5 years and onward. 旅

Wao, this blog is almost 5 years old *clap clap clap*. Blogs are definitely becoming less and less popular in the age of social medias. But I like reading blogs. I started a blog just so that I could babble rant jabber. 5 years later I am still babbling ranting jabbering. (Grow up, woman.) I should continue doing that. (Just for my own satisfaction lah.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Irrelevant Breaking News~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Today I learn about: Capitalising and Punctuating Inside Parentheses
http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000123.htm
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Two weeks ago went on a trip with sista, cousin sista and mate Sony a6000. Bringing my mate on a trip is the best way to test it. Travelling is like taking drugs. Expensive, delusory. (You are freeeeee, chase your dreams! Don't bother the whole world.) Final semester at uni is about to start, I just need to use a little bit of imagination and am already terrified by the imagined workload and stress. I wish time will pass faster, but not too fast please (*smack*). I feel that I am too old for uni, but heck I am still in uni. Am I the last one among my batch?!


12th July: Chokolait!
They have the  b.e.s.t  chocolate drinks eveeer. Tried it the first time in 2009, couldn't forget it since. Tried it again in 2012, the taste still surprised me (too good). At that time I told myself I'd bring my sis there one day. So, in 2014 we went there together. Damn how can it still be so good? Not a big chocolate lover, but I will pay for that iced chocolate any day. Here is their chocolate mud cake, very rich but not sweet which is very good. Err no pictures of my iced chocolate.

13th July: Wine - Koala - Penguins   
The trip was rather spontaneous. A day before, we contacted the travel agency (澳东旅社) from a pamphlet my cousin took from the tourist centre. Our tour guide, Darren, has been living in Australia for more than 30 years. (He was a former Malaysian, so we felt quite 亲切). We got 'V.I.P' treatment 'cause only 3 of us booked on the trip and we travelled in a nice big car.

Err no pictures of penguins 'cause no photography allowed on Phillip Island.

14th July: An intoxicating journey 
Wine, wine, wine, wine. On the second wine tasting I was already feeling dizzy fuzzy. Too much for me who normally don't drink. The tour offers really great value as the itinerary includes 4 wineries, Yarra Valley Dairy for cheese tasting, 1 brewery and 1 chocolaterie. Link: Wine Tasting Tours

15th July:  Alice Springs  
To the Northern Territory! More than 5 years in Australia and I have only been to Melbourne 
(a total of 4 times wth), sad.

Resident kitty at the hostel. It is fat.

I booked for an 8-person female dorm but the hostel upgraded our room to a 3-person bedroom. Thank you. Booked the room together with The Rock Tour, it only costed us $16.5 per person for one night. Great value. The room reminded me of father's kampung with its colourful paints and pitched ceiling. Link: Alice Lodge


16th July:  Kings Canyon
Three-day camping trip in the outback with The Rock Tour. Memory: Hot afternoons, frigging cold nights, many stars, very blue sky, loads of rocks, big rocks, small rocks, frigging huuuge rocks, very steep climbs, interesting aboriginal stories.

Three-hour walking trip.

After shooting mainly with the Sony 35mm f/1.8 prime lens, the drop in photo quality was obvious as I changed the lens to the 16-50mm kit lens, the only other lens that I had which was more suitable for landscape. (No $ = no pic quality. Want to get the 10-18mm if I win lottery.) Somehow, camera was unable to capture the wow that I felt during the trip. The scenary was splendid, but pictures came out flat.

Sleeping with campfire crackling near your ears and under millions of stars. How romantic could it get? Only one price to pay: body temperature. In the middle of the freezing cold winter night you could hear all sorts of noise from the bush including dingos' howling. Damn scary wei, I actually woke up with eyes wide opened and then buried my head deep in the sleeping bag+swag.

17th July:  Kata Tjuta - Uluru
 

Guide-said-1-hour-but-turned-out-to-be-more-than-3 hours walking trip.

 
Valley of the Winds "Kata Tjuta is sacred to Anangu men.
Our people have always shown respect when visiting this special place.
They would camp a short distance away and walk in quietly.
They would not swim in the waterholes. Women entered this area as well to collect food and water but always behaved appropriately.

It is the same now. It is the same for you.
Hold in your heart the knowledge that this is a special place.
Walk quietly, tread lightly. Stay on the track.
Enjoy this place as it is."

Sweep panorama of a6000 is really handy but under bad light conditions it often fails. I wish a manual option is available. This photo has to be brightened up a lot.

From 6:38PM to 6:42PM. Uluru changed colours in 4 minutes.

Our camping site this night had toilets and showers close by. (A bliss I tell you.) Slept in a tent as we would like to escape the cold, but still as cold as ever. Some people slept outside with the campfire and they said it was warmer than the previous night. Ops.


18th July:  Uluru - Sydney

Sunrise at 7:50AM.

Magical sunrise. After that we did a two-hour walk around the base of Uluru. Wind was strong. After two days of walking, legs and toes started to feel the pain. All I could think of was "A-r-e  w-e  t-h-e-r-e  y-e e e-t?" (Donkey's tone) Good shoes are really important for camping tour. At 10:30AM we got dropped off at Ayers Rock Airport and boarded the flight to Sydney at 2:00PM.


*Heard the bad news from our travel companions on this day. Couldn't believe this could happen to us again. We could only wonder why and what's wrong? Sincerely hope that the country and the rest of the world could be more peaceful for the second half of this year.

"Historical Moments in 10 Days"

I am gonna write a descriptive essay today. Hooray!

This time, my Nikon decided to stay alive and stick with me throughout (good boy, good boy), though it did literally freeze for a few times in the cold.

浅草

08.02: 千里之行，始于足下。
Tokyo experienced the heaviest snowfall in 20 years. Every time we went into a store, we were super reluctant to come back out again. It was cold and hard to walk on the slippery snow. Our feet were freezing in our tropical sport shoes, to the extend that we just had to buy a pair of winter shoes straightaway thinking we would experience frostbite a few days later when we reached Sapporo. How is it that February is colder than January?? It was frigging cold but all fine until an out-of-no-where gust of wind+snow nearly blew us away when we were approaching the train station. It was a freaking, extremely, crazy strong wind, all we could think was what da heck just happened? I conclude, that was the coldest ever personal experience for me. Not even Sapporo could beat that.





09.02: Shinkansen, missed.
Due to the heavy snow, the local subway line stopped its service. Naturally, we didn't think about that possibility and thus missed our train. But since we were the oh-so-mighty invincible where-also-can-go pass holders, we still smiled to the end. 

Kyoto Station was so damn hella big that we couldn't find where we were supposed to go for like an hour.   （"Fool, go to the tourist information counters, they exist for a reason, yeah." 京都駅如是说。）

Kiyomizu-dera temple (...at the back)

清水寺

I was thinking "Whereeeeizzzzmytempleee" until I saw the Kiyomizu-dera temple hiding behind its scaffolds. Under renovation. Maybe I ran out of luck or something.

And then we found our new religion at the Fushimi Inari Taisha. *伏地*

伏見稲荷大社

After walking non-stop for more than 2 hours and still had no idea when would we exit this red tori-maze, we thought it must be the foxes! The maps throughout the tori-walk were deceiving as they were over-simplified (foxes, why you so sly?), not only that the "You are here!" on the map pointed to the same spot even though it wasn't (foxes, why you so so sly?) But our perseverance paid off when we reached the high point. Never occurred to me we were climbing up a mount (foxes, you....).

It was two minutes past 5.00 p.m.

After the "woah wow wiuuuu~", it was the "Err getting down...?" So we did a condensed version of the 2-hour walk back to where we started, no time to lose when you had a train to catch. It appears that we only did half the walk.


10.02: Suddenly we were at Sapporo.

Ever sang a birthday song until the guesthouse owner came and asked you to tone down? Yeah. It couldn't get any more embarrassing than that. But it actually could as proved later on on the journey.


11.02: We are yuki-onna.

Titbit: Birthday coincides with Japan's National Foundation Day. That means 1-day Sapporo subway pass is 500yen instead of 800yen. The Snow Festival consisted of 3 different sites, so we went to alll of them. 抵！If I were a Japanese citizen, I bet I will get some nice bonuses and benefits on this day (*dreaming*).

Snow here, snow there. Tokyo stopped snowing when we were at Sapporo. Then Sapporo snowed. Tokyo snowed again when we went back to Tokyo. You kidding? Must be the foxes.
Still, it didn't stop us from wanting to go to the Hokkaido Shrine (allllll the way to Sapporo, how can you leave without meeting the deity there?) Luckily we bought winter shoes as the snow in Sapporo was deep, deep, deep.

...but the deity didn't want to see us. Closed.

Ta. I ❤ Sapporo.

At night, we went to a restaurant under the recommendation of the guesthouse owner (he described it as dirty, small, cheap, big meal. Big meal!). The guesthouse owner however left out one big chunk of vital information. The menu was entirely in Japanese. Reading kanas, no problem, albeit a bit slow. Understanding them, another thing altogether. We looked like a bunch of rude kids playing with our smartphone and tablet without ordering anything; in fact we were looking for the meanings of the items on the menu. At last we took the shortcut and asked for the special meal of the day, ordered that with another meal which we understood.

I don't know, maybe we spent 30 minutes just to order.


13.02: We lost one day. Mr. Disney, no snow today.

I am feeling lazy already.
So it goes like this.

And then like this.

Then this.

Then byebye.

Conclusion: Tokyo Disneyland is for kids. Erm, spend your money elsewhere.
Anecdote: When we were in front of all those cute Disney hats in the souvenir shop, 2 high-school students approached and asked, "Which one a girl/woman will like?" (we guessed), then my friend pointed to a Minnie hat, and he was like, "This one? Oh." Without thinking twice he grabbed the hat and went to the counter. Wou, that was a fast decision for a, we guessed, Valentine's Day gift. Did he realise he actually asked foreigners for opinions? Aw, can I go back to high school?

14.02: Initially expected a romantic 14th, hey, it was Valentine's Day at Tokyo. But our yuki power came to play, it was basically raining with snow. Romantic much? I couldn't even remember what we did. I think we were 'wow-ing' at the kawaii-much new-season clothing at Harajuku. Looking back at our local taste in fashion (casual, slippers, easy, hassle-free, make-up-less), we have many miles to go.

15.02: Heavy snow = shinkansen delayed indefinitely = shinkansen canceled =
whatever wherever whichever

Highlight of the day: We saw a "Pratform Information" at one of the stations. It was a sheet mounted in a frame displayed for the public. Man, sorry but I laughed for so long, especially when it was pronounced out loud.

16.02: Acting-like-a-billionaire day.

We ate a year worth of pastas that day. We also ate a mountain of broccoli.

17.02: I would not leave without a jigsaw puzzle and a few pens.

Will I go back?
Hell yes.

My, writing a long post is tiring.