Off To See The Wizard

Australia is one of those places that I've always wanted to visit. Cable TV came late to my hometown but when it finally did, I was so hooked on the TV channel Star Plus which showed a lot of Austalian cartoons plus those shows like Neighbors and Home & Away.  I was a little too young to understand what was going on in those TV series but what I knew for sure was that Australia is a big, beautiful country!  Add to the fact that I was into animals when I was growing, I also knew that the land down under was home to one of the world's most unique collection of fauna (quirky ones, if I may add).

Fast forward to 20 years later and I found myself holding an Australian PR visa. Hmmm...Now I needed to go to Oz on or before July 2011 otherwise my visa will be revoked.  Not wanting to take any chances, I booked for a flight in May (two months clear of my deadline).  I was able force my two good friends from the Refinery, Jake and Maimai, to join me on a trip to the southern hemisphere.  Now none of us is particularly good in planning so we decided to just wing it.

The trip was not off to a very good start.  Jake made a mistake in booking his Manila/Singapore flight (duh) and had to leave earlier than us.  I miscalculated my travel time from Batangas to NAIA by 1.5 hours (double duh) and was greeted by a closed check-in counter (oh the stress!) despite driving 140 on the expressway (bad example, I know).  I literally had to beg the Singapore Airlines staff to let me on the flight.  When they finally relented, I realized I didn't have enough money for the terminal fee (triple duh).  Good thing the ATM in the airport was working otherwise I would've spent the night hitting myself for my stupidity!  The good thing about doing a photo-finish in the airport (though I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who has low tolerance for stress and has no talent for begging) is that you zip through immigration and catch only glimpses of the ugly NAIA 1 terminal.  Ever since I began travelling extensively for work this year, I've made it a point to spend as little time as reasonably possible in NAIA 1 - though in this particular instance, I was really pushing my luck.  Which didn't run out (luckily heheh).  Since I was not able to check in my luggage, the staff allowed me to bring my not-so-small bag on board. Wow, the allowances they made for a retard like me!  Beginning that moment, I became a loyal SQ convert! By the time I plopped down my seat right next to Maimai, I was soaking wet with nervous sweat (sorry Mai).  When I had time to collect my thougths, I realized that what stressed me the most was the thought of the person waiting to pick us up in Brisbane and the additional trip she had to make to fetch me from the airport.  I would've never survived that!

Zzzzzzzzz....

When I woke up, we were already flying through the middle of Australia which was mostly desert.  Now being non-planners, Jake, Maimai and myself had a little "stressful" situation trying to decide what to put under "Address in Australia" on the immigration form.  We forgot to ask our host what her address was! (Quadruple duh).  Anyway, we just decided to wing it...again.  Thankfully, our fears were baseless as we were let through immigration without a hitch.  I had concerns for the plastic orchids that we brought along with us since I know that Australia is very strict on bringing plants into the country.  Even if they were fake, we might run into a little 'interrogation' which I was not in the mood for.

Our former Shell colleague Jourdan and his wife Jan picked us up from the airport.  The first thing I noticed was how quiet it was.  Such a large country with a small population, I shouldn't be surprised that the perpetual din of a city such as Metro Manila is non-existent in this place.  Good!  We arrived at our host's (Becky - our former boss) house just in time for lunch and spent the whole afternoon chatting.  Later on we went around the immediate neighborhood, did a little birdwatching and had a nice Chinese dinner (with Becky, there's 80 percent chance you're eating Chinese heheh).

Our first day was spent in downtown Brisbane and we had such a fun time trying to figure out bus and train lines - which really isn't hard.  We went inside museums and ate in sidewalk cafes just to experience the 'local' vibe.  Our second day in Brisbane was spent in, guess what, a zoo!  Oh yes, we had to have the token zoo day in Australia so we could see (and sometimes pet) the local wildlife.  We had our fill of kangaroos, koalas, and of course, duckbill platypuses (or platypi hahaha).  It was an animal geek's treat!

On the eve of our second day we decided to go to Sydney.  Again, no plans, just winging it.  We booked our trip via Tiger Air (not bad, I must say - it was my first time).  Sydney was colder (which I liked) than Brisbane and much bigger too.  I think Australians are generally a friendly lot so we really had no trouble getting around.  Our motto: As long as you can read, speak English and are not afraid to ask, you'll be fine.  My favorite part of our Sydney trip was hanging around the harbor area, whether taking ferry boat rides from one point to another or lounging in some cafe and people-watching.  With the bright, bright Aussie sunshine plus the famed Opera House and Harbor Bridge as a backdrop, it was just the right thing to do.

After 2 days in Sydney, we headed back to Brisbane which, by now, already had a homey feel to us. Hahah.  We then spent the next day at the famed Gold Coast.  The water was too cold for swimming (at least for us tropic people) so again, we just walked around and lounged.  In fact, I think most of our time in Australia was spent walking around, lounging and eating.  Speaking of food, whenever we had lunch or dinner, we always tried to order beef or lamb - and yes, these were more delicious in Australia than anywhere else I've tasted them (and with very good prices too).

On our last day, Becky and friends (David, Jourdan, Jan heheh) drove us to this charming little town called Montville.  This locale had a historical, colonial feel to it and is the sort of place where you have tiny shops rather than big stores.  These shops had their own specialties (woodwork, glasswork, paintings, and of course, food!), it's like mini tiangges all in line.  One of the highlights of the trip was a fantastic view of the Glass Mountains - a rather unique sight if I may say.

All in all, I enjoyed my trip to Australia.  It could have been better-planned but at the end of the day, if your're confronted with bluer skies, fresher air, brighter sunshine, quieter surroundings, and wider spaces (and colder temperature) than what you're used to, all the planning can go out the window and you just have to stop, close your eyes, breathe deeply and take it all in.

P.S. Jake bought beef and lamb and handcarried them back to Manila.  The SQ flight attendant agreed (without a trace of an argument) to store the meat in the plane's freezer.  I was so surprised at the accommodation - again.  But I could get used to it.

Travel Agency Mode

I’m finally able to freeze my high-level Europe itinerary for August (God knows how many versions I’ve made). I think the difficulty in trying to nail down which places I want to go to and which ones to cross off my list comes from the fact that I’m kinda good in geography. When I was growing up, I devoured world book encyclopedias for a hobby so the list of places that I wanted to visit when I grow up has remained vivid in my mind over the years. And I want to see everything…which is impossible unless I use a portkey, leyway, or do astral projection.

So anyway, deciding when to go was easy. There are 3 public holidays in the Philippines over a two-week period at the end of August so this bit was a no-brainer. Deciding what airline to take, not so easy. I almost succumbed to booking KLM since for the longest time it was showing good value for money (read: cheap and a direct flight) but after Holy Week this year, Singapore Airlines suddenly had a ‘roll-back’ so I was able to get a good deal. And it being SQ, it’s probably the best deal even. I tried looking at Cathay Pacific (my second choice, too complicated, cheapest option has a layover in Heathrow), Emirates (just freaking expensive) and Thai Airways (through-the-roof freaking expensive). So come August, I’ll be on a 14-hour flight to Amsterdam on board the best airline in the world. Not bad.

So now which countries to visit? My port of entry into the EU is The Netherlands since I’m meeting up with my expat (read: Euro-loaded) best friend, Jake, who’s based in Amsterdam. I don’t want to do the 8 countries/14 days type of tour since I don’t want to jog all over Europe and end up feeling more tired than before I left for my vacation. “4 countries max”, that was my rule. Being a geography junkie, I made an itinerary that made sense geographically. My first version: Netherlands (3), Germany (5), Austria (3), Czech Republic (3). This version carried on for about two months until Jake went to Rome during the Easter Holidays. “Paul you’ve got to come to Rome!”. This little statement wrecked havoc to my precious, 2-month old, geographically sound itinerary (I actually have a spreadsheet complete with train schedules, train lines, and travel times).

Now I did not want to visit Italy for just 3 days since that will be so bitin, so I had to let go of some cities – 6 days’ worth of them. Berlin was the first to go away completely (2 days), then Vienna (1 day), and lastly Amsterdam (1 day). So that gives me 4 days in Italy. Still not enough. I needed at least 6 days in Italy (Rome 3, Florence 2, Venice 1). Sadly, I had to cut off Austria completely (sniff). Now who said optimization (in whatever sense of the word) was easy? When I tried to fit the train/airplane schedules into the second version of the itinerary, I ended up losing entire days to travelling or sleeping on trains (which I had second thoughts of doing since I have trouble sleeping on board anything that moves) so in the end, I decided that the itinerary was just too stressful. After countless permutations, I decided to scrap off Italy and told myself that only a trip exclusively to Italy will do it justice (yeah yeah).

Thus, I decided to put back Austria and the 1 day in Amsterdam back on my schedule. Now Berlin, I told myself, I was not dying to see, really, so now what to do with an extra 2 days? The Answer: pass by Budapest! I didn’t know where this crazy idea came from but I think somehow at the back of my mind I knew that Hungary is just around the corner so I decided we should pay the city a visit. With 3 plane rides plus countless train rides, I was actually able to come up with an itinerary that didn’t threaten to break our backs. However, an unsettling feeling began gnawing at me a few days later. I don’t know if it was just my being Catholic or that Eat, Pray, Love has been running on HBO this month but I just couldn’t bring myself to skip Italy. Aaaaargh. The headache! So anyway, to cut to the chase, I decided to scrap Germany entirely and do just 2 days of Prague so I can have 6 days in Italy. There!

I hope I won’t be sorry for giving up Germany that easily but seeing that I have three days in Austria with one (or two) of them saved for Salzburg, I might just do a quick trip to Munich just for the heck of it. Two weeks is certainly not enough for a “see-all” trip to any of countries that I’ve mentioned but then again, a fortnight is all that I (and my boss hahah) can afford. A couple of years ago, I spent two months in the UK for work but never ventured out into continental Europe. Britain is great and all that but not going anywhere else is something that I’ve been regretting up to now.

Oh well, let’s wait and see what happens in August. :-)