Malaysia: The Unexpected Awesome of Langkawi

Fact: Langkawi is the most beautiful place I have ever been.  Ever felt like you stepped on to the cover of a Conde Nast Traveler magazine?  I felt like that every day I was in Langkawi.  Pristine white sand beaches, bright blue water dotted with lush, verdant islands, and contrasted with rich, earthy 550-million year old limestone formations.  My breath was taken away so frequently, I could barely breathe the entire time.   I was so consumed with Awesome on the day we arrived, all I could do was throw my sandals off, and run to the water, shouting for joy from the intense beauty of it all.

But first, a little geography for you:

There are 14 states that make up Malaysia.  Langkawi is a district of the state of Kedah, the northern state that borders Thailand.  Formally called "Langkawi, the Jewel of Kedah," it's an easy name to understand once you're there.  It's an archipelago in the Andaman sea made up of 99 islands (wikipedia says 104, but all the locals tell me 99, and I'm assuming they know better).  Only three of those islands are inhabited--which means fulfilling that dream of finding yourself on a deserted island is totally possible here.  

It lies in between Thailand, Indonesia, and mainland Malaysia in a piece of water specifically called the Straits of Malacca.  From the main island (the one with the biggest city, Kuah) you can see Thailand across the strait--a fact that, on the first day when it was pointed out to me, made me tear up a little as I realized just where in the world I was.  

Sometimes traveling can make you feel so gloriously small.

To say that Langkawi is a paradise is an understatement.  It's a beach-goer's dream.  It takes "tropical island" to a level that this Wisconsin girl has never understood before.  But at the same time, it's way more than the beautiful beaches that bless its shores.  There's a population of over 60,000 people here, a culture rich with legends and tradition, an economy based off of rubber tapping, rice farming, and fishing, and a UNESCO mangrove geopark that is filled with monkeys, crabs, and eagles.  If you don't want to sprawl on the beach all day, there is plenty to see and learn and do.

Which is good, because (sigh) we were technically there to work, and sitting on the beach all day does not make interesting educational programming.  

Sure, the beaches may look like the Caribbean, but driving through Langkawi tells you a completely different story.  Rice paddies line the roadside and stretch into the distance, dotted with oxen waiting for their time to plough.  Humble mosques rise out of the horizon and most women wear the hijab, reminding you that Malaysia is a predominantly Muslim country, while at the same time welcoming Hindus and Buddhists and Christians as the other prominent religions.  Signs are in Malay, the official language of Malaysia, which looks and sounds a whole lot like Indonesian, if you happen have that as a reference point.  Since Malaysia is a former British colony, people do speak English here--especially in the service industry--but, unlike Sydney and Singapore, English will only get you so far in public.

(Side note: Due to the heavy tourism from both the Middle East and Japan, Malaysia is the first place in the world where I've been able to use both the weird languages I know to read signs at the airport.  I couldn't help but geek out a little.)

We stayed (go ahead, roll your eyes) at the Four Seasons Langkawi, a place that was so immaculately decorated and impressively designed I felt immediately unworthy of its attention--but oddly welcomed at the same time.  Man, this place is cool.  The architecture and design are Awesome, but it was also the diversity of guests that got my attention.  Sure there were Europeans and maybe a few Americans, but also couples and families from the Persian Gulf.  Ever seen a woman in a full burqa enjoying the pool next to a woman in a bikini?  Not at your average Caribbean resort, I bet. 

What I had originally thought was going to be the "break" time in this Round-the-Globe excursion--a time for "work" while I secretly snuck daily trips to tan on the beach--turned out to be a jam-packed few days of Awesome.  To be fair, there was a day in there where it rained so much we ended up filming spa treatments for the resort's promotional use (rain delays have never been so relaxing), but otherwise there was way more to the island (and the resort itself) than I had taken into consideration. 

If you're bored during a stay in Langkawi, you're not talking to the right people.

We toured the Kilim Karst Geoforest Park, a mangrove forest that is protected as a UNESCO world heritage site.  It's got eagles, macaque monkeys, brightly colored crabs, mudskipper fish that walk on land (our guide called them "Living proof of evolution!"), and brightly colored birds.  Mangroves grow in super-salty tropical climates, where rainforest meets ocean.  Most plants would die in these conditions, but through a series of impressive adaptations (those crazy roots being one of them), Mangroves thrive in this incredibly weird environment.

Our guide for the day, a man name Aidi (pronounced I.D.), added a lot of Awesome to the mix.  We started off before the sunrise, on a somewhat choppy semi-covered boat ride that took us deep into the canals of the mangrove forests.  Despite a super wet mid-morning downpour, we ended up with an absolutely gorgeous day to admire the ecosystem.  I'm pretty convinced Aidi knows everything, and he is also one of those people that lives life with a passion that commands respect.  "Now you can understand why I love this place," he said as the sun came out and monkeys started to appear. "To me, this is life.  It's real.  My friends in Kuala Lumpur tell me to go and get a job in an air conditioned office.  I won't."  And he laughed at the very absurdity of the thought.

I just love people like that.

The next day, we took a trip into the nearby market with the chef of the Four Seasons, a man named Adee Affende, who is from Langkawi and learned to cook first by practice growing up, and later by putting himself through school after he had worked a variety of kitchen jobs.  The market was bustling and a bit overwhelming--but Awesome, because I think markets are one of the best ways to learn about a new place.  It's an interesting peek into how other people live; something that seems so average to a person who lives there is almost always a sensory overload to a newcomer.  

We went a wet market, meaning it was selling fish and poultry and meat, not just veggies and fruit and herbs.  The term "wet market" implies everything you think--I wouldn't wear open-toe shoes or pants that drag on the ground to this one.  Fresh fish were still being unloaded and packed with ice, a rhythmic chopping kept the beat of the crowd as butchers broke down chicken carcasses with certainty, livestock hung from hooks.  We picked out some tiger prawn (Chef Adee explained to me that the color is what tells you the freshness as he expertly sifted through the bin), and then headed to the back where the vegetables and herbs were being sold.  He picked through the different leaves, offering me new things to taste and smell (Ever had bitter leaf?  I hadn't.).  This is the market where he usually shops and he seemed to know most of the shop keepers well--which was great, because filming in a market can sometimes be super difficult as an outsider.

We took our ingredients back to the kitchen at the resort and Chef Adee prepped everything to be ready for the camera.  We cooked Udang Gulai, basically a prawn curry made with coconut milk, spices, tomatoes, sweet potato, and that bitter leaf I tried earlier.  Major yum.  While we cooked, Chef Adee explained to me some of the basics of Malaysian cooking--that it's all about balancing the sweet, salty, sour and spicy.  My favorite thing he told me, however, was how Malaysian cooking has changed a bit, since recipes used to be handed down from generation to generation not with measurements included (one gram or half a cup, that kind of thing), but with quantities by price (one ringgit of tomatoes, five ringgit of prawn, etc.).  When prices started to change, however, recipes had to be retaught based on concrete measurements.  He's still translating some of his family's recipes as he cooks new things.

And still, there was more to do in Langkawi.  We visited the Laman Padi rice museum, something I never thought existed in the world but am totally glad it does.  A functioning outdoor series of rice paddies, Laman Padi (literally meaning "rice field" in Malay), is meant to help tourists understand where rice comes from and how it is planted, grown, and harvested.  The state of Kedah produces half the rice in Malaysia, something they are (rightfully) proud of.  The museum has a rice paddy at every stage, and has people working the fields to show how it's all done.

There is nothing fake about it, either.  There are fish jumping around the submerged plants, and an oxen stands on call to plough the fields.  I got in to learn how to spread the sprouted seeds, but only after applying a citronella balm to my feet and ankles to "discourage the leeches."  Comforting.

During the time we weren't filming, I rock climbed and learned archery, took a boat out to an uninhabited island to hike up 1000 steps deep into the rainforest, and even jet skied for the first time (less cultural maybe, but still Awesome).  I didn't lay on the beach once (although I would have, had I not been working).  I left feeling as if Langkawi had taught me a lesson--not the kind that necessarily sticks with you forever, but more of a "Don't you dare go back and tell people I'm only just a pretty beach" kind of lesson.  There is a depth to the flavor of this place that goes way beyond the crystal blue water and fine white sand.

The people here believe Langkawi was cursed by a maiden that was executed long ago after a dispute with her mother-in-law left her accused of adultery.  She is said to have doomed the archipelago for seven generations of bad luck, leaving the people here to constantly blame her for a lack of prosperity.  However, most people believe that the curse has finally been lifted, since the eighth generation has just begun.  Tourism, they hope, will boom in the coming years.  

I, for one, fully support that.  Langkawi is Awesome.  Truly Awesome.  And the brief taste I had has left me convinced that Malaysia, as a whole, is a country deserving a lot of attention.   

Singapore: A Giant Luxury Tree House

I'm gonna be honest about Singapore: I wasn't totally excited to come here.

I've been to Singapore once before, over a year ago, on a 24-hour layover with my brother.  It was a fun day, of course, but Singapore didn't really stay with me in the way other places in the world have.  There was no grit, no feel, no overwhelming sense of place.  I left thinking, "Well, that was nice, but I don't really have to come here again."

Wrong.  Turns out second looks are a blessing.

In the last few days, Fellow Awesome Seekers, Singapore has really blown me away.  I haven't been blogging because there has been just so much to do and so many things to see.  It makes sense--Singapore is a city (country? city-country?) of over 5 million people, all crammed into a finite piece of land.  It's a churning sea of different cultures, a place that's still finding its own identity while being proud of its history.  It's young, while old, and people seem excited by the idea that they can still define what Singapore is to the world.

It's also probably the cleanest place I've ever been, which is what I remembered most about my last visit.  Singapore seems to have no dirt, but still has a lot of trees (HOW DO THEY GROW??).  In fact, if you asked me to define Singapore with one adjective, I would quickly respond: shiny.  This place glows, sparkles, creates an aura of breathtaking Awesomeness, day or night (but especially night).

Berna, my friend and producer on this trip, had a pretty accurate first impression: "It's like a giant business lounge, built into a jungle."

Truth.  Singapore is oozing with wealth, commerce, and greenery (more on this later).  It basically shoves an upscale shopping mall down your throat every other block and beckons you inside with the promise of air-conditioning and shade (this place is a heavy-sweater's nightmare; stepping outside is like having a large man breathe hot air down your neck non-stop).  The cars are clean and new, the buildings boast modernity, the sidewalks have no cracks, and the business district screams Fortune 500.

I feel poor just looking at the city.

And maybe that's why it rubbed me the wrong way the first time I was here--in the same way I don't go to Beverly Hills on days I want to feel good about myself, Singapore seemed to celebrate the haves while completely ignoring the have nots.

But what I should have realized is that a 24-hour layover will never tell you the full story about a place, even a small city-country kinda place like Singapore.  Turns out, there's a whole lot more to Singapore than its initial giant-shopping-mall impression.

This city is cool, but you have to work to find its flavor, its essence of what makes Singapore truly Awesome.  It reminds me of Los Angeles in that way; Awesome is not handed to you, you must make it, find it, create it.  You must listen to locals and stray off the nicely landscaped boulevards.  You must want to like it, and not simply expect to.

Which is great in Singapore, because it's so safe here that even walking down a dimly lit back alley at night really doesn't raise the same alarm bells it would anywhere else.  (One cab driver explained it well: The punishments are so harsh in Singapore, no one even really thinks about committing crimes.  This place still canes people regularly, on top of jail time.  You know, he said matter-of-factly, six months, six strokes. Um, what??)

Example: Berna and I followed a local ex-pat's advice in a search for genuine dim sum.  "You want the real deal?" he said, and then jotted down some serious taxi directions on how to get there when we nodded.  It was in the red light district of Singapore, he explained, but just so good, and there were durian stalls right across the street.  Lots of them.

Dim sum? Hookers?? Durian???  Sold.

The dim sum was Awesome. We were absolutely the only non-Chinese people there, deciphering a menu that thankfully had pictures. (Shark fin soup and fried frog legs??  We didn't quite go that far, but we could have.) It was also just cool to be able to leave, wander the "red light district"--hookers and all--as two super-foreign women, and feel 100% safe.  And this is coming from someone that takes her safety pretty darn seriously.  High five, Singapore.

Since we're on the topic of food: Singapore has a lot of it.  It's known for its hawker street food stalls, which serve up a pretty wide variety of grub from the melting pot of cultures that make up Singapore.  We filmed a segment on the different street food to be found in Singapore, led by Singapore's Food Ambassador, Violet Oon.

Dear god, it was interesting, and (mostly) delicious.  A totally eclectic mix of stuff filled my belly.  I managed to cram down mutton-filled murtabak, chicken curry, roti prata, a veggie spring roll, rojak (a veggie and fruit salad covered in shrimp paste and tamarind), fried oyster omlette, and a red-bean-filled-condensed-milk-covered snow ball for dessert.

That whole vegetarian thing has been forced to completely disappear on this trip, at least on camera.  But I guess that's the job, huh.  It felt good to overcome food fears--like oysters, for example (this was my first)--because, well, I kinda had to.  You don't really keep this kind of job if you can't appreciate the different food for your audience.

And so appreciate I did.

Now, real quick, before I've lost all you Awesome Seekers in the obscurity of a blog post that is far too long (and perhaps much too general), let me just leave you with maybe my favorite part about Singapore: The trees.  Ugh, I love the trees.  The Director of PR for the Four Seasons Singapore where we are staying (IT IS GORGEOUS, BY THE WAY) called our rooms our own "luxury tree house," and at first I laughed before realizing it's pretty spot on.  Looking from above, Singapore is covered in a blanket of trees.  It's like a giant park that happens to have a city in it, instead of the other way around.

We took a trip to the Urban Redevelopment Authority to find out a bit about city planning and urban development in Singapore, and what I thought was going to be some stuffy, dry room full of unimpressive city models turned out to be one of the coolest displays of Awesomeness I've seen in a while.  A full-fledged, super-detailed, million-dollar scale model of Singapore covered the floor of a huge gallery, and interactive displays described the growth of the city in the last century and into the future.  I'm not much of a nerd for urban planning, but I could not get over the coolness of it all.

All the trees were finally explained as well.  Turns out Singapore, with its space limited and land at a premium, has developed a rule based off the Japanese city of Yokohama. Any land that is developed into a building, must be replaced by the builders in the form of a park somewhere within the building, whether in a courtyard, on a roof, wherever.  And not just any park, but a publicly accessible park, so that major developments can not take away public park space from the people and the city.

I LOVE THIS IDEA SO MUCH. 

I could continue to geek-out about the intense (and thoughtful) planning going on with this city, but for now, let me just leave it at this: I'm excited to see where this city goes.  With its seemingly endless budget, its multi-cultural population, its attention to eco-friendliness, and its interesting uses of space and architecture and design.  There are some seriously Awesome things going on here.

And, let's not forget to mention this sign from a restaurant I ate at a few days ago:

Stay Awesome, indeed, my friends.

Australia, The Final Days: Beaches and Boomerangs and Boats

Whew, five days in Sydney sure flew. right. by.  

Sad, too, because I could get used to life in this city.  The people are Awesome.  The food is Awesome.  The beaches are Awesome.

Wait...did I just say beach??

There hasn't been an Awesome blog for a few days (probably ruined your weekend, right?) because yesterday, on my last full day here in Sydney, I had four hours of free time.  The choice then had to be made: write blog or go to beach (Manly Beach, to be specific).  

What would you choose??

Um, duh:

For the first time in (my) on-location history, I went to a beach in my bikini and got in the water.  I even got tan lines.  It was a big moment.  A glorious moment.  An oh-my-gosh-I-actually-feel-like-I'm-on-vacation moment. An equalizing moment between me and the real vacationers who I usually just glare at for days.  For an all too brief hour, we were one.

But let's back track a bit, and convince you all that I do get paid to be here for some kind of reason.

I skipped breakfast Saturday morning.  Why?  We were off to film a cooking segment with a chef here in Sydney and he had tweeted at me the night before that we would be cooking the "beef dish" on the menu.  Vague enough, but I also knew I had my work cut out for me.  I've been a vegetarian for a good fifteen years, so beef and I aren't real good friends.  I knew this day would come, though, and I've been training.  A good thing about having a meat-eating boyfriend is that it's relatively easy to steal bites off his plate during dinner, in an attempt to reacclimate your body (and mind) to meat without committing to a whole dish. 

Thank you, Cesar Flores.

Friends, it was delicious.  I didn't just have one bite; I had like seven.  The (apparently super great) Australian beef tenderloin was pretty fantastically cooked (in butter, none the less), and then served over fresh local veggies and handmade (by me!) potato gnocchi.  YUM. MAJOR YUM.

Chef Barkham couldn't have been nicer too, or more fun to film with.  Overall a really rad way to spend a morning.

We hopped in car after that and drove about an hour outside of Sydney to the Muru Mittigar Aboriginal Cultural Center  where an Aboriginal guy named Anthony had the unfortunate task of teaching me how to throw a boomerang.  Anthony learned from his dad when he was five years old, and claims to have mastered the skill in two weeks.  I probably needed about two years.  Especially for someone who wants to throw everything like an ultimate frisbee, throwing a boomerang (well) is not an easy thing to do.

Anthony, however, could throw it and have it come right back to him to catch it.  As a result, we kept the camera on him a lot.  The magic of editing might even make it look like I had some grasp of what I was doing.  Wouldn't that be cool!

Either way, it was a blast.  Anthony makes the boomerangs himself (his dad taught him that too), which I thought was seriously Awesome, and he plays the didgeridoo.  I learned, though, that women are forbidden from playing the didgeridoo (it's actually a law in Aboriginal culture), because it's believed that the muscles women would need to use to play the instrument are the same used in childbirth, and they could wear the muscles out before being able to have a child.  Interesting.

We only had two hours at the center; I could have been there for an entire day.  Super nice people, really cool information, and it was just fun.  As if that wasn't enough, to top it all off, an orphaned possum made a surprise appearance (he's being raised after his mom was hit by a car up north), and I got to hold him.  I gotta say, Aussie possums are way cuter than stateside possums.  

Saturday ended (whew, these days are packed sometimes) with a giant fireworks display.  I suppose I haven't mentioned it yet, but this week is International Fleet Review in Sydney, and approximately 1.5 million people are in town to celebrate.  It's nuts.  There have been all kinds of tall ships and war ships sailing into the harbor the last few days, and they were in full force for what had to be one of the largest fireworks displays in history.  Fireworks were shooting off of naval ships, off barges, and raining down from the Sydney Harbor Bridge.  The opera house was covered in projections, and the harbor was glowing with a laser light show.  

Holy crap.

We had media passes to the whole event, and therefore pretty much the best view ever.  Not a bad way to end the day.

Australia, Day Three: A Climb, A View, and a Walk

One thing I really love about this gig is that it allows me to be the ultimate tourist.  The kind of tourist I roll my eyes at when I'm out "experiencing the culture" and "living like a local."  The kind of tourist that does things like climb the Sydney Harbor Bridge and take silly pictures at the top.

Oh my goodness, it was AWESOME.

Until recently, I had no idea that this whole BridgeClimb thing existed.  I got an email about it from my director a few weeks before the trip, and I think I replied something like, "Sweet, sounds good!"

What I should have replied is:  "OHMIGOSH REALLY WE'RE GONNA DO THAT THAT IS SO COOL I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!"

Hindsight is always 20/20, am I right?

The Sydney Harbor Bridge is almost the longest steel arch bridge in the world (if New York hadn't built one 6 centimeters longer).  It's the longest in the Southern Hemisphere, though, so we'll just stick with that.  Either way, this thing is tall; it towers 44 stories high over the harbor.

BridgeClimb came into being 15 years ago, but since it was the first such thing in the world, it took almost a decade to realize.  When you see this operation in action, it's actually shocking it took only decade, because it is a SERIOUSLY well engineered and thought out deal.  If you're gonna take over 3 million tourists up and over an iconic landmark, you'd better make sure the safety involved is Awesome.

And that they did.

It's crazy.  Not only are you tethered a metal cable running along the bridge the entire time but everything on your body is tethered to you (and therefore the cable and therefore the bridge).  You would have to try--like really try--to drop something off the bridge while you're climbing.  And if you fell, well, it could only be assumed a suicide because of the effort involved.

First, you are given a breathalyzer test to ensure you aren't inebriated.  Smart.

Then, you are given a (stylish) regulation jumpsuit.  On the jumpsuit goes a belt with a whole bunch of hooks and pockets and cables attached.  And then they supply you with a handkerchief (in case of the sniffles) that hooks and clips around your wrist, a baseball cap that hooks on to your suit, a fleece (in case it's cold) that hooks to your back in a pouch that is sewn into the jacket, and even special sunglasses that attach to a cable on your suit.  They even have an intricate system of screws and cables and harnesses that allow film crews (like ours) to take cameras up top (which is usually forbidden).

It's impressive.

The actual climb was crazy cool.  We took the path through the bottom level of the bridge, up a ladder of sorts to the apex, and then back down.  Climbing through a commuter bridge, with traffic rushing underneath you, is a rush.

And then the view.  Oh, the view.  You guys:  Sydney is a gorgeous city.

Throughout it all, our guide, Richard (pictured below), was kind of the best. guide. ever.  This man was not only afraid of heights before he took this job, he's also afraid of birds (which, as you can imagine, live in the bridge).  But he's a phobia-tacklin', life-is-Awesome kinda guy, and it was just so much fun to be in his care for an afternoon.  We couldn't have hit the guide jackpot more.

If I can leave you with one thing from this whole praise-filled post: Do the Sydney BridgeClimb if you come to this city.  It's expensive, I'll warn you, but it really is a super Awesome once-in-a-lifetime, go-ahead-be-a-tourist thing to do.  Worth it.

As if that wasn't enough coolness for the day, we finished off Day Three with that Aboriginal heritage walking tour I told you about on Day Two.  The late afternoon was spent walking along Sydney Harbor, learning the old Aboriginal names of places from the Gadigal tribe (I wish I could remember some of them, but you'll have the pleasure of hearing me try to pronounce them in the videos), and what the harbor may have looked like 300 years ago before "first contact," or colonization.

Gabby, our guide, dropped a lot of really interesting knowledge on me throughout the walk, but an important take home fact for me was that the Aboriginal people have been here in Australia for perhaps up to 60,000 years.  In the Sydney Harbor area, they know people were living here for at least 8,000 years before Europeans landed.  The country of Australia is just a tiny blip at the end of a very, very long history for this piece of land.  It's crazy to think about.

Ugh, there's just so much learning to be done in this wide, wide world.  I feel like my head is going to explode sometimes.  I love it.

Australia, Day Two: Koalas and Wallabies and Kookaburras, OH MY!

Today was day REAL one.  The day I actually had to work.  But let's still put "work" in quotes because, seriously guys, this job is just so cool.

We started off at WILD LIFE Sydney, a zoo of sorts located right on the harbor that, from what I can tell, houses a lot of animals that wouldn't necessarily survive in the wild--you know, kookaburras that had been in car accidents, one-eyed koalas, that kinda thing.  Pretty cool, if you ask me.  They were Awesome enough to let us film inside the koala exhibit, close to the koalas.  

But any dreams I had of actually holding (or touching) a koala were quickly shattered.  Why?  Well, koalas are somewhat delicate animals that require a whopping 20 hours of sleep a day on average.  When tourists come in and hold or touch them a lot, waking them up from their slumber, it can stress them out so much they start to lose hair, the ability to breed, or even die.  

Dude, I get it.  I get messed up when I don't get sleep too.

I'd never want to knowingly play a part in animal destruction, so I got close enough for a couple of selfies and a few quick video bits with koala fun facts, and then we let them slumber on in peace.  That's not to say, though, that the koalas weren't all-stars.  Considering we were there right at nap time, the koalas we were working with (I believe their names were Jay and Bill) did a fantastic job hamming it up for the camera.  They awoke, ate, climbed, yawned, groomed, and gave me quite a few annoyed blank stares (koala stink eye, if you will).  

But let's just take a second to discuss HOW AWESOMELY COOL THESE ANIMALS ARE.  And cute.  So cute.  (I think Bill would prefer ruggedly handsome, but I don't care, the dude was cute.)  They sleep 20 hours a day, poop 100 times a day (yeah, think about it), eat only leaves, and carry their young ones in a pouch.  And they have two thumbs on each hand!  I kiiiinda want a koala's life.

(I was corrected, however, that koalas are not really like sloths, even though it may seem like that at first glance.  I guess they move pretty fast and can even jump from limb to limb.)

The koality time (ha! Thank you to friend Skye for that fantastic pun--wish I woulda thought of that on camera...) ended with a torrential downpour into the enclosure, but we still got everything we needed.  The poor koalas, however, got drenched.  Curling up in a Eucalyptus tree isn't the best way to stay dry in the rain, I suppose.

Our next segment led us to an Aboriginal heritage tour of Sydney--but unfortunately the downpour was such that it made any kind of outdoor filming impossible.  So, we sat down and interviewed a young Aboriginal woman named Gabby, and then she agreed to walk with us the next day instead (the people here are just so nice).  The interview was still interesting, though, because I know pretty much nothing about Aboriginal culture.  

One of my favorite parts was that each Aboriginal tribe has a unique connection to a specific plant or animal (called a totem), and they protect that living thing.  It steams from the belief that no living thing is superior to any other living thing (beautiful), and they won't eat or kill whatever their totem is.  In this way, animals and plants are conserved throughout the country, too, because if each living thing has someone else looking out for it, then ideally over-farming or over-hunting won't happen.  I love it.  

Each person is also given a totem at birth, and it is their personal job to protect that living thing throughout life.  Gabby said, however, that this tradition is in the midst of a rekindling.  Since the Aboriginal culture has been historically squashed under colonialism, many traditions didn't get passed on from generation to generation as they were before.  If you see the movie Rabbit Proof Fence, you'll kind of get the idea.  A lot of kids were taken away from their culture early on, in an attempt to assimilate Aboriginal people into colonial culture.  Sad, and unfortunately not unique to Australia.

You can imagine all of this was hard (and still is hard) for Aboriginal people to understand because, again, they believe that no living thing was superior to any other living thing.  

Think about it.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the walking tour.  Should be pretty cool.  Stay tuned...

We ended the day with some fantastic chocolates (yes, please!), and I found myself a bottle of Yellow Tail wine (you guys, it's FROM here, and still the same price. WHY.).  

Again, this is "work", I promise...

Australia, Day One: Bird Poop and the Four Seaons

G'day mates!

(I swear that's the last time I say that.  Probably.)

After a FOURTEEN AND A HALF HOUR long flight from LAX to Sydney, I have arrived in the Land Down Unda.  The flight was, actually, not half bad.  After the last week of visa induced ulcers and packing craziness, I managed to pass out for nine whole hours.  This has to be a record for coach-based sleeping.  I'm partially giving credit to my new Kuhi travel pillow (um, BUY ONE), but pure exhaustion (mixed with 2 mini-bottles of free red wine) probably played a role as well.

I filled the other five hours with People magazine junk reading (Awesome), two highly intellectual movies (The Internship and This is the End), and making conversation with the Syrian-born Australian woman sitting next to me.  She was seriously Awesome--and she had been EVERYWHERE.  Talk about a single woman who loves her some travel.  I can only hope to be that cool thirty years from now.

We arrived in Sydney at 8 a.m. two days after we had left the good US of A.  Time travel via the International Date Line gets me every time.  As a result, I have no idea what day it is--or time, for that matter--and have to constantly refer to my phone for guidance.

Okay, so here's the kicker guys.  I'm staying at the FOUR SEASONS this entire trip.  Yep, if you do the math, that's four different Four Seasons in four different countries (it's a sponsorship deal with the non-profit I'm working for here--so, really, hats off Four Seasons).  Life. Is. Rough.  And while this is not how I have ever traveled in my life usually (sleeping on the floor in Damascus, anyone?), I gotta tell you: walking into the Four Seasons, jetlagged, hungry, and confused is like coming home during college to a home cooked meal after months of microwaved ramen, then curling up in your non-dormitory bed and having your laundry done for you.

It just feels so nice.

That said, the Four Seasons here in Sydney is (as always) impressively out of my personal affordability.  For one thing, I constantly have to resist the urge to be waiting on the tables, not dining at them.  In my usual 20-something bartender lifestyle, five star amenities don't come around often.  So what do I do?  I soak it allllll in.

Cucumber infused water?  Yes, please.  A quick steam in the steam room?  Yes, please.  Turn down service?  Yes, please.  A man casually and happily playing the piano in a tux at 9 a.m.?  Yes, please.  Unlimited breakfast buffet with a whole table of ridiculously Awesome pastries?  Yes, please.  A TV programmed with my name on the screen?  Yes, yes, yes please.

Oh, and also, the view from my...er...suite:

Major yes please.

(Fun fact: Every Four Seasons is required to keep a certain number of fresh blooms in the lobby every day. It's pretty Awesome.)

And if I haven't done a good enough job convincing all of you that I don't actually "work" when I come on these trips (I do, I promise, just you wait...), Day One was spent--for the first time ever in my time on location--doing whatever I wanted.  Yep.  I had a free afternoon.

Well, not really, because we (that's me, and our assistant producer, Berna) had to pick up some press passes on the other side of the harbor.  But that errand brought us on a nice walk through the botanical gardens--and it was a gorgeous day.  While it's possible that I spent a little too much of the walk quoting Finding Nemo (P.Sherman 42 Wallaby Way Sydney), it was still way fun.

Neither of us were aware that our trip was taking us ultimately to a Naval office with a strict dress code to get inside.  We showed up, jetlagged, ragged, typical-stupid-American-looking.  Whoops.  Apparently cutoff shorts, tie dye shirts, and flip flops are frowned upon in the Navy.  Luckily they were super cool about it, pulled us aside (not inside, mind you), and still gave us the passes.  Oh, the places you find yourself sometimes.

The rest of the day was filled with exploration, a couple of Aussie beers, some chips shared with seagulls--oh, and a gracious amount of bird poop.  I hear getting pooped on by a bird is good luck, though, and I'm looking for all the good luck I can get right now.  Three weeks to circumnavigate the globe is cray and something tells me it would be pretty Awesome to have luck on my side....