a quick note from the Auckland Airport

Where am I right now?

Signed onto a free internet kiosk computer in the middle of Auckland International Airport and bringing this post to you over outrageously slow internet. One of the things that really bugs me about Australia and New Zealand is the sloth-slow internet. Can you really call yourself a first world country when I can fetch a cup of tea in the time it takes the Facebook homepage to load? I think not!

But all internet grievances aside, I'm wrapping up my five-month-long journey abroad and feeling pretty sad about it. I spent the last eight days in the South Island of New Zealand and completed a few heart-attack inducing activities and had my fill of gorgeous Lord-of-the-Rings-does-it-no-justice scenery.

Most notably, I FINALLY skydived from a plane at 12,000 feet and bungy jumped a modest 43 meters (about 141 feet) off the world's first bungy jump bridge. Not to mention taking a morning to go sea kayaking in New Zealand's famously beautiful Milford Sound.

EDIT: When I get back home I'll upload some of the skydiving and bungy pics.

new zealand epic fail

Two things I failed to do in the last 10 days:

Update this blog, and skydive! Well, the second wasn't entirely my fault. Weather was bad in Taupo (a deliciously infuriating combination of clouds, wind, and quickly fading daylight). But no worries, as they say in these parts!! I'll try to skydive over the glaciers in Frans Josef or maybe outside Queenstown some time this week when I'm in the South Island. And I'll definitely bungy-jump!!!

As for the wrap-up of the North Island, I'm still working out the photos and will grace you with them when I get back to the US! This is code for: I am exhausted from traveling non-stop for a week and I'm ready to catch up on the episodes of LOST I've missed :)

I've leave you with this youtube video of one of the crazy-ass things I've done so far, which was invented in New Zealand. It's called Zorbing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isRlb9dIJRA

(For more info also visit the trusty Wikipedia site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorbing.)

The Land of the Kiwis

New Zealand suits me, I think.

It's quiet and unassuming and intensely beautiful... at least from what I saw from the ride home from the airport!

I've been staying the last two days with my cousin Kai, who lives in Hamilton, New Zealand and has just opened his own Chinese diner. He also has an 8-month-old baby girl with his wife Rainy. My aunt is also living with them to watch the baby, so it's a full household! But taking a break from traveling has been a nice change of pace. Yesterday I went into town and got a bunch of errands done, such as getting a New Zealand SIM card for my phone (now I can be reached anytime and from anywhere in the world... aka my parents can now rest easy) and buying a rainjacket because NZ is famous for its rain (how else could the grass have become so lush?)

In a few hours I am catching a bus and heading out to Rotorua, which is a geothermal village. Then it's on to Taupo, and finally Wellington for two or three days. Then back to Hamilton before flying to Christchurch to tour the South Island. Can't wait!

Internet access will definitely be shoddy, but I'll write again at least when I get back to Hamilton next week.

Cairns: Adventure Capital of Australia! And The Great Barrier Reef Itself!

I am literally less than 24 hours from leaving Australia and boarding a plane to New Zealand, so here's a wrap-up of my last big Australian trip!! (As mostly told in photos... more words to be added once I get my feet back on American soil!)

Day One: White Water Rafting on the Tully River (Grade 4+ Rapids...yikes!)

Let me preface this by saying that I had never before gone white water rafting before this trip. So I was in for a treat...

We look like a cross between retard children and UN Peacekeepers. Sah-weet!

Some parts of the river were calm and beautiful.... others were not!

Taking a break from rafting... to jump right into the rapids! Very "King of the Rock" a la Mulan.

We hit the rapids!

My friend Anna loves this picture of me because she says I look like a "warrior."

The rapids at some parts got so intense that two of the girls in our raft were thrown out and flushed all the way down two series of intensely flowing and VERY sharp and rocky rapids. They were scared SHITLESS and so traumatized that they refused to get back in the raft after lunch. They described the experience as "feeling like we were drowning and certain to die." That's how intense the rapids were! Anna and I were holding on for DEAR LIFE. At one point, I turned to look at her as we were being sucked into a rapid and I could see my fear reflected in Anna's eyes!!! It was horrifyingly and deliciously fun.

Day Two: Exploration of The Great Barrier Reef aboard Passions (the name of our boat!)

The deck of our tiny-ass and VERY rocky boat, Passions. Perhaps they named it Passions because the boat ride is so rough and rocky? Eh?

Sunbathing for a few last minutes before we get to the reef. The bottoms of our sting suits are on already. We were given sting suits for snorkeling and diving so that jellyfish wouldn't be able to sting our skin! Australia is full of crazy deadly animals...

And once we got to the reef, the snorkeling began. I've only been snorkeling once in Cozumel? and it was beautiful but NOTHING compares to the Great Barrier Reef itself!!

Check out the zebrafish towards the back! If you can't see because the photo is too small, click on it and it'll enlarge. There are some beautiful colors on display here.

Me and my snorkeling gear!

Schools of fish. What kind? Who knows! The coral beneath them is especially beautiful though... (Ok I swear when I get home I am doing some research on the coral and fish that I saw! Promise!)

After snorkeling, we suited up for scuba diving. I can't express how anxious I was to scuba dive for the first time-- I'm mildly claustrophobic and the thought of depending solely upon oxygen in a tank was scary to me. But I sucked it up and suited up.

We are sassy and ready to have the time of our lives! (Sidenote: What surprised me was how heavy the tank and equipment were! The weight was almost reassuring though... with this much equipment, I knew I wouldn't run out of air or drown! Or at least I hoped...)

Scuba diving brought us a lot closer to the reef and we saw more diversity in coral. Uttler breathtaking in real life. This picture does it NO JUSTICE!

At the very bottom of the reef we found a sea cucumber. The instructor snatched the camera off my wrist and took a picture of me with it. And I'm so glad he did because this photo is beyond words. (FYI for those who are curious: The sea cucumber felt really slimy and squishy and I was afraid I would squeeze too hard!)

A brightly colored parrot fish. We saw tons of these just nipping at the coral and destroying it!

After scuba diving, we went to another reef around Michaelmas Cay, a tiny but famous bird sanctuary island. The island was literally only a few hundred feet wide and had a tiny beach that we snorkeled off of.

The reef at Michaelmas Cay was much closer to the surface than the previous Paradise Reef. Swimming on top of the water, I was always worried I would kick a piece of coral and kill it! Especially with those huge gangly flippers of mine. You can tell in the picture how close the reef is to my body, and this was just floating on top of the water!

The reef was overall so amazing and stunning. At Michaelmas Cay the coral and fish were only a few inches away at all times--we got over an hour to hang around the waving, cascading, and sensuous coral.

Final photo of the scuba diving equipment before we left the boat:

A quick photo of the lagoon in Cairns. Because the water immediately surrounding Cairns is FILLED with treacherous jellyfish (known as "stingers" in Oz), there is a manmade but incredibly lush and picturesque "lagoon" near the harbour. Of course, its artificial beauty was no match to the wild reef.

Day Three: Biking in the rainforests of Cairns.

We didn't think anything could top the experiences of white water rafting or seeing the Great Barrier Reef in person, but day three was equally as fun...although in a different way.

We went for a bike tour around the rainforests of Cairns, and it was the most relaxing and wholesome fun I've had in Australia. There was an Australian family of four on the trip with us, and their kids were so cute. It was definitely the perfect way to end our Cairns vacation. And it made me miss The General so much! (My super-chic robin's egg blue road bike that's currently lonesome in Boston without me.)

Cairn's infamous sugar cane fields with a background Cairn's distinctive mountains, the "Misty Mountains."

The bike rack attached to the back of our van. I was the only one of my friends who had to wear a safety vest. It was sooo dorky that it was COOL.

The four of us with the two kids from the trip! Notice how they too are also wearing safety vests.... hah.

The place is really called "Devil Pool Lookout" but some wise guy scratched off the letters so now it's "evil Poo Lookout." I got a HUGE kick out of this, as you can probably tell.

Okay so probably no one but Andrei and my parents and Thao have read this entire post, so I'll sneak in one story here that I hope most people won't bother to read:

We were scubadiving for over thirty minutes at the first reef and I had no problem with breathing or swimming... until we neared the surface. Earlier I had had a problem with weighing myself down, i.e. sinking, so my instructor placed some extra weight stones in my belt when we got halfway down. Then when we got down, I was sinking TOO much, so he pressed a button to inflate my vest a bit so that I would float.

Well, then I started floating TOO much, and I reached the surface before my friends and the instructor did. I just started floating away from them (they didn't notice!) and rose towards the surface, and surprisingly I didn't panick a bit. However, when I got to the surface the water was incredibly choppy and rough. The waves battered me around and soon enough I felt the saliva build up in my mouth. Within minutes, I was vomiting my breakfast out into the wide open ocean (I had reached the surface at this point and taken out the mouth tube... so no I didn't not vomit into the equipment!)

As is the case when I vomit, I felt immediately better and was ready to calm myself and get back under the water, when suddenly my instructor emerges and asks me if I'm okay and starts inspecting me all over. I signal to him that I'm okay, just feeling a little bit nauseous and TOTALLY embarassed at this point (my instructor was seriously HOTT and here I was with bits of vom all over me...). Luckily, he just laughed and told me that it was no big deal... and that THE FISH LOVE IT WHEN THIS HAPPENS! I started laughing at the thought of fish congregating around me to eat my vomit. It was both really gross and really funny.

And... on that note, that's the end of this post!
I am seriously behind in packing and ready to head out to New Zealand! My internet access will probably be even more dismal in New Zealand than it's been in Australia, but keep on the lookout for a short post or two. (I am staying for a few days with my cousin in Hamilton, and I will definitely be posting pictures of his baby, my 8-month-old second cousin! She is the first baby in our family since my brother was a baby, and that was 13 years ago!)

Much Love from Down Under (for the next few hours at least),
Xu

uluru part four

Day Four and Five -- Uluru

Uluru. No more words needed. (If you click on the photo you can get the zoomed version, where you can see the rivulets of water from the rain.)

Day Four finally brought us to Uluru, also known to Westerners as Ayer's Rock. You could see Uluru from miles and miles away since it completely dominated the skyline. Literally, there was nothing but shrubs and a few sad-looking trees surrounding the area. The task of the day was to walk entirely around the imposing Uluru. Needless to say, it was a LONG walk, taking about three and a half hours. The total distance we walked was 9.8 km, which translates to 6.1 miles. But it was beautiful. And luckily it was still a little cloudy and drizzling with rain--I know I would have passed out if we had walked for almost four hours in the blazing sun.

A map of the base walk, which also shows you the shape of Uluru from above.

When recalling his trip to Uluru, travel writer Bill Bryson (who I also have a crush on) describes an eerie feeling upon seeing the rock that he says felt like a genetic pull towards the rock. He says that somehow, even if you've never seen the rock before in your life, "You know this rock."

I had that same feeling as I walked around Uluru and saw all its intricate details, including caves, small pits in the rock, Aboriginal cave paintings, and other unique formations that you can't see from mere photos. Walking the trail around Uluru, I felt some primal instinct telling me I belonged here. As if all mankind was somehow connected to this rock in the middle of nowhere. It was almost a religious feeling. I can't necessarily describe it.

One of my favorite formations was the "Wave Cave" that we're standing under in the picture above. Caused by wind being swept up and tunneled across this same cave over and over, the rock has been worn away to look like the crest of a wave.

Other famous landmarks include what looks like a giant's footprint. Aboriginal legend has passed down stories of two giant brothers who created Uluru from dirt like normal-sized kids would create a huge mud pie. When one of the brothers climbed down from his mud pie creation, he supposedly left this footprint mark.

As we walked around Uluru, there were certain sections of the trail that we were not allowed to photograph, known as "Sacred Sites." These are places where Aboriginal men and women used to conduct their rituals, and today some of these sites are still used. Fines of thousands of dollars are imposed on tourists that try to snap a photo of these sites. The thing is, the sites are no more amazing-looking than the piece of the rock before or after it. There are generally no markings on the actual rock to denote sacredness, just signs put up along the trail telling tourists not to photograph. Still, it was confusing walking around the rock and asking every five minutes, "Are we still on that sacred site or what?"

Since it'd be incredibly boring to describe every detail of the Uluru base walk to you, I'll just include a few pictures:

The texture of Uluru. Don't the pits in the rock behind me resemble human faces? VERY creepy, if you ask me!

A close-up of Uluru's texture

The walking path, surrounded by golden grasses (somewhat reminding me of Kansas!)

Waterfalls over the rock.

A (secret?) cave nestled high up in the rock.

A cave with cave paintings.

The walk around Uluru was inspiring beyond words. It was entirely different from anything I've ever done before, and the idea of a HUGE monolith stuck in the center of the desert is still hard to wrap my mind around. This was by far one of the coolest thing I've ever done in my life!

And that wasn't the end of the day.

On the ride back home from Uluru, we stopped an hour outside Alice Springs to do a camel ride at a camel farm. For a measly $5 Australian dollars, we hopped onto a camel that RAN around a paddock guided by a dude on the ground. It was such a bumpy ride, and I didn't realize how tall camels actually were until I found myself on the hump of one! I took a video of it which would be too slow to upload here, but here's a picture of me after I've disembarked from my camel, Bert?


And finally, the bus ride home:

The people on the bus (the couple in the front is the badass European couple I've mentioned a few times)

Day Five -- flying out of Alice Springs

Even though the heat was unbearable, the number of flies inconceivable, and the rain frankly unbelievable, I was sad to be leaving the Outback. It was truly the most random trip I would have in Australia (termites? torrential downpour? camels?) but probably also the most fun.

Only when I got back home to Sydney did I realize how incredibly thirsty I was on the entire Outback trip. I drank probably half a dozen Powerades and liters upon liters more water during the length of the trip, and I felt thirsty ALL THE TIME. All I can say is that the night we got back from Alice Springs I was so grateful to be in civilization again! (And then I had to pick up Andrei from the airport ten hours later.)