the right thing to do.

When the other three people got back, they mentioned that they’d bumped into a group where one of the girls was suffering the usual heat maladies - vomiting, diarrhea and general nausea. They did say they loved the Garden of Eden, and I’ll get pictures one of these days (just like you, my dear readers ).

When they were off doing their walk, we bumped into a rather small Dingo prawling around the parking lot, drinking water and sniffing around in the way that only dogs do, and I promise that when I do get back to civilization (Sydney), I’ll post pics!

Eventually, we started driving back towards home base in Alice Springs, settling for a nice dinner at Bojangles (cool place!), where we had some Kangaroo steak, crocodile thingies, Emu sausages, Camel kebab and probably some other oddities. By the way, Northern Territory has the coolest coke cans - ever.

AAAAAAAAANYWAY, right now I have to try to correct my bookings for going back to Yulara, as I accidentally booked things for February instead of January… See ya!