Gold Coast! (urm... non-halal pictures ahead)

My Australia trip post is coming to an end, finally.

If you ever visit Melbourne, don't forget to eat at The Meat & Wine Co. There's a few of the restaurant all around the world but I think the nearest to us would have to be Australia, Sydney in particular. And while you're there and while you're non-Muslim, please don't forget to eat the pork ribs.

No, not this one but this is really good too. It's their ribs platter which comes with small portions of lamb, beef and pork ribs. 

THIS. is their full rack of pork ribs. It may look gigantic but it's not difficult for 1 person to eat it up since most of it consists of bones, or ribs for that matter.

That full rack of pork ribs costs around AUD50+, can't remember the exact amount. Expensive? Yes. Worth it? Yes. Will I try it again? Absolutely. Why? Simply because I can never find something like this in Malaysia.

The last 4 days before heading back to Malaysia we went to Gold Coast, stayed at Surfers Paradise.

The Surfers Paradise beach, which is loooooooooong.

It's a beautiful place but I guess we were there at the wrong time. It was raining everyday, the sky was really gloomy, the weather was wet and cold. Everything was underwhelming :( Because the sky wasn't clear, so was the sea waters. And the rain just didn't help at all.

Upon reaching we strolled along the suburb. Because it's quite a hot tourist spot, the price of everything's marked up like crazy. My advice for anyone who's traveling to Gold Coast particularly Surfers Paradise is, stay in an apartment and cook whenever you can. The food isn't exactly amazing, or at least nothing we tried was. It's not worth it to spend on food there, not even groceries. Pack instant noodles if you have to.

We had dinner at this Taiwanese restaurant. Like I've said, food was not impressive. But I quite like their bubble tea. The milk tea was so so, but the pearls were good. The place is called Hazel Tea Shop.

The next day we went to Sea World which was quite fun but again, the rain was a major let down :(

My favourite part of the visit is seeing these King Penguins!!!!! I almost couldn't believe my eyes when I saw how huge they are and how fake they look! It's like seeing a Mumble (from Happy Feet) and the rest of the penguins! Except that they didn't sing and tap their feet and dance wtf.

There were also a few scheduled shows peformed by the marine animals.

Imagine, the dolphin show.

Fish Detectives, where the seals and sea lions all came out to act!!! So cute!!!

Looks like one of the seals is getting horny wtf.

First time seeing a polar bear!

For dinner, we decided to try Bavarian Haus because they (Wk and family) were very interested in the pork knuckle, which is a popular German dish.

Such a disappointmet.

It's my first time trying a pork knuckle and unfortunately I didn't like it. Ok... I did enjoy the crispy skin (I'm a sucker for zhu yao zhar which I think is deep fried pork lard and siew yok skin which is the skin of roasted pork) but the meat was well, quite tender but smells strongly of... I dunno. Pork which has been kept for too long I guess? Not forgetting it was looking quite bloody as well, not sure if it's cooked. But if it's that tender I'm pretty sure it has been cooked for long so I don't understand why it looks bloody in the inside. And the strong, unpleasant smell of pork, gosh.

We also had several other dishes like the Wursts (German sausages), chicken schnitzel, lamb shank, pretzels... everything was just mediocre. Nothing impressive.

Try it only if you cannot contain your curiosity on pork knuckle. Otherwise, I wouldn't recommend that place at all. Environment is ok, but the food just doesn't justify the price.

Ok signing off. Will finish off the last 2 days tomorrow. 

Selamat Hari Thaipusam semua!

Snow in a tumbler

Thank goodness for Twitter or I'll never get to buy a Starbucks tumbler for so much lesser than if I were to get it here! 

One of my violin students was tweeting about the Starbucks tumbler being cheaper in Macau and I asked her about it. Technically it is cheap only if you purchase a drink but it's still a good deal! I can't remember how much they cost over here... prolly RM 40? RM 45? Over there it's only RM 21 after converting! They had a catalogue so she sent me pictures of it so that I could choose which one I wanted. Since it was around Christmas they have quite a number of limited edition (I think), Christmas-y designs which I thought were really cute! And I think some of it weren't even available in Malaysia.

I didn't expect much when I chose this cos the pictures didn't look that promising but when I saw it in person I loved it instantly! It is everything I've wanted in a Starbucks tumbler. I quite like the one my sister's having but that's the ONLY one I like compared to all the other tumblers over here. I've been holding back and not purchase it only because it IS very expensive for just a tumbler. This one I'm having right now is just perfect :)

Thank you Nikki!

My favourite part of the design is the little holographic dots all over the bottle, which resembles glistening snow!

 And random doodlings of cute desserts. 

Also, I've finally gotten enough stamps to redeem the 2011 planner! I was left with about 7 stamps and it was 2 weeks to the deadline (15 Jan) and I was thinking oh crap how can I drink 7 Starbucks drinks in 2 weeks. Then one day I was on the way to uni and I casually asked Cat on the phone to ask around if anybody in uni wanna get some Starbucks and then she told me to get 5 for the orchestra assistants! Wheeeeeeeeee :D

Honestly, I'm a little bit disappointed. The exterior looks a lot better and is definitely of better quality but function wise, I still prefer last year's. I'll elaborate more on this another day.

After stopping violin lessons for about 3-4 months, I've finally resumed to learning again yesterday. Enjoyed it very much, feel all motivated once again! :) 

The next few months are going to be rocky due to questions nobody can answer for now. Hopefully everything will go smooth sailing.

Ashcombe Maze & Lavender Gardens

More pics from Melbourne!

On we drove to Ballarat and visited the Sovereign Hill, which is an outdoor museum where you get to see live presentation of how gold is found, processed blablabla in Ballarat. The admission fee isn't cheap but if you look at the entire recreation it's not difficult to understand how much maintenance is needed to keep the place running nicely.

I've visited the place in winter 2008. Honestly, for places like this, it's worthwile to see it once but not another time. We decided to go again because his family hasn't been there before.

 

Wearing a winter jacket during summer =.=

And exploring the museum took up pretty much the whole day. Can't remember what else we did.

The next day which was also the last day we had the car, we drove around the Mornington Peninsula. We didn't get to do much since we had only one day and most places close at 5.

We wanted to visit a strawberry picking farm but it was not opened due to bad weather conditions. So we visited the Ashcombe Maze and Lavender Gardens which was beautiful! It was quite fun too because once you get in you'll be given tasks and challenges. Of course it is completely up to you whether or not you choose to accept and do them. Honestly, it'll be a lot more interesting to do it than to only stroll along the entire place looking at trees and flowers. 

The moment we entered we were asked to look for little gnomes and fairies in the place. If we could find all of it the reward was a lolly. The whole point is of course not to get a lolly but the fun of exploring every coop and corner, having an objective while enjoying the beauty of nature.

Yes, this is a maze, like the one you see in Harry Potter. 

Apparently the Ashcombe Maze is one of the oldest existing maze in Australia.

Lavender! I've never seen a freshly grown lavender like this in my entire life!

There's this Rose Maze which is one of the oldest circular rose mazes in the world. The challenge here is to get to the centre of the maze.

:)

Then we reached the most beautiful part of the garden, the Lavender Labyrinth!

I was too excited when I saw the lavender and couldn't wait to take a picture with the shrubs. And I accidentally tripped over the fencing =.= If you look at my hand you can see dirt. Wk quickly came over and took a picture before helping me up lol.

Speaking of falling down, I don't know why I always face misfortunes whenever I am in Melbourne. 

The first time I was at Melbourne in 2007, I fell down from a chair in the public while laughing too hard. In 2008, I had ketchup splattered all over my face because I didn't know how to open that shit, yes in the public. In 2009, I slipped and almost landed with my butt in the public again but I was lucky that Wk was right next to me and I managed held on to him. But the public still saw me slip.

This time when I was there, I tripped and fell onto the floor hard when I was trying to chase some seagulls away while we were having a break at Seal Rocks. Oh how could I have forgotten about this?! Some fucking stupid/inconsiderate Chinese couple who were sitting near us fed them for their own amusement. They were throwing potato chips everywhere and laughing at the seagulls fighting for it. 

It's totally fine if they want to be stupid but please do it far away without affecting others. When they fed the seagulls, more and more flew over and surrounded them and at the same time, surrounded us as well and I find it terribly irritating cos seagulls are not afraid of people, they will snatch your food and they are very noisy. That stupid couple then moved away to another table when the amount of seagulls became intimidating, but the seagulls won't leave just because the couple left. The seagulls knew we had food so they stayed and stayed irritating as everrrr. And that is why I got really annoyed and wanted to chase them off before landing on my elbow and knees, which of course still did the trick but in a more painful way T_T STUPID CHINESE COUPLE GROW SOME BRAINS LAH.

By the way everyone, PLEASE DON'T FEED THE SEAGULLS. If you want to do it, do it without affecting the people nearby. Your consideration is very much appreciated. Thank you.

Ok sorry I digressed. Then, fell another time at the Lavender Labyrinth.

=.=

We had lunch at the cafe inside the garden where of course, they serve lots of lavender infused dishes such as lavender scones... ... ok that's all I know wtf. There's also a home made lavender ice cream but we didn't try that. The lavender scones were alright, I still prefer their original unflavoured scones.

Before heading home we dropped by a random park :)

We had dinner at one of my favourite Korean restaurants there, Oriental Spoon :)

Seafood pancake, not very nice.

BBQ meat, best!

Crispy Chicken and Crispy Chilli Chicken, best!

Such...

... is the wonders of Adobe Photoshop!