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Katie xx

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UP THE LAZY RIVER

There are many things you don’t expect to encounter when you’re riding along a popular bike track: a cemetery is one of them.

Adelaide isn’t enormous and it’s easy to get around. 14kms from the city centre lies the Adelaide Hills to the east, and the beaches to the south. With such gorgeous weather lately staying inside doesn’t really seem an option, so on Sunday we rented bikes from one of the city bike centres and headed to the coast. Note: I use ‘rent’ in the loosest form of the term; there’s no charge for bikes and the only collateral you’re expected to leave is a drivers’ licence. Rent is from sun-up to sun-down and as long as you don’t plan on using your licence, holding on to the bike overnight isn’t a huge concern either. This is never a concern for me: I once had an out of date licence for four years in NSW, and this March I renewed it when I realised I was moving to SA: it was supposed to be done in January 2009!! Spot the reluctant driver….

I had slight reservations about getting on a bike in such a public manner after my last attempt (see my McLaren Vale post for an in-depth, blow-by-blow description of my encounter with a ditch). The bikes for rent aren’t exactly made for small people: they probably weighed the same as me, and with the seat all the way down I was still on tip-toes trying to get on. I looked for a positive, and found one: this was the Volvo of bikes. If it was me versus big dog/large bush/brick wall, this monster was going to make sure victory would be mine.

The beauty of discovering a new city is that tourists, or locals/would-be tourists have a greater tendency to be adventurous. The cars are left at home, the hesitation to see areas that were also thought of as boring is lost, and the admittedly lazy outlook of most of us is forgotten. We tend to live our lives in a small circumference of convenience: our supermarket is the closest one; we travel the same way to and from work; we stick to activities that are close by, or easy, or involve the same people every week. I’ve been guilty of it for years: living in Sydney I can remember spending the majority of my time in the same three suburbs, never really going much further than 5kms in any direction. As soon as we got on the bikes on Sunday, we discovered a park not more than 2kms from our house that we’d never noticed before. This was a proper ‘Japanese bridge’ park, with ducks to feed, a kiosk with decent coffee and chocolate muffins, row boats on a lake and kites. How did we miss this?!?! As we kept riding, we found more and more little gems in the city that we’d never bothered to stop to look at before. In our 42km river ride, here’s some of the highlights:

Sunday Petanqúe, Adelaide city parklands.

Not lawn bowls in a bowling club; boules on a specially designed traditional boules area in the park, a lá Paris. By 10:30am they looked like they meant business. I can honestly say that outside of a trip to France in summer years ago, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a boules congregation in a public park before. It was absolutely beautiful to see; sun shining, bare trees blowing, little old men and ladies in their red jumpers and tweed hats wandering amongst the boules with tape measures.

Adelaide Zoo and the River Torrens

The zoo is fairly new, state of the art and the home to the only giant pandas in Australia. It’s set back behind the botanic gardens, right on the river. A tree full of kookaburras drowned out any exotic animal noises, but it definitely is now on the hit-list of things to do. And when I say ‘tree of kookaburras’, I mean 7-8 of them going nuts and squawking at once. Either they hate people riding on bikes underneath them, or the cockatoos that were going nuts in the other tree were annoying them. NOISY PARK. I’m saving my trip to visit Wang Wang and Fumi the pandas and their friends until late July. Continuing along the river, you’ll find more picture book bridges and gardens, with barges available for tours on the water and colourful paddle boats for hire. I’m sounding biased, but honestly the River Torrens has got a bit of a Mary Poppins chalk drawing feel about it: dancing penguins and a race on roundabout horses must be reserved for next weekend! We also managed to pass the Adelaide Ferrari Club, which is essentially a whole lot of people with no money left after they’ve bought their oversized matchbox cars standing around a random carpark looking at everyone else’s identical oversized matchbox car. I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do on a Sunday….hmmm….

Torrens Linear Park

Essentially just the grassy bit next to the river, the linear park continues from inner city Hindmarsh out towards Henley Beach. Highlights (after from grass stains and public bbq’s) include possibly Australia’s most random park monuments- the Lions Club sponsored Hindmarsh section, who’s installation includes ‘large plastic tree with cartoon galahs’ and ‘man in loincloth inside volcano, hammering’. Well that’s my name for them: I don’t like to mince words. The photos speak for themselves. Further down the track, as we meandered along the river we also had the opportunity to ride pretty much straight through a cemetery. If there was a place to crash and burn on a bike, large concrete gravestones would definitely have to symbolise something. In terms of bizarreness, the cemetery track was matched only by the bike track cutting through Adelaide Gold Course on the way back. Yep, that’s right: one minute you’re on a regular path, the next minute you’re ducking golf balls. No mistakes, no accidental turns; I think they figure that we should be wearing helmets, so technically we’re safe. Nobody gave a thought to how safe the golfers would be with disoriented cyclists coming at them from nowhere though, did they?

Henley Beach

Of course, the whole point of the ride was to make it to the sea. As the path gets closer to the ocean, the land on either side widens as the mouth of the river narrows. Locals have turned the land into horse pastures and people can have picnics under huge trees, with kids riding on bikes and talking to horses over the fence. 500m up the road you have Henley Beach, less built up than Glenelg and without the thousands of tourists. Just inside the mouth of the estuary, a pelican was sitting next to a fisherman waiting for scraps. It seems even the wildlife is enjoying retirement at the beach. Long jetties reach out from the beach into the sea, providing a glorious (and very windy) way to enjoy the smell of the sea and take in sunsets over the water. As an easterner, watching a sunset over the ocean is still a bit of a novelty.

Once back home I couldn’t help but marvel that I a) managed to avoid getting hit by cars as I laboriously dragged my tank bike across the roads; b) did not fall down a set of steps towards the river when I was very close to doing so; and c) avoided flying golf balls and didn’t take out those two golfers that were recklessly standing within 5mts of my bike as I charged through the park. 5 metres is simply not enough room: everybody who’s seen me on a bike knows that!

Wine of the week: Kangarilla Road 2010 Chardonnay (left over in the cupboard from our McLaren Vale weekend)

For all your cycling info while in South Australia:

http://www.bikesa.asn.au/

I found a fabulous website that lists all the petanqúe (boules) clubs in Australia, including Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne – start planning some days out, guys!

http://home.alphalink.com.au/~bigfoot/prod02.htm

Bike trails and walking trails for South Australia, including the River Torrens trail

http://www.southaustraliantrails.com/top_trails.asp?torrens

South Australia Tourism’s page on Adelaide parks, including our new favourite: Elder Park

http://www.southaustralia.com/AdelaideParksAndGardens.aspx

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GIVE WAY TO PENGUINS

June is one of my favourite times of the year. I love the change in seasons, I love winter fires, and I particularly love the long weekend that always falls on the second Monday of the month. The Queen’s birthday weekend is the one that I tend to be a bit more adventurous on, and has lead to some pretty interesting trips: I can’t help but remember the year when Ross and I decided to drive to Tamworth from Sydney and got caught in flooded waters in Muswellbrook and fog that came straight from a John Carpenter film over the Great Dividing Range near Murrurundi. It was the first time I’d seen snow as close as it was to the town at that time of the year, and it was also a fairly eventful weekend for others: many in Newcastle will remember it as the weekend they finally got a (albeit temporary) tourist hot spot with the Pasha Bulker running aground. Oh how they flocked to that one…….

  

For our 2011 winter long weekend, we drifted to regional South Australia, heading east down the Fleurieu Peninsula. It’s one of the oldest regions of the state, and the eastern coast has a notorious history as being part of the successful whaling industry in the 1800s. It’s also home to the mouth of the famous, much loved and maligned Murray River. We headed towards Strathalbyn via the Adelaide Hills, with a view to be there by lunch. Maps of South Australia need to be treated like cars with side windows: ‘Objects may be closer than they appear’. I thought it would take us 2 hours to get to Strathalbyn; 45 minutes later I was dragging Ross through every antique shop I could find! Alas, I wasn’t in the market for a Charles and Diana commemorative wedding plate or a hideously tacky Toby jug, so we left empty handed. (Toby jugs are the ones that are sculpted ceramic in the shape of a character’s face and then hand painted. Highly sought after and collectable, I personally find them the height of tack-a-rama. They can fetch upwards of $500, so apparently others don’t agree with me.) The town of Strathalbyn is unbelievably quaint. The River Angas cuts it in half, with the historic old centre on one side (complete with sandstone bank buildings and antiques shops galore) and the new centre on the other. A beautiful church stands just near the main park right on the river for ample duck feeding opportunities. Just under 4000 people live in the main town, with nearby Langhorne Creek and Currency Creek wine areas making up extra numbers and tourism opportunities. It was here that we would be based for two nights while we explored other areas of the peninsula.

Strathalbyn is just a little bit……odd. Borrowing a line from Dennis Denuto, it’s ‘the vibe’. It’s gorgeous, it’s very twee, but there’s just an overriding sense of ‘you’re not from around here’ that seems to permeate when you arrive. Only one restaurant in town (another warning sign: it wasn’t a Chinese… something is definitely wrong here), four pubs in town and the same five people in each pub that we went to meant we ended up enjoying a ‘quiet night in’ barricading the doors the second night.

As a base for exploring, Strathalbyn is brilliant. Langhorne Creek is a stone’s throw away, and as one of the less well known wine regions you won’t be lining up for tastings or competing with others for spots. Twenty minutes driving south will take you to Milang and Lake Alexandrina, where the Murray flows before reaching its final resting place on the coast. Cold weather and windy days meant the lake was relatively quiet. Further down south, you will eventually reach Goolwa, perched on the banks of the Murray. Paddle steamers operate tours, and Hindmarsh Island (a large island in the middle of Lake Alexandrina) is accessible via bridge. Goolwa is also a station on the famous SteamRanger train line; South Australia’s first railway (and Australia’s second: yep, Goolwa and Victor Harbour had a train line before Sydney did. How’s that for progressive?!).

This is where the fun bit of the trip starts. From the day we moved down here, I’ve tried to keep the attitude of exploring South Australia without relying on maps or Wikipedia for tourist information. We just wanted to ‘drift’ from place to place, without making huge plans or exhaustive itineraries (hence the title of the blog). We knew we wanted to see Victor Harbour and Goolwa, but at no stage had either Ross or myself actually stopped to read about the towns, so we had no idea there was a train line connecting the two. When Ross discovered the train was a steam engine and only took 40 minutes to reach Victor Harbour, I thought he was about to wet himself! Plans for driving around the whole day were abandoned, and the train was our new mode of transport. On top of having a fully functioning steam train on hand, Goolwa also turned out to be the surprise home of the Steam Exchange brewery; people who read my post on Adelaide will notice a photo of Ross sampling a boutique beer, which happens to be a Steam Exchange variety! Add into that a railway souvenir shop run by an almost blind granny and you have a tourism winner. Our challenge of finding the daggiest ornament for our display cabinet was well and truly fulfilled with the purchase of not one, but two new additions: a goggley eyed stone with a crocheted Adelaide Crows beanie, and a goggley eyed walnut in Port Adelaide colours (to dispel favouritism). Ross also made sure he grabbed a take away beer from the brewery before we headed off on the train.

The train line cuts across a small strip of the peninsula, before eventually following the coast down to Victor Harbour with views of sandstone pioneering huts on one side, and dairy cows dry humping above the ocean on the other (don’t laugh, I’m not kidding: the strangest part of the whole weekend was walking away knowing I’ve now witnessed a bull mounting a cow, while I was riding a steam train). VH is a popular seaside town at the bottom of the state, connected to Granite Island via a horse drawn tram line. It’s the stuff of children’s holidays: mini golf, camel rides, Shetland ponies, jumping castles and hot dog stands, right next to the beach which has a permanent beach volleyball court, croquet club and lawn bowls club. 


We walked out to Granite Island in the hope of seeing penguins. The Little Penguin is a native to Australian and New Zealand waters, and is the smallest in the penguin family. Consequently, it’s also the easiest to catch, and each year the number of breeding pairs grows smaller; whether this is due to a reduction in fish for food, or an increase in fur seals (who’s favourite meal is little penguin sashimi) isn’t really known. Granite Island currently has approximately 77 breeding pairs who come back every night after a hard day fishing. The penguin centre houses some of the not so lucky ones (or perhaps extra lucky ones), who almost ended up as lunch. Penguins on Granite Island get right of way: if one crosses your path, humans must stop and not disturb them. No dogs or cats, no overnight stays on the island, and no feeding penguins are some of the rules in place to protect them. We spent the whole day wandering around the island and enjoying the view.
The trams take passengers all the way up to the main information centre on Granite Island, and are pulled by Clydesdale horses, making for a beautiful view of old fashioned service against the backdrop of wild seas. And just to make the day even more perfect and unimaginable, a pod of dolphins decided to join us for lunch, catching fish and causing havoc for the local fishermen just off the rocks! If you’d told me I’d be sitting down enjoying wine while watching dolphins play in the ocean, I wouldn’t have believed it. I also wouldn’t have believed it if you’d told me I’d be aiming a golf ball at a whale’s backside, but it’s rural South Australia, so stranger things have occurred!

Wine of the week: 2007 Bremerton Wines Coulthard Cabernet Sauvignon

Check out the Granite Island website for info on penguins, cormorants and history

http://www.graniteisland.com.au/

Information on the Goolwa Barrages and the Murray River mouth

http://www.murrayriver.com.au/river-towns/barrages/

Strathalbyn Villas, our beautiful base for two days.

http://www.strathalbynvillas.com.au/

The famous SteamRanger train line and the Cockle Train

http://www.steamrangerheritagerailway.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9&Itemid=5

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WHAT A BUNCH OF CORKS

I’ve done it. I’ve finally escaped Adelaide city, and headed out into the regional areas of South Australia. And now I can add another wine region to the list of ‘been there, done that, going back again’ experiences. Three years ago, on our last trip to SA we’d cycled the Reisling trail in the Clare Valley; we’d dodged old railway tracks and rabbits, and wobbled between some of the country’s oldest wineries on a cold, but very memorable day. With 50% of Australia’s wine produced within 200kms of Adelaide, we couldn’t exactly ignore the rest of the vineyards. Why, it would practically be rude not to! McLaren Vale is nothing short of glorious. It’s a tiny region that saddles the back of the Adelaide hills, and the sea. The locals have the option of drinking themselves silly in vineyards and then relaxing in some of the state’s best beaches. 

We’d decided that again, the best way to have a guilt-free booze fest was to disguise it with exercise, so we’d picked a mountain bike tour of the region. Our fellow byclers for the day were Crispin and Jane, with guide Ian; while his wife Deb and 7mth old Charlotte followed us in the van to make sure no one became the latest roadkill. I thought I was clever wearing black jeans and layers on the trip to beat the chill in the air. As soon as we drove to the forest at the top of the hill, the rain and the mud indicated that my jeans would soon be covered in muddy skid marks, and I’d have the all over smell of ‘wet dog’ following me in my lovely damp woollen cardigan all day with a hair style to match. 


The emergency poncho (bright coloured plastic thing resembling an oversized garbage bag) was just a tad too hideous to break out in public. Freezing on a bike in the middle of a forest in a new state where no one knows me simply isn’t a good enough reason to commit a crime of fashion!

With the smell of pinecones, we headed down the forest, making our way to the valley below. Cycling through the area is a great way to get out, take your time between wineries, get some exercise and escape the confines of more rigid tour bus operated tours. Not only do you earn every drop you drink, but you get to see and experience views that aren’t possible on the main roads, like the group of friendly alpacas who wandered up for a closer look when we tried to take photos! EXTREME CLOSEUP!!

Our wineries for the day were Kangarilla Road and Pertaringa; Kangarilla is particularly well known for its reds – the Zinfandel is nothing short of amazing. A bottle of that, and a few others were loaded in the back of the van, while we all took off with much more bravado and much less common sense, hooning down the streets debating the quality of Glee and Justin Bieber. I think it’s fair to say that once you have a bunch of 30-somethings getting deep and meaningful about the Beiber, a long ride and a big lunch to soak the tastings up is probably needed. Ian and Deb didn’t disappoint, with a fabulous antipasto spread laid out at Pertaringa, while the tastings came to us at our table to save us the hassle of joining the crowd inside: how’s that for service!!!

More wine in the back of the van (a white, and a dessert), and we headed to  into the main town of McLaren Vale, for coffee and cake and a big lie down. The boys zipped off ahead of us again, leaving Jane and I to take in the countryside and negotiate the ultimate ‘hill of death’ at a slow and steady pace – my experience on bikes meant that taking a hill at steep and gravelly as that would more than likely lead to certain injury (and embarrassment). We hit the town, and had completely lost them. Riding towards the main road, I was really pleased to see the final destination, and to have had the most successful bike ride yet!

But I should have known better.

Just as we were about to reach the road, I decided it was the perfect time to disengage ‘watch where you’re going’ mentality, and I turned to have a chat to Jane, while my bike continued to move forward. As I turned my head to look out in front, I heard Jane yell ‘watch out!!’ in slow motion behind me, and saw the front wheel slide into the embankment (I say slide; it was more like ‘cycle furiously into the embankment’). With my lightning reflexes (who’s got tiger blood now, Charlie?), the bike went down, while I hopped off and avoided total humiliation.

Crisis averted, coffee wasn’t going to cut it: so once at Oxenberry Cafe, I opted for a glass of fortified wine to wash down the cake (and calm the nerves).

A fabulous day out complete, Ross and I finally had a stash of local vino in the cupboard, and a new experience of South Australia under our belt!! McLaren Vale has been elevated to one of the two best wine region experiences I’ve had so far (the other one was in Victoria, so we won’t mention that here). I made a great new friend in Jane, and as a bonus, the poncho decision turned out to be an excellent prediction of sorts: I found out when I got home that Ian had been sneakily posting photos of the trip on facebook while we were out. I think everyone that saw them would agree the helmet, silly riding gloves and woolly fringe would have clashed completely with my gorgeous raspberry plastic bin liner.

Thanks to Ian, Deb and Charlotte for hosting a great day. Check out their other tours here: http://escapegoat.com.au/

Next time you’re in SA in June, make sure you hit Sea and Vines in McLaren Vale. 
The local wineries open their doors to entertainment and gourmet cuisine, with special and celebrity guest chefs cooking for the public.
 Details on the 2011 event below:
http://www.mclarenvale.info/banksaseaandvines

It wouldn’t be fair to pick one, so here are both cellar doors we visited:

http://www.kangarillaroad.com.au/default.asp

http://www.pertaringa.com.au/home

Wine of the week: Kangarilla Road 2009 Zinfandel; Pertaringa Full Fronti fortified Muscat (gold medal wine)

Book of the week: Chai for Beginners, Jane Ainslie. I got to spend a day cycling with the author, so make sure you check it out on Amazon!

http://soniareviews.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/book-review-of-chai-for-beginners-by-jane-ainslie/

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HAPPY ENDINGS IN BANGKOK

This Easter holiday, Ross and I decided to avoid the lack of bars open on Good Friday and embarked on our first trip to South East Asia. Five days in a city of 11 million people should be hectic, but in fact it was one of the most relaxing holidays I’ve been on, not least because none of it was planned. It’s the first time I’ve gone anywhere without concocting the ‘Itinerary from Hell’ beforehand, and it lead to a week that felt like three. Without trying to get all Lonely Planet on you, here are some moments from our trip that stood out as must-do’s for the future.

1. If You Can’t Change It, Ignore It

Anyone who knows me (that’s all of you) knows I don’t unwind easily. Peace is not like a river in my household. I have short nails from biting them, I’m going grey, and there’s a track worn in the carpet from pacing like a Sun Bear (that’s Ross, not me). ‘Spiritual enlightenment’ is a really good gin and tonic as far as I’m concerned. The cheapest, fastest and easiest way to head to the city from the airport in Bangkok is taxi. And the first thing that’s noticeable as you’re screaming along the freeway sans seatbelt, apart from trucks with 6 people hanging on for dear life in the back of them, is that everyone takes traffic jams like a normal, everyday occurrence. When you get stuck in a jam, you turn off the engine and read the paper until it’s time to go. Would that happen in Sydney or Brisbane or Melbourne? No chance. Would we wait patiently in line for food, or train tickets, or buses? Not likely. And getting on a Skytrain, packed like sardines and not complaining: well, read the newspaper today about transport in your city and you tell me: bet there’s a column about how bad it is. The difference between Bangkok and a lot of western cities I’ve travelled to is that they expect it: it’s normal. They know they’re a congested city. They know that things don’t happen when they should; and they don’t complain. Granted, they may get in a bit more trouble than us for speaking up and whinging, but a lot of it stems from the fact that the majority of citizens (try 96%) are Buddhists, who aren’t known for tantrums in supermarket aisles over the quality of the sandwiches (which I witnessed in Adelaide 3 weeks ago). It's a city that's motto is 'Smile'. And they do - a lot. The poverty is unbelievable. People live in shacks that leak, piled on top of each other like broken boxes alongside abandoned rail tracks or polluted canals, or in apartment blocks that bear the tell tale signs of lead and sulphur poisoning; but they complain less than the tired woman in the post office back home, and there's less road rage than there is here on a Saturday morning. It was a lesson: chill out.

On top of all the smiling, Bangkok has the most beautiful collection of Buddhist temples, scattered all over the city. In the grimiest, dirtiest neighbourhood, follow a saffron monk and you’re bound to find whitewashed beauty around the corner.  What with the chanting, and the high walls, and the fact most of them are set in quiet gardens on large blocks, the noise and rush of Bangkok seems to just melt away into the background and you can appreciate where the calm in the craziness comes from. It’s a nice side to the city that wasn’t expected

2. Death March Til You Drop 

Walking around a city like Bangkok is admittedly a bit of a mission. Thai’s don’t walk; they pay 10 baht to hop on the back of a bike or scooter and get driven to the end of the road. It’s not necessarily lazy, it’s just a way of life: it’s hot, it’s grimy, and it’s faster and nice to just get driven somewhere. We thought we’d attempt to walk, regardless of the difficulty. Was it difficult? Yes, and no. It was 28 degrees at 7am most days, climbing to 40 with high humidity for a start. The most obvious point was the fact we stuck out like sore thumbs as tourists and kept getting stopped by people thinking we were looking for a taxi or either mad or lost and needed help. Amazingly, everyone who stopped us was an English teacher or language student who had a friend with a tailor who made excellent suits! Didn’t fall for it. Nu-uh.

Walking did lead to pleasant surprises. Firstly, we couldn’t walk directly from our hotel to other areas without catching the Skytrain (overhead monorail) or Metro (underground), both of which put any train I’ve used in Australia, the UK or Paris to shame: they are so clean you could eat off them. And quiet, and prompt. And there’s always an Ovaltine or Pepsi ad with a catchy jingle playing on the electronic advertising screens to drive you nuts – I was still singing the tune to the donut ad for a week after we got back. We also saw into the ‘normal’, non-touristy side of the city by hitting the back streets. We found the tuk-tuk repair area, the sports store area (where we picked up a few local football team shirts – Phuket United better place well this season….), Lumphini Park, where the locals run every day, marching bands practice, dogs chase ducks in the heat and you can lift weight in an outdoor gym; both sides to Sukhumvit: the seedy, sex tourist end with lady boys and happy ending parlours; and the up-market, high rise end where the rich and famous live; and possibly the best find of the whole trip: The Banyan Tree, and Vertigo Bar. And outdoor cocktail and dining bar that sits a-top a 59 floor high rise in Lumphini, Vertigo offers customers 360 degree views of Bangkok while sipping cocktails decorated with Singapore orchids. As the sun sets, the city lights get brighter and you can really appreciate how busy and congested the streets really are and the river, which can be almost completely ignored on a trip to Bangkok suddenly becomes an integral form in the landscape.

3. Spicing Things Up

The chilli finally broke me in Bangkok. I’ve eaten a lot of hot food in my lifetime; I’ve practically grown up on hot Indian curries and spicy foods and there is no such thing as ‘too much chilli’. That is, not until you find yourself on the end of the hottest, spiciest, most potent sweet chilli sauce you’ve ever experienced. Oh, they do love to pack in the flavour and strengthen things up over there. The Red Bull is notorious, the beer is 6.5% (most western beer is about 4-5% alcohol content), and the chilli is FLAMING. The secret to weight loss was discovered in about 24 hours: eat lots of meals, eat little meals, eat them in 40 degree heat, and pack in the chilli. Ross and I decided before we left Australia to be really open minded and willing to try anything when it came to food. Considering most of the city eats from food carts on the side of the road, we weren’t really going to have to try hard. Some of the meals included: eggs Benedict, that had been grilled with the hollandaise sauce on; curry with shrimp and pork for breakfast; pancakes with banana and coconut (which I would almost fly back just to eat); giant oysters; various unidentified cured meat products on sticks; some sort of animal penis (also on sticks); a hamburger from the side of the road; crab balls that melted as soon as you ate them; noodles that kept burning, and burning, and burning; and a pork curry/soup combo meal that cost us all of 60 baht for two (about $2) with Singha’s collected from the 7-11 up the road on a scooter. Not a bad meal in sight!!!

4.Take Me Back To Chatuchak

I found my idea of heaven on earth in Chatuchak Markets. One of the largest markets in South East Asia, Chatuchak is an outer suburb of Bangkok and an absolute maze of goodies. Divided in sections, it’s like a giant, open mall, but full of bargain stuff and with all the smells and heat of a traditional market. There’s a section for just shoe vendors, the jewellery section (pearls, anyone?); The Chinese area, the young designer area (which has some pretty amazing stuff on show); rows of jeans, artwork, sculpture of Star Wars characters (I kid you not), pets (including squirrels), handbags, fresh food, elephant paraphernalia….. I could go on and on and on. We found a child prodigy glockenspiel player, a Thai cowboy, a karaoke section, advertising for Garnier which involved some pretty shoddy dance moves from the 90s and lots of sequins while throwing hair products around, and a Thai hippy busker that looked like he was a Nimbin local. When we got tired, we found more meat things on sticks, and cocktail bars with djs in a cowhide decked out interior. When all the tourists go home, the place gets taken over by the locals, and the fun starts again. Amazing. Didn’t want to leave – my favourite day in Bangkok, if just for the people watching and being able to experience a place like that, which was so different to what we know as our markets over here. FABULOUS

Website of the month: Tourism for Bangkok: http://www.bangkoktourist.com/

Bar of the month:  The Vertigo and Moon Bar, The Banyan Tree Hotel, Lumphini, Bangkok

http://www.banyantree.com/en/bangkok/dining/vertigo_and_moon_bar

Drink of the Month: Orange Sunset. Mysterious gin based cocktail in Chatuchak markets. Very Strong. Very cheap.

If you're planning a trip to Bangkok, or anywhere in Thailand in the future, check out the Lonely Planet guides for information and tips on local protocol and etiquette, as well as accommodation, sight-seeing etc.  http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thailand/bangkok

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PORT ADELAIDE. HOME OF TUMBLEWEED.

It’s been a little while since the last post, mainly due to a new job and university assignments all being due at the same time.

The Port Adelaide Derive Top Five:

Socialist monument, or roundabout for horses?

1. It’s a sea shanty kind of town; if there were people to sing them! It’s got potential. It’s obviously an industrial area and one of the deep sea ports of Australia (think Melbourne Docklands, Wollongong, Newcastle etc). Unlike places like Newie, there’s still the essence of the sea; narrow cobble stone streets, with terraces on either side; colonial shops covered with wide traditional Australian verandahs and (most importantly) pubs on every conrer. At 2pm on a Saturday, the key component to this scene that was missing, was people. No one. The pubs were empty, the streets were empty, and the whole place felt more ‘The Legend of Old Gregg’ than ‘Doc Martin’. For a place that is a hub of scientific research for aquaculture, it was pretty dead. Saturday afternoon sessions at the pub obviously don’t go down a treat with the locals.


2. There’s More Fun For Signalling Engineers than Library Students. There’s a railway museum, but the lack of atmosphere (more likely lack of lively pub atmosphere) had Ross doing the unthinkable and bypassing this mecca for trainspotters. In all honestly, the only reason I’ve mentioned the trains is due to the fact we technically spent more time waiting at the station for them than actually exploring Port Adelaide. Half an hour after arriving, we turned back; only to discover the reality of public transport in Adelaide: there is none. Message to all in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane who complain about public transport: yours might be a bit late, or a bit cramped, but it turns up. Down here, there’s an average wait of an hour between buses and trains, and sometimes they don’t even bother on the weekends. For a couple who balk at driving everywhere, it means long walks or long waits. (I didn’t mention Newcastle because I’m fairly it’s another area that still thinks public transport means ‘BYO car’).  Anywhoo, insert generic photo of deserted railway line here:

3. Count Duckula Reigns Supreme. Silly mention here, but a highlight of the trip was discovering Count Duckula in the local Vinnies. He now resides in City East, and has spawned many Youtube viewings of old episodes. If this is all I get from Port Adelaide, it’s a pretty fair swap. At $4, I think the duckman makes the trip worthwhile! He has also started another great pastime, commonly known as The Worst Ornament Ever/Dodgy Toy Project

Ross tries a Steam Exchange brew

4. After Port Adelaide Comes the Wine. Back in the city, Ross and I took the long way home and discovered we live amongst a veritable smorgasbord of gastro-pubs and bars. The Saracens in Carrington Street has a woodfire pizza oven in the courtyard that is fired up daily; you can have your food cooked by a chef surrounded by vine leaves and cobble stones; The Crown& Sceptre on Pultney St is a retro pub with a 50s influence and young crowd; and the Kings Head on Pultney is the only ‘South Australian only’ bar in Adelaide: everything is local, including beers and ingredients and you won’t find anything from the other states. Sounds parochial, but the bar sells beers and wines that you can’t find anywhere else, with food made from local produce and farms, supporting their farmers and graziers. It’s a nice idea that pubs in other states should get behind.

5. Football is Life, and Seating is Negotiable. I did something completely unimaginable on Saturday night. I went to an AFL game. It was the local derby (‘showdown’ to the locals, which sounds ridiculous considering every game is technically a showdown of sorts), and I’ve always had a soft spot for the Crows; they were the first team I ever watched in a game on tv, and they went on to win the premiership the year I actually bothered to attempt to understand it. We discovered that a group of Port Adelaide Power fans had taken over the entire row of seats, including ours, and after being told that ‘we always sit here, every game’ the traditions, superstitions and bizarre attitudes of AFL tragics became clear. It didn’t matter that we’d paid for the seats that they occupied; flat out defiance by a group of determined and slightly scary looking fans meant we would not be sitting there. This was a heated game; the rivalry between the clubs was fierce, and these women in our seats probably would have come after us if they’d lost.  They didn’t, but my interest in AFL, although fleeting, was: two hours of football and I understood about 10mins worth. This is one are of the local culture I’m happy to let slide.

Apologies for the lack of interesting content this week; we’re in Thailand next week so la Dérive will be going to South East Asia for a week!

Pub of the week: http://www.thekingsbardining.com/ Fabulous pub with local beers, wine and produce, and switched on staff who are happy to give you a background on any of the suppliers.

Website of the week: www.pir.sa.gov.au The homepage of the Department of Primary Industries and Resources, who are my new employer! Information on mining, agriculture, viticulture, biodiversity and biosecurity and aquaculture in South Australia. Check this out for quarantine info too: no fruit!!!

Wine of the week: http://www.rookerywines.com.au The Rookery 2008 Zinfandel. Grown on Kangaroo Island, Zinfandel is one of the rarest grapes in Australia. A younger, floral red. 

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WE DON'T NEED NO STINKING CONVICTS

Rather than go on and on in terrible descriptive sentences, I thought I’d stick to bullet points.

Five Things I Learnt On My First Dérive: North Adelaide

1: It Stinks. 

Local houses, Nth Adelaide

Everywhere smells. Not in a bad way: North Adelaide has a constant fragrant scent of wood fires and rose, with a bit of lavender thrown in for an ‘old lady’ perfume. It’s quite lovely actually. Coming from the hotbed of Brisbane after almost four years, catching a whiff of fresh rose on crisp air is a bit of a treat, and one that immediately took my back to my childhood home (which some would argue wasn’t much different from Adelaide - cheeky buggers). At night, the air gets cooler and the fires come out again, and what was rose becomes an almost overwhelming smell in the air of peppercorn trees, so strong it makes untrained eyes water. My jolly took me into the city to get to know a few walking areas, and I found the botanic gardens fairly quickly. The herbal bed in the middle of the gardens was a rare find for a public garden that size: again, the aromas were gorgeous and I think I actually found it by nose, not feet. I’ve never seen a public garden with thai rainbow chillis and French thyme before, but there is was, smelling like a kitchen and reminding me of my mum’s chicken; which brings me to my second lesson:

2: Everywhere Reminds You of Somewhere Else. 

I spent so much time wracking my brains to figure out what the area reminded me of, it got annoying. In the end, I realised that while it did take me to places of my past (Tamworth, Quirindi, Newcastle, Sydney), Adelaide reminded me of……. my last visit to Adelaide! It’s easy to see new areas and find familiarity; what I find interesting is my need to compare the new with the old. I have a tendency to go somewhere and almost immediately exclaim “this is so much like (insert generic town/city/thing here)” or “this is nothing like (insert generic town/city/thing here)”. Rather than build new feelings and attachments based on old memories, I’m determined to experience Adelaide as a blank slate. So no more comparing. (For the record, it reminded me of most places I’d lived: the cottages and terraces could be those in Melbourne, or Sydney, or Newcastle; the gardens look like my home town, the wood fire smells are my grandparents house, and the sandstone buildings are pretty much most of Eastern Australian city buidings. Except Brisbane, where they knocked them all down…..).

Random church in Adelaide

3. Religious Freedom Does Not Mean No Religion. 

What is Adelaide known as? The city of churches. Lots of churches. Waaaay more churches than I thought. I love churches, don’t get me wrong, but it was particularly interesting to learn that Adelaide, as the first ‘planned’ city of Australia (as in, ‘we don’t want no stinking convicts’) was designed and envisioned as a sort of southern Utopia: progressive education, progressive politics and freedom from religious persecution. Of course, the atheist side of me immediately assumed that meant no religion. On the contrary, churches sprang up EVERYWHERE, from all denominations, sometimes right next to each other! What it makes for is a beautiful skyline of church spires and pigeons, not those wicked capitalist idols of skyscrapers ;- ) And in keeping with these traditional, protected buildings, they’ve protected pretty much everything around them too. Most of North Adelaide is actually heritage listed: original row houses, stand alone blue stone cottages, shop fronts, terraces and pubs have been restored to their former glory and make up for the majority of buildings in the area. It's such a huge heritage area and there are so many plaques I wouldn't be surprised to see a magpie with one attached: "This magpie is an example of an original bird in Adelaide in 1830 when Colonel William Light designed Adelaide to have lots of trees that would have been home to magpies like these....blah blah blah....."

4. Building Churches Is Thirsty Business. 

The British Hotel, est 1838

Ahh, Adelaide. There is one particular feature of this city that reminds me of Tamworth. For those that aren’t aware, Tamworth is a small city (approx 40,000) in North West NSW, which, apart from holding lots of rodeos and being the home of Phillip from Playschool, also happens to have a fairly famous festival every year. In order to keep the tens of thousands of people visiting the festival happy, they have an alarmingly large number of pubs, sometimes three to four in each city block in the main area of town. I’m not sure if a country music festival in the mid 1800s caused pubs to be built, but there is an abundance of them in North Adelaide alone. I’ve counted at least nine within 3 blocks. Surprisingly, one is even named after the cathedral it sits opposite: maybe they ran out of ‘blood of Christ’ and thought opening a speciality hotel was a good idea? In any case, beer and wine is cheap, and top notch. The wine list in the dirtiest pub in SA could and most likely would put most in other states to shame.

5. The ‘Green Man’ Is a Myth and Traffic Light Changes Are a Luxury Not To Be Squandered. 

I got sunburnt on Monday, my first walking day. Don’t get me wrong, I wear a hat and I always, ALWAYS wear sunscreen. It was a baking day, but there was one hiccup that I couldn’t possibly have factored in to my walk: traffic lights. They don’t change!! Ever!! I timed one corner: 3 minutes waiting on the side of what must be the WIDEST ROAD IN AUSTRALIA, with usually just a single car that drives deceptively fast enough to hit you if you choose to cross, and no end in sight to that smug little red man daring me to challenge him. There are no refuge islands in the middle of the road, and usually hardly any cars, which makes the whole situation even more irritating. If it was like a case of trying to cross Parramatta Rd I wouldn't mind so much. Normally I'd make a dash for it, but I have a feeling they factored in jay-walkers when they built this place eons ago and designed roads that are so wide they put the Brisbane River to shame. Then you have the classic game of chicken with the blinking red man. Don't fall for it. Yellow light? What yellow light?! The lights are green, then for approximately 2 secs they are yellow and then BAM!! It’s biped vs car and they aren’t stopping. If you intend to walk around the city, plan your trip in straight lines, walk around the same block in laps, or be prepared to add at least an hour in waiting. And carry extra sunscreen: you’ll need it.

The greenhouse, Adelaide Botanic Gardens

Interesting sites of the week:

http://www.history.sa.gov.au/

http://www.environment.sa.gov.au/

botanicgardens/home

Pub of the week:

The Archer Hotel, O’Connell Street, North Adelaide www.archerhotel.com.au

Next up: The eastern city fringe.

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