Jonasian's Hong Kong Experience!

It's official. I'm now Asian!!! I headed off from Perth last night on a midnight redeye flight. It was sad to say goodbye to all the friends :*(. But I did get to see a wicked view of the city at NIGHT! Something that I hadn't done in my 15 flights to and from Perth Airport .... I've been flying a lot! To make things even BETTER! No one was sitting next to me, so I had the two corner seats to myself. In the 8 hour flight, I got about 4 to 5 hours sleep. Not too shabby. I tried to watch the movie "Kite Runner", but it was all in subtitles, and that required too much paying attention. THEN, the sound konked out on all the 'Economy' classes headphones. So we had NOTHING!!!! Major crappy. So, didn't see anything. Fingers crossed that I'll be able to watch Nicholas Cage tonight with no disappointments. He's always in such great movies!!! Ghost Rider, Wicker Man, Next ....

Anyway, back to today. So boy was it muggy, and smoggy, and cloudy when I first got here. It looked like everything in Hong Kong was grey. Including me! I took the train into the city from the airport. This train is the GREATEST train I have ever been on. It was pure luxury. Then, I proceeded to just walk around for a long time. Went up to an overlook of the city at Mt Victoria. More Walking, got into Hong Kong Park, more walking, sun attempted to come out. It was weird, I could see shadows, but you couldn't actually see the sun.

I then took a ferry trip for $1.50 Hong Kong, which equates to about 25 cents Canadian (Hong Kong = cheap), to a northen part (Kowloon), and hung out for awhile. Got majorly hassled by a guy who wanted to make a suit for me on the spot. I considered, but the price was more than getting a plane ticket to Thailand and getting it made there. I said "No Way".

I'm in the Hong Kong airport now, waiting for my flight to board. Will hopefully have some photos uploaded and more stories there....... Gotta make sure to get some Duty Free as well. Mmmmm Vodka!

Will also hopefully find a shower .... as I probably did about 15 to 20 kms of walking today. If not, the person next to me won't be too happy. Then it's onto the plane for the 2nd Leg of my Adventures in China !

Richmond.

photos : http://picasaweb.google.com/australialiterally/HongKong

Tropical Storm Neoguri

It's now my final day in Australia. Later, I will be flying out of Perth and Heading to Hong Kong to see my good friend Tropical Storm Neoguri. I have a 16 hour layover in Hong Kong, so the plan is to leave the airport, and mindlessly walk around for a while. We'll see if weather conditions allow me to do that!

The last week in Perth has been good. Highlights include: attempting and failing to surf, yet again, discovering nhl broadcasts on the internet, getting a arm band tattoo (who knew that it would come off in the shower?), meeting up with friends for a final time, 2 hours of unlimited arcade time, and dealing with my good friends at "3" again. Still should be called "Stupidi3".

That's the end of Australia!

Back in Perth

Wahoo ..... !!!!



Time for bed.

Passions of Paradise

No, it's not the next Monday night Fox Drama .... it's the name of the tour company I went on today for another Great Barrier Reef adventure. Lots of fun. Went to two locations this time. Michaelma's Cay and Paradise Reef. I bought a couple photos the camera woman took of me. Mine were the best, as I learned from last time to take the snorkel out of the mouth for the pose! They also included some of their best underwater photos, thus allowing me to just snorkel and not worrying about taking crappy photos in a plastic underwater camera. Check out them out here. http://picasaweb.google.com/australialiterally/GreatBarrierReefRevisited

Not happy about this morning though. Someone broke in and stole some of my milk. It was in a plastic bag that was double knotted and had my name on it. This morning, no plastic bag, no note, just the milk was left. Still enough for my cereal though. If not I woud have LOST IT!!!!! Hostel kitchen's are disgusting. I have a couple pictures in this latest set that prove that. Who just puts a plate of pasta in the kitchen without putting sran wrap on? And who just leaves Chicken on the counter overnight?

Flying out in 5 hours. Back to Perth. Wahoo.

Boyd, Out.

Fitzroy Island .......

Forgot to mention in my last blog a funny story. Due to some crazy UK girls in my 8 bed dorm. I was unable to use the toilet the night before I left for Cape Trib (alcohol was involved .... on their part). Anyway, the next morning, I ended up downstairs in the poolside toilet, LOCKED IN!!!! with only 20 minutes to spare before my tour left. That's right, the door handle had broken off and I was trapped. Thank god for the little Japanese boy who saved my life ..... I'm now back at the same place, but decided to spend $2 extra per night for a 6 bed dorm.
Much more space this time + 5 cute European Girls = Happy Jon!

Back to the last couple days. Had a good couple days in Port Douglas. I hung out with a friend, Tara, from my New Zealand trip, and some of her friends. One night, we headed for George the Groper's feeding. It's this 3 metre long fish that they feed every day. He came! But supposedly it was a baby George. The highlight of the time in Port Douglas was finding a random monkey in a bush. Good times. Oh yah, a bird crapped on me as well. That
wasn't cool :(.

Got back to Cairns and headed to a place called Fitzroy Island today. My ticket had the name Johnothon on it!!! Haven't had that one before! My first stop on Fitzroy was Nudey Beach!!! I was the first person doing the walk, so I had to deal with the many spider webs along the way. As I was first there, I figured it was time to let all of the Jon out to the world!!! I wore my birthday suit for a few minutes. Don't you just love that picture in your mind! I then headed up to the summit of the island, again, first one to do it, and dealt with all the spider webs. There were also tons of these little lizards called skinks (i think). I spotted one snake .... Crikey!!!!
At the summit, I had some wicked views and could actually see some of the reefs of the Great Barrier Reef.

Tomorrow is my last day in Cairns. I'm going to do another Reef tour and then I fly back to Perth late at night.

Uploaded some more pics of Cape Trib, P Diddy, and Fitzroy Island .... click here. http://picasaweb.google.com/australialiterally

Cape Tribulation

I headed up to Cape Tribulation for a night. It is the location where "Reef meets Rainforest". On the way up, we did a river cruise on the Daintree River and spotted a couple of wild crocs!!! Scratch that off the list. I'm now just down to Platypus and Wombat to view in the wild! The crocs were of the Salt Water variety, the kind that eat you! One was just a 3 year old baby and another was a massive 80 year old. Another animal that I haven't seen or had never even heard of before was the Cappowarry (google it). It is one of the largest birds in the world, and the most dangerous. The males are very aggressive and there feet can rip your guts apart! Unfortunately, I didn't get to see it.

On Cape Tribulation, I went for a long walk on the beach with a dutch and english girl. It was a gorgeous view. Also went on a couple jungle hikes. Good times. Then made my way to P. Diddy. Also known as Port Douglas, and met up with one of my friends from the NZ tour. Had dinner and drinks with her and friends. Today, it's been quite rainy, so haven't gotten around to much. Checked out the beach quickly, and they had a "pool" there that allowed you to swim in the ocean without fear of a jellyfish killing you.

Enjoying some Sustain Cereal (very similar to Just Right, but with Raisins and Sliced Apples)

"Oh my God, Oh My God, It's Coming This Way"

I have arrived to Cairns. It's a real nice tropical city. So far one of my favourite locations in Australia. On my first night (Thursday), I met up with a couple (Alex(girl), and Taylor (boy)) from the UK that were on my New Zealand tour and we went out for dinner. Then headed around the city and I stumbled upon something that made the entire trip completely worthwhile. I came across the "Sister Cities" park. And Yes!!!! Sidney By The Sea is the sister city of Cairns and I have driven by the Sidney "Sister Cities Sign" every time I go to the BC Ferries. I have now completely the Trifecta of Sidney, Anacortes, and Cairns! Later that night we somehow had a 3 year old boy come and start playing with us. No Parents in sight. He brought his stroller and proceeded to run at us with it. It was frightening! We were able to distract him by pointing to a guy doing a fire-spinning in the distance. There is nothing like watching a random 3-year old kid run off alone in the dark.

The next day, I went on a Great Barrier Reef tour with Alex and Taylor. We headed out for an hour and half to Moore Reef. The tour company had a pontoon (sp?) set up at the reef. We got there and jumped into the water! It's the tail end of the "Stinger" season. That's a nice name for the season that has Box Jellyfish swimming EVERYWHERE! Box Jellyfish can be lethal! As there has never been a sighting of Box Jellyfish at this particular reef, I felt fine going in the water, but Alex and Taylor got Stinger Suits. These look just like those full body speed skating suits! Very funny!


We had an awesome time snorkelling. The 3 of us went throughout the entire zone of allowable snorkelling. We saw an awesome purple/green Parrot Fish that was about a metre long. It would chomp on the coral reef and you could hear the chomps distincly. As we headed towards the pontoon, we spotted the Scuba Divers below us. There was a camera man who was feeding this large fish named Wally and a large sea turtle. Taylor and I dove down and were able to stroke the turtles shell. We got back up to the shore, I looked down at the turtle and it was slowly heading up straight for us. "Oh my God, Oh my God, It's coming This Way!!!!" I got so excited that I had swallowed half a litre of water. I tried to keep watching the turtle but was struggling for my life. The turtle ended up surfacing and went straight into Taylor's arm. Then dove back down.

Later in the day, we went back down near the scuba divers, and spotted our turtle friend. This time we "hijacked" him. We were able to get the turtle a good 50 to 60 metres away from them. At one point, I was able to grab onto its shell and catch a free ride. Then Taylor shouts "There is two of them!!!!". Oh my god, we ran in to 2 of them. We then chased them for a little while, and then FLASH, a couple of camera shots. The Scuba Diving Cameraman found us, and was there to take "his" turtle back. We did get a couple of great photos of us with the two turtles. No one else got two turtles in their photo. Not to mention ours wasn't a fake posed picture. We were actually chasing the things. We spent the rest of our time in the water just laughing about all the fun we were having.

The rest of the trip consisted of a 20 minute glass bottom boat ride, a 20 minute semi submersed submarine ride, and 2 full lunches. Mmmmm good. It's going to be hard to ever go snorkelling again. The colourful fish, and coral, the warm water.... It was absolutely amazing!!!!!

That night, I went out for dinner with Taylor and Alex, and the rest of their Contiki Australia tour group. Another member of the NZ tour was on their tour as well. I spent the night avoiding a "crazy" guy on their tour. If you got in a conversation with him, you were stuck for the rest of the night. I actually had to be quite rude to ask him to leave a photo of the 4 of us from the NZ trip. Because of a bizarre story (tell ya later), Taylor ended up smashing me in the nose with his knee. Ouch, I don't think it's broken, but it hurts. They are now off to Alice Springs, and I'm not sure where I'm headed for the next week......

Jane, Me, Alex, Taylor, Crazy Guy