Month: August 2002

Canberra, the capital of Australia, is totally different from Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. The city is small, unpopulated and filled with monuments such as fountains and statutes. The city is also a planned city where geometrical designs shape the city.

It’s been an exhausting day. Esther’s gang brought me around Canberra. Our first destination was Lake Burley Griffin. It’s a man-made lake with an average dept of 12 feet. We took a stroll round the lake before we went for a paddleboat ride. Candy and I shared a paddleboat while the 2 other couples (Esther/Ritchie and Cheryl/Harry) had shared theirs. We started a water fight in the middle of the lake. Boy, the lake was extremely dirty! We were totally soaked by the end of the boat ride.

The Parliament was next. Entrance to the Parliament was screened by x-ray and a metal detector (probably to detect bombs). There weren’t any personals to guide us or brief us and we had to wander on our own. We somehow managed to get into the senator and house representative’s hall. We headed outside to hike up to the top of the Parliament to have an aerial view of the city.
Soon we were bored. We decided to head to Melbourne and Sydney. There’s a museum inside the memorial. The museum has an excellent display of the wars that Australians were involved. It was huge and I couldn’t go through everything thoroughly. Their World War I display is extremely huge. It emphasized in detail of every battles that Australians were involved.

Btw, we’re going clubbing tonight!
– 6:40PM

I’ll be staying in Esther’s room while Esther moves to her boyfriend, Richie’s place. Her room is well equipped. She has a tv, fridge, internet cable connection and even a Play Station one. She introduced 2 of her friends to me, a Hongkie named Candy and a Malaysia named Cheryl. They’ll be bringing me around Canberra tomorrow.
– 1:33AM

I’m not leaving Brisbane for Sydney today. I couldn’t get a train ticket! However, I’m leaving tomorrow evening. The journey will take 18 hours.

Jin Han, Su Cheen and I went to Mt. Choo-tha today. It’s a scenery spot where you can see the whole of Brisbane from one end to another end. We took loads of pictures and had a drink before heading home an hour later.
– 11:44PMI’m leaving Brisbane tonight..sob sob. Sydney here i come!
– 1:15AM

» Gold Coast was great. It was about an hour away from Brisbane by train and bus. JinHan, Soon Loong, Kiang, Umeng, and I were extremely tired but Su Cheen and Su Min seemed energetic. We did not have enough sleep and we ended up sleeping on the train.

Racism is one of the main social problems in Australia. Some of my friends were victims of such social ill. Umeng and I were sitting next a young white boy. We were speaking in Cantonese but then suddenly the kid started saying, “yes, yes, what’s your name? Where are you from?” and his friend sitting infront of us started laughing. Umeng was pissed and screw him “shut up!” The boy was shocked and he kept quiet. We were suspecting that the boy thinks that we don’t understand or speak English. We plotted revenge. As soon as the boy gets out from his seat for his stop, Umeng said, “See you later guys!” the boy replied, in a surprised and embarrassed tone said “You can speak English???” Everyone on the bus started laughing.
First stop was a shopping centre. We had lunch before heading to Surfer’s Paradise by bus. In the beginning, we had no idea where the hell is the bus stop. We wandered around until we saw few benches in front of a 7-11. I sat down and asked a Japanese girl for directions to the bus stop. She replied, “oh this is the bus stop!” We started chatting. Her name is Noriko. She’s from Kokaido and 24 years old this year. Extremely fair with huge eyes, friendly and pretty but has really yellow tainted teeth. She can speak English (most Japanese cant) but she has a limited vocabulary (she doesn’t know what’s an architect). I asked her why are there so many Japanese around Brisbane and Gold Coast. She answered “because there are many Japanese shops and Japanese here!”

Umeng joined our conversation and we started chatting more. But soon Umeng and I ran out of things to say. However, this friendly Japanese girl kept on talking and asking us questions. She even led us the way to Surfer’s Paradise. We asked for her email so that we could keep in touch. She replied, “oh I don’t have email!”
We separated with a simple bye-bye.
Surfer’s Paradise was filled with people picnicking, sunbathing and taking photographs. We took off our shoes when we walked on the beach. Unexpectedly, the sand was cold despite the bright sunny day. The beach is clean but there is still rubbish around. The seagulls happily feast on left over food.
We weren’t properly dressed for the beach. Most of us were clad in jeans and even brought our sweaters along. Hence we didn’t spend much time on the beach. We took loads of pictures before heading to some of the shops around.

8 Hens in Gold Coasts!

God of Gambler – Hen??

Kiang feeding seagulls

Surfer’s Paradise’s Town

Sunset!

There was this entertainment centre that has shooting games that uses a real gun (but it was too expensive) and even a make-your-own-mtv (but it was damn lame). Soon, we were bored of that place and we headed back to the beach. We took couple of pictures again, ate sushi at “Sushi train” for dinner and then headed to Hen’s house. His place is just few minutes from Bond University (his uni). I took a picture of it before we left for Brisbane.
– 11:30PM
» We had a yamcha session in La Dolce Vista (café), Milton. My friends call it Bangsar because it has similarity as our Bangsar in Kuala Lumpur. But this “Bangsar” doesn’t have much pubs and cafes as they do back in Malaysia’s Bangsar. It’s just a row of single story shops. However, there’s a small radio tower which looks like the Eiffel tower within the shops. They call it Brisbane’s Paris. According to my friends, Dolce Vista serves really good ice mocha. They put gelati and chocolate syrup topped with chocolate powder and whip cream on it. yummy! We started talking about ghost stories. Him was telling us about his experience in his old apartment when he first stayed in Brisbane. His stuff sometimes gets missing or sometimes something that doesn’t belong to him appears suddenly. We then started talking about Ouija games. Him, Kiang and Soon Loong were telling us their experiences. They held a pen together on a piece of paper and kept thinking about summoning the ghost. Soon the pen started moving. They asked about some stuff and even asked about what’s the winning lottery number (sadly, the ghost answered he doesn’t know) and what’s the ghost’s race (he’s a Malay). And for the ghost to leave, all the do is just tell the ghost that they’re done. *phew* scary!

I’m going to Gold Coast tomorrow morning!
– 1:33AM

We played football at Milton just now. We played against an Asian team and a mixed team (Peruvian, Bolivian, French, etc). Any team that scores first will be entitled to remain on the pitch. We could easily beat the Asian team but we lost to the mixed team twice. In both games, the mixed team scored in just few seconds! We exited the pitch shamefully. We played till dark, until we couldn’t see the ball and people. There were few mishaps such as banging into each other and tripping.
After football, we had dinner at this place called Spice house in Milton. The owners (husband and wife) are very nice and friendly. They gave us prawn crackers and dimsum while waiting for food to come. I had sweet and sour pork. Boy, their sweet and sour pork is really nice, it’s one of the best I’ve tried!
– 10:00PMClubbing was fun. Kiang, Elaine, Mien, Umeng, JinHan, Hen, Soon Loong and I went to this club called Family. Apparently it’s one of the good clubs around. The club has 3 floors with 3 rooms namely the main room, Hard House room and the chill out room. The hard house room is a suffocating small foggy room while the chill out room is mainly a bar. We had couple of drinks before heading to the hard house room. Their drinks are horrible. A vodka redbull cost me $11 and their jedi coke tasted awful. I even felt like puking when I was on the dance floor!

Kiang and Him has been showing me the Brisbane dance ever since back in Kuala Lumpur. And today, I was able to witness it! Almost everyone could do the Brisbane style (probably cause it’s easy to dance)! Due to the fact that the hard house room is hot and suffocating, we headed for the main room. Initially, someone told me that the main room plays R&B. However, it soon turned into trance and lastly into hard house and techno.

There were more locals that Asians in the club. It reminds me so much of UK. Sometimes the locals would be so fucked that they would just come up to you and shake your hand. However, according to Umeng, he saw this local trying to get close with 2 local guys. The guy annoyed the latter and soon they smashed the guy’s head onto the wall. On another occasion, we had a local trying to get friendly with Mien (she’s a friend of Kiang). He kept on touching and dancing with Mien and she was trying to avoid him. We got up and approached the local and he left within seconds (however, he soon found another Asian girl to molest).

By 3:30AM, all of us were exhausted and we headed home. We shared a taxi van with a gay couple. They were hugging and touching each other and kept on talking to us. They even go till the extent of touching Umeng and Hen!
– 5:58AM

Hen came down to Brisbane from Gold Coast. He’ll be staying here until Saturday. Kiang, Umeng, Soon Loong, Jin Han, Hen and I had our customary drinking session. We were playing UNO the whole night and the loser has to bottoms up a mixture of Sprite and Smirnoff. The winner will also be entitled to draw graffiti on the loser’s hands. I drew a penis on Hen’s hand. hehe.

We went wild for few hours, running around and laughing the whole night.

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After 3 hours, we were totally drunk. We shifted the beds from the rooms and placed them on the living room so that all of us could sleep together.

However, Umeng couldn’t make it to the bed (he was too drunk), he ended up on the floor till the next morning.
– 1:07AM

We didn’t do much today. Soon Loong and Umeng couldn’t wake up for the early classes due to yesterday’s heavy drinking session. We ended up in the city; walking around and shopping. Hen bought a backpack and I bought a Bota bag (the traditional Spanish wine skin) from a shop selling army accessories. The shop also sells gun replicas (damn they’re heavy!), Samurais swords (aud199 to aud300, wanted to get one but don’t think I could get it through Malaysia custom), crossbows, Mao caps, etc.

Soon Loong had been telling me about the arcade in Brisbane. He said that the players are not good at all. We then walked to a video arcade nearby. I was glad to see a King of Fighters 2001 machine there. Its been weeks since I played a game! I happily inserted 2 tokens to challenge someone. However, within few seconds, I regretted playing. Their fucking buttons are all mixed up! I couldn’t play properly! Predictably, I lost and I left the place disappointed.

They brought me to this place called King George’s Square (its in the city itself). It’s a small garden with fountains and statues scattered around it. And there also lies a huge clock tower next to the garden. We took couple of pictures before returning home so that Hen could cook dinner. His soy chicken and mushrooms is really good!
– 1:42AM

I just had dinner at Sunny Banks (a suburb in Brisbane, about 30minutes from the city). My friends and I had dinner at this small food court which has Vietnamese food, Taiwanese food, Chinese food, steamboat etc. Sharon (oinkie) and her cousin joined us for dinner. Her cousin is only 20 years old this year but surprisingly, she owns a cybercafe in Toowong, drives a big black Holden (some Aussie car) and has her own lawyer. Sounds like a very successful person. However, Sharon told me that her boyfriend died not long ago from an incurable cancer disease. Poor girl. However, throughout the conversation she seems cheerful. And she even gave me a ride on her Holden! Cool!

I had a quick photo session in the evening. My friends took me to South Banks. According to them, it’s one of the great places to take pictures. The city’s panoramic view can be easily admired from the walkway of the bridge that crosses the Brisbane River. However, due to the fact that it is still winter, it gets dark quickly. By the time we reach South Banks, the sun has already set. I was hoping to take some pictures of the city on a sunny day. But I guess I’ll just go on with the photo session. I managed to finish my first roll of film for this Aussie backpacking trip. yay!

– 11:12PM