Holiday In the Whitsundays

For spring break Jessie and I travelled to Cairns and then took a nine hour overnight bus to the Whitsundays to board on our two day, two night sailing trip. After our four long days of adventure in the cairns we were ready for some Rest and Relaxation. At midnight we took a cab to the Greyhound bus station. When we got out of the cab a rat crawled on my foot. I flipped out and started screaming. Everyone told me to relax in which I replied, " Have you not heard of a little something called THE BLACK PLAGUE". We boarded the bus and headed off. At 3am I a woke up and we were pulled up at a rest stop. I got off the bus to go to the bathroom. The bathrooms were labeled : Mangoes, No Mangoes. I just stood there, staring at them, wondering if I was considered a mango or a no mango..... I decided I was a no mango, but I am still unsure if I went in the correct bathroom.

We finally arrived at Airlie Beach in the Whitsundays and boarded the boat. We were told that it was a no shoes boat and were all forced to put our footwear in a big bag. I was really worried about getting sea sick and made sure to buy tons of motion sickness meds which I took diligently every four hours.

Those were the two most relaxing days I have experienced in a long time. The sunsets on the Whitsunday islands were beautiful! At night we were giving the option to sleep on the deck of the boat, despite it being hard cement, I opted for the deck. I fell asleep to the soft waves and woke up in the middle of the night surrounded by thousands of stars and complete darkness. I have to admit my eyes teared up a little and I put my I-pod on to a Sia song I love and let the waves rock me back to sleep with the soft summer breeze against my face.

The boat stopped at a few locations, one of them being White Haven Beach, a beach with the whitest and softest sand in the world! It was beautiful. Despite the beauty of the white sand and pure aqua water, we were forced to wear stinger suits, as it was deadly jellyfish season. I guess even paradise has its drawbacks. At this point in the trip the weather was starting to be a bit iffy as dark clouds began to hover over the boat. Despite this, I still opted to sleep up on deck. This time when I woke up in the middle of the night it was not to stars, but instead to torrential rain. I was soaked and the only one remaining on deck. I walked downstairs to find someone else sleeping in my assigned bed. Desperate for a place to sleep, I attempted to sleep in the breakfast nook area. The next morning we headed back to shore immediately as it was reported that a category four cyclone was approaching the Whitsunday islands..........

Sydney Thai Tour 2009

While in Sydney I have noticed some cleverly named Thai restaurants. In fact these restaurants are so cleverly named that I can't help but to give them my business. For instance I have noticed: Thai Tanic in Newtown, Thai Me Up in Paddington, and my personal favorite.... Thai Tanium in St Leonords. The use of the word Thai in these names are SO CLEVER. Because of my respect for these restaurants some friends and I have created the Sydney Thai Tour of 2009. In this tour we will visit each Thia restaurant and take pictures outside acting out the title. So at Thai tanic we would take a picture holding a ship, at Thai me up we would be in hand cuffs, and at Thai tanium we would have metal or something chemistry like. My friend, Liz, from Boston is visiting and I obviously told her about these restaurants. Equally sharing in my enthusiasm, we came up with a few restaurant names of our own: Thai Dye, Black Thai affair, and Thai the knot.

Hong Kong has more than shopping

Believe it or not I did more than just shop in Hong Kong. During my nine day long trip to Hong Kong, with my dear friends Heather (pronounced heathA) and Shelly, I went to ocean park, visited the largest bronze sitting Buddha in the world, went to the peak, and saw PINK DOLPHINS!!!!

So the pink dolphins… I know you are all sitting at home thinking that I made them up and they do not exist, BUT THEY DO. In Hong Kong there are pink dolphins that jump out of the water. They have no idea why they are pink, but they are. We took a boat out near the airport and I saw at least 20 pink dolphins! I wish I had a picture to share of these infamous pink dolphins, but you wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to take a picture of them. By the time my camera auto focused the dolphin was gone. I now have 40 pictures of just water with no dolphin in sight. I have posted a link to a Google image of a pink dolphin from a more skilled photographer than myself. http://lhessiando.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/pinkdolphin.jpg

We also visited Ocean Park, which is a zooish/ amusement park type place. The highlight was seeing the pandas and the red pandas. The first three pandas we visited barely did anything. We stood there for 40 minutes and all gasped with excitement when the panda’s ear flinched. That was the most movement we saw. We walked out of there so excited about the pandas and went to visit the other pandas. But before that we sat down for a quick lunch, when suddenly it started pouring; I have never seen rain like this before. We were sitting under this large picnic umbrella and decided to stick it out, but the rain changed directions and we seemed to be its main targets. After about ten minutes of holding on to the umbrella for dear life we decided to make a dash for the gift shop like the much smarter people before us. When we got there we were soaked. SOAKED.

The other pandas we visted were SO LIVELY. They were eating and walking around, in fact one even took the largest dump I have ever seen and then just passed out. As it happened, I just stood there covering my eyes and thinking, hmm, I guess pandas and humans have more in common than I thought. We then went to see the red pandas, which I didn’t even know existed. They were so cute! They look like a hybrid of a raccoon and fox.

Lastly we visited the largest bronze sitting Buddha in the world via cable car. Somehow I got this idea that I wanted to put my finger in the Buddha’s belly button, but when I got there I realized there was no way I would be able to reach it, it was that large. There is a monastery at the Buddha. We went to the restaurant that serves the food that the Monks eat. It was a great vegetarian meal filled with tofu, rice, and spring rolls! I loved it, except the soup. The soup was this tasteless broth with random bits of branches and bark in it. Heather told me the bark was a mushroom, so I tried to eat it. It definitely was not a mushroom.

Shopping in Hong Kong

I know this blog is called “living life in Australia” but I took a short trip to Hong Kong. Hong Kong is great and a shopper’s paradise! While here I have literally shopped till I dropped. At the end of the day my feet are sore; I even wore out my shoes from walking from shop to shop. Fortunately that gave me an excuse to buy a new pair! We visited the markets in Mong Kok. Mong Kok has a gold fish market, a bird market, a flower market, a jade market, a ladies market, and lastly 3 regular shopping markets! I LOVE Markets!!! I was in heaven, minus the pollution, hundreds of people, and smothering humidity. The bird market was our first visit. It was terrifying; I felt like I was in the movie “the birds” by Alfred Hitchcock, SO much squawking and chirping. We all just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. There were at least 20 birds in one cage. When you think that birds usually have the entire sky to fly around, it is so sad that they are stuck in those small cages. People often say they wish they have the ability to fly, yet we take away that ability from an animal that has it naturally by trapping it in small cages.
We then went to the flower market. There were thousands of orchids, my favorite flower. Beautiful Orchids were only $20 Hong Kong, which is about $3 USD. In America an orchid much worse looking can cost up to $40 USD. I wanted to buy them all but would never be able to leave Hong Kong with them so I settled for taking hundred of photos; however, I was getting dirty looks. There were signs around requesting no photography, but I don’t understand why. They are flowers….. The color doesn’t fade from the flash and it doesn’t steal their souls. It was really odd, so I just continued to take pictures and anyone who has a problem with it can suck it. We then ventured to the regular markets and the jade market
I bought so much. Seriously someone should hide my wallet from me. I am out of control. The only way I can justify my behavior is with these excuses: 8 HK dollars = 1 USD, I haven’t been shopping in 6 months, and I’m on vacation. So I bought: 2 pairs of sneakers, 6 sweaters, 5 shirts, 3 bags, a ring, 2 bracelets, pearls, a photo album, and jade. This list does not include gifts I bought for others…. So yes that means that all that stuff I listed if for myself. However, I did bargain down for a lot of these things items. I was on fire! One item I bargained down by $160 Hong Kong dollars. However, I think the joke is on me, seeing as I have no idea how I will take all this stuff back to the US. I will probably end up paying more money than all these things are worth in fees for overweight luggage. Sellers were quite eager to bargain. I went to one stand to look at a wallet and heard the seller speaking to this lady about a bag; she was charging $230HK for the bag. The lady started to walk away and the seller started running after her and screaming “OK $180, OK, OK, I MEAN $100, $100” with the bag in hand. It was so entertaining!

Hospital

Visiting the Hospital in Sydney Australia
I didn’t have a big night because I was preparing to go canyoning and ab sailing the next morning in the Blue Mountains. I was supposed to wake up at 6am and be at Central station at 7am to take the train to the Blue Mountains. I say “suppose” because that is definitely not what happened.
Around 5 am I was woken up from my roommate moving around our living room. Assuming she was just drunk and just having trouble finding her way around in the dark by bumping into things I just attempted to fall back asleep. After all I have done the same thing, a week before I walked straight into the fridge at 2am, so from my past experiences I didn’t think much of her fumbling around. However, 10 minutes later I hear “MARISA” in a terrified voice. I open my door and lying on the floor is my roommate curled up the fetal position. She was sweating profusely and pale. She described terrible stomach pain that woke her up in the middle of night that was coming in and out. She thought it might be gas, but my dad has gas all the time and I never once found him in the fetal position on my living room floor, so we decided to go to hospital.
So in our pajamas, we jump in a cab. In the cab I tell the driver that I want to go to the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. He has no idea where that is, so I tell him just to take us to ANY hospital that he knows and this is an emergency. He just looks at me, then looks at my roommate and says, “What, is she going to vomit in my taxi”, and then kicks us out of the cab. It was outrageous. We then get in another cab, in which the driver is also concerned with my roommate vomiting in his cab and thus drives as slowly as possible to hospital. I kept pushing the idea that we were going to the emergency room because it WAS AN EMERGENCY. We finally get to the hospital and my roommate gets a preliminary examination as I fill out her paper work in the waiting room. At thing point the desk clerk hands me a card for foreigners. This card notified me that my roommate would have to pay $800 a day if she was admitted. We then went to this hallway with curtains separating the beds. We waited three hours for a doctor see us, but in the mean time he were graced with the unique opportunity of hearing an 80 yr old man getting a catheter put in.
At around 6:30am I hear an old man across from us yell “Will someone help me, my penis hurts.” He yelled this about four times before a nurse came over tohelp him. I know this is insensitive but I could not stop laughing. I had to shove my sweatshirt sleeve in my mouth to keep myself together. Once the nurse came over I could hear her giving him an examination. I can’t be completely sure what happened, but I did hear phrases such as “Does it hurt underneath this flap” and “SIR, can you please keep your arms by your side”. About 20 minutes after the catheter was put in, another man came to visit the 80 year old. He said he was giving him a memory test and asked him a series of questions. When I say a series of questions, I mean six questions that consisted of: what is 100-7? What is 40-7? What day is it? Where are you? What is your name? AND ….. Sir, where are your teeth? He answered all the questions correctly including the last one. He told the nurse that his teeth were in his backpack underneath the bed, to which the nurse responded “So you can still enjoy a good steak”.
A few hours later, my roommate got her test results back and we found out she had to stay a few days in the hospital just to make sure she was ok. I got her an IPod and magazines just to make sure her stay was a little less painful. A few days later my roommate was released from the hospital with a $2000 bill…… I did miss canyoning and ab sailing, but it is alright because I got my money back and hope to do it in a few weeks when my friend from Boston comes to visit. My roommate and I discussed later that we wouldn’t have experienced true cultural immersion without a visit to a hospital in Sydney, Australia, however, I wouldn’t suggest this to other tourists. I was later notified that there is a TV show that takes place at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.