Days 306-307: Sydney

Flying to Sydney went fine. After the 20ish flights I've done in the last year I have the process down to a science. There's an airport train into the city that dropped me off near where my hostel was, but like almost everything in Australia the price is a bit extreme. It was something like $17 for a train shuttle that was less than 15 minutes. The hostel I was staying in had a bar right below it, and apparently on Thursday through to Sunday, past 7pm the hostel lounge gets turned into a dance club so you can't use the wifi there. Luckily a roommate even more wifi desperate than I managed to figure out the password to the locked wifi of the travel agency across the street. It was slow and unreliable, but at least it offered some form of connection from inside our room on the top floor.

The following day finally offered some sun, I went exploring town. I walked through downtown and visited the Art Gallery of New South Whales, which was just as excellent as the Victoria Gallery in Melbourne. The Botanical Gardens were right across the street, so I wandered through them up towards the harbor, walking along the water until I got to the famous opera house.

From there I checked out The Rocks, which is the old historic city center part of Sydney next to the harbor. I eventually worked my way through the downtown back to the hostel and hung out there for the evening.

Days 294-295: Idling

On Saturday I was supposed to meet up with my second host in the city for his 21st birthday party, then go to his house in the evening. Due to unexpected circumstances that plan fell through, the birthday party got cancelled and I stayed at my original spot for an extra night to make things easier. The party was supposed to be at the botanical gardens, and even though it got cancelled I figured the gardens would be a nice place to take it easy and relax after a few days of pretty extensive walking. The botanical gardens were more of a big park with lots of open green space for lounging and picnics. Unfortunately the weather had gotten cooler again so while it was still nice out, it was a bit chilly to just lie around.

The following day I tried to make it to the town of Healesville, outside of the city, for something I had been wanting to do. Unfortunately Sunday is a horrible day to try to use the bus system around Melbourne, and I ended up spending about 4 hours trying to get there before giving up and coming back to the city. I gathered all my bags from where I'd been staying and took the train and a tram to get to the new place I'd be staying at for the last few days in Melbourne.

Day 273: Being Touristy in Cameron Highlands

The day tour I signed up for around Cameron Highlands was a mix of attractions, some of which were much more appealing than others. Our first real stop was in the Mossy Forest, which is, according to our guide, is part of the oldest rainforest in the world. I somewhat suspect that this claim is one of those vague, unproveable ones that more than one place claim, but I'll at least accept that it's really, really old. We first drove all the way to the top of the hills to visit the highest point in Cameron Highlands. Unfortunately it was above the level of the low-hanging clouds, so all we could really see was mist. While leaving this point I managed to accidently slam a girl's finger in my door. I felt terrible about it, despite it not really being my fault or anything I could have done to prevent it (I was sitting in the front seat, and everybody else was sitting in the back of a van - I still don't really know how her fingers got into the frame of my door). It was a substantial wound with blood and probably a nail torn off, and the first injury I've caused another my entire trip, but she handled it very well and trooped on.

For the Mossy Forest, the group does one of two walks. One is a rugged jungle hike and the other is a walk of the same length, but over a maintained boardwalk through a similar terrain. Obviously I would have preferred the first option, but due to heavy rain in the last week there was a high risk of cobras so our guides opted for the boardwalk. It was still a nice walk, and the forest was one of the most beautiful I've been to.

Our next stop was at one of the major Cameron Highlands Tea Plantations. This one produces BOH Tea, which I'm not familiar with, but maybe is a recognized brand by one of you tea people. It's quite shocking how beautiful a tea plantation really is. You'd think it would just look like a normal field, or an orchard, but when the tea bushes are spread out over the hills and valleys it's quite striking.

The tour included a visit to the tea processing plant, which is a pretty straightforward process. I also learned an awful lot about growing tea, which will probably never be terribly useful information, but I have a special fondness for mostly useless knowledge.

The last two stops were to those sort of manufactured attractions I mentioned earlier. The first one was to a butterfly/insect/reptile/etc garden, which I guess is the Malaysian equivelant of a petting zoo. Despite my skepticism, parts of it were actually quite cool. My favourite part were the camouflage insects, like the stick and leaf bugs and the dead leaf and orchid mantis'. The last stop was a strawberry farm, where we couldn't even go to the farm, and was really just a stop to buy strawberries and strawberry products. Dull.

Day 264: Skygarden (and Rain)

More rain! Luckily this time it started earlier in the day so I didn't get caught in the middle of some outdoor activity. Since it was going to be another wet day I decided to visit "Gardens by the Bay", an impressive group of structures that combines nature and some pretty wild engineering and architecture. Normally visiting gardens on a rainy day isn't the brightest idea, and it's true that I did miss out on a bit of the area due to the weather, but the parts I really wanted to see were mostly indoors.

The grove of strange tree looking buildings is called the Supertree Grove. In addition to being pretty decorations and housing vertical gardens up the sides, the Grove is something of a power station for the larger garden, helping generate electricity and aiding the heating/cooling systems.

The main section of the garden is located in the two glass domes. The taller one is the Cloud Forest, and as one would expect it's cool and humid. I really enjoyed Cloud Forest. It has an artificial hollow mountain in the middle, with a waterfall pouring down over the side. Different paths and walkways let you climb through and up the mountain, seeing the change in vegetation as you ascend. The variety of interesting plants also allows me to have a post with what I can only assume is the nightmare of all blog-readers: poorly shot amateur flower photography!

The other structure has the confusing name of Flower Dome. It is very dry and mostly contains cacti, succulents and dry climate trees like baobabs. It also was decorated for Christmas, and having Santa and reindeer flying through a patch of cacti was a bit strange.

I thought about sticking around for the lightshow over the bay, but it was still raining and I didn't really have anything to do in the meantime. Plus, light shows aren't really a huge draw for me. Instead I took the metro to a shopping mall and got some dinner and looked around a little, since it kept me indoors.

Day 170: Hong Kong Island

My original plan was to dive right into the visa battle this morning, but after learning the express service fees aren't really that bad and just feeling worn out from yesterday I decided I didn't feel up to getting up really early and rushing around all day. Instead I decided to do things at a more relaxed pace and get prepared so that things tomorrow will hopefully go smoothly. I got all my visa photos done for both visas and went through a sample of the application to work out the details I need for everything.

In addition to all that, I did a pretty thorough exploration of Hong Kong Island. For those that don't know, Hong Kong is split up into different regions, of which the main two are probably Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. I got a hostel on the island because it's close to both buildings I need to visit for visas, but visiting the other parts of Hong Kong is still easy to do and something I'll definitely get around to given the two weeks I'll be here. I walked along some of the busy main streets, but eventually worked myself partway up the hills to where things were less chaotic.

Up away from all the buildings I came across a really nice aviary, and zoo/garden, both of which were free. The zoo was almost entirely primates, but had a few other climbing animals like sloths - all of which were very fun to watch.

My goal was to find a way up the mountain to Victoria Peak, but I just couldn't find a road/path that led up far enough. I'll get up there at some point. On my way back I decided to use the subway so that I'll know what to do tomorrow when I go try to submit my visa application. Finally though, here's some more photos of the Hong Kong cityscape.

There's something about bamboo scaffolding that I just find incredibly cool...

Days 139-140: Island Hopping

Stockholm has very interesting geography. I knew there were a few islands involved before getting here, but when you look at a map and wander around you realize just what a jumble it is. The central city spreads over 14 islands, and instead of a central river or bay like most cities it's just a mix of waterways and islands that eventually work their way out to the Baltic Sea. 30% of the city is water, and another 30% parks, so there's a lot of open space.

My hostel is on a big island south of the bulk of the city, connected to it by the small but important island of Gamla Stan. Gamla Stan is the historic "old city", which still looks much like it did 600 years ago in many places. It is also where the Royal Palace is located.

Many of the small islands are covered in parks, museums and restaurants. Yesterday I spent much of the day on the island of Skansen, which is largely parks and woodland, but which also has an amusement park and numerous museums.

The museum I checked out on the island was the very unique Vasa Museum. The story of the Vasa is an eventful but brief one. It was a massive warship that the king of Sweden ordered built in 1626. It was one of the largest and most heavily armed ships of the time, and it was covered with ornate painted carvings to show how rich and powerful Sweden was. Unfortunately the master ship builder who was in charge died before the ship was completed, and the person that took over was used to a wider design. All the canons made the ship top-heavy, and it is suspected there was insufficient ballast to stabilize it, and the result was that the new ship, which was to be the star of the navy in Sweden's war against Poland, tipped over and sank in the harbor 20 minutes into its maiden voyage in 1628.

As is often the case with archaeology - their misfortune led to a wonderful treasure of history. The brackish water of the harbor didn't have enough salt to make a good environment for the worms that eat through the wood of most shipwrecks, so when the ship was found and carefully raised over 300 years later the hull was in extremely good condition. The entire process of retrieving the ship, treating it for preservation and slowly reconstructing it from the pieces found was an elaborate undertaking, and as no ship this size had ever been preserved it was a lot of trial and error. As impressive as the ship itself is, all of the preserved items found on and around the ship are just as important at providing a detailed snapshot of that period.

Old ships isn't exactly a passion of mine, and the fact I've written this much already is an indication of just how impressive the setup of the museum was. It's 6 floors, built around the ship itself. The floors contain a cinema, information on the history surrounding the ship, the items found on board, models, reconstructions, and pretty much anything else you can think of relating to the ship. All together, probably the best organized and most detailed museum I've ever been to.

Today I visited another interesting museum - the Nobel museum. It has history on the founding and information on the modern process for Nobel prizes. It also has lots of information and displays on different prize winners and the work they did to win the award. My favourite part was an exhibition they had where a photographer had past recipients of medicine, physics and chemistry awards come in and unexpectedly got them to draw a big picture relating to their winning work and hold it for their photo. The range of pictures is huge as some would draw elaborate diagrams with complex equations, some would draw a few squiggles, one ignored the science entirely and drew a picture of himself drinking at the afterparty. Additionally, you can listen to audio of each scientiest explaining the drawing and their work, and it becomes clear pretty fast that a lot of the most brilliant scientists are also incredibly characters. Also - one of the cooler museum gift shops you'll run into, at least if you're a bit of a science nerd like me.

My other big destination was Millesgarden - an art gallery and sculpture park created by sculptors Carl and Olga Milles. The park is more than 10km from where my hostel is, but I'm being incredibly cheap in Sweden - partly out of principle since everything is so ridiculously expensive - so I decided to walk there (and back again afterwards). 20km isn't that unusual for me, but that was just one part of the day, and most of it was in a persistent drizzle, so overall not the most pleasant walk.
The park itself was nice, but probably not worth the walk and the cost to get in. The gardens contained sculptures by both Milles (though mostly Carl) and casts of other famous sculptures by other artists. You could also wander around their old home and studio and see more art they had made and collected, and visit an attached gallery showing other artists' work. Carl Milles had a pretty whimsical style, and although his sculptures are pretty interesting, artistically I generally prefer more realistic looking figures.