One thing I have learned on this trip is that, no matter what, there is no escaping American pop culture. I thought I could leave behind the Beyonces, Lohans and by god the worst of them all, the talent-less Keishas, but no American pop culture is like herpes, no matter where you go, they're never far and can pop up at anytime, at least that's what my buddy Gaurav tells me about herpes.
Just when you thought you've escaped pop culture into possibly the furthest place on earth from the US, here comes the queen diva herself, the alpha-icon, goddess of daytime television, Mrs. Oprah freakin' Winfrey. In spite of all the atrocities and stories occurring around the globe, she is the headline on every front page: "Oprah Visits the Zoo and Holds a Koala, Later Knighted and Rename Hope" or "Opera Passes on Visiting the Gold Coast Until They Rename it the Platinum Coast" Actually, aside from Huge Jackman zip lining face first (literally) into the stage to meet Oprah on the set of her show, the biggest story was Oprahs disapproval of the Aussie icon called a Walligong.
What is a Walligong you might ask. Well, it could possibly be the most hilariously racial toy every created, one that if any kid in America owned, would be getting recruitment letters from the KKK. Apparently, these dolls are very nostalgic to many Aussies as their parents parents were playing with these things, you know the parents that came over on the boat... which, I don't think they were rowing themselves. To add to the already physical racist-ness of these things, Aussies use the term "walli" as a derogatory reference to anyone with color i.e. the aborigines. I'm pretty sure Oprah may have a point with this one.
Aside from awing at the Walligons, we did get a little driving and sightseeing done as well. Driving in Australia is kind of like playing a really long (and often tragic) video game; instead of putting a quarter in the machine, you instead put $40 in the tank and put your pedal all the way to the floorboard (we had a Toyota Yaris so we could actually do this without breaking the speed limit) and play the villain in Frogger. Instead of frogs though, you get to dodge the most unique and most adorable animals on Earth. A drive in Oz goes like this: "Awe, look a dead wallaby, no wait that was another kangaroo... or was it a Wombat? I don't know, but I'm getting hungry, wanna’ pull over for a cheeseburger?" Needless to say, the wildlife in Oz is amazing. On our first day out of Melbourne, we went for a short hike and spotted 20 or 30 wild Koalas. In the wild Koalas are very hard to find, but once you see one, you can often find a few others since they only eat five or six of the 20 something varieties of eucalyptus, and really only prefer just one. On our eight day road trip through OZ, we saw such a variety of wildlife: Kangaroos, Wallabies (even a rare black one), echidnas, monitors, sugar gliders, possums, etc. To spot these guys, we ventured from our tent and went on a few night hikes, one of which was cut short when Krissy was nearly cut short by a fruit bat (apparently going after the bugs flying around our headlamp); I've never seen Krissy move so fast. To her defense, the bats in Oz are huge and look like Satan himself (see creepy pic. Below); however, contrary to Krissys belief that it was zeroed in on her jugular, they are harmless.
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| Spawn of Satan? |
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| Koala in the Mist |
After out self guided tour of South Australia, we arrived in Sydney and met up with Chris, a cousin of our close buddy Brian James back home. Chris lives with his girlfriend Helen in a town right outside of Sydney. Chris is the ultimate host; insistent on picking us up and dropping us off wherever, hosting BBQ's and letting us partake in his daily life. His girlfriend Helen even insisted on giving us both hair cuts before we left (don't worry, the fro' is still going strong, I just got a trim). While we were there, Chris and Helen brought their dog home from the pound for the first time... little Oscar (named after Oscar De La Hoya, the boxer). It was really nice to have a little substitute Morgan for a few days as most of you know how much we miss our dog back home at Camp Schwalm.
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| Chris, Helen and Oscar |
It didn’t take long to discover Chris’s true passion which happens to be the most god awful, boring sport know to man (aside from women’s basketball of course), the sport I speak of is Cricket. Imagine a huge field with a tiny dirt runway in the middle of it, then take 10 or 11 guys and plop them around this runway in any random order. Finally, the most important part happens when the spectators then gathers up all the grass and dry leaves around them and attempt to conjure up some sort of pillow or mattress because there will be no better time in your entire life to catch a nap. Being the cultural investigators that we are, we kindly took up Chris’s offer to come watch his Cricket match, I’m not sure what he had against us (maybe we looked tired), but we almost made it through the entire 6 hour ordeal. Four hours after we arrived, Helen decided she had had enough and off we left with her. Chris finally came home after a few hours and tossed me the game ball as to say “You and Krissy really earned this; nobody has lasted THAT long watching a Cricket match!” I thanked him and named the ball Lunesta as one glance at it puts Krissy and I both to sleep. To Chris’s defense, he owned the field acrobatically catching any ball in his vicinity and then crushing the ball over and over again when he was up to bat.
Krissy and I are both pumped to host Chris and Helen at the upcoming Brian James and Sarah wedding, which is not set due to a lack of proposing (get on it Sarah!)... but we know it’s coming soon.
Australia, is such an amazing place. In my opinion, I think Sydney could be the most livable place on Earth – it really does have it all. At the moment; however, God must have it out for Oz as they are experiencing floods of Biblical proportions (nearly 300,000 affected). In the Northeast, places that have not seen water in 10 years are getting washed away . Then down south near Melbourne, crops are being decimated by a plague of locusts that would make Moses proud. Mostly the locusts are ravaging the vineyards, so all you wine-o’s out there, it may be a good time to stock up on Aussie wine now as they’re predicting the next few years may be affected by the onslaught.
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| The Locals "Bondi" |
As for now, we’re off to Borneo! Most of you know we’ve been in Malaysia for the past few weeks, but the timing is perfect for this blog thanks to mainland (peninsular) Malaysia not having anything to write about. However, for all you Tra-vow followers that want to know, I’ll sum up mainland Malaysia like this: Trash, Crowds, Fish Sauce, Diarrhea, Homelessness, No Cultural Identity and Rats... there, I just saved you from buying the Malaysia Lonely Planet. All I can say about traveling is, you win some and you lose some and we definitely lost one with Malaysia.
Tomorrow we’re headed into the jungles of Borneo (Bako and Mulu) for some serious trekking. We may be out of reach for a week or so, but feel free to send us any messages via email and facebook – we love hearing feedback from our blogs... other than we don’t write them enough!
Sorry for the lack of pics - we have many more but they take forever to upload on the blog!
Shout Out's from Overseas:
Happy Birthday to Kerry, Mama Muholland, Mike and Mormann
Cangrats to Jeff and Amber and Happy Birthday to Jeff (soon)
Congrats to Juicer for the bid on the house and other things.
