meditating in Melbourne

Hello there,

I haven't been getting up to too much lately, just catching up on some school and hanging around town. Unfortunately we're all on a little break from travelling so there won't be too many posts to make you all jealous for the next little while.. but I'm still in Australia... so you can still be a little jealous.

Since I got back from Thailand I've been given a larger load of work than I remember being used to, ugh... school here is real, kind of. All my teachers are so unorganized, or "unorganised" as the Aussie's would spell it (as I've come to notice from actually reading my textbooks), that when I returned after my trip I was the only student who wasn't placed in any groups for the upcoming projects/presentations that were assigned between weeks 7 and 12 in every class. So they simply decided "Oh.. sorry about that, you can just rock up with next week's group and present with them". Cool... three days of class next week... three group presentations next week. Meeting all of these different people for the first time and throwing a presentation together the night before and morning of... somehow managed to work out, well.

Other than that we had a massive party on the 13th to celebrate the birthdays of six of our friends! Steph, Erin, Ryan, Joey, Sebastian, Jake. Since Ryan lives in the apartment attached to our house and happens to be a DJ and it happened to also be his birthday our house became a night club. Speakers, lights, lasers, fog. All night. Our friends didn't have to worry about cabbing home because they were able to take the first train home when it opened at 5:30 a.m, and then there were our friends who just decided to pass out all over my room. It was a grrreat night resulting in the largest amount of recycling I have ever witnessed along with ridiculous complaint phone calls to our landlord...

We also went to our first AFL game! Australian football. A sport unlike any other. It is played only on weekends on an enormous circular field with 18 players from each team on the field at the same time. This sport is HUGE in Melbourne. Our Aussie friend Nic who was on exchange at Western last semester has recruited us to cheer for his team, and they say that once you commit you must remain dedicated to that team for the rest of your life so GO Hawthorn Hawks!... not Hufflepuff. To help you get an idea of how massive this sport is in Melbourne, Hawthorn as well as their opponent, Collingwood are nothing more than a couple of suburbs of the city that are equivalent to Etobicoke maybe... and this regular season game brought out 72,000 spectators!!

On a more relaxing note, my friend Anna and I decided to take a half day meditation session. We journeyed across the entire city train system to the end of the line, ending up in the Dandenong region of Melbourne... whatever that means. We got picked up from the station and driven up along beautiful rolling hills and farm fields to a Buddhist Temple to learn how to meditate. It was really interesting to learn a little bit about Buddhism and how they use meditation to achieve inner happiness and to balance and open the mind and all that jazz. Along with free cookies, tea, and lunch it turned out to be a grrrreat day!

April is somehow wrapping up already. I don't have any travel plans as of now, other than another rock climbing camping trip that is coming up in a couple weeks. So I'll be hanging around Melbourne doing the school thing and shtuff like that. I've definitely be missing all you guys back at home and am a slightly jealous that I still have to go to school while you lot are finished your exams!

Sincerely, 

AUS

P.S. In case you haven't heard, my mumma will be joining me down here in June! I couldn't be more excited for her to come!

The Thailand Tour: The Taste

My biggest worry in this country was that there wouldn't be enough meals in 14 days to get a taste of everything.

I'd say I did pretty well. Curries, noodles, pad thai, rice, pad thai, soups, exotic fruits, fresh shakes, unidentified snacks... bugs...

Everything was so delicious. and CHEAP! Where else can you get a delicious and satisfying meal, a desert, and two beers for under $10... The most expensive dish I had was 110฿ which is equivalent to about $3:50 and that was because we were at a legitimate restaurant rather than a local family operated stall on the street. We went with pad thai for our very first meal and it did not disappoint.. and there were many more meals including this classic fave! Knowing me, I would opt for seafood over any other meat but the one day I only had the option of chicken happened to be Good Friday...oopsie.

Take a gander:

Pad Thai

Shrimp Fried Rice

Chicken Stir Fried with Basil

Green Curry with Chicken and Eggplant

Stir Fried Shrimp with Red Curry and Coconut Milk

Tom Yum Soup with Shrimp

Khao Soi with Chicken

Green Papaya Salad

Rice Topped with Fried Egg and Chicken with Chilies

Shrimp Pad Thai

Massaman Curry with Vegetables

Thai Style Omlette

Thai Curry and Fresh Veggie Spring Rolls

Red Curry Soup and Pineapple Fried Rice

Curried Pumpkin, Long Beans and Tofu, and Stir Fried Cucumber and Tomato

Fresh fruit shakes were a necessity to cool down in the sweltering heat.. coconut, watermelon, pineapple, papaya mmmm. 

Fresh Watermelon Shake

Grilled Bananas

Pressed in Banana Leaves

Mornings there would be stalls with sweet snacks where one day we indulged in every option available. I couldn't tell you exactly what it was that we were eating but it usually consisted of some sort of coconut cream and was always delicious. 

Sticky Rice with Banana

When it came to desert we could not resist a good "rotee". This amazing creation was the definition of delicious. A ball of dough that is whipped around and spun out into a large, thin crepe thing and then fried with a concoction of either some sort of fruit and egg mixture in the middle, folded up, flipped around, cut up into pieces and doused with chocolate sauce and condensed milk. Oh my yum.

Rotee with Pineapple and Chocolate

Thai Pancake with Sugar

Whenever they would let me I would taste the different fruits they had available like rambutan, jackfruit, pomelo, durian, sapodila, papaya, and rose apple... and I could never get enough of the little egg bananas!

Cicada, anyone?

It's definitely sad to leave all this behind... between taste, variety, and affordability I ate some of the most delicious food I've tasted in these two weeks! Be jealous. Although, it was nice to find that the Thai food you can get at a good restaurant back home is surprisingly authentic and definitely a suitable substitute for the real deal... so I know what I'll be ordering when I eat out at home from now on!

Back to AUS means back to my yogurt and granola for breakfast.

Sincerely, 

THAI

The Thailand Tour: The Mountains

Another overnight train from Bangkok and we've reached our final chapter of our Thai adventure!

Chiang Mai

Paradise. The name of our hotel that was our home-base for the remainder of our trip. The one word that defines the exact opposite of this place. A jail-like, concrete building located along a back alley of Chiang Mai. Scum coating the surface of the indoor pool, bird droppings on the breakfast tables, ants in the sinks, in our beds, and in our pants. Paradise.

Although we were far from paradise we happened to be right around the corner from a terrific local restaurant that I must say ranks #1 in the pad thai category!

Daytime in the area was spent hopping from food place to food place whether we were looking for a meal or trying to kill time. We also took our chances not knowing what to expect to get out of the five whole dollars we spent for an hour long Thai Massage. Oh man, having my body twisted in awkward positions and having my muscles kneaded by the hands, elbows, and feet of a little thai lady was just what I needed after sleeping in trains, planes and automobiles and not to mention bamboo "beds" throughout the course of our trip. That was the first and only massage I've ever gotten aaaaaand probably the last in a long time considering my low expectations of finding anywhere else offering such a service for anywhere near that price!

Nighttime in the area included wandering the stock-filled streets of the Night Bizaar where we spent more time and money than anyone can consider normal...

We really just wanted another chance to dress up in long thai skirts with pretty stitching and what other place to do such a thing than a Buddhist temple? So up Doi Suthep we went to see beautiful Wat Phra That sitting at the top. We wandered around there for a bit, but you can only spend so much time taking pictures of peaceful Buddhas when tigers are next in line. We went back down the mountain to Mae Rim where we got up close and personal with some ferocious felines at Tiger Kingdom. If the walk up the stairs to the temple didn't get my heart rate up... this sure did.

Doi Inthanon

Into the jungle we went. Three days and two nights in Doi Inthanon National Park. Bamboo rafting, hiking, waterfall bathing, tribal village dwelling, hiking, elephant riding, hiking... I can say with confidence that this was the best experience I had in this country! We were able to do so many neat activities and interact closely with the Karen tribe people who live in the jungle with their own language, villages, and sustainable way of life. They lived in small huts without doors and had minimal electricity other than a couple solar panels that they can benefit from when its not wet season. They used and reused everything they could, brewed their own alcohol, and had what could very well end up being their dinner running around the roads! We exchanged songs with the village children, were challenged with riddles by the cheif, and played takraw (think volleyball with no use of hands). When it came to sleeping we were under a roof, a mozi-net and on top of bamboo, and woke up to the roosters... which seemed to be a little confused, cock-a-doodle-doo-ing at 4:00 am... then again at 6:00...

That is Thailand.

Sincerely,
THAI