Time has flown by. I'm now on my 2nd day in Sydney. Uluru was cool, but the sunset was pretty unremarkable. I guess that's the problem with seeing an image of a place so many times and then seeing it for real is just like looking at another postcard. Sunrise was cool though - much more fun watching it gradually glow as the sun comes up. I much more enjoyed my base walk (i'm totally against climbing Uluru) and you get a much better appreciation of its scale and all its eroded features. There were just 4 of us on the tour and our guide gave us so many cultural insights, it was fascinating (Dad - you would love the geology of this place). There had been loads of rain the morning before so we were really lucky to see a natural river around the base which apparently will only last a couple of days and happens once or twice a year. We saw some crazy climber who had come right off the track and was perched precariously over an edge. We thought he was a jumper and half expected to see an ambulance when we came back round. Freak. I was massively amused to learn that the aboriginal people at Uluru call white people mingers! Ha ha. It means 'ants' because the climbers look like ants on the rock, but i prefer the English usage! Another highlight was my guide saying "bizarro." I didn't think that word existed. The walk around Uluru and a very brief walk amongst the Olgas were my highlights, although my tour company were morons and kept turning up late so i missed the first 10 minutes of sunrise (quite significant when it last only 30 minutes) and messed up my itinerary so i got stuck with 2 boring Uluru sunsets when i could have had an Olgas sunset, which i was much more looking forward to. But hey, i've still seen a gorgeous sight.

Next was Canberra. It seems to be a national hobby to take the piss out of Canberra but i really liked it, despite it being freezing. It's like a massive campus, very green and spacious with lots of strolling areas and a beautiful fake lake. It's all autumnal coulrs at the moment, with blue skies and water and surrounded by mountains - kind of reminds me of Vancouver but with more hill-like scenery! It screams urban planning, but they've done a good job. I loved touring the parliament buildings and recognising borrowed elements but learning about the little changes and how they've incorporated the Australian environment into the architecture. I also loved that the old parliament building had the prime ministers office on the very corner of the building with full windows and overlooking a major road with a massive tree just metres away. How deliciously naive. I enjoyed the war memorial too, which was like a mini Imperial War Museum, and it was really good to see loads of artifacts and displays on Gallipolli so i could learn about it before ANZAC day, yesterday.

I took the bus to Sydney and subjected myself to hours of endless gum trees going past my window. After about 3 and half hours we dipped into a tunnel and when we came out there was suddenly a massive city filling the window. "Bizarro." I'm staying with friends in Sydney, one in the eastern suburbs, and then with a friend on the north shore. The eastern suburbs have an amazing view over the whole harbour, taking in all the city and its landmarks. Its incredible. I met up with both friends yesterday and went down to the main harbour area but didn't really see the sights as it rained all day, but that was fine coz it was ANZAC day and everyone was spending all day in pubs anyway. It was a really cool day. I thought ANZAC would be all solemn and stuff but it just seems to be an excuse to have a big "piss up." People were out in uniform just drinking and having fun playing the simplest of gambling games that is apparently illiegal to played on any day other than ANZAC. Today i'm just taking advantage of the sunshine and walking around the harbour and admiring the views before meeting my mates for lunch.
Sydney is cool.

I've just arrived at the Ayers Rock resort from Alice Springs. I said goodbye to my roomates (a gecko and a cockroach and made a hasty exit from the magpie that enjoys attacking me at the pool) and headed on my fly-infested flight to Uluru. We were only in the air for about 30 minutes and were following the path of a lone highway the whole way, just a thread of red dust through a surprisingly green landscape. I stared out my window looking for a glimpse of a red ovoid shape through the pin-size trees, keeping my eye out for a small bump in the ground incase my sense of scale was all wrong. It was. I only needed to turn and try to see through the windows the other side of the plane to realise the window was entirely full of a view of orange rock. Dammit, i chose a window seat on the wrong side of the plane. Fortunately the plane took an alarmingly steep turn before its last approach and a massive grin crept across my face in sync (sp?) with the view of the Olgas just creeping into my window view. They're even bigger than Uluru which came in view just before dipping below a green hill as we touched down. I've heard from so many people that you ashould take photos of Uluru every 5 minutes to capture the changes in colour and shade. I'm booked on a sunset tour tonight for such an event, but i got a small taster of how it changes at different angles just from my airport arrival. From the plane it appeared orange but at ground level it appears almost purple. It's clouding over at the moment, just 2 hours before my tour, and i am secretly hoping for a storm with my fingers crossed that i may enjoy the rare sight of waterfalls cascading down the crevices.

View from lodge in Alice Springs; Great Ocean Road near(ish) Melbourne; feeding wallabies in Victoria; outback lodge near Alice Springs where wild wallabies come down from the hills at dusk and hop around near my window

Singapore: Padang waterfront; Chinese Temple; mosque in Bugis; Orchid Gardens

Storm in Nara and cherry blossoms in Kyoto

Miyajima Island and Himeji Castle

At last! I just spent 2 quid and 15 minutes watching this ****** computer crawl its way towards a home page. I have found possibly the slowest and most expensive internet access. Well done me.

Left Melbourne 2 days ago, heartbroken coz i loved being there. I saw many places off the tourist map, including a ride in an ambulance and a day spent in casualty with my accident-prone cousin, a night spent at the footie then for celebratory drinks and getting egged by rival fans, and an evening at a CD sale throwing up after eating unknown edibles at a terrifyingly kitsch German restaurant (they played Waltzing Matrilda with bells - ghastly). "It's just not cricket." (i'm learning all the sayings from Ash) . I loved my hosts and my new mini-network of friends in Melbourne so am sure to go back sometime and try to soak up the city a bit more.

I'm currently in Alice Springs enjoying guaranteed warmth and sunshine. I'm at an outback lodge a few miles from the town and at the foothills of some 'mountains.' For under 10 quid a night i have a dorm to myself, a tv and ensuite bathroom, pool access and a i read in the early evening as tiny rock wallabies come down from the mountains and nibble grass just feet away from me. How cool?! Its a bit hard trying to find things to do on the easter weekend so i'm joining whatever tours are running. Today i went to a desert park and absolutely loved the cute tiny desert rats and geckos. There were also massive red kangaroos that were digging holes and collapsing into them in the midday sun. Autumn is a perfect time of year to be here - you're warm but capable of spending all day outdoors on your feet.

It's been nearly a week since i last posted! I can put the delay down to being generally massively busy and to be rather overwhelmed by my arrival in Australia. My hosts, My-Family-I-Never-New-Existed, have been amazingly generous with their time and keen to make me a member of the family. I think i felt at home in an instant. My first night consisted of being at a birthday dinner for one of Margarets friends. His friends were all round and the night consisted of lots of wine and watching a game of aussie rules football on tv - quite an introduction to Australia. Within a couple of hours of meeting them they were telling me to immigrate - and after my first trip into Melbourne i'm starting to think the same! At the moment i feel a bit like Cinderella finding her slipper. I arrived to familiar overcast skies ( i was actually shivering on my first day - it was freezing after a few days in Singapore) and a bumper - lets look at the family tree and get the family photos out session. In my time here i have completely forgotten i am on holiday. I was strolling down a street in the city, oblivious to being in Melbourne because at times it felt like London's shopping streets.

I went back into tourist mode yesterday and did a daytrip down the Great Ocean Road - something i have looked forward to for months. It was the first sunny day and was stunning. I saw koalas in the wild - a wonderful environment for my first viewing. We also walked through temperate rainforests and then hit the sites of the great rock formations along the coast. Amazing to stare out at a massive ocean and think that there is nothing between here and the arctic (or is it antarctic? i get confused). I met someone from kent who said she'd been told there had been 9 inches of snow in kent, IN SPRING! Hard to believe, and such a contrast to where we were standing. I can't believe i'm the other side of the world and have got here so quickly and easily - it has crushed my impression of a massive world and epic adventures!

I had a wonderful weekend winding down after my manic sessions in Japan and Singapore. I must admit i've not actually spent much time in Melbourne itself yet. Lauren and Diana took me out to Williamstown, a cute old place on the water that has a view of the Melbourne skyline. It was freezing and overcast but i could imagine how nice it would be in summer. So lovely to catch up with them after 2 years and to get a driving tour of their city. Margaret took me to church on the Sunday which was full of either ex-pats or England enthusiasts. Quite weird seeing pictures of the Queen in the tearoom. I started telling a joke about how i went to an Anglican church in Canada and was weirded out and amused by them singing God Save the Queen. I was all ready to chuckle at what i had found ridiculous but had to correct myself when the people around me exclaimed how lovely that was. I was even more perplexed to find these Australians were having to inform me that St George's day was next week! I am truly clueless. I know Christmas and birthdays and that's about it. I totally forgot Easter was this week! I was redeemed when Margaret brought her grandkids round (lovely girls, but a cyclone of activity - we had a gin and tonic when they left) and one of the girls asked her if Ash Wednesday was named after the bushfires. I think it was the other way around, and quite a few centuries ago! There were some nuts at the Great Ocean Road who tried to tell me that Noah built his ark here. I decided not to point out that the Middle East is thousands of miles away and simply nodded my interest and made a hasty departure - thank goodness for bus tours and their tight viewing schedules!

Today i'm going to Philip Island. I just want to see the cute little penguins that come out at night ("vicious buggers" according to one of my cousins) but i have to go through a whole day of Australian animal petting and hugging before i get to that bit. Ashley (the 3rd cousin) is coming along though. He is very Australian, so he is sure to make it a "hoot." He is full of aussie rules injuries, northern territories croc attacks and numerous near-death bushfire, cyclone, shark attacks and sports punch-up anecdotes. (you'd get on well with him, Pete) I expect to see a bloodbath when he takes me to an Aussie rules footie game tomorrow night. It should be quite an education in Melbourne sports culture.

Better today. Went to the Padang area and realised how important water seems to be for making a favourable impression of a city. I'm still struggling with the extreme climate change, but was abl;e to enjoy a deliciously heavy downpour this afternoon, and a lovely warmish evening to stroll around the city to enjoy it at night. I spent absolutely hours in the Asian Civilisations Museum, which was amazing, before heading to the famous Raffles Hotel to try their signature Singapore Sling. I'd been out with some guys last night (to the zoo's night safari, pretty cool) who were turned away from the bar far not being smart enough (plus they had Mancunian accents! ooh i'm bad!), so i spent a fair bit of time walking around and psyching myself up before strolling in with my poshest accent, an air of owning the place and some garish sunburned shoulders, cheap flipflops and a drowned rat appearance (the storm). Miraculously I had no trouble. So i spent the best part of 2 hours just sitting at the courtyard bar sipping cocktails whilst i read my book and watched the rain clear and the day turn to night. Very nice.

Tokyo from the Met Government Offices - you can't see the horizon nor Mt Fuji because of a thick blurry line of pollution

Miyajima Island - across the bay from Hiroshima, when the tide is in the shrine appears to float on the water

Hiroshima

first cherry blossoms - a suburb in Osaka

Fushimi Inari shrine and the Golden Temple - my wow factors in Kyoto

First day in Singapore, and i'm not exactly liking it that much. I'm really hot and uncomfortable in moving from 12 to 26 degrees. It was snowing in Japan just a few days ago! The hostel is friendly, but there are a tad too many ants and fleas for my liking. So far i have been to Chinatown, which was quite interesting as i visited a Chinese temple, a Hindu temple and then a mosque within about 10 minutes of each other. The architecture is an interesting mixture as are the different people, but its just not gelling together for me. The sights seem to have become a bit Disney. I ride the subway and arrive in different pockets of Asia each time, but it all seems a bit Epcot. I had lunch in a market in Chinatown where they sold live toads and tortoises in horrible conditions. I bought some duck and rice and settled down to eat and found the guy selling it was watching me eat/grimmace at every bite (there was more bone and grissle than meat). He was determined to chat with me about China and its relationship with the world. His conversation was considerably better than his food!

I sought a cable car ride up a mountain to view the city in the hope that the full skyline would better gel the experiences and neighbourhoods together for me. Unfortunately it was shut, so i headed back to Little India where my hostel is - i'm already bored of the men staring at any white woman that passes by. That reminds me of a conversation with a guy in the mosque. He was telling about Islam generally and then started going on for ages about sex and marriage. He kept referring to how we are naturally attracted to each other because we are human and that is the natural way, but we don't touch each other because we have control and order(and can think of plenty of other reasons why i didn't!). I couldn't get away from the conversation fast enough! Fortunately he moved on to the architecture of the mosque and i was able to escape and explore it for myself.

I've signed up for a trip to the zoo tonight for a night safari. Its supposed to be great fun so hopefully it will improve my opinion of things. Right now, i'm liking ice cold beer and the music in Little India. Until tonight i think i'll just sit at the bar with a drink and a beer and think of things i could be doing in Japan! Sigh

Tokyo!

OK, this has totally not uploaded the images i was going for, nor has it formatted them correctly, but i've just spent a fortune in the SLOWEST internet cafe on the planet so these will have to do. I will endeavor to improve the state of my semi-pictureless blog in a few days time when i get to Australia and hopefully find an internet supplier that is up to scratch.

How frustrating. I finally get my photos on to CD, itching to load them up here but my slightly evil hostel won't let me. Grrr. I hope my one in Singapore is much nicer about such things. I fly out tomorrow and am really sad to go. I just wandered around Kyoto today, soaking it up instead of sightseeing. I have so many amazing memories, with 4 particular 'gasp moments': 1 when i got my first glimpse of the Golden Temple, Kyoto, 1 when i saw the Giant Buddhas face peering out the huge wooden doors of a massive hall in Nara, 1 when i emerged from a bamboo forest and saw a gorgeous promenade garden unfold before me, and the most recent one was tonight when i was desperately searching for a bus stop and heard an 'excuse me' before looking up and seeing the white flash of a beautiful geisha brush past my face.
Quick rundown of my time:
Being lost count: many
Geisha count: 5
Racism count: 4
Unbelievable kindness count: 6
Japanese sweets sampled: 7
Japanese sweets swallowed: 2
Octopus balls eaten: 4
World heritage sites viewed: uncountable
Favourite city: Hiroshima - green and inviting with loads of riverside walks and pretty monuments
Favourite castle - Himeji exterior, Nijo interior
Favourite shrine - Inari - thousands of red gates snaking around the mountain
Favourite garden - Isui-en - literally breathtaking
Favourite temple - Daisen in Nara - gorgeous zen rock garden, extremely peaceful
Favourite shop - Kiddyland, Tokyo! - Hello Kitty EVERYTHING
Favourite stroll - by the canal near Gion in Kyoto

I love Japan!

OK, back to Kobe. I took a trip to Kobe to see what is supposed to be Japan's most beautiful harbour city. It was raining all day long, so i wasn't really feeling the beauty, but i could get a good idea of how nice it must be on a sunny day. It has a lookout tower that looks like it should be in Blackpool - that combined with the rain made me wonder if i would see donkeys strolling down the waterfront at any point. Kobe was the city that had that massive earthquake in 1995. They kept some of the pier in the condition it was in immediately after the quake. It was quite striking. There was also an amazing picture of a huge crack in the ground winding up to the eet of the tower. I pondered this image and my own foolhardiness when i reached the top of the tower. The city (like all japanese cities, it seems) is surrounded (other than the harbour of course) by mountains. You can take a cable car up one to view the whole city and harbour. I decided not to, being in an earthquake frame of mind. But i did climb up part of the foothills to see an area of the city that had been built to house foreigners. It was quite fun watching Japanese tourists um and awe at houses called Weathercock and The Brambles, with one having some hideous Tudor-style paintings adorning the side. Hmmm.

Osaka is a major commercial and industrial city near Kyoto. It is a giant Birmingham. I went there to take a ride up a scary skyscraper to go up an outdoor glass escalator from the 37th to 44th floor. I chickened out when i got there. A common theme. My highlight in the ugly urban sprawl of Osaka was a trip out to the suburbs where i went to an open air museum of old farmhouses. Sounds boring, but it was amazing. I felt like i had gone into the mountains and back decades in time. There were my first sightings of cherry blossoms amongst thatched buildings, and gorgeous old ladies who whisked me off to view their crafts and bowed incessantly at me each time i ummed and awed. Delightful. I ended up having a conversation with one in pathetic japanese at first, then broken English, and eventually German, which i never expected to utilize on a trip to japan. The farmhouses were truly a great experience. Another storm hit, so i sheltered in one and read my novel for an hour and got totally lost in the silence and smell of woodsmoke. It was also pretty interesting to i stir from my reading of Hannibal and noticed i was in a dark room with farming implements suspended above my head.

I've been really enjoying doing my own thing in the day time and coming back to the hostel to catch up on everyone's day and get tips on what to see. I've done all sorts of things i hadn't planned on. The hostel is homely (free cake and sake to celebrate the cherry blossom season!) and i see the same faces for dinner and conversation each night, so i got to feeling like coming home after a day at work (only fun work). Jon and Alex were a great laugh for enjoying Japanese TV with - especially the variety shows and crazy advertising (actually quite scarilly insane) and Anna who is amazingly interesting and who i have spent the last 2 days seeing Kyoto and Nara with. I'm gutted I have just one day left in Japan as it has really captured my imagination, but i am certain i will be back. I've met several people who have done teaching English here, and it is really appealing to me.

Bear with me. I've been manically trying to do everything Japanese in 5 days and its eating up my daylight hours. I think my 8 hour return train ride for a daytrip was perhaps pushing it, but i'm totally making the most of my train pass and the little time in Japan i have left. I've only really spent one whole day in Kyoto so far, which is a bit appalling when i've been here nearly a week, but i've been using the bad weather as an excuse to go to cities and hold out in the hope of a burst of cherry blossoms in Kyoto at the end of my time here. The theory is working so far. I've enjoyed excellent days out in Kobe, Osaka, Himeji, Hiroshima and Miyajima, and i head to Nara (the ancient capital) today for Buddha-spotting. I will write about all these trips but please be patient as i probably won't get anything down until i get to Australia - i'm out all day long at the moment and when i get in its either lights out curfew time or i find someone really interesting to chat with. I must get my act together as the laundry situation is turning bad and i have found no time to edit my photos so i have literally hundreds already! I'll get some posted as soon as i find a place to get a CD made.