Melbourne/Hobart Trip

Hi people, this is a very late post on my short holiday down south last January. A lot has been happening lately and I hardly have the time to post up stuff on my blog these days. So what I'm going to do is to summarize my activities over the past 2 months.

So when my exams ended, I stayed at home pretty much the whole month of December. I did not manage to work much at the pool due to my injured elbow from the fall of my bike in November. But it was a good rest nevertheless. And after my hike up Mt Kosciuszko, I went to Sydney for a couple of days and spent my New Year's Day there with a friend and her friends who all happen to be South Americans. So it was a good time listening to them conversing in Spanish. I didn't manage to go to the harbor to enjoy the spectacular fireworks display because of the few million people crowding the area. But I still want to do that one day. Hopefully.

Queen Victoria Market. A lot of cheap fresh produces are sold there. Fruits there are half or one third the price of the ones being sold in Canberra.

Fresh oysters. 12 for $11.

And a couple of days after that I went down to Melbourne to get a haircut from a friend and also to stock up on Malaysian food. Melbourne has so much more Malaysian food compared to Canberra. And they're so much cheaper too. For example, if I were to buy a plate of Char Kuey Teow here in Canberra, it will cost me about AUD $15. But over there in Melbourne, I can easily get a plate for maybe AUD $8 or so.

I ordered a Nasi Lemak Sotong over there and didn't really like it at all. Maybe I ordered the wrong type of nasi lemak, but I'll never visit this shop again.

This shop on the other hand, is one of the better and cheaper ones in Melbourne in my opinion. Had beef ball noodles, kuey teow soup and not sure what else over there. The food's pretty good and the price very reasonable. But do not try their cendol. It's bad.

Had pasta at an Italian place somewhere outside the city. This whole bowl of noodles only cost like AUD $13 or $14. Enough to feed 3 people. (Still had my long hair then)

I also did a bit of sightseeing down there in Melbourne when I visited the Crown Casino and loss AUD $20 gambling and went up Mt Dandenong which is somewhere on the east side of Melbourne city. The view from up there was pretty cool. And the best thing was that it was easily accessible by public transport.

Crown Casino

The view up Mt Dandenong. I can actually see the city's skyscrapers in the far distance.

Tried the so called 'best pie' in Melbourne. Wasn't too bad.

A very pretty looking cottage.

After Melbourne, I decided to drop by Hobart, Tasmania for a couple of nights just because I managed to grab a couple of cheap flight tickets. It only cost me AUD $45 for a return ticket to Hobart from Melbourne. So I thought, why not?

Hobart is a pretty quiet city. And I would think that Hobart has actually less things to do compared to Canberra. And people say Canberra's boring. Wait till they see Hobart. And unfortunately for me, when I was down in Hobart, the weather wasn't really that favorable. It rained pretty much every day and the weather was very foggy. Because of that, I didn't manage to see too much of Mt Wellington which is just a 20 minute drive from Hobart city which supposedly offers a very spectacular view of Hobart city and the ocean. But I still managed to get up there courtesy of my old high school friend's friend who had a car. Very fun times up there with them.

A very downcast day.

And the roads there in Hobart are REALLY hilly! Very good for jogging and exercising.

Seafood; fish, scallops, squid and chips.

But I did managed to do a couple of other things including a visit to a wildlife park to pat koalas, feed kangaroos and having a look at a couple of Tasmanian Devils and other wildlife, a short visit to Wrest Point Casino to get free hot chocolate, a tour around a beer brewery with a session of beer tasting, a trip to the Cadbury Factory where (unfortunately once again) they stopped organizing actual factory tours due to hygienic reasons and a short lunch cruise. The weather in Hobart was pretty cooling and a little chilly at night but it was all good because I'm from Canberra and the weather in Canberra's much colder. Even as I type this out, the weather outside is just about 16 degrees and it's only 8.30pm and it is still meant to be summer. The minimum temperature is going to be single digits in the coming week as autumn approaches.

Bonorong Wildlife Centre

A koala bear up close.

A kangaroo and her joey.

Me feeding the kangaroo. They have buckets of kangaroo food along the track. So you can just grab a handful and offer it to the kangaroos.

Cascade brewery. One of the oldest brewery in Australia I think.

Tasting the beer. Entry to the brewery includes 3 free cups of any beer of your choice.

Cadbury Factory

Each visitor will get a free bar of Cadbury chocolate upon entering the factory.

Because we can't tour the factory, the whole process was explained to us in a room.

They also had tasting of the raw products used in the making of the chocolate.

Overall, Hobart's a nice place to go and chill. Prices of things in general are slightly more expensive than Melbourne but still cheaper than Canberra (some are more expensive). I would love to have another trip back down there and visit the other parts of Tasmania. Maybe a road trip around Tasmania would be a good idea.

The view from the halfway point up Mt Wellington

The road up the mountain. The trees were really really green.

A couple of random shots of gardens

Salamanca Square

Wrest Point Casino, the tallest building there in Sandy Bay, a short 20 minutes walk from Hobart. Also one of the few buildings that are still open after 5pm.

A random duck crossing sign.

The University of Tasmania...

...and this is the kind of view they get everyday

Look at how big the portion of my steak was. It was huge!

Right after my 1 week holiday stint in both Melbourne and Hobart, I had my 3 week vacation program with KPMG Canberra. Got thrown into a team that was working on an external audit at a client's place which was pretty cool. Did a bit of other stuff as well while I was there. The people in the firm were all really friendly and nice. The pay was also pretty sweet. For my 3 week program, I got paid AUD $24 an hour and worked 7.5 hours a day for 5 days a week. So that three week stint pretty much got me about AUD $2700. Not bad huh?

But sadly, on the last day of the program, everyone else was offered a job offer except me. This is because they were all Australian citizens and I was the only international student on a student visa. And because KPMG Canberra's work consists of mainly government related contracts, I would need citizenship status in order to get security clearances for the various departments that I might need to work in. So that means I will have to start applying elsewhere.

I'm currently about to start Week 4 of classes tomorrow. So far, it's going pretty alright. Assignments are starting to pile up and I'm going to be even busier the next couple of weeks. I want to try to get as much work done as soon as possible because I won't be here in Canberra during my 1 week mid semester break in Week 8. I've already purchased my flight tickets to Adelaide and will be there for 4 nights from the 29th of March. The tickets weren't too expensive. It COULD be cheaper. Altogether I spent about AUD $150 for a return ticket to Adelaide. I have to stopover in Melbourne first though because TigerAirways (a budget airline) do not offer direct flights from Canberra to Adelaide. They use to do that but I think they terminated that line due to the lack of passengers. There are other flights flying directly from Canberra to Adelaide but they are pretty expensive starting from AUD $150 to over $300 one way.

So Adelaide should be quite fun. I might just head to the Gold Coast and Brisbane after my exams in June. Have to see if any of my friends are up for it.

I guess that's pretty much it for now. I'll probably update my blog again next month if I have the time or if anything interesting happens to me.