Good Bye Australia

August 11 – China Town

After breakfast at the hostel we walked downtown. We wandered into a mall and did some engagement ring shopping. It was cool and kind of strange to be looking at rings. I tried on a couple of solitaires at a few different stores but nothing really wowed us. We headed into China town for some lunch at the little food court. We both had soups which were quite spicy. Mine was huge and I wasn't able to finish it so we got a to-go container. We got some Emperor Custard Puffs for dessert then headed into Paddy's Market. We looked at another jewelry store and I tried on another ring. We accidentally left our leftovers on the counter and had to go back for them. We headed downstairs to the market area and perused the souvenirs. We headed back to the hostel. For dinner we mixed up my leftovers with a bunch of vegetables and enjoyed our nice bottle of wine. The evening ended with watching Olympics again.

August 12 – Cockatoo Island

We had made tentative plans to meet up with Sarah and Lee Clayton over in Manly today but poor Sarah had come down with the flu and was bedridden all yesterday. Sadly we had to cancel our meeting. We were all really looking forward to getting together again. We tried to find a book exchnge for Beau but didn't have any luck. We then walked over to the State Library and got our boarding passes printed for our flight tomorrow. We were hungry and ended up searching high and low for a Subway. After lunch we hopped a free ferry over to Cockatoo Island where there was a big art exhibition going on; also why there was a free ferry. Cockatoo Island is a world heritage site and was once upon a time a convict ship works. There were lots of old industrial buildings that housed some of the exhibits. We went into one building that had a few different exhibits in it. There was an artfully done plasma cut shipping container with sand in carpet like patterns, a really cool hanging natural paper display, and a landscape painting that spiralled like a conch shell. The coolest one though had these fern lights that were motion sensors and would light up and move. It was pretty cool. We walked over to another area of the island where there was a large exhibit of paper accordion flowers that when folded were shaped like weapons. Upstairs was a fabric display which had different fabrics, nets, and notions hung from the ceiling, obviously I liked this one. We started making our way back to the dock but took another tunnel back. There was a very strange exhibit inside with little igloo coolers made into miners with black lights for eyes. We got on the ferry back to Circular Quay and took the free bus part way back to the hostel. We stopped into O'Mally's for beer and some wedges. We hung out at the hostel for a bit afterwards then decided to try out the Japanese restaurant next door. They had free BYO so we picked up a bottle of wine to have with dinner. It was pricey but we enjoyed some sushi, sashimi and miso soup. We decided to get dessert and had amazing wassabi ice cream with saki jelly. Yum! Our evening finished with Olympic basketball but I would have much preferred watching rhythmic gymnastics. 

Sydney Harbour

Plasma Cut Storage Box

Fern Lights

Natural Paper Display

Conch Style Painting

Accordion Paper Guns

Closed Accordion Paper Gun

Open Accordion Paper Gun

Fabric Display

August 13 – Leaving on a Jet Plane

We were up pretty early this morning to make sure we had everything packed up. We had breakfast and checked out on time. We were able to leave our big bags in the office for the day so we didn't have to worry about them. We headed down town to an ANZ and closed out our bank accounts. Now we had $2600 cash so we stuffed part of it in Beau's underwear pocket. We found a good exchange rate and changed some of it over into American. We walked down to Central Quay and took a bunch of pictures since it was a gorgeous day out. We got pizza for lunch at a restaurant on the main street and sat on their sidewalk patio. We both got a beer and pizza, Beau had seafood an I had supreme. They were delicious. We moseyed back to the hostel stopping to pick up sushi and some snacks for the plane. At the hostel we chopped up the rest of veges for an airborne snack. Our shuttle picked us up at 3:15 and we were off to the airport. Check in was a breeze and we went through customs with no problems. We still had a little bit of money left so we bought some green tea ice cream. We plane was half empty so we got to sprawl out over 4 seats. We both tried to sleep on the plane with marginal success it was about 9-10 hours till Aloha time.

Kuala Lumpur

Our two days in Kuala Lumpur have been enjoyable. We've been traipsing around and are a little footsore now. It would be worth spending some more time in the city to see some of the other sights besides China Town and the Petronas Towers. Beau and I are confident we will be returning to Kuala Lumpur at some point. We wish to explore the east coast where there is supposedly good diving.

Dec 23 – Kuala Lumpur China Town

We arrived in Kuala Lumpur this morning at 4:45am. Ugggh, I cat napped a little on the bus but not nearly enough. Our hotel was very easy to find though and they let us check in early. We had booked 2 beds in a 6 bed dorm but those beds were full that night so they put us in a 2 bunk room. So we still got a private room and early check in for the same price. We went to sleep for a few hours and woke up again around 9 or 10. Our hotel provides breakfast of toast and coffee so we made use of that. While eating we met a Jamaican girl, Fae, who has been teaching English in Japan for 2 years. We had a nice chat with her and then finally got our acts together to explore around 1pm. Our hotel is situated in China town. All the signs are in Chinese and English, there are Chinese book stores all over and to make it perfectly a China town there is a street full of stalls hawking knock off products. You can buy Louis Vuitton purses, Gucci sunglasses, and soccer jerseys. It's what you would expect from any China town, although not really what you find in China. We had some lunch and then continued onward towards to Central Market. This was mostly tourist items but still quite expansive. I picked myself up a purse though. Beau's on the look out for a new book, so we went into a couple of used book stores but they were quite overpriced for what they were. We head back to the hotel to give our feet a rest. There is quite a nice common area with couches and a big flat screen TV. Later we went for dinner and then headed back into the China town market which had doubled in size (really there were double the number of shops in the same area). I picked up a new tank top and t-shirt and Beau got a Spain football jersey. Back at the hotel we made ourselves some instant 3-in-1 coffee and did some computer work. We also saw the end of Horrible Bosses which looked pretty funny. We'll have to watch it from the beginning sometime.

China Town Street Market

Dec 24 – Christmas time in the City

After some peanut butter and jam on toast for breakfast, we hopped on the metro to head to the Petronas Towers. These are the famous two towers in KL that have a large sky bridge connecting them. I think they are the ones from the movie Entrapment. We were thinking about going up the the sky bridge but it cost almost $20 and they were sold out of tickets for the day. Beau was still on a book hunt so we entered the massive 6 floor mall that was connected to the towers. There was a huge Christmas display and Christmas music playing throughout the mall. Being in the mall with all it's pretty decorations put us into the Christmas spirit. Beau browsed through the book store and I took a little wander around the mall. Beau found a book to his liking and then we went for lunch. We did some more wandering of the mall but we couldn't afford to buy anything here, it's a little more expensive, and legitimate, than China Town. It was also packed with Christmas shoppers. After much wandering we headed back to the hotel. I stopped into a few bead shops but they were about the same price as home so there was no point in buying any. Once back we started reorganizing our bags. Mine was being checked while Beau was taking his as carry-on. We headed out for some dinner after we were organized. We asked at the desk for a good place for Malaysian food and found one of the buffet style places. The food was delicious and super cheap, you just had to ignore the little cockroaches. It was an outdoor eatery. Back at the hotel we prepared a couple of peanut butter and jam sandwich for the flight. We got into bed relatively early but had trouble falling asleep. Looks like not much sleep for us for the next few days.

Beau at the Petronas Towers

Christmas Decor