Epic Day!

Sort of saw the sun rise. Breakfasted with mom in our room before she took off. Delicious and healthy lunch and juice at Dijon. Guy with a colorful parrot also has an eye patch. Buried in compost up to our ears. Acupuncture session by a famous-with-the-locals Balinese doctor. Another delicious + healthy dinner at Manik Organik. Home to the resort and our executive suite!

Sunrise -- Check!

Well, I sort of made it. The sky was light by the time I got outside, but the sun wasn't quite out when I got to the beach. It was above the horizon, but behind a haze. So, I saw it rise from the haze! And, that's good enough in my book.

Turns out, at some point, watching the sun rise just becomes staring at the sun.

Sunrise

I've been waking up by about 6 AM here. I haven't been getting up, though. It is my typical mode of operation to want to watch the sun rise over the water whenever I get the chance. (Living on the west coast, it's a novelty for me.) The sun rises at 6:21 here. And, from what I can see from my room (pictured) it appears to be rising from the general direction of the beach. The thing about sunrises, is they happen everyday -- knock on wood. The procrastinator in me says, I'll do it tomorrow...

Hairy Balls

The closer you get to the equator the more interesting and tasty the fruit gets! Fresh pineapple juice replaces my fresh lemonade habit and I get to eat some of the fruits my parents get excited about whenever we approach the earth's mid-line. The hotel gives us an assortment of fresh fruit in our rooms daily. We've been getting passion fruit, apples, green oranges, what my mom calls 'kolikuttu' bananas and something that looked suspiciously like durian, but turned out to be an Indonesian fruit called 'salak'. This morning, on our way out, my mom asked the front desk if they had rambutan. In 2003, when we went back to Sri Lanka for the first time in several years, the first fruit mission my parents went on was for rambutan. My dad gave our driver 10 rupees and told him to buy a bunch from a fruit stand on the road. The driver was embarrassed to tell him that it wasn't enough. In fact, it would have only bought one small fruit. My parents were shocked to find they cost 6 rupees each. Not sure why rambutan became so expensive in Sri Lanka, but they're giving it away here...

When we got back to our room in the afternoon we had a bowl of spiky, round, red fruit waiting for us. My mom was like a kid on Christmas morning opening those things. When she finally handed one over to my sister, almost under her breath she pointed out that "they look like hairy balls" in an attempt to dissuade her from eating it. That's my mom. They are pretty delicious, but I think the appeal for my mom has a lot to do with the memories of eating them as a kid in Sri Lanka.

Bali's Not Bad

We arrived in Bali about 24 hours ago, and I gotta say -- it's not bad. In fact, the resort we're staying at is pretty spectacular, we were upgraded to a sweet suite, and the weather is delightful. The complimentary high tea (which is about to commence again) is better than several high teas we've paid for. (My mom is always in search of a good high tea.) The Balinese style massage is the perfect combination of acupressure and deep tissue and I had the fortune of sampling it last night. Waking up at 7:30 AM in Sydney and Melbourne translates to waking up at 5:30 AM here in Bali. This resort has free wifi everywhere (I'm writing this from the beach!) though it's only intended to be free on the lobby, so I was able to catch up with a friend in California over IM from bed instead of staring at the ceiling when I woke up. The "Total Body Workout" class at 7:30 turned out to be a personal training session for me since no one else showed up. Shannon turned up after I ate breakfast and she took me out for my first dip in the water. There was a pretty strong current, the break was really far out, and I was already fatigued from my total body workout so I turned back before we got out to the waves. I ended up getting to know Shannon's friend, Tony, over my second glass of fresh pineapple juice for the day. Tony is here from Florida for a month visiting Shannon. He was supposed to come on our India trip last year, but he had a bad accident and couldn't make it. I would have gotten to know him then, but here we are, over a year later, sipping drinks at an out-of-the-way beach restaurant in Bali!

And now it is tea time again.

Cheers!

Makin' your way in the world today takes everything you've got.

Takin' a break from all your worries sure would mean a lot.

Wouldn't you like to get away?

Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name.

And they're always glad you came.

Cheers is on in our hotel room. I haven't watched Cheers in YEARS. Remember when Woody was the new guy? I think I should be too young to remember that, but I do. The last time I watched Cheers on a regular basis was my freshman year of college when I stood by and let a good friend get the Cheers sign tatooed on his arm. Ah...good times.

Just got home from visiting with family -- a second cousin on my paternal grandmother's side and my maternal grandmother's cousin's family. A really good bunch of people. Growing up I didn't appreciate having family or family friends wherever in the world we went. It meant we stayed at people's houses instead of hotels and had homecooked Sri Lankan food instead of local food. Our trips to New York were really trips to a suburb in New Jersey. "SF" was really Lafayette, Cupertino, Fremont, San Ramon and Daly City. We have visited or stayed with family or Sri Lankan friends in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Sri Lanka, India and Dubai. From my perspective, we might as well have been at home visiting with some uncle and aunty I'd never met. Since then, I've...well...grown up. But, I've also gotten to know a lot of my parents' friends and my second cousins and more distant relatives. They've come and stayed with us, we've visited them before or we've met at weddings. And being with them is like being home. The reception I got from my grandmother's cousin was so warm and loving. You'd think I was her long lost grandchild. And it was great to see her. I've gotten the chance to spend some time with her over the years and she is like a grandmother to me. But I don't think I've ever met her husband until tonight and he seemed just as happy to see me. I also met her son and his kids for the first time, and we got on instantly. Now, I truly appreciate that I can travel to the other side of the world and walk into someone's house and...well, everybody knows my name.

Oh Sunny Day in Melbourne!

Flew in to Melbourne this afternoon from Canberra. Checked in to our hotel (the Westin again -- it's a Starwood trip on account of all my mom's points). After a night in the Crowne Plaza In Canberra with the whole fam in one room, it was really nice to be "home" again at the Westin.

It's a beautiful day in Melbourne and there seems to be a lot of fun stuff going on in the city! Grabbing a late lunch/early dinner (supper?) on Degraves St at one of the many little cafés lining this tiny walk street. The center of the street is packed full of tables, chairs, umbrellas and heaters. There is a constant stream of pedestrians on the sidewalks. It reminds me of Maiden Lane in San Francisco...repeated.

After refueling, we're going to head out to explore the city. The Westin appears to be very conveniently located in the heart of it.

There is a Michael Franti concert tonight that I might venture out to. Not sure yet as tickets are $60! We'll see...

Angry Birds

I have never before today wanted to dropkick an animal. I crossed that threshold thanks to the seagull that stole my finger sandwich at The Opera House. It wasn't just that the dollar at an all-time low coupled with the already ridiculously high prices here in Australia made my sister and me deliberate far too long about spending $7 AUD on four finger sandwiches to share. It wasn't that today was the wettest April day Sydney has seen in a decade and we had just found a warm, dry spot with a nice view of the bridge to enjoy said sandwiches. Or that we'd just trekked up to the Opera House in the pouring rain to find out that this was the one day a year they give free tours and...wait for it...they were all booked up. It wasn't even that we were both pretty hungry. It was that this was an act of terrorism.

This bird was mean and calculating and it targeted us long before we became aware of it's presence. If I didn't know seagulls were equal opportunity scavengers and I didn't think they were idiots, I'd suspect this was a hate crime the way we were singled out amongst several other diners around us. We had just sat down and split the first of our four sandos when it came out of nowhere (i.e. it's sniper's perch) and popped up staring me down first with it's cold, beady eyes. Then, it flew up directly over my sister's head flapping it's wings wildly kicking up her hair and distracting us from it's intended target. Before we knew what had hit it us, it swooped in making a surgical strike at our sandwich tray snatching up two neighboring halves, effectively stealing a whole sandwich from us. Spattering my bag with sandwich guts it disappeared as swiftly as it had appeared leaving a trail of mayo and carrot shavings to verify to us that, "Yes, that did just really happen." Descending upon the ground next to our table -- not nearly far enough away from us given the offense committed and the huge advantage we have in size -- the robber may have been subsequently robbed of it's loot before it hit the ground. It's not clear. There was a flurry of activity as one seagull suddenly became many, scrambling for a piece of the prize.

What happened next is what sent me over the edge from highly offended and irritated to violently murderous. One of those flying a-holes, and it may have been the original culprit, flew back up to our table. Landing on the seat back of the chair between us, sitting almost at our eye-level it squawked -- no, shrieked at us threateningly flapping it's wings as if -- as if to shoo us away from the rest of our sandwiches! Insult to injury. And I was still sitting there in shock.

Terror begets terror and I really and truly wanted to kick that bird's ass along with the rest of it's cohorts. The birds in Sydney are aggressive and angry and someone needs to remind them just how small they are and how terribly humans can behave.

It's BANANAS!

Ok, so this is an extreme example of how jacked prices are here. But it really is bananas how expensive things are. For added fun, the US dollar is at an all-time low. This is probably what it feels like to visit the US from a third world country. Tables totally turned. Sucks. I remember on my first visit to Australia back in 1993 being shocked that CDs cost $20-25 AUD. And even the relative strength of the US dollar didn't temper that, but now it's weaker!

Keeping in mind that 1.00 AUD = 1.057 USD, here are some prices in AUD:

Gala apples - $5/kg

Small bag of potato chips - $3.80

Baskin Robbins single scoop - $4.90

Fresh blended juice - $7-9

Cup of tea - $4.50

McDonald's Sausage McMuffin meal - $6.90

10 ride single zone bus pass - $16

Pay-per-view in-room movie at Westin - $17

Besides the strength of the Australian economy, there are some good reasons things cost more here. The minimum wage is high. It varies based on the industry (imagine that!) The national minimum wage for "award/agreement free employees" is $569.90 a week (based on a 38 hour week), or $15 per hour. Because people that work in the food industry are paid a living wage, the service cost is included in the price of your meal. You are not expected to tip and the average cost of an entrée (by my estimation ~$25 in downtown Sydney?) reflects that. In the case of the bananas, the store chose to support local growers during their crisis rather than import cheaper bananas.

Overall, good for the world! Right now, bad for US tourists.

Downtown Sydney

First stop -- Sydney! My mom had a ton of Starwood points, so we and we are making the most of them. In Sydney, we're staying at The Westin in the Central Business District or CBD. We've got a pretty nice view from our 26th floor room (pictured right). For whatever reason, I keep thinking I'm in Canada. I guess Sydney reminds me of Vancouver, the last Canadian city I visited. It feels like Vancouver did. The newness of the city, the overcast sky, and the diverse population. I have to keep reminding myself I'm on the other side of the world. Or someone opens their mouth and does it for me.

My first evening in Sydney, I met up with a good friend from college. I hadn't seen him in about 10 years, even though we both live in California. It's another Facebook success story for me. We became friends on Facebook a while ago and talked about meeting up, but never made any concrete plans. He happened to post something about going to Sydney (he doesn't post often) and I happen to see it. I realized I'd be there at the same time and we made a plan to meet up. My first weekend in Australia is his last after 5 weeks here. We communicated via the Face and met up at The Opera Bar at sunset. I got to meet his family and we caught up in a pretty amazing spot at the most beautiful time of day. A great way to kick off the trip!

Oz/Bali 2011

I'm in Australia with my parents and sister. We came here for...wait for it...a wedding! Another of my mom's classmate's kids is getting married. It's my dad's first big trip since he got sick and I wanted to join them. We have family in Melbourne and Perth, so we're doing a little tour of Australia. I decided if I was coming all this way, I had to go a little further and drop in on my good friend, Shannon, in Bali. (We were roomies in Kerala.) So the itinerary is: Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Bali, Perth. This is my third visit to Australia, second time to Sydney & Melbourne, first time to Canberra, third time to Perth, and this will be my first trip to Indonesia! I'm excited for Bali, looking forward to spending some quality time with my family and generally not having an agenda.

Maui - January 2011