Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
AUSTRALIA!!
I arrived in Sydney on the 23rd December just in time for all the Xmas festivities!
On Xmas Eve I went out on a fancy dress pub crawl around Bondi Beach, which was a great build up to the big day!
Xmas day I'd imagined a BBQ on Bondi beach and plenty of sunbathing. Unfortunately it was overcast and raining. However, that didn't stop us and we still had a BBQ and I headed to Sunburnt, the festival on Bondi, and danced the day away in the rain!
I spent the next week in Sydney before New Year. During this time I went to the horse races, climbed Sydney Harbour Bridge, took part in a sports day between my hostel and it's sister hostel (we kicked ass!), visited the Opera House and the Botanical Gardens, went to the Ice Bar, met up with Emma (from Linklaters) and Jen (who was in South America with me) and even did some sunbathing when the sun appeared!
New Years Eve!! I was sooooo excited to see the fireworks and I wasn't disappointed. I met up with Lauren (a school friend, who now lives in Perth but happened to be in Sydney for New Year) and we got our places at 11am!! We were in the botanical gardens looking out over the harbour and the bridge and right next to the Opera House. We couldn't have asked for a better view! Lauren greeted me with 2 large McDonald's cups cleverly concealing champagne and Cosmo and I snuck 4 litres of 'goon' (boxed wine) into the 'no alcohol permitted' area and we spent the day catching up, which wasn't hard as we hadn't seen each other for 2 years. At 9pm they put on the family fireworks and they were incredible! The next 3 hours passed so quickly as we were waiting for the main event. I was blown away. I've never seen fireworks that impressive ever. I can't ever do it justice in a description or even photos or videos. I would just recommend that everyone spends one new year there, it was phenomenal!
After a couple more days of sight seeing in Sydney I headed down to Melbourne. The city itself was pretty cool, with lots of modern art and cool buildings everywhere, although it felt much smaller than Sydney. The main highlight for me though was Neighbours Night! I got to meet the legendary Karl Kennedy as well as Libby and Steve Parker. We found out that Susan isn't a lesbian and doesn't have loads of tattoos (disappointing) and that Karl has never dated Libby in real life (although he'd like to). I was a really fun night, especially dancing away to Karl and his band 'waiting room' playing. Surreal, but fun!
East Coast!! With 3 weeks left to get from Melbourne all the way up to Cairns things started to get really busy, so here's some of the adventures I had:
Surf Lesson at Byron Bay. It was loads of fun and I got up on my board a quite few times on my own, so I'm basically a pro now. Although I think I drank most of the ocean in the process.
Surfers Paradise. This felt like Benidorm! Very purpose built, but amazing weather and a great/messy pub crawl.
Brisbane... not much happening here.
Noosa, gorgeous beach and Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo!!! It was brilliant!! I got to feed an elephant, stroke a baby croc, a snake, a koala and play with the kangaroos! I also went to the crocoseum where they had the whole Irwin family there feeding the crocodiles and getting them to do death rolls... so cool. Unfortunately Bindi Irwin (the little girl) apparently loves singing and dancing and her mum claims she's better than Britney... can't wait for her album to come out!! And if you can't wait that long then don't worry, they are making Free Willy 3 and she is the main kid in it.... joy!
Fraser Island!!!! I was doing self drive, which involves 10 of us being given a jeep and a map and being sent off onto the biggest sand island in the world for 3 days! They are stopping the self drives in June this year as they are apparently too dangerous and sadly there have been a number of deaths recently from people rolling the jeeps. So after a very long briefing on how not to do this we set out!! I had 5 fantastic girls in my truck and so we were hoping for 4 lads to make up the 10 to help out with lifting stuff and also for banter. We got a French family! And possibly the laziest people I have ever met in my life. Wonderful! This lead to a full on shouting match on day 2 when they'd done nothing to help at all. Luckily there were 6 jeeps all heading out and we all camped together every night so we quickly made friends with some other guys who helped out and kept us sane. There's nothing like a common enemy to speed up the bonding process though and very quickly us girls we best friends united! That aside, Fraser Island is fantastic, especially Lake McKenzie which is paradise! The whole experience of driving on sand was pretty special too. I drove the jeep quite a lot including on the dirt tracks in the forested centre of the island and out on the beach and in to the ocean...opps! Yep, I plunged down into a crevice and water poured over the car, bonnet and in through the side windows. I stopped immediately and then we got stuck so everyone had to get out and push, whilst the tide went under the car and back out to sea. We'd been told about people getting their car washed out to sea and I was paniking inside massively. Luckily I backed it up out of the water and we were back on our way all laughing about it afterwards! The evenings were brilliant too, since 60 of us all camped together and stuck the stereo on loud on one of the cars and stayed up to the earlier hours trying to scare away the many dingos we saw. It was a great experience.
Next I went to 1770 and went on the scooteroos tour. You get a motorbike and you ride it round the area. It was brilliant and I kept racing the people I was there with and we got to see some wild kangaroos.
Whitsundays!! I went sailing around these beautiful islands on the Clipper boat, which is known as the party boat.... it didn't disappoint. Fortunately we weren't too unruly and no one fell off the boat, which is apprantly common. That could have had something to do with the 5 sharks that were swimming around our boat on the second night. It was a bit of a different feel to the first night when there had been a dolphin swimming around the boat and flipping and playing about. It was fantastic. We got to go to Whithaven beach, which has the purist sand in the world and was so white. Since it was stinger season we had to wear stinger suits whenever we went in the water including at the beach. A couple of us saw a dark shadow in the water and thinking it was a sting ray we chased it down the beach only to see that it was actually a shark as we got closer. Needless to say we got out of the water pretty quickly. I also got to go snorkeling and scuba diving down there on the Great Barrier Reef. There were soooo many colourful fish it was beautiful, as was the coral. The highlight was a fish they'd called Elvis, who was like a pet. He knew the scuba dive instructor and followed us the whole way on our dive. He was huge! I fed him and gave him a big hug and I couldn't get my arms round him... crazy! Was really glad I did the scuba diving too, after my horrific experience last time when I was 15 and got stung really badly by a jellyfish, I actually really enjoyed it. I also got to jump off the top of the boat and go down the slide off the side of the boat into the ocean. I had a great time on the trip and loved getting to see all the different wildlife actually in the wild.
Cairns aka Party town. I only had a few nights here and spent it going out with all the friends I'd made as I went up the coast. I had planned to go out to the Great Barrier Reef from here but there was a cyclone, which hit just north of us and so all trips were cancelled.
Australia was great. I think I had pretty high expectations and they weren't always met (such as the opera house looking a bit yellow and needing a clean), but that's not to say I didn't have an amazing time here, especially on the east coast. And New Zealand was an impossible act to follow when I'd had the most incredible time there.
HONG KONG
I spent my days in Hong Kong exploring the city or Kowloon and shopping. I also made it down to the south of the island to Stanley market which was great. The height of the buildings in the city is mad. Having never been to New York, I don't think I've ever been to another place that is so high rise and I loved it, especially at night when it was all lit up. On the Wednesday evening I went for dinner at the Hong Kong Football Club and then went to the races where I won on the first horse I bet on, woo! I also went out in the evenings to Wan Chai and Lan Kwai Fong, both loads of fun! I also went to see the Symphony of lights where the buildings all light up and put up strobe lights in time to music, incredible. It was a brilliant city and a great way to spend my last few days before coming home to the snow!
So that's it! My trip is now done and I had the most amazing time. Favourite places were Rio de Janeiro, Machu Picchu, Buenos Aires, Queenstown and Hong Kong. My all time favourite thing was the bungy jump, which I loved!!!! But there was also the achievement of walking the Inca Trail, seeing the incredible Iguazzu waterfalls, eating the most delicious Argentinian Steak, going to a party in Favela in Rio, Skydiving, Scuba diving the great barrier reef, surfing the gold coast of Australia, white water rafting down the scariest river I've ever seen, flying in a 5 seater plane over the Nasca Lines, experiencing different cultures in South America and mostly meeting loads of great people on the way.
That's it from me.... next adventure starts in less than 2 weeks when I become a proper grown up with a job in the big city! Looking forward to catching up with all of you now I'm back. x x x
- comments