Hotel Puri

After a month and a half in hostels, we splurged in Melaka and stayed in a real hotel. Hotel Puri, located in the Chinatown area of Melaka, is in a renovated pre-war dwelling. It was decorated with lanterns for the Chinese New Year. Walking into a cool, welcoming space after five hours on a grimy bus was such a relief.


The rooms were spotless (smell and all), and the people were quite helpful. In USD, the rooms cost about $45 a night. (For comparison, we had spent more on some of our dorm beds in Australia.) Breakfast was included and served in a lovely courtyard. We took full advantage of the free internet access and cable tv with ESPN.


Right around the corner from the hotel, was the chaotic shopping and cheap food of Chinatown. We truly enjoyed Melaka. Staying at nice place in such a picturesque neighborhood definitely added to the experience.

Kopi

We found another favorite place to hang out. Calenthe Art House serves coffee (here it is spelled Kopi), and they have excellent food as well. At the door, they have a giraffe named Gee Gee which has a sign hung around her neck to indicate whether the place is open or closed. The servers are super nice and the food is very cheap.

Who needs sidewalks

We have been staying in Chinatown in Malaka, and there are very few sidewalks to speak of. Most of the time, people just walk on the line painted on the side of the road. Crossing the street is a serious hazard, but we are learning (thanks to Jeff & Lavi for the lessons).

I took a snapshot of one of the streets in the popular Jonker St area. You can see that the shoppers are spilling out into the street as they try to navigate past the shopping and food stalls. The cars just weave their way through the crowd and we are constantly surprised that no one gets their toes run over.

Malaka

The name of this town reminds me of a scene from one of my favorite movies. In Weird Science, Anthony Michael Hall says "she's into malaka's deano". It is a long story, so you have to watch the movie yourself to get the joke.

Otherwise, Malaka (which is just south east of Kuala Lumpur) is a nice place to visit. Apparently, this port city has been disputed and fought over for hundreds of years. The Portugese first invaded in the 1500's, the Dutch arrived in the 1600's, and the British held it until right after WW2. Today we visited one of the oldest Christian churches in the area, along with the oldest mosque, and oldest Buddhist temple. As is the case in Singapore, everyone appears to get along with their neighbors in a nice racial and religious harmony.

The weather here is hot, but the humidity is what is really stifling. We have kind of lost our appetites because of the heat. However, the sketchy food also contributes to the lack of eating. Many restaurants are just on the sidewalk, and we haven't quite gotten bold enough to eat anything which looks like it has sat on display in the sun longer than it was cooked.

We did visit an excellent coffee shop today. It had a beautiful spiral staircase which led to an apartment above the shop. It may seem like a contradiction to have coffee in such a hot environment, but it was necessary. Trust me - there is something to be said about a good espresso, even when it is hot out.

Everyone is still celebrating Chinese New Year here. I think the celebrations last for a month, but in reality it is more like 6 days. There are arbitrary fireworks and there are lots of folks here who are clearly on holiday. Additionaly, when we visited the temples, there were some parents showing their children the appropriate rites and rituals. According to this doco we saw on tv, this is an auspicious time of year to introduce children to their religions and traditions.

Headed to Malaysia

We leave Singapore for Malaysia today (Feb 20). We are headed to Melaka on the western coast of peninsular Malaysia. Erin

Night Safari

Next to the Singapore Zoo is the Night Safari. It is full of nocturnal animals that are most active at night. Here you can see tigers and hyenas pacing their enclosures and have enormous fruit bats fly directly over your head.

(More to come shortly.)

The Singapore Zoo offers a unique way to view the animals. They stay open until midnight, so that you can get a look into the lives of the nocturnal behavior. They also offer breakfast with the orangutans, but we elected to go in the evening instead of the morning (much to Erin's chagrin, I like to sleep late).

There are three different options for seeing the animals at night, and we were able to do them all. First, there is a walking trail. There is also a night show where the animals are brought onstage so that the crowd can see some of their behaviors in the spotlight. Finally, there is a tram ride through the zoo, which allows you to see a few more animals than the walk allows.

We went on the walk first, and saw a multitude of animals in the darkness. The path is not very well lit, and it winds its way through a jungle-like area so it really feels like you may accidentally happen upon a critter at any moment. It is really scary to come out of the trees to see one of the animals (like the hyena or the tiger) staring at you because it could hear you coming down the path. They are obviously a confined space, but you can almost feel them watching you in the darkness.

Some of the animals that stood out to Erin and I were the hyenas, the lions, and the elephants.

One of the scariest parts (for no good reason) was the bat cage. The bats on display were vegetarian so they are no danger to humans, but they were at least 3 feet wide when they spread their wings. Also, the bat cage is totally open, so you can walk right up and pet the things (although, this was strongly discouraged). At one point, one of the bats which was right in front of us took flight, and buzzed our heads. The wind gusts created by the beating of its wings was tremendous. I had the willies for about an hour after that. Technically, guests are not supposed to use flash photography during the night safari - which is why we don't have any good photos of the animals - but my flash accidentally got turned on in the bat cage, so we do have a good snapshot of one of the bats.

The staged show was really funny. It was the last show of the night, and the animals were misbehaving. One of the owls flew away into the trees, and for the rest of the show we could hear the zoo keepers whistling to try and coax it back. They also have this trick where they have a snake locked in a box underneath some of the seats, but the snake got away and was actually under some other seats. The people who were sitting there freaked out. As noted above, they don't allow flash photography, so the picture of the snake didn't turn out as well as we would have liked.

The tram ride was a hoot. You actually ride right into the enclosures with some of the animals - obviously the less dangerous ones. But we got to see deer and a cape buffalo. We got to travel very close to one of the asian elephants. It was 29 years old and HUGE!

Chinese New Year

We stayed in Singapore for an extra few days to experience Chinese New Year and what an experience it was.

(More to come shortly.)

We got to see the actual Lunar New Year celebration in the Chinatown district of Singapore, and it was a riot. It is hard to describe how many people were packed into an area about four blocks square. Think of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and you may get an idea. The major difference is that most of the participants are asian and there were no flashing of breasts.

We arrived in Chinatown at around 7pm and decided to follow the crowds as they shopped for traditional New Year's items such as oranges, bags (to put the oranges in), and red and yellow banners. I'm not sure that I understand the reasons for purchasing all of these trinkets, but it was a shopping bonanza. The streets were lined with booths of all sorts with the hawkers calling out "two dollar! two dollar!" and trying to grab you to come and look at their wares. We didn't buy anything except some drinks to quench our thirst, because it was still pretty warm out. However, we could have spent all of our money within an hour.


We had heard that getting into any line is difficult in Southeast Asia. Everyone pushes towards the front, and if you aren't competitive you won't get anywhere. This was especially true during our walk through the Chinese New Year celebrations, as there were a few thousand people milling about in such a small area. We were persistantly shoved and cut in front of. It is a good thing that we didn't really have any place to go. Unfortunately, we were both groped, but neither of our wallets were stolen.


We eventually ended up behind the main stage and saw the final acts before the fireworks. We got to see and hear a lady who was obviously popular, because when she went onstage the crowd erupted (at least the men were excited). As I mentioned, we were behind the stage, so we didn't get to see the main part of her routine but she did turn towards us a few times to belt out some of her tunes.

Finally, the moment of the New Year approached, and we turned our eyes skyward to see the fireworks. Somehow, we had ended up right below the display, and we were suddenly covered in exploded paper and black powder. Everyone around us was rushing to get under a canopy or simply to get away. I wish we would have had our handy umbrella, but alas it was in the hostel.

The fireworks didn't last as long we expected, but it was a cool show. Afterwards, we walked back to our room. There were other people wandering the streets headed home as well. It was comforting to see all of the families sharing their stories of the recent celebration. The New Year is a time of new beginnings, and it seemed a very poignant moment. Aww.

Singapore - City of No

Singapore is famous for its radical rules. There are even t-shirts that joke about how many rules there are. No chewing gum, no spitting, no jay-walking, and the list goes on. Some of these rules have been relaxed, so it really isn't that big of a deal to chew gum in public. However, we saw the following sign in the rail station and it had us laughing.



If someone can explain what "no monotony" means, we'd be happy to hear it.

Dorm Room

Joey shot this picture of our dorm room at The Inn Crowd to show people back home one of the kind of places we are staying in. We generally stay in dorms about five out of seven nights. They are cheaper and often the only thing available without a reservation. This dorm has sixteen beds; we like to look for dorms with four to six beds. Fewer people = less noise. This room is spacious enough that you don't notice how many other people are staying there. Also, good ear plugs are a must.

This has been a great place to stay. The people are friendly and helpful. The common areas are inviting and the bathrooms are generally pretty clean.

Just for Bill

Our first squatter. Joey paid ten cents to enter. It is not the worst toilet we have seen. I expect that they will get worse. We want to commemorate this image of our first squat toilet to Bill S.

Rain and Beer

Our first few days in Singapore were beautiful, hot but beautiful. Thus, we left for an afternoon of exploring without a thought about the weather. Oops.

We stopped at a lovely bar called Barrio Chino for lunch. After a few days of experimentation (think noodles, unreconizable Chinese dishes, with a little Indian thrown in), we were ready for something that we didn't have to point at to order. Western food, with a capital W, was in order. We settled into an enormous cheese plate, some bruschetta, and some beer (no need to be too western).

Suddenly, the heavens opened up.


We took this as a sign that we needed to order another round of drinks... and another one.

Eating in Singapore is cheap, drinking is not. The final bill could be divided as follows: 1/6 food and 5/6 alcohol. The alcohol bill was more than we had spent in the previous three days of meals.

It was worth it. The friendly staff at the bar sent us out into the rain with a new umbrella. All in all, an afternoon well spent.

Lost Passport

Of course, losing your passport is bad. Of course, it can mean lots of hassles while traveling. Of course, I had to lose mine. Actually, I didn't lose it per se, but I thought that I did and it caused waking nightmares for nearly an hour. Here's the story.

While checking into our hostel, I had to give my passport to the receptionist for them to log us in for the night. For some reason, the guy kept my passport, but I didn't think too much of it. This is sometimes customary for certain places, and we are going to be here for a few days so I didn't worry about it.

Later that evening, we were in the reception area looking at their collection of dvds for an evening movie, and I saw a different receptionist give a passport to another guest. Typically, all passports look basically the same. Other than the color of the passport book, most are identical. However, my passport is a bit beaten up from our travels (it has gotten wet a couple of times, i keep it in my pocket, etc). So, when the receptionist gave the passport to the other guest, I thought it looked like mine.

This bugged me for a while, but I wasn't worried. After a while though, I had to check. I went to reception and asked for my passport, and the lady told me that they don't keep guests's passports. This shocked me, because they had kept mine. I told her that the guy had put mine into the safe, so she checked and it was not there. Yikes!! This had me in a tizzy. I explained that I had seen the other receptionist give my passport to someone else earlier, and I thought that I heard that they were checking out.

In my haste, I ran out of the hostel to search for the person who had my passport. I had just seen her earlier and I knew the direction that she was going, so I thought that I had a chance. Of course, in a city with nearly 5 million people, this is impossible. After about a half hour of searching, I headed back to the hostel.

The receptionist explained that the woman had actually checked in and they would leave a note for her, so that she could return my passport and retreive her own. After a while, there was a knock at our door and the receptionist gave my passport back with profuse apologies. I was so gleeful that I asked Erin to take my photo with the newly found document. I think it is obvious that I was a bit anxious up to this moment.

So, on with our trip.

Fortunes

Getting our fortunes told was quite fun. Happily, we both are going to enjoy a good marriage and there is at least one daughter in our future. Unhappily, spring is a better time to finish Erin's thesis and we may run into some inconveniences while travelling. Fortunately for us, it will be a good year for silk production and farming, although at this time neither of us farms or produces silk. We will keep our eyes open for new opportunities in these fields in the coming year.

The process is quite streamlined. Once you enter the temple, you approach a counter on the side wall and pick up a cannister of sticks (much like pixie sticks) and two red lip-shaped tokens. You then take your shoes off and kneel on the carpet in front of the altar. While thinking of a specific question you want answered, you shake your can of pixie sticks at a 45* angle. Eventually one or more will fly out. If it is more than one or if you don't really like the one that fell out, you put the stick(s) back in and start over. Once a single stick falls out, you throw the red lip-shaped things. You have three chances to get one up and one down, yin-yang. If it doesn't happen within three tosses, you put the stick back in the cannister and return the lot to the counter. This means it is not a fortuitous time to get your fortune told. If you do get this yin-yang configuration, you take the stick up to the counter and are given a slip of paper with a number and verse on it. You then look up the number in a book and it describes in further detail the verse and your fortune. You need to read between the lines a bit to link it to your question.

For example, both of our fortunes said that we would have good silk production. Being that we own exactly zero silk worms between the two of us, this must represent something else, probably that it will be a good economic year for us. Strange, given that we have no jobs but there it is.

We were both pleased to have a daughter foretold. We are working on coming up with a name but hope that she doesn't arrive for at least another year or so. We were also told that our marriage would be happy (well duh!) and that travelling would be mostly good (well, all good for Joey and mostly good for Erin -- again, duh!).

All in all, the fortune telling experience was entertaining and educational. It was vague enough to give us a general feeling of well-being and precise enough to make it personal. Now that we understand the process, we may join the masses on Saturday night and try it again.

There are no images because taking pictures is not allowed. Sorry, words will have to suffice for this post.

Walking Tour

As noted before, we are staying at a hostel in the Little India neighborhood in Singapore. The folks here are really nice, and if you need a cheap place to stay we'd recommend "the inn crowd". As is the case with most hostels, they have events for the patrons and even do a walking tour of the neighborhood.

The first place we visited on our tour was the oldest Indian mosque in Singapore, Masjid Abdul Gafoor. Our host Karen showed us the appropriate behavior for entering, including wearing modest clothing - even the men have to cover their knees and we were given wraps, so that we could respect the rules. Karen also showed us where we were supposed to go to wash our hands and feet. Without a guide, I'm sure we'd have made many mistakes and violated as many customs. This part of the tour was very helpful.

Next, we visited a tradional tea shop. India has many tea options, and we were educated again on the local customs of how to order and what each item on the menu meant. Erin and I ordered 'teh tahrik,' which is "pulled" to cool the tea as well as to make it foamy. I had heard of pulling tea before, but I had no idea what it meant. Seeing it in action helped me to understand what it was all about. We plan on visiting this shop a few more times before we move on in our journey.

After tea (and a savory donut), we walked on to a Chinese market. It may seem weird to have a Chinese market so close to the Little India neighborhood, but that is one of the amazing things about Singapore. There are mass cultures and people all smashed together on this little island. One of the most amazing things about S'pore is how so many different cultures coexist in such a small place. Karen pointed out that on the same street there is a mosque, a hindu temple, a buddhist temple, a jewish temple, and a christian church. Anyway, on with our story...

Erin and I had walked through the market earlier in the day, but Karen pointed out certain shops and customs which educated us on what was really going on there. We visited the Hindu Sri Krishnan Temple (slightly fuzzy picture above) and saw the evening prayers. We also visited the buddhist temple next door, the Goddess of Mercy Temple (Guanyin), and got our fortune told. We even got to eat some "local" ice cream, which was served on bread instead of in a cone or on a stick. The ice cream stayed with us a little longer than we would have liked.

After the tour, we spent a little longer wandering the markets. Shopping is a major form of entertainment in Singapore. We did not partake (yet) but enjoyed watching the chaos. We were grabbed multiple times by eager shopkeepers who wanted to hawk their wares and get a sale. It takes a bit of getting used to, but we are enjoying it nonetheless.

Lunar New Year

The Chinese calendar is based on the lunar cycle, so their New Year's celebrations is not on January 1 like western calendars. This year, the New Year's celebration falls on 19 February, and we are really looking forward to being in Singapore for the experience. We had seen some of the preparations in Sydney, but being in an Asian country is totally different.


At the Chinese market, we saw lots of supplies for the upcoming festivals. Some of the items were easily recognizable -- lots of mandarin oranges, bamboo plants, red and gold decorations -- but we didn't necessarily know their significance. Others were totally inexplicable until we took a tour later in the day (see next post).

We also have seen many people stopping by Guanyin's temple to make offerings and get their fortune told. About twenty carts are set-up outside the temple selling all of the necessary accroutrements -- incense, flowers, oranges, etc. People come, offer incense to the heavens and to Guanyin, and then enter the temple to pray and have their fortunes told. We did the latter, there are more details in the next post but our mothers will be pleased to know that a daughter was foretold in each of our fortunes. We are planning to return to the temple at midnight on Saturday to see the throngs of people that show up at that auspicious time.

Singapore

We have arrived in Singapore at about 4am this morning. It may be Asia-lite but it is craziness to us. (Though, I may wish to revisit that opinion after I have showered, changed out of the clothes that I have been wearing for thirty-eight hours, and gotten more than two hours of sleep.)

We are staying in Little India. Singapore packs a lot of people into a small space (details when I can dig out my guide book). We spent today touring the Chinese New Year Market, some temples/mosques, and generally wandering around a very small section. We have lots of pictures, which will have to wait until after the shower, change of clothes, dinner, and sleep to upload. This post is just to let our families know that we have made it intact.

We are staying at the Inn Crowd, if anyone needs to get in touch with us before we figure out the phone situation.

Miss you all, Erin

Sydney Highlights

We ran out of time in Sydney (surprising, eh?) and didn't get an opportunity to blog about everything we did. Needless to say, our six days in Sydney where not only spent touring the Opera House and looking at the Harbor Bridge. Being ourselves, we also spent a far amount of time in cafes, pubs, and wandering lost through interesting neighborhoods. (After two months of travelling, I am amazed that we managed to find our way back to Ballard every night for the past few years. We have spent more time being lost...)

Anyways, here are some of our the highlights of our visit.
** Basketball in Wolloomoolloo: Joey found a group of guys to play basketball with. The lone American, though a bit older than the rest of the crowd, he was one of the best (maybe the best) player on the court. We revised our hostel plans, staying in King's Cross instead of heading out to Bondi Beach so that he could enjoy a little extra time on the court. Yes, I am a wonderful wife.
** Dov at Delectica (or something like that): we found this excellent little cafe, complete with a waitress with an excellent accent, our first day in King's Cross. We returned more times than I care to mention. The capaccinos and croque madame (okay, and the pancakes, the eggs benedict, the cheese and tomato melt) were delicious. Being recognized was also a pleasure after so long away from our usual local faves.
** Cheap pasta on Victoria Street: an excellent meal for twenty bucks, in Sydney, awesome.
** Ferry ride to Manley (in the monsoon): it poured on us repeatedly during the second half of our stay. Our beach days were cancelled due to sheets of water falling from the sky. On the last day, we unpacked our raincoats and took the ferry over to Manley, one of the must dos in Sydney. (We had attempted the Seattlite trick of ignoring the rain but waterfalls of rain are much more difficult to ignore.) The ride across the harbor was a rollercoaster, quite fun but not for those who get sea sick. The surf was up over in Manley; we got a kick out of watching the surfers and one lone kite boarder. We eventually got rained out of our perch but, absent the sheets of water, we could have watched the surfers all day.

Bob Marley

I hate Bob Marley. I realize that this confession may result in me being forever ostracized from my fellow travellers.

It began as a minor annoyance. I like Bob in small doses and find pleasure in some of his lesser played tunes. After two months of travel, my minor quibble has grown into a major gripe. Mr. Marley is quite popular in NZ and Oz but only for three songs. They are played over and over and over and over. Can you name them?

Thus, it was ironic to walk up to our dormroom at the Funkhouse on our first night back in Sydney and discover his face gracing our door. Are the gods of funk trying to tell me something?



No Woman, No Cry
Don't Worry About a Thing
(Thankfully I can only remember two right now. If you think you know the third, please put it in the comment section to assist in annoying me further.)

Sydney's Icons

After picking up our Indian Visas on our first full day in the city (yes, they will actually let us in), we walked down to the Opera House. Our first sight of this iconic building wasfrom right below it from the Opera House Quay. I must say that we did this backwards. A day later, we walked over the Harbor Bridge (another iconic sight), The view of the harbor, and the Opera House in particular, is fantastic. The appropriateness of the building is much more evident from afar. When seen from afar, the Opera House looks (1) more like the images projected around the world and (2) majestic, stunning, etc. Seeing it up close first, the sense of appropriateness is lost in the details of its constuction. The concrete construction, the off-white tiles on the roof, the hordes of tourists all distract from the immenseness of the building. That said, it is still an incredible sight. We snapped the same pictures that thousands of tourists have snapped before but they do not capture the actual experience. (Well, maybe not the exact same. The interior picture is from the bathroom, a sinuous, spotless affair. Definitely worth a stop, if only to wash your hands.)

From the Opera House, we walked along the waterfront through the Botanical Gardens to Mrs. Macquaries Chair. We got rained on in the gardens, but the birds were quite active making the dampness doable. This cockatoo (they are everywhere) was working quite hard at getting into the water pipe. We watched another flip upside down on a palm branch, much like a kid playing on the bars at school. Mrs. Macquarie was Governor Macquarie's wife. He was responsible for much of the early building around Sydney; he built a road out to the point and had this bench carved out of the rock for his wife who loved to sit here and look out over the harbor. The seat is not terribly comfortable but the view is still quite lovely, if vastly different than the view that she cherished.


We finished our first walking tour at Harry's Cafe de Wheels. Harry's serves Australian pies on mushy peas and some of the best hotdogs I have ever had. Joey went for the Hotdog de Wheels, piled high with mushy peas, chili, ranchero sauce, and cheese sauce. The mushy peas looked a bit like guacamole but tasted quite a bit different. It was good enough to go back a few days later for another round.

The next day we headed back into the city to check out The Rocks, walk over the Harbor Bridge, and generally tootle around downtown. We didn't do the Bridge Climb -- budgetary restrictions and out-of-shape issues -- but the views from the bridge deck were still spectacular. To get to the bridge, we walked through the Rocks, one of the older areas of Sydney, now mostly shopping, pubs, with some interesting buildings. The tale of the bridge is basically in the pictures; the views are lovely and the bridge is really, really tall.

Sydney: Final Week in Australia

We flew from Melbourne to Sydney, skipping Tasmania due to budgetary restrictions. (Gotta love those budgetary restrictions.) Upon our return to Sydney, we stayed in King's Cross, a backpacker haven. King's Cross is a heady mix of lovely Victorian row houses, many impeccably kept up, and red-light district sights. It contains many of the least expensive hostels in Sydney, making it crawl with backpackers. During the weekends, Sydney's party crowd shows up in short dresses (girls) and open shirts (boys) to mingle with the prostitutes, dealers, strippers, and backpackers. Weeknights are a bit tamer but a scuffle in the streets is not unusual. The craziness abates two blocks away from the main drag, with some excellent coffee shops and at least one really cheap and quite good pasta place. Although the guidebooks and other experts say to get out of King's Cross quickly, we ended up staying here for our entire six day visits. (Joey found a group of guys to play basketball with. Although I have tried to change him, basketball outweighs bodysurfing any day.) We stayed long enough to get recognized at our favorite coffee shop and meet some of the people who actually live here. Like Melbourne, we "lived here."

Sport

One of my goals for traveling is to see and learn about sports from all over the world. Erin and I have both been impressed with Australian's love for sports - and we do mean ALL sports. If you can think of a sport, they play it in Oz. We have seen sports that we haven't heard of and even sports that make no sense whatsoever, and we've tried.

One example is netball. Netball is a lot like basketball, but the players are not allowed to dribble. Also, the basket does not have a backboard. While we were walking in Canberra, we found a netball court. We could only imagine how difficult it must be to score a shot without being able to use the "bank".

As far as sports that have caught our interest (ok, Erin isn't as intrigued as I), cricket has made the list. I had heard of cricket before, but I had never made a concerted effort to understand it. We first started to recognize the fervor for cricket while we were in New Zealand, and folks in Aussie are equally into it. I really get a kick out of asking locals to explain various rules of the game, as they get all worked up and excited about it. There is nothing like talking to an elderly gentleman about the nuances of the sport to see how red his face gets in describing a "golden duck".

I won't get into the convoluted rules of the game on the blog, but if you are interested I can explain what little I do understand separately. Think of it this way: it is kind of like a very long version of baseball with 10 outs at a time and the pitcher (called a bowler) must bounce the ball before it can be hit.

While we were in Melbourne, I decided to attend a match. To be honest, I didn't think I could make it through an entire game, because they sometimes last more than 8 hours. And that is just the one day match. In "true" cricket (called a test match), the game actually lasts for FIVE days! Anyway, I arrived at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds (MCG) at around 6:45ish, even though the game started at 2pm. The second session had started, so I got to watch the Aussies bat and they eventually won the game. It was a riot to see the home team beat the New Zealanders, even though I wasn't really rooting for one team or the other.

The MCG is one of the most famous cricket grounds in the world, and I was very excited to visit. The arena holds nearly 100,000 fans, but the game I went to was only attended by about 50,000 folks. I found it notable that there were no major breaks and the big screen television had only one trivia moment throughout the time I was there. In American sports, the big screen is often kept busy with announcements and trivia games and the like to keep the crowd interested.

The other really interesting story here is that the wave (for some reason it is called the "mexican" wave in Australia) was banned recently. It was a controversial decision and the crowd was clearly displeased with not being able to participate. In the video, you can hear the crowd banging their seats as they anticipate the wave approaching their area. I'm not sure how that many people stayed in an open air arena in 90 degree heat for that long a period of time without doing something more mischevious and rowdy than a simple "mexican" wave.

Melbourne

Erin and I loved Melbourne. It was a nice place with lots of coffee, which made us quite happy. We stayed a few nights in a former convent, called The Nunnery. It was in a neighborhood called Fitzroy. There were plenty of cafes and shops in the area, and the Nunnery was across the street from the Melbourne Museum. While we were visiting the Museum, they fed the chameleon which was awesome.

After a few days, we moved to a new neighborhood called St Kilda. Kilda was also pretty cool, but the hostel wasn't as nice as the Nunnery. Kilda was an interesting mix of suburb and weekend away spot. There was an outdoor market and there is a beach, which loads of folks visit on the weekends. Melbourne's river walk is also quite beautiful at night.

Our Melbourne visit can really be summed up by saying that "we lived there." We really tried to experience the city in the way that a local would (except that we didn't have to commute to work). We rode the tram to various places, and we walked through the neighborhoods to find things off of the beaten track - certainly things which were not listed in the tour books.

One such item that I particularly enjoyed was finding graffiti. Erin and I have had many debates about the artistic expression versus destructive defacement qualities of graffiti. I agree that graffiti does deface property, but some of the images are so expressive that I do enjoy it. Erin says that as long as the graffiti is in a reasonable place (not on a storefront, home or fence) and that it is more than just a simple name or "i was here" message, it is ok - sort of. Below are some examples of the good stuff that we saw.

We also visited some of the churches. Melbourne has a few cathedrals which are open to the public, and we really enjoyed touring them. I'm a huge fan of stained glass and some of the other decorative elements of old churches. Hopefully, the images do them justice.

Lorne

We stayed in Lorne after a day of driving the Great Ocean Road. Lorne is a small surfer town along the highway, and the hostel we found was pretty cosy. The coolest part was the birds. In the morning and eve, the birds would line up along the balcony to be fed. The hostel provided cans of seed for us to use to attract the cockatoos.

Unfortunately, we aren't in any of the photos with the birds, but we did get to feed them by hand. I only got a little nibled during the feeding.

We met a few folks who were also travelling, and we stayed up late chatting with some of the other inhabitants of the hostel. The next day we let two of the folks we met, Marika and Susy, ride back with us to Melbourne.

The Great Ocean Road

The Great Ocean Road is an astounding drive starting south of Melbourne and heads west along the coast. The road is not that dissimilar from Highway 101 which parallels the coast of Washington, Oregon and California. The road twists and turns sharply as the ocean crashes against the rocks and cliffs right off the side of the highway. As the tour book suggests, the driver doesn't get as good of a view because of the required attention to driving, but as a passenger it is amazing. Erin and I took turns - Erin drove westward and I drove on the return trip.

I believe that Erin enjoyed driving much more than I did. She certainly enjoyed driving faster than I did. My knuckles are still a bit white from holding on so tight as we sped around the sharp turns just over crashing surf. I'll let her take it from here - The road is made for driving fast; though fast means something very different here than say fast when driving through the middle of Montana. We were the odd-car out in our pack, comprised of a motorcycle, a Saab turbo, an MG convertable, and a BMW. We kept up nicely though, our little Toyota rental car zipped around the corners and through the (rather short) straight stretches at a whopping 70-80kph. Rally car racing, here I come. While there are many bus tours along the Great Ocean road, I think that driving is the best way to experience it. Oh, and I insist that Joey's white knuckles were due to the scenery, not my driving. Back to Joey -

As we indicated in previous posts, there are lots of signposts warning of wildlife crossings. On the drive, we saw wild kangaroos (26 or so) having dinner in a field on the side of the road. We also saw a few koalas in the trees, with the obligatory tourist standing in the roadway snapping photos while trying to avoid getting run over. (Erin again -- the koalas in the trees were their typical sleeping selves. Regardless, it was quite neat to see an animal that we had previously only seen in captivity just hanging out in the wild.) See if you can spot the koala in the tree above Erin's head.

We got to see a lighthouse at Airey's Inlet (pictured below), but we were disappointed about the Cape Otway lighthouse as there was a fee to get into the park just to see the thing. [Editorial note: We don't mind paying a reasonable fee to see sights (it was $15/person to get in), if you can at least see what you are paying for. In this case, you can't even see the lighthouse from afar without paying the fee. Additionaly, we don't mind paying to see sights if the money goes to a good cause (i.e. for a historical society), but the Otway lighthouse was a for-profit group and it didn't appear that the funds went to anything historical. You couldn't even use the restroom without paying! Anyway, that's all I have to say about that.]