How to Protest in Cusco

No protest is complete without a random girl doing the hula hoop.

Maru: The Most Pawductive Creature I Know

In the six weeks that I was away, Maru:

1) Starred in a ad for UNIQLO

2) Published a book in French

3) Did a stint as a cat burgler (and was caught breaking and entering along with joyriding in Malibu Barbie's house)

 

Malibu Barbie woke up one morning with a funny feeling that something had happened to her car.

 All in all, he's been more productive than any other human being I know.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Llama

One Sunday lunch time, a jeep stopped in the middle of a field and pop! Out from the field comes a curious and very hungry llama (soon joined by his three amigos).

 

 

 

 

He starts to look for some food.

First, we give him the peel from one apple. He gobbles this up but is still hungry.

Next, he eats through two cucumbers. He gobbles this up but is still hungry.

Next, he eats through three oranges. He gobbles this up but is still hungry.

Next, he steals four slices of chilli salami off a plate. He gobbles this up but is still hungry.

("You're going to have really bad breath," I say to Mr Llama.)

Next, he eats through five plums. He gobbles this up but is still hungry.

Then, when he thinks nobody is looking,  he takes a lunge towards one of the girl's bubble gum lollipops and eats this with the stick and all.

"No!!" screams the girl.  Mr Llama stands there chewing, and swallows the lollipop and the stick whole.



"You're going to have a stomach ache," scolds the girl. "Loco, that's what you are."

After a while, Mr (loco) Llama starts to have stomach-ache! 

He eats one banana peel and then started to feel much better.

Then, it is time to pack up and continue driving to the Uyuni salt flats. 

"Bye Mr Llama," says the tour guide. "See you next week."  

I Wanna Wheelchair......in Lima, Peru

Those who genuinely need a wheelchair are obviously the ones who can climb a step or two.

An Elderly Lady Werkin' Her Zimmerframe Down the Street...s of La Paz

...making her not so quiet get away.
Quien es el fisioterapeuta quien le dio esto a ella?

Somebody needs to give this lady a two wheeler. If you turn your speaker volume on high, you can actually hear the metal scraping against the concrete pavement.....all the way up from the second floor of the hotel.

What Would Jesus Do....As seen in San Salvador's Airport

Jesus one time fed 5000 with two fishes and five loaves of bread.

In the Third Millenium, He decided to expand His enterprise, multiply and start up His own rice company.

Or so the Capitalist story goes.....

42 - 44: South America & Cuba

Even as the seasoned traveller that I am, I start to feel a combination of anxiety and nervous excitement which leads to a number of restless nights on the lead up to my South American (SA) trip. I worry about not having any Bolivianos prior to landing in La Paz at 1am. (Nobody wants to stock a currency of a country when it is politically unstable and economically poor.) My backup plan is to withdraw money from the ATM, and I worry that my card's going to get eaten up by the machine. It also doesn't help that I keep on reading stories about tourists getting hijacked, kidnapped and mugged on the Thorntree forum.

"Are you sure you want to go there?" my aunt asks me. "It's a bit of  a cowboy country." Needless to say, South America doesn't generally come up on the top five list of a typical Singaporean traveller.

One of my client's parents asks me whether I want to reconsider going to Las Vegas instead.
"Tell A. if she is in the car, she shouldn't stop at the traffic light as she might get hijacked," I overhear the client's mother in the background.

While the (many) flights to get to La Paz has been tedious, the journey there has reminded me of something I'd nearly forgotten, and that is the ease in which you meet people. On the plane from Sydney to Melbourne I meet a newly graduated nurse who's freshly been bitten by the travel bug. She had coincidentally been to Bolivia recently, and provided some useful insight into the place which helped put my mind at ease.

"All the men wear baseball caps over there," the girl says. (This is so true if the plane load of people flying from LAX to El Salvador is anything to go by.)

On the leg from Sydney to LAX, I strike up a conversation with Rachael and Bianca - 2 girls  enroute to New York for a shopping trip.

It's the act of being on holiday/travelling that instantly makes people more friendly, happy and relaxed. I even strike up a conversation with a Londoner while we both were waiting to charge our Apple accessories at an allocated power station at LAX airport. (Note to self- having an iPhone is really like having an annoyingly demanding child. Somebody really needs to work on improving battery technology.)



Postscript: My airport transfer in Bolivia, (even after confirming with the hotel staff twice,) never arrived, but all was well taking a taxi to the hotel. No issues with being mugged, murdered or kidnapped so far.

Here's to the start of new adventures :) 

If the Michelin Man were to go Camping

He'd wear something that looks like this:

Home Sweet Home

Touching down in Melbourne city, I am thankful for the following:
1) Being back in a city where every other person isn't gawking at me and yelling, "Where are you from?", and then being unable to answer (inevitable) questions about, "But how can you be Australian when you are Chinese?" (Try answering the latter when your Spanish is at a "Mi Nombres es Earl" level.) Being Australian is a nationality and not a race, for crying out, people!

2) My bed complete with thousand thread count (Egyptian cotton) sheets.

3) Having access to a hair dryer & my GHD.

4) Being able to use a toilet that allows me to discard toilet paper down the toilet bowl, and not into a waste paper basket.

5) Having a shower with water pressure.

6) Eating fresh salad, vegetables and fruit (and not having to see rice, fried potato and fried meat served on the same plate ever again).

7) Seven Seeds coffee.

8) Having Barrys Tea with fresh milk and market grade honey.

9) Catching up with friends and family. (Did everybody miss me?)

10) Knowing that I'm not faced with another day of lounging around airports and boarding planes. (HAV => LIM => SAL => LAX => SYD => MEL was a bitch and I literally lost Wednesday during the Trans-Pacific flight. Thank God for business class lounges.)


For some reason, I have a strange craving for vegemite on toast (with lots of butter). With that saying, I think I need to pay a visit to Babka. 

Until next time, signing off, The Not So Lonely Planet.

The Return of the Hip Hiker

So between the return trips back to the string of outdoor stores lining Little Bourke St and my (very) novice questions about hiking, the sales people (unsurprisingly) start to recognise me. The guy at Mac Pac tells me that he suggested in a recent staff meeting that they should look at stocking smaller backpacks. 

"When I said that, I specificlaly thought of you," he said.

Really? Awww.... So if you see smaller backpacks in store, you know that it's all because of the Not So Lonely Planet.

For some reason, the sale people keep wanting to talk relationships.

The sales guy at Bogong tells me that he's just broken up with his girlfriend of eight years. I have to keep on redirecting his attention back to hiking boots. (Hello, concentrate on the shoes, here.) Even funnier is when he asks me if my trekking trip is my honeymoon. 

"Er, no." I say. "Wrong finger," (in reference to my diamond ring). Seriously, anybody who takes a girl trekking for her honeymoon......doesn't deserve to get laid.

S. reckons they were all trying to pick me up. I reckon not. 

So I've become resigned to the fact that there's no such thing as fashionable hiking gear. But as the trip is a combination of subzero freezing temperatures and warm tropical climates, what does one who is backpacking wear on the island getaway part of the trip?

Then I found these:

Not too short, polyster (which means fast drying and no creasing when rolled up into my backpack). I just need to add beads and a colourful scarf and I'm all set :)

Stay tune for more.

Norway in a Nutshell Part I: The Not So Lonely Planet's View on Potato Snacks

Oh Lordy, the Crushinator is a potato snack in Norway.

The Crushinator comes in two flavours - original and tomato sauce

Yoo-Hoo.

Closetblonde versus Crazy Wings

So there's this cheap (?northern) Chinese restaurant nestled amongst a group Asian eateries on Russell St. It'd fall into that category of a (largely) unmemorable late night eating joint - the kind you somehow wind up in after a night of drinking, had it not been for their notoriously crazy hot, chicken wings. If you're a Melbournian, you'd know that I'm referring to the (aptly) named Crazy Wings. 

It's one of those things that people (and depending on who you speak to,) refer to as an experience/challenge/torture/part of an initiation process. As an avid lover of spice, I was intrigued, but had never gotten around to trying it until today. 

So while we had time prior to C.'s appointment at a bridal store in the city, I suggested that we gave Crazy Wings a go. 

In the centre of every table is a small wooden tray. They're used to essentially balance the chicken wings which are on wooden skewers, although I'm unsure how this differs from having the wings on plates.

The wings themselves look innocuous enough. C. took one small bite and immediately turned red. She initially had opted to just stick with water, but quickly changed her mind and asked for a bottle of cold soy milk. 

"Omg, these are really hot," C. said.

"Don't die," I replied, slightly panicked. "You've still got your wedding dress appointment at 2."

I fair a bit better and get through the first wing, and then start to feel the heat kick in when chewing through the second wing. I really start sweatng about two thirds of the way through and empty my entire can of herbal Chinese tea. Believe me, these wings are not for the faint hearted. As a comparison, Nando's extra-hot peri peri sauce - (not really hot in my opinion,) is in liking to eating mayonnaise. I asked C. for her opinion on crazy wings vs buffalo wings, and she said the latter cannot compete in the crazy level of hotness that are these well, crazy wings.

"Wow, you're pretty good," C said as I polished off the last of my wings. She attempted another bite out of her wing, and then had to leave the rest uneaten.

I'm pretty chuffed at my efforts, but then my mouth and the tip of my nose goes strangely numb. I'm officially on fire and drink about half a jug of water. I'm having an experience that is synonymous to Homer Simpsons' when he swallowed that crazy hot jalenpeno and started hallucinating. 

We order a few more things to try - beancurd skins wrapped in coriander, lamb skewers and honey chilli chicken wings. The wings are succulent and if you like your food seasoned with cumin, you'd certainly find the food acceptable for what it is. As per any Asian place, don't expect any world class table service.  I personally thought they were responsive enough - but then, maybe it's because we spoken to them in Mandarin.

My advice would be to avoid using their toilets - I had to use them after drinking about a litre of water in that one sitting, and they weren't particularly clean. 

I feel like my stomach is wringing itself from the heat of the wings and continue to experience pangs of intermittnet burning pain in my abdomen some six hours later after the event. I attempted to rectify this with a glass of cold milk and again, with more cereal some 12 hours later.

Crazy wings are for crazy people.

Dare to try? Crazy Wings are located on 177 Russell St, Melbourne CBD. Just don't sue me if burns a hole through your stomach.