Sunday 27 September 2009

Byron Bay aka Paradise

So we had reached the surfer's paradise, Byron Bay (picture above)

With no hostels open at this time in the morning, AND our very heavy backpacks, we ended up just sitting outside a YHA (youth hostel association) hostel till one of the management came and took pity on us and allowed us to sleep in the TV room till he opened his reception. We were accompanied by Melrose the cat :D

We have both agreed that if we should ever go on a trip that is of a 2-3 month kind, we will NEVER pack more than 10 kg each because after walking for about 15 minutes with 15 kg PLUS small backpack, it becomes unbearable to carry these things around. Also laptops are a no no if you are not planning to stay put in one place for significant amounts of time, VERY heavy to drag around.

As much as we appreciated YHA for letting us in, we realized quickly we had to get to a different hostel. It would have been a great place if we were on a vacation, but since we are looking for jobs and a place to stay we needed our sleep, and in a party hostel with drunken people wandering in and out arguing about cigarettes, it becomes difficult.



We booked ourselves into Arts Factory Lodge, which is a 10 min walk outside Byron Bay central (also called cluster of restaurants and shops. There are only 9000 inhabitants in Byron Bay, the rest are tourists/backpackers/surfers) where we managed to get a “two-bed-tent-kind-of-thing” (pictured above) by a lake and some trees for the same price as YHA. We can now hear birds singing (some of them in a weird manner by the way), hear turkeys walking around outside and cicadas chirping. The quiet and calm is tangible. We LOVE it!!! `We did however have a girl last night who drunkenly thought our tent was hers twice during the night, but that was mildly amusing and expected on a Saturday for one of Australia’s most popular student and backpacker destinations with an infamous night life.

We are saving it for after we’ve had a job for a while ;)


On our first day in Byron Bay, we went on a viewing about a 50 minutes walk from central. A dad, ex-DJ, and his 3 year-old were renting out two double bed rooms in their house. If we shared one double bed this would mean 87,50AUSD (about 500 NOK/£50) a week in rent (AMAZING). So we turned up the charms (pictured above...:D no I jus promised Henriette to add some pictures of me and not just her) and Henriette dragged out her nanny skills and bonded with the kid, and later that evening we had a place to stay from Monday. The long walk to central will be the only issue we have to deal with, the rest was perfect. This family man also has two daughters who live with their mum, but might come over from time to time. Their other house is in the bush, I thought this house was in the bush since it was surrounded by a jungle, but apparently the bush is where the next neighbor is kilometers away and there are Kangaroos a-jumpin and Koala bears a-fallin out of trees. We hope we are also invited to this place at some point to experience some proper aussie action.

After acquiring a place to stay we have now surged the restaurants, shops and hotels with our respective CV’s and are now waiting for the Sunday to become a Monday so we may get some more CV’s out and possibly some positive responses. Currently there are some nibbles here and there because a school holiday of some sort is coming up and they are in need of people. We’re crossing our fingers.


The Sunday was spent hiking to the Cape Byron Lighthouse (pictured above), the easternmost point of Australia (pictured below) where we got ourselves a good work-out, a tan and experienced wild hunchback whales and dolphins migrating south. It wasn’t up-close, but we saw splashes and fins. The Byron Beach Beach (and the smaller beaches next to it) are absolutely dazzling. White, soft sand makes it feel like we are stepping trough flour and the constant breeze makes the heat bearable. When the sun goes down the warmth goes with it, but we’re hoping that will change as the weather gets slightly warmer with the approaching summer.


Now all fingers crossed for jobs, we need to save some money, and we want to start NOW!

Sydney - the city where we got serious


Get out your popcorn and Coke Zero (official sponsor of our trip, as we have drunk a lot of it), this is going to be a long one. I am gonna split this into two, first Sydney, then Byron Bay. I normally would neglect to write because nothing special has happened. On the contrary loads have happened since the last entry, but a restriction on internet access has made “updating the blog” exchangable with “searching for jobs” and “filing for tax number” which we felt you would understand :D


Now, we arrived in Sydney on the 20th of September and even though we arrived quite late, we quickly hurried over to the Sydney Harbor to have a look at the bridge and the iconic Sydney Opera House, which were beautifully lit and had loads of teeny tiny seagulls flying around them. The seagulls are disturbingly small, the Norwegian seagulls could eat them as a snack between meals. :D


Our hostel in Sydney is OK. It lacks the charm that made us fall in love with Sleepy Sam’s (Singapore), and we feel more like we are on a conveyor belt in a large factory. There are seven floors (we’re on the sixth which apparently is called South America) and there are loads and loads of people either coming to Australia or leaving. We shared a room with six others where there were new people everyday, although we managed to bond with an Irish girl, Leah, who is very sweet and talks a lot. She is staying in Sydney looking for a job in an office (she remarkably has a major as an accountant, something which we both found astounding, she doesn’t seem like a numbers kind of person at all) so we have made a deal to see her for New Year’s when we are planning on getting back to Sydney to celebrate.


A good thing about our hostel is that it provides guests with a free tour of the city. Thinking this would be a good opportunity to get to know people, and an excellent chance to get a promised pint of lager at the end, we set out expecting the whole thing to take about an hour… how wrong we were… 5 hours later we sat down in the hostel bar (named Sidebar) and took a well deserved break.

Joe, the guide (picture above), gave us a very thorough walk of Sydney and gave us loads of interesting tips (and loads of dry jokes). Apparently we are lucky for coming to Sydney after the Australian bicentennial in 1988 because half of the sights we saw were gifts from nations of the world (or McDonald’s) for that celebration. We had lunch on the stairs of the Sydney Opera House, which is as gorgeous up close as it is on pictures, majestic and stunning, and were told that the designer (apparently Danish) didn’t think of white sails when he designed the opera house, but rather the peal of an orange… You think about that one till I come home and explain it (unsuccessfully;). We also tried out the toilets in the facility, but were disappointed as they were nothing compared to the ones in Orchard Street, Singapore.
Trough the botanical gardens we met cacadoos (above), spiders and flying foxes (aussie for bats, pictured below). The bats were hanging upside down in the trees in broad daylight. Evidently they eat leaves all night, which intoxicates them and hang on the trees drunk all day. We were warned that should we experience a bat falling down, we can laugh oh yes yes, but I it starts crawling towards you, GET THE HELL AWAY!!! Now, bats can’t take off from the ground like a bird, but has to have a drop to be able to fly. If it happens to think your leg is a tree it can crawl up in, you might get infected with a deadly decease that some of them carry. Last girl it happened to was in isolation for two weeks before they were sure she didn’t have the disease.


The rest of our days in Sydney were spent doing practical stuff like taking our RSA’s (a six hour course about alcohol law in New South Wales (NSW). ANYONE serving alcohol needs to have one), getting our Medicare cards (so that we don’t have to pay for a normal doctor’s appointment, which saves time dealing with insurance companies) and bank accounts (Commonwealth; because they have the most ATM’s in Australia and Australia, being a bit behind the times, still charges your account if you withdraw money from another bank’s ATM?!?).


We decided quickly we wanted to get away from Sydney, not because we didn’t love it, because we think it is one of the most gorgeous big cities we have ever seen, but because we DO still think it will be easier to save money in a more rural community. So we bought our train tickets for Byron Bay, a surfers paradise 13 hours north along the east coast, 2 hours from Brisbane. There was a lot of snoring, baby crying and general annoyance on the train (and being the stingy girls we are, we didn’t opt for a bed so were sleeping in a chair) which made it difficult to sleep. But after 13 hours, the last two of which were in a bus with a bright yellow sunrise entertaining us (well at least Trine who was awake), we reached Byron Bay at 5.50 in morning were we are planning to stay for the next 3 months.

Saturday 19 September 2009

Single over en Singapore Sling



Singapore has been a blast and we feel we've managed to cram quite a lot of stuff into our scrummy four night stay. We feel it is the perfect length as long as we can't do any shopping anyway (considering both money and luggage space).

Our first night I had my first meeting with the dreaded jet lag monster, consequently making me wake up after two hours sleep thinking it was morning and then being unable to fall asleep when I again woke up at 4 am. However, I am pleasantly surprised at how soothing the 5.40 am prayer from the Mosque is, considering all the complaining I have heard from other people. The guy who is singing the prayers must be a really good one ;)


On our first day we walked (with some mishaps and detours) from our lovely little hostel to the central Singapore area with the Marina and the iconic skyline. The cute thing about Singapore is how the big, massive skyscrapers (the tallest one being the Swissotel where they hold a vertical marathon every year up the hotel stairs, maybe a new challenge for you Pappa ;) and the picturesque colonial houses live side by side (picture above). It's also very colourful everywhere. Everyone paints their houses a different colour and even some of the apartment complexes are sporting bright colours.

Just looking around and getting to know the city was basically our day. We were both still very tired from the flight and were still adjusting to the insane humidity and constantly swooped into shopping centers for that life saving extreme air condition chill they set up in there. We had ourselves a pint and a meal by the riverbank where there was a row of colonial houses used as restaurants, pubs and bars. Gorgeous! (picture above)

Later that evening we joined our roomie Natalie (York, UK) for the Nightsafari in the zoo (picture above). It was an amazing experience and can be recommended to everyone who comes here. It was so relaxing and quiet to walk through the spotlighted paths. Especially the bat enclosure was exciting as the bats were free to roam and they were absolutely humongous (the size of a rather large fat seagulls) and when they were flapping their wings there was loads of screaming (you just don't want that to fly into your hair, especially mine where it could get stuck;). We were the last ones to leave the park at midnight, but before we left we had a 5 min. spa with a type of doctor fish (picture below). The fish eat dead skin cells off your feet and apparently this is exfoliating to the skin and a natural spa treatment. It tickled as hell, especially the larger fish when they nibbled under your feet, but kinda felt like putting your feet in a bubble bath with tiny bubbles. The funny thing was they all really seemed to enjoy my feet the best (another woman next to me had only about 5 on her feet, mine were covered) which should probably tell me to use some more moisturizer on my feet :D The staff even managed to convince Henriette to put her feet in with the fish, even though she started off being very very skeptical :D

For dinner we went to a food court where they sold Singaporean specialties. It's called a hawkers market and the food they sell is the kind you find in the street stands (just under more hygienic surroundings) Really cheap to eat there, a full plate would be somewhere around 4-6SGD (which is about 20-30 kroner or £2-3).

On our second day we were refreshed after a good night sleep and wandered up to Orchard Road which is the main shopping street. Here we found a really beautiful shopping center, really up-market and luxurious, where we ventured into the toilets and found that we could get a wash while we went. A button would spray you down there and another would dry you :D it cause a lot of giggling and some screaming, but was a hilarious experience. There were also escalators on the outside of the building (picture below) which was fun for me, but Henriette realized suddenly that she is afraid of heights and experience vertigo so was looking mildly scared as we went up.


This was also the day we decided to take the trip to Raffles hotel find the Long Bar and sit down and have a Singapore Sling (picture below) (apparently consists of gin, cherry brandy, orange juice, pineapple juice and limejuice) and eat peanuts still in the shell and throw it on the floor. Good times. Although the drink did set us back 27SGD (135kr, £13.50), but it was worth it :D The guy behind the bar says he makes hundreds of Singapore Slings every day and that next week when the Singapore Grand Prix Formula 1 is on, he's gonna make about 1000. Very hectic. The Formula 1 here is apparently the only one that runs during the night and it runs through the streets of Singapore (loads of construction workers putting up stands and railings everywhere). Unfortunately it isn't till the 25th of September, so we just miss it :(


We then ventured into Chinatown and had a looksie at a Hindu ritual in the Sri Mariamman temple and covered our bare shoulders (and Henriette's long legs) to go into a massive Buddhist temple where there loads of figurines everywhere. The ones in the photo are supposed to protect people born in the year of the Ox and Tiger. Everywhere people were burning random things in front of their stores, so at last curiosity overtook and we had to ask someone. Apparently it is the end of month 7 and you burn stuff to wish for more money/business for your shop. We thought we mite try that at home ;)

At dinner we started chatting to some 50-60 year old Singaporeans (ethnic Thai) and although some of their English wasn't good we had a blast and they even managed to convince us to join them for karaoke. Here there were more people our age and we ended up staying till the bitter end, both me and Henriette sporting the microphone at some point or another (because no one can be worse than the Asians when it comes to karaoke) and there was a lovely atmosphere, just us two Europeans and locals :D Random, but good night :D Only bad thing was we missed Natalie leaving because we stayed out late. She was traveling on to Malaysia. We now have an old German woman as our roommate, and she is a bit weird.

Today we've been taking it slow and just did a sightseeing bus trip. The world's largest water fountain (Fountain of Wealth) was turned off. I was gutted. Judging by the size of the hole and the fact that there is a food court belonging to a shopping centre around the bottom, it would have been a spectacular sight. We were supposed to meet up with the Norwegians we met on the plane (actually we've planned that every day) but something has always come up and we have now agreed to meet in Sydney (they will join us in 3 days) where we will be staying at the same hostel and we just can't possibly have another excuse ;)

Now we are packing and preparing for our departure at 6.30 am for Sydney and we are both looking forward to finally reach Australia.




Wednesday 16 September 2009

Finally in Singapore

After 13 hours on a rather huge British Airways Jumbojet, which sported fancy sleeping cubicles (although none of that luxury for us) we have now finally landed in humid, sweaty and lovely Singapore. We have now been travelling for over 24 hours and are starting to feel the strain. The long flight was made short by us falling asleep for about 7 of the 13 hours and although our feet are swollen and our asses are aching, we consider the flight to have been not so bad. :D

Already on the flight from Oslo to London we stumbled upon four other Norwegians, all of them 21 from Stavanger and a girl from Fredrikstad who also were going to Singapore (for a week) and then to Sydney for a year of Working Holiday. This is when we stopped feeling special. We exchanged information and are meeting up with them tomorrow to tag along when they have a local friend show them around. They had a hotel in the prostitute area, we on the other hand have opted for a hostel, Sleepy Sam's (picture below) about £10 pr nite (100 kroner) including wireless internet and breakfast. Alright we share the room with 4 other girls and there is a communal shower and toilet AND we are situated right next to a mosque (picture above) which has already greated us with some Arabic prayers, but I'd still say that is value for money.

Cutest thing was we had to take off our shoes in the hallway before entering the hostel :D

We have now made friends with a British girl in our room, travelling Asia for 3 months on her own, and we might join her tomorrow for a Night Safari at the local (apparently world reknown) zoo.

Did I mention this place has aircondition? Think we'd die without it!!!

Right outside our door is a little pedestrian street (gågate) with restaurants and shops. We are now going out for a bite to eat (neither of us really keen on the airplane cousine (I was thinkin of giving it to you Hannah;), although the British breakfast we were served this morning was edible. Now we want something proper :D and then we'll go exploring the area before we have a nice sleep in beds, BEDS oh yes beds not a chair!!!! :D:D:D

By the looks of this gorgeous city there will soon be loads of pictures to enjoy :D

C u soon!!!

Singling from Trine and Henriette
(from the local dialect singapore + english = singlish;)