Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Melbourne the bad weather and the great art galleries

Actually Melbourne is quite below my expectations. I used to thing that his should be a very beautiful and full of cultural atmosphere. Maybe it's due to the season, nows the chilling winter, so that the city is boring and ugly. But walking around the CBD is really not enjoyable to me. Even the walk from my hostel on City Road in Southbank to the famous St. Kilda surburb is a boring long way to me. I like walking, and I've been walking quite frequently along my journey in the past 2 months. Even in Darwin a walk can be fun, but here it's just making you feel that you had better stay in the hostel and watch the TV all day.

The weather here these days is so terrible. It rains and be windy almost everyday. The sky is usually gloomy. This makes the already not beautiful even uglier. The tram system is another of my dislikes to Melbourne. They simply make the city a noisy place. And they're so slow and expensive. The public transportation here is so worse than that of Brisbane. And the city is as a whole also worse than Brisbane. Staying here makes me miss Brisbane. The beautiful Brisbane River is far superior than the smelly Yarra River. And the streets of Brisbane is simply more beautiful and full of the cultural atmosphere that I look for.

The only thing by far I like about Melbourne is only the National Gallery of Victoria. It's a huge museum of fine arts. I'm amazed that I see genuine works of some very famous artists exhisbited there. And their exhibitions of ancient Egyptian, Chinese and European objects are simply fabulous. I'll go there again on Thursday. I have to say that I totally love the gallery.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Day 2 in Melbourne

Long time no see friends. It's been more than 3 weeks since my last post.

In the past weeks I'd been working as a receptionist at Alatai Holiday Apartments in Darwin for more than 2 weeks. It was a challenging job. I needed to learn a lot to do the job well, and it was not easy, especially that I didn't get to understand all the English accents quite well. The pay was about average at 18 per hour. My boss's family was from East Timor, their family name is Tchia. They are Chinese descendants which means that they are just like typically Chinese boss that will treat the employees not too well. My work sometimes was in the nighttime from 10PM to 06AM, and sometimes in the other hours, but the pay was all the same. It is a job I could learn much from, and I liked it, just that one of my colleagues was quite bitchy.

I'd been to Litchfield NP for 3 times when I was in Darwin. The first time I took the tour made by Kakadu Dreams, and the 2nd and 3rd time I hired cars with some Taiwanese friends. It was a tragedy at the 3rd time. When we were on the way to Termite Mounds, before going to a right turn we met a car close to our lane and I as the driver tried to drive the car, a Ford Fairlane, a bit to the left side to avoid the car, our car ran over sands and we lost control and bombared into a tree. The frond side of the car was severely damaged, and both of the airbags popped put. Fortunately no one was hurt at all. But we waited for more than 4 hours until the car rental company sent another car to us, and then we could continue our journey. But it was almost dark, so we could only go to Tolmer Fall and Wangi Falls to take some photos before we set on the way back to Darwin. When we waited at the place where our car crashed, many people stopped and tried to help us. There was an old couple from Perth gave me a ride to the nearest caravan park to make a call to the car rental company. I'm very grateful for their help. And we found out that there are many Australian people very thoughtful and considerate and keen to give help. We paid AU $440 for the crash, thankfully we had bought an insurance policy at AU $36 per day.

I had also been to Kakadu NP twice. On the 2nd time, I rent a car with Hendrik, a german friend, and Red and Renee, both are Taiwanese girls. We'd been to Fogg Dam, a funny name I know. There were thousands of different kinds of birds in the swanmps there. The scene was quite amazing. I liked it very much. After that we went to do jumping cricodile cruise. The host was different from the first time I did it. It was run by a couple who live in Victoria most of the year, and only runthe business for a few months in the dry season. It was not bad.

I got bored much by the life in Darwin. So I decided that I have to move again. This time I came to the place that I had long thinked of, Melbourne. The flights depart from Darwin Airport are normally in the very early morning. My flight was at 2:35 AM. Before taking the shuttle bus from YHA to the airport, me and Paula, Lilian, Red, Renee and Jerry went to see Shrek the Third at the cinema. Red found some of her cards including the Master Debit card were lost right before the show began, she was quite unsettled, she phoned the bank to suspend her card, and some one found her cards excluding the debit card and gave back to her after the movie. And the movie was below my expectation. It's in fact quite boring and lacks of new ideas in my opinion.

I arrived in Melbourne yesterday morning at around 7:00 AM. The weather in Melbourne was rainy yesterday. And the temperature was very low. The highest temperature these 2 days is only about 14C. I stay at a hostel called Urban Central at 334 City Road, Southbank. Because I checked in early, the staff gave me a room she thought was clean, but it was in fact full of litters due to the previous tennants had a party in it on last weekend. I told the staff, she wanted to give me another room, but I told her thant I can stay in the same one, and I would go out and get back after 2:00 PM when the shousekeeping was done. So when I returned it was clean.

The city of Melbourne disapointed me infact. It's also below me expectation like Shrek the 3rd. The city is not as beautiful and interesting as Brisbane. It's in fact ugly, small and also boring like Darwin. The Yarra River is ugly, too. The southbank, where my hostel is, is far more interior than that of Brisbane. The Chinatown is small and most of the Chinese people there are from mainland China. The gardens here are not as big and as beautiful as the Brisbane Botanic Gardens. All in all, I cannot believe why this can be the 2nd largest city in Australia, and there are quite some people think this is a good place to live and to go to.

Yesterday I walked around in the central business area. And today it's almost the same. Just today I've been to the Fitzroy Gardens and a big cathedral. I think the only things beautiful here are the cathedrals. There are 2 of them quite big, including St. Paul's and another.

I don't know if I will stay here or go to Hobart. Currently I'm waiting for 2 of my Taiwanese friends, Elsa and Tai. They took the Ghan from Darwin to Alice Springs and did a tour to Ayers Rock, and they're on the way to Adelaide right now, and they'll be here in a few days. I will guide them to walk around the city here, and maybe we'll go tp Philip Island to see the penguins together.