Author kathryn

Sydney: Australia’s Commercial Capital

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What can I say about Sydney?  My stay here has been a bit underwhelming.  It strikes me as being just a big, ol’ city with a famous building.  Aside from the coastline (which is admittedly beautiful), I find nothing very interesting about Sydney.  It has been kind of a let down after coming from Melbourne.  Also, it is more expensive than Melbourne in every way (lodging, public transportation, food).  It’s one of the few places I’ve been to that I was ready to leave after just a few days, and I have no desire to return. That said, I haven’t had a terrible time here; it just hasn’t been amazing.  Even though it seems like an extremely international city (it feels like almost everyone here is from another country), Sydney seems to lack a real culture.  And it definitely does not have that cool vibe that Melbourne has.

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Melbourne’s Street Style

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Melbourne, Australia is full of incredible street art and creative graffiti.  Graffiti is legal in Australia as long as you have the building owner’s permission and the content is not offensive.  This has made Melbourne one of the world’s greatest street art capitals.

Indeed, there seems to be graffiti or murals around every corner, and most of it is extremely good.  Walking the streets and laneways of Melbourne, checking out all the brightly painted walls, was one of my favorite things to do in the city.

Here are some of my faves:

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Melbourne (aka MEL-bun), Australia’s Cultural Capital…

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But shhh… don’t tell Sydney.

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On June 1st I flew from Kuala Lumpur to Melbourne, Australia to meet up with my dear friend, Carrie, who flew in from the States just to travel Australia with me for ten days!  We spent five days in Melbourne and these were the highlights in order of awesomeness:

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One Night in KL

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En route to Australia, I had to spend one night in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  One more stamp on the passport, although I don’t know that one night deserves it.  Fortunately, my friend from Elephant Nature Park/Vietnam, Vici, was also in KL at that time.  So we met up and did what most people do when they come to KL: We went shopping.

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On Leaving Vietnam

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Viet Nam was never on my list of countries to visit on this trip to SE Asia.  I have other travelers to thank for strongly influencing me to go there, particularly Lauren and Natalie who invited me to travel with them there.  I stayed for the entirety of my 30-day VISA and feel like I really got to know the country as well as one can in only a month.  I don’t know if it was because I was there longer than the other countries I went to in SEA, or if it was the culture, the food, the people, the nature, the history… or most likely a combination of all those things… but Vietnam was definitely my favorite SE Asian country that I visited.  Followed closely (very closely) by Indonesia.  (If I had spent more than two weeks in Indonesia, it’s very possible that it would have been my favorite.)

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Vietnamese coffee is the shit

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While in Vietnam, you will frequently hear that Vietnam is the #1 coffee producer in the world.  This is a bit misleading.  Vietnam is actually the second largest coffee-producing country in the world after Brazil, but they export more Robusta beans than any other country.  Brazil exports more Arabica beans.  All of this came as a surprise to me, as I had never thought of Vietnam as a “coffee country.”  Being from North America, when I think “coffee”, I think of Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, etc.  But in Vietnam, the coffee industry employs more than two million people and has helped Vietnamese people rise out of poverty.  The central highlands, where I did my motorcycle tour, is the coffee capital of Vietnam because the majority of the plants are grown in this region.

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Easy Ridin’ in Viet Nam’s Central Highlands

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I just finished five days of motorbiking around the Central Highlands with an Easy Rider tour (meaning I was riding pillion, not driving).  They were five exhilarating, educational, and exhausting days. We started between 7-8:30am every day and rode anywhere from 165-240 kilometers a day.  The days were full of stops to explore the region and its people.  The nights were lazy and entailed big dinners, lots of rain, and going to bed early due to boredom and/or exhaustion.  Some days were better than others.  Some stops were more interesting than others.  Sometimes we got rained on.  Sometimes my butt hurt a lot and my legs went numb.  But the overall experience was really rewarding and I’m glad I did it.  I got to see parts of VietNam that most people never see.  “Real VietNam” my driver called it.  And it’s true… it was an authentic experience.  Nothing I saw or did on the tour seemed set up or imitation. So, read on to get a slice of my real VietNam experience.

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Da Nang: A Day at the Beach

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After doing the motorcycle day trip in Da Lat, I knew that I wanted to see more of Viet Nam from the seat of a bike.  Touring Viet Nam by motorcycle is a “thing.”  Lots of people (mostly guys) come here, buy a cheap bike from another traveler who has just finished his trip, and head on up (or down) the country on two wheels with their packs tightly strapped on the back or in saddle bags.  One day, I will learn how to ride a motorcycle and do this trip myself.  But for now, if I wanted to see the country by bike, I needed to hire a driver.  Fortunately, this is easy to do, as there are dozens of companies (Easy Rider is the most well-known) that organize just this type of thing.

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Above the clouds in Sapa, Vietnam

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Sapa is a small town way up in the mountains of northwestern Vietnam.  It is a popular spot on the tourist trail for its trekking, homestays, cool weather, and beautiful vistas.  Even though I had heard good things about Sapa, I had a hard time deciding if I would go there, or instead to a town called Mai Chau which is not as touristy.  In the end, I decided to follow some of my travel buddies to up to Sapa on an overnight bus from Hanoi.

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Halong Bay, Vietnam

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In Vietnamese, “halong” means “descending dragon.”  Legend has it that Halong Bay was formed thousands of years ago by dragons who came down from the heavens to protect local inhabitants from invaders.  The Dragon Mother and her children spat giant emeralds into the sea battlefield, which created a defensive barricade against the invaders.  The emeralds eventually turned into the islands and islets that majestically dot the ocean landscape off the northern Vietnam coast.

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