20170113: Wayback Machine to Australia and New Zealand

 January 13-30, 2017

Australia and New Zealand Travel Diary

Welcome virtual travel voyeurs! What follows is a compendium of daily travel diary entries made during our 2017 visit to Australia and New Zealand. Nobody's bucket list would be complete without a visit to this corner of the world, popularized by movies like Crocodile Dundee and the Lord of the Rings. When we heard that my brother-in-law Jack and his wife Sharon had booked a Princess Cruise to this region, we just had to tag along for the adventure. For those who may be contemplating such a trip, or who may not be able to travel, I hope that sharing this diary will allow a glimpse into what we experienced in our adventures on this trip.

January 13-15, 2017 Back to the Future

So our trip began without hitches. We used the Whidbey Sea-Tac shuttle which lets us park our car in Oak Harbor. The shuttle runs about every 2-3hrs during the day. We boarded at noon and arrived at Sea-Tac rested and stress free at 2:30pm. Our flight was scheduled to board at 5pm, so we had a few hours to kill. Our Nexus membership gives us TSA Pre-Check status, and it took us no time at all to get through security. It's hard to know when it will be OK to arrive at the airport just an hour before departure when the airport still advises at least 2-3 hours before departure. When we dropped our son John and his girlfriend Nina off at Sea-Tac just 2 weeks earlier, a problem with US Customs and border patrol software caused a huge back up at the airport, with cars parked on the shoulders extending beyond the airport boundary on the approach highway. We fortunately had two passes for the United Club lounge, where they serve free beer, wine, coffee, snacks, crackers, cheese, salad, fruits, cookies, trail mix and soup. We relaxed and enjoyed a free lunch while waiting for our flight to begin boarding. Ben used to have a United Mileage Plus credit card, but he canceled it last year. They send a pair of passes each year as a perk to offset the yearly fees, but they still sent the passes even though the account was closed a month or two earlier.

We flew on United Express in a small Embraer 175 jet from Seattle to Los Angeles. Since we were booked on an international flight through to Melbourne, Australia, we had two free checked bags each. It was nice not to have to struggle with a carry on in that little jet. It was uncomfortable, but fortunately just a 3 hour flight to Los Angeles, where we transferred to a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Ben had debated spending extra for Economy Plus seating because we have had to endure some really awful transcontinental and intercontinental flights. However, the Dreamliner's economy class seating was equivalent to Economy Plus seating on a 737 jet. Ben got a self-inflating Thermarest airplane seat cushion for Christmas to save his rear, and it did really help since many jets now have very poor padding on the seats now. We had a comfortable one hour layover in Los Angeles and our flights on United were all on time.

The 787 Dreamliner had free seat-back entertainment with USB charging ports that are easily accessible. There seemed to be a decent media selection. Ben watched Deep Water Horizon,

Jack Reacher, Secret Lives of Pets, and Suicide Squad during the 15hr flight. They served us real food for dinner, a midnight snack sandwich, hot breakfast, and free beer and wine, as well as the usual beverages. We sure miss that kind of service on transcontinental flights, where now you're lucky to get a bag with 6 mini-pretzels in it and a 4oz splash of soda on ice.

Figuring out a strategy for when to try to stay awake and when to try to sleep to decrease the effects of jet lag is always hard to make work. Compounding the situation is crossing the international date line, so we actually leap forward a full day. So we left on Friday January 13, but arrived in Melbourne on Sunday January 15, even though it was actually still Saturday January 14 in Oak Harbor. So we got to go back to the future.

Our flight left Los Angeles at 9:45pm, and arrived in Melbourne at 9:45am. We had no trouble gathering our luggage and getting through customs. I had undergone a radioactive prostate seed implant operation in September, so I was still a little radioactive. I have had patients in the past who have been stopped in customs because radiation from their seeds was detected. This usually occurs within the first 3-4 months after the procedure, when the radiation levels are highest. The radiation levels drops by 50% every 60 days, and by the end of a year, the radiation levels are undetectable. No radiation detectors in Australia, I guess.

Enroute to the shuttle bus pickup zone, Janet noticed a chauffeur holding up a sign for "GUY PEARCE", who is an acclaimed actor that lives in Melbourne. She had some fun chatting with the driver about driving around a big celebrity. We didn't stick around to try to get a picture of Janet with Guy Pierce. We boarded a prepaid shuttle bus at 10:15am and were deposited at our hotel, the City Limits Hotel, very near the heart of Melbourne's Chinatown. It is said that Melbourne's Chinatown is one of the oldest and largest in the western world. We were allowed to drop our luggage off at the hotel, and then set off on foot to explore Chinatown and Downtown Melbourne.

As we walked down the street into Chinatown, we were stopped by police who had closed the Main Street leading into Chinatown because they were filming a Hyundai commercial with drumming and Dragon dancers. We went around the block and were able to enter Chinatown from a side street and got to get right up to where the commercial was being filmed. Janet might show up as an unpaid extra if they use one particular take of many that they shot. It was interesting to see them using a leaf blower to drive a cloud of red confetti and a smoke generator to simulate smoke from firecrackers as the camera car led the model vehicle down the street. The drumming and dragon dancers made it feel like early Chinese New Years.

There were so many restaurants that the biggest problem that faced us was picking one to eat at for lunch. We ended up going into a shop that did both noodles and dumplings (Jin Dumpling & Noodle Shop) and had some pretty good Xiao Long Bao (soup dumplings), fried noodles and braised pork noodle soup. 

The Chinatown is actually quite busy with lots of people on the streets. For the most part, it seemed clean and safe. You could tell when a tour bus would drop off its load of passengers because there would be periodic hoards of people all herding off in the same direction. There are also many theaters in the same area, including one showing Kinky Boots,and another showing The Book of Mormon.

Melbourne has a large Free-Tram Zone that covers much of the downtown core. There is also a tourist-oriented free tram that circles the Free-Tram Zone. It uses antique cars and offers a narrative, like a free hop-on, hop off service. Unfortunately, the old cars are so noisy, that it's hard to hear the narrative most of the times, but the free trams let us cover a lot of ground without wearing our feet out.

We returned to the hotel at 2pm after covering about 75% of the circumference of the business district, and checked into our rooms for a well needed tooth brushing and nap. The room was very nice, similar to the hotel we stayed at in London. However, the internet connection was terrible, barely getting 1mbps download and 0.5mbps upload. Ben tried to back up his iPhone, but the iCloud backup estimated it would take 18hrs to complete a back up.

We returned to Chinatown and found a place specializing in Sichuan cuisine called the Noodle Queen. It seems that most of the restaurants in this Chinatown serve primarily Cantonese and Shanghai foods (thus lots of dumpling shops and Dim Sum, which they call Yum Cha in Australia), but we found a decent looking Taiwanese shop, a couple of Ramen and Korean BBQ places. Since we didn't carry any Australian cash, we could only chose to dine in establishments that accepted credit cards. In Chinatown, it appears customary to require a minimum of $20-30AUD purchase, and 3% surcharge is added to run the card as credit, rather than a debit transaction. However, in Australia, tipping is not customary, so the 3% surcharge seems reasonable. Janet had a dish called "Burning Noodles". It had some sliced up Thai peppers in it, along with pickled vegetables, minced pork and peanuts. If you didn't pick out those peppers, that dish would certainly have lived up to its name. Ben had a bowl of noodle soup, Chung King style, which was quite spicy and yummy. It was noted to have 2 chili's on the menu. I wouldn't recommend ordering anything with a 3 chili designation unless you have an asbestos lined digestive tract. Those guys take their star rating seriously.

We had hoped to get back on the Circle tour tram after dinner, but on Sundays it only runs until 6pm, so we walked around a nearby garden and saw a couple getting wedding photos taken on the steps of the Parliament building. Melbourne seems pretty pedestrian friendly with the free tram zone and circle tour tram, but you have to take street crossings seriously. They drive on the left in Australia, and not only do you have to contend with cars, and trams, but also bicyclists that seem to come from out of nowhere. All our instincts as to which way to look for when crossing streets are messed up when traffic travels on the wrong side. This also leads to some confusion on sidewalks too, where we Americans tend to keep to the right, but Aussies keep to the left, leading to some awkward approaches on crowded sidewalks. We'll hit the sack early and hope to finish our Circle Tour and visit the Royal Botanical Gardens tomorrow.