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That title is actually misleading as we never quite made it to the outback, but for obvious literary reasons I will leave it like that. Truthfully, as many of you know, we were never meant to come to Australia at all and our decision to leave Asia was probably the most spontaneous of our lives. Luckily, it was also one of the best.
Let's start with our journey from, Beijing to Perth Australia. Because we booked our flights with a budget airline, we weren't actually leaving from Beijing, but we were leaving from a smaller town, about 300 kms away, called Tianjin. Because I'm paranoid about missing flights and connections, we got up extra early to catch a taxi that would bring us to the train station where we had to catch a high-speed train to Tianjin. We weren't sure how easy it was going to be to get around on our own, so we decided to give ourselves a good amount of time to deal with the possible difficulties we might encounter. First step was getting the taxi driver to understand where exactly we wanted to go. Our solution to that problem was to ask the girl at the
Perth
The Swan Clock tower...weird design.front desk of the hostel if she could write out "Southern Train Station" in Chinese. Perfect solution! We got there without any problem, though Beijing traffic in the morning is crazy!! Once at the station, we were able to get our tickets for the train fairly easily and boarded the nicest and cleanest train we had seen in China! Too bad we were only going to be on it for 30 minutes instead of 18 hours. This high-speed train was amazing! We both sat there staring out the window watching things zoom past and watching the speedometer rise to 326km/h! It was amazing how fast we were going. Alexis and I were like school children we were so excited. As I mentioned before, the journey only took 30 minutes to reach Tianjin's train station.
Once there, we had to somehow make our way to the airport. We managed to figure out that the easiest and the cheapest way was to take the public bus there. What we didn't know is that the bus would drop us off on the side of the highway close to the airport! We started to suspect that it was going to happen when we
noticed that there were no real bus stops anywhere and that people were just being dropped off randomly on the side of the road. After getting off the bus, we weren't sure how far our walk was going to be, but luckily a taxi pulled over and picked us up after only 10 minutes or so of walking. We made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare and feeling very good about how we managed the journey successfully on our own. Now we had another budget airline flight to look forward to.
Lucky for us, while we were waiting to check-in we noticed a very large Chinese tour group approach the same check-in counter we were waiting at. They were all very excited and loud and we could tell that we were going to have a pretty interesting flight. Of course, we weren't disappointed. As I think Alexis mentioned in the last blog, the Chinese people are a little different. During the whole flight they were walking around while the seatbelt sign was on and had to be told over and over that they had to remain seated for their own safety, the lady sitting in
Perth
Small downtown core. front of us with her baby kept trying to get her husband's (who was sitting in another area of the plane) attention by screaming his name over and over and the rest of the people in the tour group were having loud conversations. Alexis and I just kept looking at each other and rolling our eyes...what an experience. Once we landed in Kuala Lumpur, we only had 2 hours to cross the Malaysian immigration, collect our bags and check onto our flight to Perth. We were a little afraid that we weren't going to make it, but to our relief, we got everything done and still had time to grab something to eat at the airport. I guess you might want to say that we sound like seasoned travelers!
We landed in Perth very early in the morning and we were quickly culture shocked (reversed culture shocked)! Everything was in English and people understood us when we asked a question. After 2 months of hand gestures and repeating ourselves, it was weird to have our conversations go so smoothly. It was exactly what we needed and hoped for by going to Australia. Because it was so last minute, we
Perth
Steph in King's Park weren't exactly sure what we were going to do in Australia or where we were going to go, but we knew that we had a couple of days to explore Perth before moving on to somewhere else. Our first impression of Perth was good. Our hostel was in a pretty good location being pretty close to the downtown core, so our first day there we ended up just walking around. Our first stop was at the boardwalk by the water. It was so nice to see the blue water and the blue sky!! Because of the pollution in China, we felt like we hadn't seen a really blue sky in ages. The sun felt so good beaming down on us, so we kept walking until we just couldn't do it anymore. We were so tired after the long flight that once we made it back to the hostel, we crashed and slept for a few hours. We spent 3 nights in Perth and had a pretty good time, despite feeling a little homesick. The day before we left for Melbourne, we met up with my brother's (Pat) girlfriend's (Brittany) sister (Adriane) and her boyfriend (Marc) who just happened to be
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The view of Perth from King's Park traveling in Australia as well. We figured out that Alexis was Marc's girlfriend's sister's boyfriend's sister's boyfriend. We thought it was funny... Though we had never met them before, we had a great day at the beach with them and their two Irish friends. We finished the day by eating some delicious fish and chips before heading back to our hostel to do some laundry. So far, Australia was working out for us.
The next day, we flew to Melbourne - the Montreal of Australia. We landed pretty early which gave us an opportunity to walk around South Yarra, the area in which our hostel was located. We noticed right away that Melbourne had a different feel to it than Perth did. The lifestyle in Perth seemed to be a lot more relaxed with people walking around in their board shorts and flip-flops (or thongs as the Australian's say...sounds funny to us). Melbourne had a faster pace to it with people rushing around in their trendy clothes and on their cellphones. With it's older styled buildings and coffee shops on every corner we knew that it wasn't going to represent what we thought a typical city in Australia would
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Meeting up with Brittany's sister Adriane and her boyfriend Marc at the beach!
The only thing missing was you Brit! look like. Though it was a little cold, we managed to enjoy walking around the city however we weren't feeling very well our first couple of days there, so we also enjoyed relaxing in the hotel, of course the free tea and coffee supplied didn't hurt. On our first night there, after resting for most of the day, we made our way to the Festival Hall to see if we could get tickets to the Jason Mraz concert that was on. We weren't sure if there were going to be any tickets left, but we thought we'd give it a chance. The reason we wanted to see him so much is because we had been listening to his latest album so much during our trip and we thought it would be a perfect thing to lift our spirits, which it was! The only downside was that they didn't accept credit cards at the ticket booth and we had just enough cash on us for the tickets, so we weren't able to buy any drinks or souvenirs. In the end it didn't matter, the concert was very good.
It just so happened that we knew someone else who was in
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Ah, back to the beach. Australia and who was staying in Melbourne. A girl I had classes with in university had been living in Melbourne since September nannying for a neighbour who had been transfered to Australia. She saw my status on Facebook and we decided to meet up for a drink while we were in her temporary hometown. She took us to a pretty swanky bar in the downtown core where we had a couple of beers on a crowded balcony. Afterwards we headed down the street to grab some fries at a place called Lord of the Fries...haha. They had every kind of topping there, even the French-Canadian (aka poutine) though we were told that it didn't taste very good. We took our snack to Federation Square where we spent an hour or so chatting some more. Once again, it was nice to see a familiar face so far away from home. After Melbourne, we were off to Sydney for a couple of days.
Alexis' dad has an aunt who lives in Sydney and who was nice enough to have us stay with her while we were there. She and her husband live only about 10 minutes away from the airport so
she told us that they would pick us up....the only problem was that we had no idea what they would look like. Our flight landed at Sydney Airport around 4pm and as we got off the plane we kept our eyes peeled someone who might be waiting for us. As we turned to corner, the first people we saw were an older Indian couple standing at the gate looking like they might be waiting for someone. Because we weren't sure who we were looking for, they sort of fit the bill. Alexis slowly started approaching them with a smile on his face and ready to introduce himself when we noticed that they were holding boarding passes in their hands. Alexis quickly changed his path and we walked by them snickering to ourselves. So we still had to find the mystery aunt and uncle. We decided to collect our bags and find a payphone to give them a call. As Alexis walked in front of me, I noticed a lady following him looking like she might be trying to get his attention. I was right because just as Alexis turned around she said "You're not Alexis are you?"
Once the
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We bought matching T-shirts in China. Look closely and together it spells WE. introductions complete, Raijni, Alexis' aunt, guided us out to the pick-up/drop-off zone where her husband Bushy was waiting for us in the car. We had to quickly jump in as a parking official was taking down license plate numbers and Bushy's were next to be noted. We arrived at their house and were immediately treated like family. Alexis had been talking for weeks about how much he missed his parent's home cooked meals and that he would die to have some curry. To his absolute delight (and to mine of course) the first thing we were fed were samosas - a family classic. Next on the menu was chicken curry as well as lamb curry. I could tell that our waistlines were going to expand while we were in Sydney. The food was SO good and was exactly what we'd both been craving. Raijni and Bushy's eldest son Keegan, his wife Rebecca and their daughter Natalia joined us for dinner. Later that night, Kevin, their youngest son, and his girlfriend Suzie also joined us for some drinks. It was a great welcome to Sydney.
We had originally planned on staying with them for 4 nights before moving onto Japan,
Melbourne
Jason Mraz concert on our first night in Melbourne. but we actually ended up staying for over a week! Don't worry, we weren't taking advantage of our wonderful situation. It just so happened that Kevin was turning 30 on the Saturday after we arrived and we were invited to stay for the party. The offer was so nice, we just couldn't refuse. We spent our first couple of days walking around Darling Harbour and the Opera House. Alexis immediately fell in love with the city. I felt like I had never left. The weather in Sydney was beautiful! The next couple of days we spent visiting the Botanical Gardens, where the trees were covered with flying-foxes (giant bats) during the days while at night they took to the skies. We watched surfers work their magic at the famous Bondi Beach and hiked along the cliffside in the Blue Mountains. We had an awesome time in Sydney. We spent our days walking and our evenings chatting with Raijni, Bushy, Kevin and Suzie who live just down the street and profited from the same delicious meals as we did. It was so nice to be with the family and feel like we were at home. Our time there made the detour
Melbourne
Downtown Melbourne was awesome despite the trams and tram lines. to Australia well worth it. After the big party for Kevin, we spent one more day in Sydney before taking the train to Brisbane.
Japan was now no longer part of the plan, not because of our extended stay in Sydney but because the flights from Japan to China were more than stupidly expensive. We decided to spend a couple of days in Brisbane instead. To be honest we didn't do much in Brisbane. We walked around the city, visited a local artificial beach and of course spent a day at the Australia Zoo - home of the late Crocodile Hunter. The zoo was both amusing and exhausting, which was good because we were catching an overnight flight to Shanghai that evening. We were almost sure to be able to sleep on the plane.
Though we didn't plan on meeting up with anyone in Brisbane, we actually ran into someone who went to high school with us and who used to live down the street from Alexis. She had been in Australia for over 6 months and was heading home soon. What are the chances of running into someone from home on the other side of the world?
Melbourne
Coffee time. So with that encounter we had met up with someone in each of the four cities we visited in Australia. Not bad for a last minute side-trip!
Next we were off to Shanghai for a couple of days before flying to London to commence our Europe leg of the trip....already!
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Mai
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This was an amazing blog! You guys are Adventurousand spontaneous!!!!! Australia was probably the best pick after all.