Travel Ramblings of the Mentos Addict, Part 1

After a week in lovely Australia, I'm back. Well... technically, it's more like five days, four nights, seeing that two more nights were spent on the plane... nasty advertising tactics...

Neways, I'm back in one piece.... although all slush on the inside from exhaustion. But slept the whole afternoon so I'm 'almost' back to normal.

I'm Mentos-Addict, due to the 3 tubes of Mentos brought along on the trip, which me and my mum, Tangerine-and-Ginger-flavoured-Hacks-Sweets-Lover (called that for obvious reasons...), chomped down unmercifully throughout the trip. Heh. I'm serving these posts in bite sizes, or else I'll be typing all day...

Day One (Or should I say, night one?)

Met up with our 21 other tour group members at the airport at 4 pm, as well as our tour leader. 24 in total. First, off to Singapore's Changi airport. Then, aboard the, can you believe it, Airbus A380, only on it's 3rd voyage to Sydney.

But honestly, other than the fact that it is of course, HUGE, there's not really anything else that is special. Ok, I'm saying that cos' I was attacked by nausea throughout the flight and I'm grumpy cos' I was in no condition to enjoy any of the hundreds of music albums and shows they have (including CSI and CSI NY.. ish...)

So, after about 8 hours of sitting uncomfortably in a glazed trance, trying not to gag everytime meals were served, as well as enduring the woman who was blowing her nose in regular intervals behind me, the guy who was coughing consistently in the seat somewhere in front, an the baby who cried all night long, we finally arrived in Sydney, 7 am local time (3 hours ahead of Malaysian time).

No rest for the weary. Off we go through 2 hours of getting through customs, and an hour of waiting for our bus driver, Bill. Finally, we're on our way on a 3 and a half hour journey to Canberra.

Canberra, is the capital of Australia. Stop thinking it's Sydney. Turns out, Sydney and Melbourne were fighting over who gets to be the capital, so they decided to pick somewhere else to develope into the capital instead.

Bill is one jolly guy with quite a thick accent. One hilarious thing was Tony, our guide (whose English ain't too hot), had a hard time understanding him, and vice versa. So one would ask the other a question, and the other will either not reply or answer something completely different.
But they bonded anyway, referring to each other as 'my boy' and 'my man' everytime. XD

Everyone pretty much zonked throughout the journey to Canberra, waking up with stiff necks.
First stop, was the Cockington Green Gardens, filled with minatures of people, buildings and what not. Amazing detail. There were tiny golf courses, villages, football stadiums, castles... you name it. Outside the Cockington Green Gardens

Next stop is the Parliment Building, the most expensive building in Australia. We got to go inside and take a look around. Saw the potrait of ex-Prime Minister, William McMahon, as in Julian McMahon's (of Charmed and Nip/Tuck) dad. Cool or what? Also, we went to the War Memorial, what can I say? It's cooler than the Penang one. Hehe... But as we were 2 hours behind schedule, there wasn't much time to look around. Onwards to Embassy Road, where we got to see all the different embassies, including Malaysia, of course. :-)

Finally, we head back to Sydney, another long bus journey. The hotel bed never looked so good. Zonked out immediately.

Day 2: Blue Mountains.

Will upload more photos later. Connection is nuts right now...

Gila-gila Mentos signing off!