Tag Archives: Melbourne

You know how when you’re going to travel to some place new for the first time, you make a list of things to do and places to visit, right?

Well when i found out that i will be going to Melbourne for the first time, i did the same too. It goes like this:

1. Visit the zoo
2. See a kangaroo
3. Touch a koala
4. Go to Supre

Besides number 4, everything else sounded ridiculous.

You see, Melbourne is an extremely urban city. I wouldn’t say it’s a place full of historical or cultural things to see cause i think of Melbourne as a place to have fun, eat, shop… you know, city stuff. And all i was adamant about was to see kangaroos and koalas.

Well, good news is that i managed to do all of the above and was able to leave Melbourne happy and contented.

Hoongmao and i visited the Melbourne Zoo on a beautiful Friday. After having brunch at Victoria Market, we proceeded to take a tram to the zoo. And if i’m not mistaken, it was our first time paying for tram tickets after all the rides we’ve hitched illegally :D

Honestly i don’t know what compelled me to want to visit the zoo. It’s not like it’s one of Melbourne’s main attractions or anything. I guess it’s because i’ve always had a liking for animals. As a kid, my favourite letter from the encyclopedia set was A because there was a huge section on Animals in it.

So yes, i guess i could say that i know a thing or two about animals in general. Ahem 8)

If you’re wondering what animal this is, it’s a tree kangaroo :D

Fluffy snow leopard

I was really impressed with the variety of animals they have in Melbourne Zoo. I’ve never seen so many big cats at one place before. Tigers, mountain lions, snow leopards… wow.

Unfortunately they’re heavily surrounded by safety wires and you most likely won’t be able to get a good picture of them. But i did manage to take one to show how fluffy a snow leopard’s tail is :D

Sad bear :<

We saw this huge enclosure that was supposed to be the home of a brown bear, but the bear was no where to be seen. We then spotted him at a corner from afar. Doesn’t he look so sad? :<

We went over to take a closer look from the window and i managed to get a picture of him looking up before hiding his face under the rock again.

This is the home of…

The Meerkats!

I don’t want to sound like a bimbo going nuts on cute and fuzzy animals but, aren’t they just adorable?!

I just can’t comprehend their cute behavior of standing up like that. And that little guy looking over on the left is just too cute.

Hey, Timon!

Spotted a peacock wandering around

You get to see peacocks wandering around the zoo quite frequently. Did you know that the bird is actually called a peafowl?

Male peafowls are called peacocks, while female peafowls are called peahens.

Male birds have brighter and bolder colours than their female counterparts for attracting mates. Female birds are duller looking or has less distinctive markings because it’s easier for them to blend into the surroundings to protect their nest.

Oh nothing, just pointing out a giant seaweed

We saw a cute seal who was just done with his feeding time. I could tell he wanted more fish because he followed the zoo keeper all the way to the other side of the enclosure while barking.

Yes, the sound that a seal makes is called barking :D

No more fish :<

Can you guess which animal lives here?

Hey, little fellas!

These are little penguins, the smallest species of penguins. In Australia, they’re also called as fairy penguins because they’re so small. They’re also known as blue penguins in New Zealand because of they’re well, blue!

We stopped by a bistro for tea only to be harassed by these guys

Don’t they remind you of the gulls from Finding Nemo?

BE AFRAID.

The birds don’t attack, but having a horde of them waiting around you sure is intimidating.

A peahen!

On to the next animal! It must’ve been my lucky day because we were just in time to see a zoo keeper feeding it!

It was…

The red panda!

Red pandas are extremely cute! They’re one of the few animals that can make me self-combust just by looking.

I’ve always wondered why are red pandas called red pandas when they don’t really resemble pandas at all. I’ve always thought that they look more like raccoons. True enough, after doing some research i found out that red pandas are actually more related to raccoons, skunks and weasels.

One of the few similarities that red pandas share with the pandas is the fact that they both eat bamboos. The name “panda” comes from the Nepalese word poonya, which means “eater of bamboo”.

Red pandas are such a joy to look at. If you look up red pandas on YouTube, i doubt you’ll find one that’s not cute. They also have an adorable way of walking because they’re front legs are actually shorter than the back.

They are also excellent climbers. A tree is a must-have in a red panda enclosure.

This shy little fella ran back up to his tree after eating. Can you spot him?

This other red panda just observed from his tree spot

X-LARGE.

I’m not really a fan of monkeys and chimps, but i gotta admit that they’re really smart. Almost all of the gorillas in the enclosure had their backs facing us, i guess cause they knew people were watching them and that they’re shy.

Spotted a peacock again

Ring-tailed lemur cuddling during the winter. Also, isn’t that King Julien? :D

Alas, it was time to see the famous Australian animals!

I was so excited to see a koala…

… but instead i found it snuggling tightly on a tree. I didn’t even get to see its face :<

An echidna!

Echidnas are found in Australia and New Guinea. They’re weird looking mammals with long snouts and spines. What’s even weirder is that they lay eggs! The echidna and platypus are the only mammals to lay eggs.

If you’re familiar with Sonic the Hedgehog, then you should know a famous echidna, Knuckles the Echidna! :D

A snuggling wombat

The emu, another animal native to Australia.

I have nothing much to say about it besides it being a very large bird. They were allowed to wander freely around the area, which i thought was pretty scary because they looked like they could peck you anytime.

Scared but curious, i had to have a picture with the emu.

Nearby the emus were the kangaroos. Now let me tell you the story of the emu and the kangaroo.

Since the emus were allowed to roam freely, this emu wandered into the kangaroos’ hangout spot.

Seeing that the emu was slowly walking towards him, this kangaroo got up and hopped over to the other side to have some nibbles while avoiding the emu.

Little did he know, the emu had food on its mind and slowly walked towards it. The emu sneaked up behind the kangaroo and suddenly… PECK!

He pecked the kangaroo right on the head!

The frightened kangaroo quickly hopped to a corner

And watched helplessly while the emu eats his food.

No f**ks were given by the other kangaroos.

The kangaroo was actually quite near to me, i wanted to try petting it but i was afraid that it might box me or something. Boxing kangaroos, don’t wanna find out what that looks like.

Anyway, that’s pretty much my zoo adventure. Of course they were lots more animals in the zoo, but i just picked out the interesting ones to share over here. I hope this post was both interesting and educational for you cause i too learned a new thing or two while writing this post :)

Alright so now that we’re all back from that holidaze, it’s time to get crackin’. I’m trying to clear out all my backdated posts so i’ll be posting stuff from way back. Stop giving me the dirty look, okay, i’m trying to change my blogging ways!

So anyway, one of main things we planned to do when we were at Melbourne couple years ago was to go snowboarding. Everyone except Hoongmao has never tried snowboarding before and he managed to convince all of us to make a trip up to Mt. Buller to try it.

I was actually a bit worried about going snowboarding because i was afraid i might hurt myself. But since Hoong made it sound like a really fun thing to do and i’ve never really played with snow before, i figured why not.

Now if you want to go up to Mt. Buller, there’s actually quite a few things you need to plan beforehand besides settling your accomodation. For instance:

1. Transportation – how many people are going and what kind of car to rent?
2. Equipment – you can either rent your skiing/snowboarding equipment from the city or Mt. Buller when you get there (the price differs)
3. Supplies – how much food to bring up there if you’re planning to make use of the apartment’s kitchen (if you have one)

And most importantly, what time to leave the city. It takes approximately three hours to reach Mt. Buller from Melbourne.

Unfortunately for us, we pretty much failed in every point.

Captain Panda

For starts, we began our day pretty late.

We rented our car and did our grocery shopping on the same day we were suppose to go up to Mt. Buller, which took quite some time even though we did them quickly. After some miscommunications here and there, we were finally on the road to Mt. Buller around 3pm.

It was already nightfall by the time we arrived at our destination. The journey up Mt. Buller was quite a scary one as we were driving on a windy road surrounded with tall trees… IN PITCH BLACK.

Our initial plan of “arriving there early” so that we could have half a day to familiarize ourselves with the snowboard was crumpled up into a paper ball just like that.

Since we didn’t really have a choice, we just settled in our cozy abode and called it a day.

We stayed at ABOM Apartments, which was really nice and clean. It had very good facilities from a nice tv to an array kitchen utensils, so we had no problem settling in.

Charmander the Cook :D

The next day, we did the same mistake of starting the day late again. Once again, our plan of renting our equipments and joining the snowboarding lesson early in the morning failed. I don’t know how could we be so irresponsible, but yeah.

Since we missed out on the snowboarding lessons, we had no choice but to just do the rambo and learn to snowboard the hard way. Imagine throwing a toddler into a pool without any floats to teach him how to swim. Yeah, it was like that.

Needless to say, it was quite a bad idea.

It was all good for Hoong because it was his second time and he has skateboarding experience cause he used to skate. The rest of us (namely, me) just spent the whole day face planting the snow and knee sliding down the hill.

Okay, let’s try again. Maybe we’ll get it this time.

Ready…

LOL NOPE.

I was at the brink of giving up. I went back to the apartment frustrated and sat for a bit. Then i thought, NO. I WILL NOT LET THE SNOWBOARD WIN.

So i went back out and strapped that bastard back onto my snowboarding shoes and took on the hill for the second time. I’m happy to say that i kinda got the hang of snowboarding on my second take. Unfortunately for me however, it was already towards the end of the day.

It was such a shame we only had two nights at Mt. Buller. It would’ve been better if we stayed for three nights instead. I’m pretty sure i could’ve done much better in snowboarding if i had another day.

But that was all the time we had, so we had to leave.

Journey down Mt. Buller

Little white dots of sheep

The countryside was such a scenic view. The blue skies and green hills make it look like a Windows XP wallpaper.

I definitely wanna try snowboarding again, but i’m not sure if we’ll go back to Mt. Buller. If we were to plan a snowboarding trip, it’ll definitely be at some place with really soft snow. And hopefully, i’ll do better without any possible injuries :)

Here comes the much delayed post about my trip to Melbourne. I can’t exactly say what took me so long, but all i know for sure is that i’ve put in quite a lot of effort in editing these pictures.

As Boromir would say, “One does not simply edit pictures”.

Also it took really long to come up with this post cause i have loads of pictures from all over the place, so i had a tough time deciding how am i gonna go about this. Well, i’ve decided to split everything up so there’ll be more posts about my trip ;)

So anyway, back to talking bout Melbourne. In August 2011, i went to Melbourne for the first time.

I’m really glad that i went for this trip. At first, i was sure about not wanting to go because the trip would be really expensive, considering the fact that the trip will be almost two weeks long.

But after some persuasion and consideration, i decided to go after all. And it turned out to be one of the best decisions that i’ve ever made.

BabyGiap and Fei Sing

Of course there were a lot of things to sort out before i left Malaysia. School stuff, mostly. I had to explain to my lecturers and group mates bout why i’ll be missing during presentation week. They all didn’t understand why i chose to travel in the middle of the semester, but thank goodness they approved of my absence nonetheless.

Anyway, it was my first long flight to somewhere out of the country. BabyGiap and Fei Sing were my guardians-slash-escorts to Melbourne as rest were already in Australia for a gig in Sydney a couple of days earlier.

When i finally arrived at the airport in Melbourne and took my first step into the outdoors, i felt like i needed time to take in everything.

The rush of cold wind against my bare face as i stepped out and fresh crisp air that accompanied it, the sky with the prettiest gradient of blue coupled with some white fluffy clouds here and there, and the simple yet stunning scenery during our cab ride to the hotel.

It was all foreign, yet exciting. It felt surreal.

My first few hours in Melbourne was spent with Jason and Cai Jin since i had a couple of hours to myself until Hoongmao and the rest arrives from Sydney. So by being the new kid in town, Cai Jin and Jason were both obligated to take me out. You know, as a welcome gesture.

Good thing i bought a prepaid the first thing i arrived :)

Another good thing is that we’re all living in the city and we’re just minutes walk away from each other. But even so, i didn’t really get to see them as often as i’d want to cause they both had classes during the weekdays.

But nonetheless, it was nice to see familiar faces after landing at a completely foreign place.

First meal at Melbourne – ox tongue rice from Menya

Cai Jin brought me to her place after lunch. The view from her place is amazing, don’t you agree?

This is the service apartment we lived at for our entire stay at Melbourne. It’s located at Franklin Street, which makes it the best place to stay given the price for accommodation.

Our humble unit

Well it may not be as glamourous as some people would like it to be, but really it’s not bad at all. I got used to it just fine cause the place was clean.

Besides, the four of us lived pretty much in harmony considering the fact that the we only had one bathroom. Amazing, innit?

Evening view from our balcony

There wasn’t really a need for public transportation since we were located at Franklin Street. Places like Melbourne Central and Victoria Market were just a walking distance away so it was really convenient.

Plus, why would you wanna take public transport when the weather is perfect for walking?

Coop’s Shot Tower in Melbourne Central; est. 1888

There’s also a place in Melbourne Central called Cho Gao that we went to for drinks pretty often. I’m sure Malaysians studying over at Melbourne would know this place.

We’d always sit outside at the balcony. The weather makes beer drinking so much more enjoyable cause with a weather like that, the beer is always cold.

So we walked most of the time. We took transportation only when we’re going to some place outside the city center.

It pretty easy to navigate around the city too. I could even walk to Melbourne Central alone the day after i first arrived in Melbourne just to get my uggs before heading up to Mt. Buller.

Speaking of uggs, they’re actually pretty useful. I thought i’d only wear them up in the mountain cause of the snow, but i ended up wearing them when we were back in the city too cause it gets really cold at night.

But really, the best way to explore new places is by walking.

Taken during my morning walk to Melbourne Central

At an ally nearby

Nasty taggin’

Spotted an Invader

We started our first night in Melbourne with a blast at a Pure Hard Dance (PHD) party at Inflation. It was my first time going to an underground club so it was quite an eye opener. And i got to see real Melbourne shufflers :D