Edmond Chan

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

FROM HONG KONG, I was meant to head straight into China; I‟d planned a trip to Beijing and further afield, with the possibility of going to Tibet. However, whilst in Hong Kong, I got a Facebook message from two of my oldest friends from university, Craig Harvey and Moe Umer, saying that they would be out in Malaysia for a week or so and, seeing as I was in Hong Kong, would I like to come and meet them? Why not! So in just a few days, I rethought my options. I bought a plane ticket with fresh plans to travel overland back to Hong Kong via Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and China. This was now the beginning of the South-East Asian leg of my trip. I had visions of Alex Garland‟s The Beach and classic backpacking through one of the great regions of the world. I halved the contents of my backpack intending to as travel light as possible and picked up a new guidebook, the Lonely Planet‟s Guide to South-East Asia. Easy! By now, I was a backpacking veteran! (So what did I take with me? Learning from Grant‟s misfortunes in Buenos Aires, I always separated the most valuable things into my pockets so I was never without them: Passport, wallet, phone. The next most important things then go into a smaller rucksack: alarm clock, glasses, hand gels, books, journals, earplugs, toothbrush, diarrhoea tablets, MP3 player etc.)

Geographically, Malaysia is split by sea into Peninsular Malaysia, between Thailand to the north and Singapore to the south, and Borneo Malaysia next to Brunei to the east. It‟s ethnically diverse with the breakdown of the population being around 54% Malay, 25% Chinese, around 12% other indigenous peoples of the Malay Archipelago around 8% Indian, and around 1% other peoples.

Kuala Lumpur

I flew the three hours from Hong Kong into Malaysia‟s capital city, Kuala Lumpur, in the south of Peninsular Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur International Airport is nowhere near central Kuala Lumpur, so I took a bus to Sentral bus station and then jumped on the monorail to Binit Bintang in the heart of the Golden Triangle. After two weeks in Hong Kong, and being very well looked after, it was weird being back on the road but it felt pleasantly familiar checking into a ropey youth hostel. May in Kuala Lumpur is an uncomfortably hot time of year (a solid 35 degrees) and it‟s incredibly humid and sticky; it‟s a different style of living here, where things are done more slowly so as not to sweat buckets. The humidity saps your energy as soon as you step into it and you‟re always looking for that next dose of air conditioning. I knew straightaway that I‟d need some new clothes to handle the climate; mainly vests and shorts, not the jeans and t-shirts that I‟d brought with me. I took a stroll around Chinatown which is centred on and around Petaling Street and dominated by a huge street market of the usual fake t-shirts and watches. I immediately got down to the important business of eating, tucking into delights such as sweet pork kebabs with spicy dipping sauces washed down with fresh coconut juice straight from the source and with beer in the only places where it‟s freely available in this officially Muslim country, Chinese food stalls.

There‟s plenty to do and see in Kuala Lumpur over a couple of days. After meeting up with the guys, I was kindly treated by them to a great buffet dinner in the revolving restaurant on top of the massive Sky Tower with great views of Kuala Lumpur at sunset. We also went to the iconic and massively impressive Petronas Twin Towers, which at 452m is/are officially the second tallest building(s) in the world, now below Taiwan’s Taipei 101 (not any more!). These buildings are absolutely enormous! We took a tour up to the walkway linking the two buildings and the sheer height we were at and the immense scale of the design was mind-blowing. Kuala Lumpur looks like a tiny model city teeming with construction from here. We also took a bus to the Batu Caves on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, a system of three huge limestone caves, the most famous of which is the huge, cathedral-like Temple Cave that houses a Hindu shrine. The Temple Cave is reached by climbing 272 steps and its entrance is guarded by the largest Murgya statue in the world, a ridiculously big 43m high golden statue. There are small long-tailed monkeys milling and jumping all around the caves throwing drinks cans all over the temple and I saw a man with a huge bright yellow python offering it to tourists to pose with around their necks. It was about four metres long and about as thick as a human thigh. I hate snakes and there was no way, even in the spirit of trying new things, that I was having that thing around my neck!

As always on my travels, I’m always looking out for the next meal or snack and eating in Kuala Lumpur is a real pleasure; you can have Malay nasi lemak for breakfast (rice cooked in coconut milk, fried peanuts, fried onion, curry paste and a hardboiled egg), ethereally light Indian roti canai (fried wafer-thin chapatis with curry sauce) for a mid-morning snack, Chinese fried ho-fun noodles with chilli and chicken for lunch, fragrant and spicy Thai curry and pad thai for dinner, and some durian for a late night dessert – lip-smackingly great stuff!

However, despite all this great food and interesting sights to visit, something about Kuala Lumpur left feeling me slightly cold. It seemed to me like my mental image of Dubai: full of futurist steel and glass edifices, and luxury boutiques, all with a strong sense of orderliness. I didn‟t feel that for its much vaunted multiculturalism that it really was an exciting melting pot of disparate influences. Instead, I had the feeling that it was another typical city of just another South-East Asian tiger economy. With three other South-East Asian countries still to travel through next, I hoped that that wouldn‟t be the case. Kuala Lumpur is advertised as a „vibrant‟ and „typically Asian‟ city; however, I must say that, having come from Hong Kong and Melbourne, Kuala Lumpur is in the slower lane of world cities. It has the obligatory skyscrapers and plethora of high-end hotels of tiger-ish Asian cities, but somehow without the dynamic atmosphere of Hong Kong. The city is multicultural but in a different way to any other form of multiculturalism I‟ve seen before. Instead of one clear host culture and many other smaller represented cultures (such as in European countries for example), Malaysia has three distinct races and cultures, more or less equally represented; Malay, Chinese and Indian; who all seem to get along well under the official state religion of Islam. Despite this clear sense of cohesion and clear „melting pot‟ of cultures, the host culture (the Malays) holds the reins of power, and does so in a way that is incompatible with this projected perception of multiculturalism. The Malays enjoy all the benefits of diversity but actually entrench discriminatory practices that go against the very idea of multiculturalism.

The major benefits to Malaysia are twofold: firstly, so as to entice tourism, Malaysia undoubtedly uses this diversity and multiculturalism as a marketing tool: Come to Malaysia, we‟re such a melting pot of influences and so developed and progressive. You‟ll love it! claims the tourism literature; and it surely works.

Secondly, as a result of this diversity, Malaysia reaps very real economic benefits, such as from the wealth creation that flows from the Chinese community, many of whom have been in Malaysia for generations, yet another example of the Chinese Diaspora in the region, which extends to Indonesia, Australia, America, and Canada. Like the Jews and their Diaspora, the Chinese have faced hostility in bad times and are often a convenient scapegoat and target for nationalist feeling. Yet through it all, almost without exception, the new immigrants have made significant cultural and economic contributions to their adopted country. Malaysia is no different. Here, the Chinese are leaders in business, enterprise, and education. There is little doubt that the Chinese are major contributors to Malaysia‟s total wealth and have played a strong role in transforming Malaysia into a leading developed nation.

As we‟ve seen, Malaysia enjoys the benefits received from diversity and it‟s an image that‟s projected to the world. Given then that Malaysia paints itself as a multiethnic and multicultural nation, I was surprised and disappointed to discover that Malaysia has written into its Constitution that the Bumiputera (Malays and certain indigenous groups) people have certain rights over and above all non-Bumiputera peoples. Articles 153 and 160 of the Federal Constitution of Malaysia provide that the Bumiputera have a “special‟ place in society. These laws are the basis for an extensive programme of affirmative action or positive discrimination that borders on racism; meaning, amongst other things, that certain administrative positions are only open to Bumiputera; that a certain percentage of higher education places must be held for Bumiputera only, with lower qualifying grades necessary; that certain large companies must have a certain minimum percentage of Bumiputera on the controlling board to be able to be listed on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange; a certain percentage of new housing must be sold to Bumiputera and a discount must be offered and so on.

For a country to use “cultural cohesion‟ as a marketing tool and to simultaneously enjoy the wealth creation of one of its largest ethnic groups but yet actively and deliberately make discrimination such an iron-clad, entrenched feature of its constitution and its society, with all the consequences that entails, is completely wrong.

Before I left Hong Kong, I took a day trip over to Macau, the gambling centre of South-East Asia, with Deborah, Jerry, Eleanor and Joseph, Macau is a short hour-long ferry ride from Hong Kong‟s Tsim Sha Tsui terminal and borders Guangdong province. Macau was colonised by the Portuguese back in the day when Portugal was a world power in the 16th Century. Macau was handed back to China just two years after Hong Kong‟s sovereignty was transferred and on similar terms. Macau has a similar political structure to Hong Kong in that it‟s largely autonomous but ultimately part of the wider China. Macau and Hong Kong, are the two Special Administrative Regions of China, operating under the same “One Country; Two Systems” principle.

Macau is one of the richest cities in the world due in large part to its massive gambling industry (reputedly bigger than Las Vegas) and its manufacturing interests. I‟m not really a gambling man (if I do gamble, it‟s only really on myself in games), so I didn’t play in the casinos but I did visit the newest on the island, the Venetian (reportedly the largest casino in the world – for now at least): an enormous hotel/casino complex with malls and indoor reconstructions of Venice (seriously…!); so you can see a fairly faithful reconstruction of the Piazza San Marco and the odd canal with obligatory gondolas and singing gondoliers.

Afterwards, we headed to the old quarter where vestiges of Macau‟s past as a colony of Portugal can be seen. Here, we enjoyed the delicious Portuguese-style egg custard tarts with a caramelised top; it‟s easy to guzzle half a dozen in one go. There‟s a winding, cobbled street full of bakeries and dried meats vendors where people vie to give you a taste of their wares. The Old Quarter of Macau is a world away from Hong Kong with ancient colonial buildings and squares with unmistakeable European architecture, and bendy streets crowned with the incredible Ruins of St Paul‟s, the remains of the old Cathedral of St Paul; only the four storey front façade remains and is completely free-standing. It’s more mindboggling than the Tower of Pisa; you just can‟t work out how the thing doesn’t topple over!

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. “Come, my friends, Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho‟ much is taken, much abides; and tho‟
We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Tennyson, Ulysses

FROM MELBOURNE, I flew the nine hours northwards to Hong Kong, the first stop on the Asian leg of my travels. Hong Kong is a true metropolis, and it‟s the leading South-East Asian tiger city. Since 1997, Hong Kong has been a “Special Administrative Region‟ (HKSAR); officially part of the People’s Republic of China but in most matters (bar defence) self-governing. Hong Kong is comprised of three main areas: Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and the New Territories; the latter two are part of the Kowloon Peninsula attached to mainland China, with the New Territories being the closer to mainland China. Hong Kong Island, as its name suggests, is separated from the Peninsula by water. Hong Kong has around 7 million people packed into just over a tiny 1,000 km2 making it one of the most densely populated places in the world, explaining the relentlessly high-rise nature of the skyline. Despite Hong Kong‟s position as a global city, it‟s remarkably un-multicultural with 95% of the population being Han Chinese.

To understand Hong Kong, you need to know a bit about its history. Hong Kong was a sleepy, undeveloped Chinese territory until the 1840s. In a dispute over the opium trade (i.e. Britain wanted to force China to continue importing its opium, generally on the black market), China became embroiled in the First Opium War with Britain. As a result of losing this war, Hong Kong Island was ceded to Britain in 1842 in the Treaty of Nanking. That wasn‟t the end of it, and, after losing the Second Opium War, the colony was enlarged to include much of the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860. Then, in 1898, a 99 year lease was granted to the British for the New Territories. Hong Kong was finally transferred back to China in 1997 on the basis that its autonomy would be largely protected for at least 50 years (were it not for the 99 year lease, Hong Kong might still be under British governance today). Whilst under British control, Hong Kong became one of the most developed places on the planet. Its freedom and strategic importance helped make Hong Kong an economic powerhouse and one of the world‟s foremost financial centres. Its history gives Hong Kong an almost unrivalled duality; a true nexus of both Eastern and Western cultures; a cliché that‟s thrown around a bit loosely when describing Hong Kong. However, there‟s definitely more than a grain of truth to this: as opposed to cities such as Beijing or Bangkok, an English-speaking visitor to Hong Kong can orient herself easily; you can be an expat in Hong Kong and never have to learn Cantonese. Then again, however, the cliché isn‟t always as true as you might think because despite the visible Western influences, as we shall see, Hong Kong‟s psyche, culture and traditions remain firmly Chinese.

My cousin, Jerry Kwan, kindly picked me up from the airport at 5am and, for the duration of my stay in Hong Kong, I stayed with him and my aunt, Deborah Chan, in Kwai Chung in the New Territories (they were fantastic hosts and a huge thanks to them for making my stay so enjoyable). Arriving that morning, I was too excited to sleep, so I persuaded him to join me for a walk around Kowloon for some food and some exploration. That morning, we walked through Mongkok, Jordan, Prince Edward, and Yau Ma Tei and turned around at Tsim Sha Tsui at the Harbour. Surprisingly, nothing is open at 10am in Hong Kong. Jerry explained that the shop owners don‟t close until late at night and were probably still asleep. The next day, we went to the Hong Kong Island side for a long walk from Tai Koo Shing to the Peak, a thin stretch of land between the harbour and the mountainous terrain of central Hong Kong Island, an overall journey of around five hours. Tai Koo Shing is a middle class area in the heart of old-school Hong Kong in the east of Hong Kong Island, with impressive views of the harbour, achingly modern high-rise buildings and enormous commercial malls. It‟s the Hong Kong that I fondly remember from childhood holidays. From here, we walked westwards through Quarry Bay where it’s more traditional with makeshift food stalls lining the streets and a more sedate pace of life. It wasn‟t long until we reached Fortress Hill and North Point, two districts which are classically Hong Kong, with tall buildings from the 1960s with iconic neon signs hanging off the sides of the buildings and over the roads. The shops sell everything from dried mushrooms to dried fish to cosmetics to Chinese cakes to traditional soups brewed with fearsome-looking fungi and primeval roots. We followed the tram tracks to Tin Hau and Wan Chai and turned southwards towards the Peak. Normally, you access the Peak by the world-famous Peak Tram; instead we walked it and it took us more than an hour to reach the top. At 552m, Victoria Peak is the highest mountain on Hong Kong Island and the views are truly stupendous! You can see central Hong Kong with its massive skyscrapers sprawled out beneath you with Victoria Harbour beyond that and Kowloon in the distance. You can appreciate exactly how pushed for space Hong Kong is, and, with hardly any room to build new property, the only way forward was upwards. The Peak is one of the most visited attractions in Hong Kong; it‟s not hard to see why. It‟s easy to spend hours up here until dusk when the lights start to appear below on one of the most instantly recognisable skylines in the world.

I‟ve been to Hong Kong six times before; five as a child and once as an adult. I‟ve seen all the touristy stuff before such as the Victoria Peak, the Star Ferry, the futuristic Central, the boozy district of Lan Kwai Fong, Wan Chai, the theme park Ocean Park (although I did go again this time – they‟ve got red pandas now!) etc. on previous visits; this time, I definitely wanted to see a bit more of how the locals lived and absorb as much as possible of the “real” Hong Kong. I also wanted to catch up with my many relatives who live here. My dad‟s from Hong Kong; he‟s one of seven siblings so I‟ve a large extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins including Eleanor and Joe, Perry and May, Diana and Frankie, Bill and Lorry, Deborah, Jerry, Stephen and Mendy, Andy and Jenny, Eric, Davy, and uncles and aunts from my dad‟s mother‟s side. I caught up with all them over several teas, outings and delicious meals. It was great to see how they were all doing. It was also really good to catch up with an old friend from law school, Yu-Wing Man, who took me to off-the-beaten-track foodie haunts in Central and Soho on Hong Kong Island.

For me, seeing how locals live always starts with food, particularly seeing how and where the locals eat: I wanted to try everything. Chinese food is made up of various influences, both from within the wider China and from abroad. Within China, there are 22 provinces, the most notable, food-wise, being Guangdong (particularly famous for dim sum); Sichuan (famous for super-hot hot-pots of chilli infused stock in which various meats, vegetables and noodles are cooked); Chiu-Chow in the East of China (particularly famous for soy and vinegar marinades); Shaanxi (noodles); Shanghai and Beijing (famous for dumplings).

Almost every day, I ate at least one meal in a Cha-Chaan-Teng, which are simple tea houses of the sort where the vast majority of Hong Kong people go to eat a breakfast of congee (a delicious rice based soup or porridge eaten topped with fried fish skins and crispy deep fried bread), noodles, or cheung fun (a rice based thin dough often steamed or sometimes fried (filled with pork, prawns or beef) and eaten with soy sauce and chilli oil), and Hong Kong-style coffee (with condensed milk) or yuen-yeung (half coffee and half tea with condensed milk).

You also can‟t miss the countless hole-in-the-wall (mostly Chiu-Chow) operations where you simply walk down the street and there‟ll literally be a hole in the wall where you can see the kitchen and big pots of sauce (soy-based) and stock for cooking various meats such as geese intestines (they‟re thin, tubular, incredibly soft, remarkably delicate and eaten with a sauce of finely crushed ginger, garlic and oil).

However, for the quintessential Hong Kong eating experience, head straight for a Dai Pai Dong. The Dai Pai Dong originated around the turn of the 20th Century when impromptu stalls were set up by enterprising cooks to feed the vast numbers of industrial workers busily building Hong Kong. The government of the day actually encouraged these establishments and gave out special licences for them, which happened to be physically bigger than the previous licences, giving them their name, literally “big licences”, Dai Pai Dongs. These are really old-school places of the sort where you sit on reclaimed beer crates or tiny, plastic stools; they‟re communal, people often share tables, and they‟re pretty untidy. This may be why the Government is now trying to slowly phase them out. However, in recent years, many locals have realised the importance of these restaurants and a grass-roots campaign to preserve the Dai Pai Dong is beginning to gain momentum. The food at Dai Pai Dongs tends to be incredibly cheap and it‟s also characterised by its use of the mythical wok hei (lively wok), or the flavour that can only be imparted by the wok being heated to an insanely high temperature prior to cooking. Classic Dai Pai Dong dishes include chilli-fried aubergines and fu yu chow tung choi, a spinach-type vegetable, cooked in a fermented beancurd sauce – delicious! The experience is rough and ready; just how I like to eat. There‟s friendly bustle and a liberating absence of niceties; in many places you can just spit bones out onto the table or into a bucket on the floor. One thing I noticed, particularly in the Dai Pai Dong, is the emphasis paid on hygiene. You get a jug full of hot tea (the first brew) with which to wash your chopsticks, spoon and bowl. Post SARS, and the ensuing explosion of interest in ultra-hygiene, this practice is almost ubiquitous.

I ate so much in Hong Kong; I really wanted to eat everything that a local might enjoy and that I may have missed before. I ate small frogs (there‟s very little meat on them and, I know it‟s a cliché, but they really do taste a bit like chicken!) in rice claypots (glorious, sticky rice) on Temple Street. I salivated over deep-fried rotten beancurds on a stick in MongKok (they really are rotten; they wait until a thin layer of rot forms on the outside; they then deep-fry it to kill the bacteria and mould; they smell really funky and you can sniff them a mile away! Whilst not for everyone, they taste salty and crispy and best eaten with chilli sauce.). I wolfed down soy-marinated geese intestines in Yau Ma Tei, where you sit outside on tiny stools on the pavement and they give you a plateful of tiny chopped up intestines that look like tubers and should by all accounts be a bit rubbery, but they‟re soft and slightly salty and with a hint of sweetness – delicious. I ate turtle shell soup in Causeway Bay; literally a jelly made from turtle shells which is solid black. It tastes bitter like black tea and is best eaten with lashings of honey to take the lip-pursing edge off. It‟s supposed to have a „cooling‟ effect on the body (about which more later). I ate pigs‟ ovaries in Tin Hau which are surprisingly large, pinky-white organs (similar in shape to an ear!); they‟re chewy and tasty. I tried pigs‟ blood jelly for the first time (gelatinous, supernaturally and disconcertingly smooth) in Tsuen Wan in the New Territories, where I also had the best wor tip dumplings I have ever eaten. I was walking down the street with my cousin when I suddenly caught wind of something delicious. It came from a small alleyway where someone had set up a tiny stall with wor tip; dumplings filled with pork and vegetables encased with a crispy, thick pastry and usually fried; they‟re also called „pot-stickers‟. These were hot, sticky and filled with the most delicious broth and pork. I would find their equal in the Shanghai variant later in my trip. I also loved my new favourite fruit, durian (known as the King of Fruits in South-East Asia due to its large size, its heavily spiked exterior and its pungent odour which honestly smells a bit like shit, going some way to explaining why it‟s not allowed on planes!); it‟s rich, custardy, sweet, spicy and utterly delicious! I also ate in one of the oldest dim sum houses in Hong Kong, the Lin Heung Tea House on Wellington Street (with my Aunt Diana and Uncle Frankie) where there are no reservations and everyone shares huge tables regardless of whether anybody actually knows anyone else; people wait behind you waiting to grab your spot the second that you‟ve finished. This is a slice of old Hong Kong; one where they still serve tea in pots with no spout (just a dish on top) which makes pouring a cupful for yourself and your guests a very messy experience! Here, I enjoyed steamed buns, plump and juicy king prawn dumplings and steamed chicken feet in black beans.

What else is part of Hong Kong culture? Gambling is hugely popular, even though by law, there are only three places where you can legally gamble: at the racetrack (there are two in Hong Kong: Happy Valley and Sha Tin, where I saw the last meet of the season and watched HK Cantopop legend, George Lam, perform), on the Mark Six Lottery and on football. However, such is the appetite for gambling, that it often spills into other games, one of which is mah-jong: a wildly popular and addictive ancient Chinese gambling game involving different sets of tiles; the object of which is to be the first to arrange your tiles into an acceptable winning format, and, following this, into a winning format that attracts the most points possible (generally the more difficult a format is to achieve, the more points you win). There are four players, one player acts as the „dealer‟, a designation that moves around the table. One revolution constitutes a round and a session might last six to eight rounds and, in total, takes about six hours. I played quite a bit of mahjong with relatives and family friends; I‟m not very good at mahjong; good enough not to get knocked out early but not so good so as to win overall. At my level, mahjong is a war of attrition, not blitzkrieg, and, at the moment, I generally bleed slowly to death!

I also tried another popular Hong Kong pastime: foot massages. These parlours are everywhere! I went to one with Deborah and Jerry in Yau Ma Tei. You sit next to each other chatting over a cup of tea, watching TV, which is all very convivial but then the heady mix of pleasure and serious pain begins. The masseurs start gently but then begin to apply some serious pressure to all points in your feet, ankles and calves. There‟s a tendon linking the heel to the toes that, when pressure is applied to it, just killed me! I was told that the pain was caused by an imbalance in some cartilage in my feet; whatever it was, it really hurt. I‟m not sure if my health was improved as a result of the massage but I‟d recommend trying the experience.

I enjoyed Hong Kong-style drinking which generally involves drinking games and getting hammered as fast as possible! One game is called Liar and involves dice and some cups. Each player must shake their own five dice onto a table and not reveal their outcome. Instead, you merely state how many of a particular face you think exists in total between the players. For example, with two players and five dice each, I could declare that there are five “fours” between us i.e. if both of us revealed our dice immediately, there would be five or more “fours” between us (minimum possible = no “fours” between us, maximum possible number of fours that there could be between us = ten “fours”). My opponent must either call my bluff (she might have no fours herself giving rise to the relatively improbable scenario that I have five “fours” to make the stated belief that “there are five „fours‟ between us” true) or she must raise the bet by stating that there are six or seven or eight or nine or ten instances (i.e. must call an occurrence greater than the original five “fours”) of the same face “four” or of another face such as a “two” between us. I can then call her bluff or continue escalating the bluffing. Once a bluff has been called, the „truth‟ is revealed and someone has either been exposed as a „liar‟ or has called the „wrong‟ bluff. Whoever this is must drink. It‟s a fast game and gets you roundly battered very quickly and is just one of a whole raft of immensely popular drinking games amongst young people in Hong Kong.

Traditions and deference to ancestors are particularly important to Hong Kong people. Religion doesn‟t play a huge part in people‟s lives but Taoist, Buddhist and Confucian thought provides the framework for the maintenance of centuries-old customs, such as when incense and paper money are burned in ancestors‟ honour. I took part in this tradition when paying respects to my grandparents whose bones reside in a huge Taoist-style cemetery in Sha-Tin in the New Territories on a side of a forested hill so big that you need an escalator to get around it. We went to a shop that specifically sells incense for burning to your ancestors. The offerings have become ever more elaborate over the years; you can buy paper mobile phones for example, or suits and paper whisky bottles; anything that you think your ancestors might need or want in the afterlife and might have run out of since your last offering. Symbolic paper money is always a good bet and we bought a sackful (literally!) of paper offerings to burn at the cemetery. The burning takes place in a cast kiln that reaches fearsomely high temperatures and, once burned, you go off to find your ancestors‟ remains. You light some incense sticks and bow your head several times and place them in ash to slowly burn and smoke away. This is a ritual that takes place all over Hong Kong and beyond, whether at cemeteries like this once or twice a year perhaps, or daily in peoples‟ homes. It‟s a part of life here and wouldn‟t even be considered to be particularly spiritual or religious; it‟s more like a tradition and an essential strand of the culture.

I saw a lot of this aspect of Hong Kong culture and, after I visited the massively impressive Buddhist-style Chin Lin nunnery in Diamond Hill in Kowloon and the huge Buddha statue on Lantau Island (on a hill overlooking the nearby airport), I had my fortune told in a Taoist monastery in Wong Tai Sin. You‟re given a cup of sticks numbered from 1 to 100. You kneel down in front of the altar and, holding the cup in both hands, gently and repeatedly bow, which shakes the cup. Eventually, one stick will slowly emerge and fall out (I‟m not sure about the physics as to why only one comes out!). You need to look up that number (I think mine was number 67 or something like that) in a fortune book. Apparently, the possible fortunes really are all different and, whilst there are some fantastically good ones, there are also some truly terrible outcomes possible in that cup! Mine was apparently pretty good, not supremely amazing, but pretty good.

Hong Kong people are huge fans and believers in Feng Shui, an ancient belief system that that can perhaps best be described as the search for balance and harmony. Feng Shui beliefs influence anything from how and where buildings are built to what to call your child. One of my cousins, Stephen Chan, even named both his daughters after consultation with Feng Shui masters. Apparently, one of them needed a „cooling‟ name to temper a possibly tempestuous nature. During my visit, I became a huge convert to Chinese fortune-telling having had my palms and face read. This is based on Feng Shui principles and well-trained masters can determine facts about your life just from your palm and your face, both past and, hopefully, of the future. Mimi Chan, my aunt‟s friend, read my face and my palm (left hand for people under 30) and her ability to identify many of my personality traits (which I‟m not going to divulge here!) was spookily accurate.

Hong Kong people are firm believers in the principles of Chinese medicine which, I think, can be summed up as not too much yin and not too much yang, or, in Hong Kong parlance, not too much “hot‟ and not too much “cold‟. In the body, too much “cold‟ will cause a weakened immune system leading to illness, and too much “hot‟ can, amongst other things, lead to nose bleeds, indigestion and spots! “Cold‟ foods range from dairy products such as yoghurt to turtle shell soups. “Hot‟ foods are generally fried and spicy (obviously!) foods, but also, strangely enough, durian. It‟s well known that if you eat too much in the way of “hot‟, you‟d better take on some “cooling‟ food, or accept the consequences.

Another aspect of the Hong Kong psyche is the insatiable appetite for consumption. Hong Kong is highly consumerist and shopping is a major pastime. There‟s at least one major mall in every town filled with mad-keen shoppers. The malls are amongst the most modern and expansive I‟ve ever seen, filled with every shop you can think of, cinemas, ice-rinks and huge food courts. Even on Friday nights, people spend their time in the markets and in the malls. There‟s everything from the most exclusive of luxury brands to the most enterprising of street markets. You can get almost anything you want here at highly competitive prices, primarily because retailers can import almost anything and only certain imported products such as alcohol, cars, tobacco and petrol attract tax.

My first stop in Melbourne was in the suburbs, about 30 minutes outside the CBD, in an area called Glen Waverley. A very good friend of mine, Ivy Huang (whom I met whilst she was travelling in London at the turn of 2008), very kindly put me up for a few days on arrival, which was fantastic; after being on the road for three months sleeping in hostel dormitories, this was really welcome. Generally, you are able to relax in a dormitory (touch wood, you‟re not likely to get robbed or worse). However, you‟re only able to switch off around 95%; unconsciously, some part of you is alert to the fact that you‟re sharing a room with complete strangers. Here, in Glen Waverley however, for the first time in a long time, I was able to fully switch off and relax; a real comfort. Ivy was also one of the very few constants during my seven weeks in Melbourne (with trips to the Yarra Valley, Sorrento, the zoo, the International Comedy Festival and many other outings including exploring the enormous range of Melbourne bars and pubs; a huge thanks to her for her kindness, hospitality and generosity throughout my stay). The other constants were The Nunnery, a great hostel in Fitzroy and, sporadically, the Salad Club, a highly convivial and enjoyably very boozy dinner party club consisting of Ivy and her friends (Olga Lapchine (a good friend whom I also met in London; she was travelling with Ivy, whilst also on an extended visit to Europe. Olga also very kindly spent time showing me around Melbourne with very welcome suggestions on things to see and do; a huge thanks to her as well) Sade Forbes, Nathan Taylor, Ivy Pham, Kathleen Tham, Ross Laxton and Jimmy Cheah), with events ranging from souvlaki (a huge Australian version of the kebab, huge slabs of meat on a spit; delicious) parties to pasta suppers to Russian Easter lunches.

After a few days in Glen Waverley, I set up camp in the Nunnery hostel in the northern inner suburb of Fitzroy, between the suburbs of Carlton and Collingwood. The Nunnery was just that: a converted former home for nuns but which now housed travellers and backpackers. It had three floors, a couple of annexes, a large common room, a communal kitchen and a beautiful courtyard for barbeques. It was like a little commune with people ranging from long-termers to people just in for a day or so. I was in a dorm for the seven or so weeks I was there and I had the pleasure of meeting thoroughly interesting people throughout my stay. It‟s very easy to make friends in a long-term hostel like this: you get chatting in your dorm or in the kitchen, have a coffee, drink boxed wine and go out exploring the city. In no particular order, I spent great times with the following: Julia Roe and Jo Taylor (travellers from Wolverhampton); Jasper Enstrup and Lars Peters (German dorm buddies of mine who were in Melbourne on a dentistry student exchange programme. They both had that very engaging wide-eyed excitement of being on the other side of the world in a totally new city and were always keen to go and do something), Nimrod Gargya from London (a great guy in his sixties from London who was over for several weeks to see his daughter settle in after emigrating from London to Melbourne. He could drink and party with the best of them and was the embodiment of the slogan “young at heart” and I really hope I‟ve got his energy and lust for life when I‟m his age. He had spent his childhood and early youth in Melbourne and kindly took the time to show me round the Carlton suburb), Craig Buoniconti from the States (a great guy from Boston who just lived for travelling. His particular favourite region was South-East Asia), Jen Sambien and Verena (German travellers), Lysa Jumelle from Paris (a traveller who‟d just come from backpacking around Vietnam and Laos and was trying to work as much as possible to extend her stay in Melbourne. We spent ages in thrift shops in Collingwood, random laneway bars and hanging out in Fitzroy coffee shops), Jon Tree (lovely guy from England always up for a pint, an explore and kicking a football around. He developed a strong love for surfing during his time in Australia), Jeremie Reist (a Swiss soldier who also happened to be a no-holds-barred fighter with a 14-0 record, all knock-downs!), Angeline Kamleh (a lovely postgraduate human rights law student who was from Adelaide, always keen for the cinema, a pint and some searching conversation), Kate from New South Wales (an aspiring writer fully committed to the bohemian lifestyle as a prerequisite for creativity), Eli Lee from London (an aspiring novelist who had moved to Sydney for six months in order to finish her novel whilst at the same time working as a financial journalist; she was in Melbourne on a mini-break), and Angela from Sydney, most of whom I‟m still in touch with today. I met teachers, dentists, civil servants, several architects, an Aboriginal band and the usual hostel traveller mix of aspiring musicians, actors, writers and artists; it‟s fantastic to meet such a diverse array of people and with whom, by virtue of each being travellers, I also shared a high degree of like-mindedness, a quality in others that I came to value increasingly highly during my travels.

Fitzroy is absolutely the kind of place that I want to live in the future. It‟s unashamedly bohemian, alternative and creative. Fitzroy is centred on the parallel streets of Brunswick Street and Smith Street (which has a Camden/Tooting feel). The people here are diverse; their diversity contributing to the optimism and buzz of the area. I met entrepreneurs, artists (Melbourne seemed to be a magnet for young creatives, and particularly artists), singer/songwriters, artisans, street-poets, guerrilla gardeners setting up public patches of vegetable plots (I remember meeting this guy who‟d set up some large vegetable boxes made out of reclaimed pallets. He wanted to develop some community spirit and believed that communal spaces where anyone could help out and where anyone was welcome to the fruits of that effort might help foster this quality. I remember there were some teething problems because someone had taken all the tomatoes. I loved the idea though.), social workers developing sanctuaries for former trafficked sex-workers (next to the Fitzroy library), writers, conservationists and designers.

One thing that Fitzroy is renowned for is its live music scene. There are loads of bars and pubs which host mostly free live music every night. In my first week in the area, I went to at least one gig a night, literally just walking across the road to the next venue! To be fair, I did see quite a lot of fairly bad music (who cares?!) but I also saw some fantastic stuff such as a band called The Fearless Vampire Killers. The bands tend to be emerging local guitar-based groups and I got the sense that the venues where they play take very seriously their self-imposed responsibility to develop local talent. Fantastic venues around here include Bar Open, The Old Bar, The Evelyn Hotel and, one of my favourites, Yah-Yahs, a deliciously grimy, red behemoth of a room serving cheap beer; it‟s eclectically filled with sweaty, tweedy types, the obligatory skinny jeans lot and big-haired, alternative types in bare feet.

Fitzroy is also a fine example of that other famed Melbournian preoccupation: coffee. A stroll up Brunswick Street alone will reveal at least 20 coffee shops with different themes, beans and blends. Most of these become bars in the evening ensuring that socialising in Melbourne is all day long, such as at the Black Cat. My favourite coffee bar, though, was Alimentari, another example of how things can be done just right: delicious coffee, awesome food, artisanal deli-like interior and full of little touches such as tap water being chilled in green stoppered bottles in the fridge from which customers just help themselves; I‟ve never seen that before. It‟s just right. Another of my absolutely favourite places in Fitzroy is Bimbos Deluxe, which offered lunchtime deals of 4AUD pizzas, an absolute bargain and great for the area‟s impecunious creatives, students and backpackers. The Bimbos pizzas were another example of things being done right: thin crust, lots of toppings, generously sized, ridiculously cheap and most importantly, completely delicious. I also loved the place‟s dress code: no suits and no ties! A few doors down was the Vegie Bar, another Fitzroy institution, with great food at fantastically low prices in an impossibly modern dining room.

Melbourne is routinely voted as one of the world‟s most liveable cities. It‟s easy to see why. Everything seems geared towards the well-being of its residents. For instance:

It has an excellent location: it‟s on the Victorian coast within a huge natural bay (Port Philip) enjoying properly seasonal weather (it was 47 degrees for five days straight in February 2009, and famed for its „four seasons in one day‟ climate – sunshine in the morning and hailstorms and gales in the afternoon). Just 60km from the city centre is the Yarra Valley, one of Australia‟s top wine-producing areas, in a country producing great New World wines. I went there with Ivy on a wine tour shortly before I flew out of Melbourne. The Yarra Valley is an idyllic picture-postcard region with gentle hills and field after field of vineyards. A particularly enjoyable tasting session was at Seville Hill, where John D‟Aloisio, the winemaker, introduced us to gorgeous wines. I particularly remember a 2005 Reserve Shiraz and a superb 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon; delicious! We also enjoyed cellar doors at Giant Steps, the sumptuous Chandon vineyard, the niche Coombe Farm, De Bortolis and the Mandala winery.

Nearby lie superb beaches such as Lorne, Torquay, Bell‟s and Sorrento; all are within an hour‟s drive away. It was in Sorrento (a beautiful area at the eastern tip of Port Philip, about 70km from Melbourne) that I experienced my first “rip”, on one of the back beaches. A “rip” is a strong current of seawater that flows away from the beach. It‟s not an undertow but a separate current of water that pulls you out to sea. People can get exhausted from swimming against the rip and subsequently drown. Swimming lessons are mandatory for Australians at school and, with the strong beach culture, it‟s not difficult to see why. Australians are taught to spot rips and, when caught in one, to swim across it. I was in a large rock pool just glorying in letting the waves crash over me, when suddenly, I was pulled further and further away from the edge of the rock pool, even after swimming hard against the current pulling me out to sea. Eventually, I made it back to the rock edge, completely exhausted and very respectful of rips thereafter!

It‟s immensely cultured: Melbourne is famed for being the culture capital of Australia. This is clearly a dig at Sydney, its far brasher rival city, for when you say that Melbourne is “cultured”, you‟re also saying is that Sydney is un-cultured (or at the very least, less cultured), and what we’re really saying when we say that Sydney is less cultured is that it‟s not particularly sophisticated! I definitely got this impression having spent time in both places. Sydney is geared to the beach, physical exercise and tanning, whilst the Melbournian is almost a parody of Euro-cultured i.e. coffee-addicted, literary-minded, enjoys live music, wears head to toe black, smokes languidly, sips cocktails, has a strong interest in art and fashion, enjoys microbreweries and vineyards etc. Perhaps you could say, slightly more provocatively, that Sydney is a bit more American and that Melbourne is more European, in its widest sense. Obviously, this is a massive generalisation but the overall thrust, I‟m sure, isn‟t far off the mark!

A major factor leading to Melbourne‟s reputation for culture stems from the literary resources available in the city. Aside from the wealth of bookshops, there are several excellent libraries, the flagship of which is the State Library of Victoria. The State Library is easily my favourite building in Melbourne. Victoria spent AUD200m just on the State Library‟s refurbishment, the crowning glory of which is the LaTrobe Reading Room whose design is based on the Great Dome of the Reading Room of the British Museum – it‟s spectacular! Not long after inception in 1856, the Head Librarian copied, book for book, the entire catalogue of the British Library. From those early days, the State Library has surpassed the British Library, which itself has moved to less central locations, resulting in less accessibility, and limited admission. The State Library, by contrast, is incredibly well stocked and keenly focused on its commitment as a fully public library with hundreds of magazines and journals being subscribed to and providing comprehensive research facilities and completely free internet access. It has impressive exhibitions, currently on travel, the history of Melbourne, and the written word. There is an imposing gallery showcasing old and contemporary Victorian paintings, both of portraits (of the great and the good of Victoria) and Victorian landscapes (old and contemporary). The Library even has a dedicated chess room, housing a bequeathed collection of chess books rated as the third most comprehensive in the world. I spent many happy hours in the State Library; a hugely stimulating and invigorating place, and another example of how things should be. I don‟t think I’ve read as much as during my time in Melbourne. I was reading loads everyday; whether it was the new Popular Penguins orange series, journals, or art history; I just wanted to read.. (Why isn‟t the British Library as good as this? Shouldn‟t the British Library be more accessible and welcoming to everyone? Shouldn‟t every book in their catalogue be available to view?)

In terms of Melbournian high culture, there’s a fantastic art gallery called the National Gallery of Victoria, housed in a huge granite building on St Kilda Road in the very heart of the city, just off the Yarra River. The building is strikingly monolithic with Fascist leanings, of the sort seen in Madrid, Lisbon and Rome. This is next to the Arts Centre, a massive underground complex with an Eiffel Tower-esque structure on its roof, where top quality shows are performed on constant rotation and where I saw my first ballet performance since school: Firebird, Petrouchka and Les Sylphides. There‟s also a magnificent museum in Carlton Gardens (next to the World Heritage listed Royal Exhibition Building right opposite the Nunnery) with great exhibitions such as one celebrating the huge range of (mostly deadly) Australian bugs, snakes and spiders. I‟d walk past this every day (free internet), across a huge paved space between the two buildings. The space, because it was so perfectly smooth and flat, would always be occupied by skaters, hipsters on single gear bikes practising tricks, and rollerblade hockey players.

In March/April every year, Melbourne also hosts its month-long International Comedy Festival, regarded as the third biggest comedy festival in the world, attracting more than 400,000 people. The whole spectrum of comedy is represented from globally known stand-ups, edgy up-and-coming comedians, local talent, sketch shows, musicals, improvisation, fringe shows; all in a variety of venues in and around the city centre. The venue could be in a tiny pub, a theatre, the Melbourne Town Hall on Swanston Street, a student‟s union, a bar etc. There‟s such a buzz in Melbourne when the Festival is on as performers take to the streets to promote and hopefully persuade people to go and see their show; often the shows will clash with those of other performers leading to comical mock fights for your affections. Most of the shows are in the evenings and tickets, with the exception of the very biggest names, are generally available right up until the show‟s opening time. Outside the Melbourne Town Hall is a huge blackboard of shows, dates and times; simply turn up in the evening and see what takes your fancy. I was fortunate enough to see some very funny stuff – I enjoyed David Quirk (very dry, deadpan and just on the edge of acceptability) and, in particular, an engaging comic named Nick Cody.

Melbourne is also a foodie city, and, for me, the heart of this foodie city, is the open-air Queen Victoria Market off Elizabeth Street and Victoria Street, a giant complex of stalls and a major draw for tourists and locals alike. There‟s a great deli section showcasing the different immigrant cultures where cheeses sit happily next to tabouleh and spicy bratwurst; a super value butchery and fishmonger section; a huge fruit and vegetable section both indoors and out, a great place for really cheap, fresh food and where I discovered Tuscan cabbage or cavolo nero (my new favourite vegetable); delicious churros and fabulously gooey melted chocolate from a stall run by Olga‟s boyfriend, Robbie. The Victoria Market is one of my favourite places in Melbourne; I loved wandering around at 4pm looking for bargains.

Melbourne is also completely sport crazy: the world-class facilities that it possesses and the events that it hosts truly mark Melbourne out as a global city. Again, following on with the theme of accessibility, its world class sporting venues are slap-bang in the middle of the city. There‟s the world famous Melbourne Cricket Ground (the MCG or simply the “G”), just a short walk east along the Yarra River from Flinders Street Station. I took a tour of the MCG, even walking through the Long Room, which, whilst I‟m not the biggest cricket fan in the world, set the hairs on the back of my neck on end. I saw the points in the grandstand where historically famous sixes had been hit. I also watched some actual cricket there, a very sparsely supported inter-state match between Queensland and Victoria. That day, I saw two centuries smashed by the Victorians and I even saw Andrew Symonds (who had been recently dropped from the Test side touring South Africa at the time) in the field. Next to the MCG is the Rod Laver Arena which hosts the Australian Open tennis, one of the sport‟s four Grand Slam Championships. I also saw the track around Albert Park to the south of Melbourne’s CBD which hosted the Formula One Australian Grand Prix during my stay. I could hear the racing cars whining from the other side of the city!

However, despite all these other well-supported global sports, the sport that Melbourne goes completely nuts for is Australian Rules Football (AFL), or simply “footy”. I was lucky enough to see a game at the Etihad Stadium, next to Southern Cross Station. This was a pre-season tournament called the NAB Cup. The match was a semi-final between Carlton Football Club (“the Blues”) and Geelong Football Club (“The Cats”). I was very kindly taken by Ross Laxton, one of the guys from Glen Waverley, his girlfriend Simone Cunningham and one of his friends, Cameron. Ross gave me one of his old Carlton sleeveless vests and I‟m now a Carlton fan by default. Contrary to commonly held British opinion, footy is not a bastardised hybrid of football and rugby (!); it is in fact an exciting, fast, high-impact and high-contact blend of hand-passing and kicking. AFL is a Victorian obsession loved by representatives from all demographics. The sport pages are at least 90% dedicated to AFL with full page pictures, breakdown analysis, statistics, previews, random gossip stories, tales of footy glory from decades past etc. The main news stories when I was there focused on Ben Cousins, a gifted player with drug problems, and also keen reporting on player violence inflicted on teammates during pre-season training! Melbournians absolutely live and breathe footy. At the game, I was heckled by a couple of stoutly built, middle-aged women, Geelong fans, from the row in front who turned around with open contempt, “It’s a fucking mark, not a catch, it‟s a mark! Will someone fucking tell him the fucking rules? He’s with you guys yeah? Tell him the rules! A fucking catch?! It‟s a mark!” Suitably chastised, I slunk off to the beer stall. I tried playing AFL during my time in Melbourne; it‟s very difficult to perform even the basic moves. There‟s the hand pass, where you hold the oval ball in one hand and “pop‟ the point with your other hand clenched as a fist. It hurts! There’s the ball-bounce which you have to do when running with the ball (as you can‟t run with the ball in your hands). The idea is to throw the ball down in front of you whilst running and bounce it in such a way that it comes back to you. The ball has to strike the ground near the front point at an angle with the ball pointing back towards you whilst running; it‟s a similar move to dribbling in basketball, but with an oval ball, this is a seriously difficult skill to master!

Melbourne is a fantastic place for going out. Aside from live music, there’s also a strong underground culture of laneway bars. Laneways (or alleyways) are an integral part of Melbourne life and they criss-cross the CBD area as bounded by La Trobe Street, Spencer Street, Spring Street and Flinders Street; some of the laneways are signposted, many aren‟t. Speakeasy-style laneway bars are tucked away in these myriad alleyways. For example, you might be wandering down Swanston Street and take a right down Lonsdale Street. From here, your actual next first right wouldn‟t be the next main street of Elizabeth Street; it would in fact be a narrow, grimy looking, smelly alleyway called Drewery Lane. At first glance, there’s nothing down here but refuse containers and graffiti. However, wander about 70 metres down this alleyway and next on your left will be an even smaller, even more non-descript alleyway called Snyder Lane, again filled with dumpsters and a solid dead-end about 60 metres down. At the end of this alleyway, though, on the right, is a small green Coopers sign above a door with no name (BTW best beer in Australia is Little Creatures Pale Ale (from Freemantle in Western Australia) and Coopers Original Pale Ale (from South Australia)). Push through the meat-locker-style plastic curtain, walk through the small, empty lobby, climb up the stairs and suddenly you’re in a cool little bar called Sister Bella’s, with great pizzas, mulled wine, and a complete world away from the bustle of the city. Melbourne‟s CBD is full of these great places. There’s Section 8, just off Tattersall’s Lane, a semi-outdoors, industrialised space behind wire netting, where the bar is an old shipping container and rain comes through the patchy, corrugated iron roof and where you sit on wooden pallets quaffing long-neck beers. There‟s the Croft Institute, at the end of a windy alleyway off Chinatown, themed on a medical laboratory, with surgical steel, glass and medical implements. There’s the Gin Palace, a Melbournian institution, which is almost impossible to find off Little Collins Street, where the huge range of martinis and den-like ambience serve up an unforgettable bar experience. There’s The Rooftop bar seven stories up on the top of Curtin House on Swanston Street with great views across the eastern CBD. There‟s Madame Brussels, a super little bar with a tennis theme straight out of Wimbledon with astroturf, white deckchairs, campari punch, and model waiters with the tiniest old-school white shorts! There was St Jerome‟s, a great little dive bar in an alley off Caledonian Lane, sadly shut down during my time in Melbourne and also where I saw perhaps one of the worst gigs of my life! (Check these lyrics out: “Monday – nothing! Tuesday – nothing! Wednesday – nothing!”….all the way through to “Sunday – nothing!” it doesn’t stop there…“Year 2000 – nothing! 2001 – nothing!…” Get your coat.) In short, laneway bar culture is part of Melbourne‟s very fabric – I loved it! These places are a total antidote and a complete tonic against the homogeneous, pine and chrome interiors of most Australian, and indeed most Melbournian, pubs and bars.

Given that I was in Melbourne for 7 weeks, it’s safe to say that it’s a city I’ve fallen for. I absolutely love the place! There is a palpable sense of creativity, vigour, stimulation and possibility that I’ve not felt in any other city. Looking back, I see my time in Melbourne as a golden period; I’ve probably never been happier. It was the first time during my journey that I’d actually taken the opportunity to set up camp for a prolonged amount of time and, instead of just arriving in town and ticking off the sights, for once trying as hard as possible to live as a local. It was a completely different experience and, whilst not lessening the value of other modes of travels, totally rewarding.

I vividly remember walking down King William Street in Fitzroy, with the sun shining on my face and, on several occasions, just breaking out into a huge, involuntary grin. I hadn’t felt that happy for a long, long time. The atmosphere either caused or coincided with various shifts in my outlook. Creative and stimulating atmospheres create powerful virtuous circles. Spending time with diverse and like-minded fellow travellers, idealistic, bright students and creative, bohemian, arty types cannot fail to have a significant, positive impact on your outlook. I couldn’t help but think about things that I hadn’t considered in sufficient detail before, such as well-being, the environment, literature, sustainability, international development, global citizenship, culture, consumption, human rights, and my own politics all against the backdrop of global financial turmoil and re-evaluation. My time in Melbourne has left me with a thirst for experiment and for the new. Whether this turns out to be permanent or transient, only time will tell, but I very much hope that it lasts. I left Melbourne feeling intensely that I was no longer even close to being a relativist, that I was to my soul a believer in absolutes. Forget solipsism; forget the debate as to whether our notions of absolutes are man-made constructs or real; forget wondering whether there’s a soul; forget wondering whether there‟s meaning or purpose in the world or in our lives. These doubts are life-denying. Believe in the existence of a soul; believe in absolute values such as justice and love and, to paraphrase Thoreau, believe particularly fiercely in the existence of truth, and live as though it’s at the very fabric of our being.

Sadly, after nearly three months, it was time to say goodbye to Australia, for a few years at least. Unfortunately, it‟s just too far and too expensive to go for a quick holiday, but what a great country to visit! It‟s easy to see why so many backpackers from Europe flock there; it‟s got an incredible quality of life. I didn‟t manage to get over to Perth or Tasmania this time but that can wait until I return to this part of the world to see New Zealand.

To get to the next destination of my Australian journey, Melbourne, I took a trip through the intervening country, namely the Grampians National Park and the Great Ocean Road, a journey of more than 700km in total. Before the bus pulled out of Adelaide, at the last pick-up point, on stepped two people from my Uluru tour, Filippo and Angela; it was fantastic to see them again. Perhaps the odds weren’t quite as long as bumping into Rhodine, Michel or Leonie back in Buenos Aires, but still the coincidence was quite unlikely; last time I saw them, two weeks previously in Alice Springs, they were heading westwards the vast distance to Perth; here in Adelaide, they’d picked the same tour company as I did, were leaving on the same day as I was, were going in the same direction etc.; what are the odds!

As usual, there was a lot of driving; we went through the Grampians and spent the night at a quiet village called Hall’s Gap (so quiet in fact, it could have been the setting for a horror movie about killing off backpackers one by one), where I saw kangaroos in the wild. I was able to get to within about 10 metres of these amazing animals before they bounced away. That night, we played the classic travellers’ card game, Shithead. A classic “Get rid of your cards‟ card game. The cards are divided up between the participants who lay their 3 “best‟ cards on top of three “blind‟ cards. According to pre-determined rules (they vary), the remaining cards in your hand have to be discarded before the cards on the table can be played. There is no “winner‟ as such, just don’t be the last to get rid of all of your cards, or you are the “Shithead‟!

The next day we touched the coast again and I saw many of the stunning rock formations that liberally pepper the coastline between Adelaide and the Great Ocean Road. These formations will be particularly familiar to school-level geographers as “stacks‟, which are parts of the coastline where sections of rock have eroded and collapsed into the sea leaving behind parts of the coastline seemingly stranded on their own in the ocean and separated forever from the mainland. The most famous of these are a group of rock formations known as The 12 Apostles, which, along with the Great Barrier Reef and Uluru, are some of the most iconic symbols of Australia.

Our tour was fortunate enough to be given a generous discount on helicopter flights over the 12 Apostles and this was ten minutes that I‟ll never forget. It was a Huey-style helicopter and Mary, Angela and I went up together. We were given a set of headphones each and we just smiled, pointed and waved like idiots for the entire ride. We flew over the coastline and over the 12 Apostles (which aren‟t really twelve strong, but then I suppose the 7 Apostles wouldn‟t quite have the same ring). I was grinning involuntarily like a loon for a couple of hours after! It was phenomenal!

Another formation we saw was London Arch, which used to be a double arched rock formation connected to the mainland, looking just like a bridge, going someway to explaining its previous name, London Bridge. However, a few years ago the arch next to the coastline collapsed, but one remained ‘stranded’. Unfortunately, at the time, a couple happened to be in flagrante on the bridge. Don‟t worry, they weren‟t on the part that collapsed, but they were on the part still standing, meaning that they were alive (woohoo!) but stranded (aaah!). Not for too long because luckily for them, the then Australian Prime Minister happened to be giving a press conference nearby, when a keen journalist rushed into the conference room shouting to everyone that London Bridge, an Australian icon, had just fallen down. The whole room, journalists and cameramen, piled out and rushed to the scene, just in time to see the red-faced couple being winched off the rock by helicopter and whisked away to safety, all in time to be broadcast on the national six o‟clock news as the leading story!

That evening, we stayed in the pretty, hippy town of Port Campbell, where with full bellies of chilli con carne, we sat outside on the wooden veranda of our charming, coastal hostel, wrapped up against the cool night sea air in our duvets and drank the delights of boxed wine again. The next day we left Port Campbell at 7am to see the Loch Ard Gorge, another magnificent rock formation on the coast within the Port Campbell National Park, close to the 12 Apostles. The spectacular Lock Ard Gorge is an inlet carved into the coastline with a small sandy beach. It‟s named after the famous Loch Ard, an English cargo ship bound for Melbourne that was wrecked here on the rocks in 1878 with just two survivors out of 48 on board: Eva Carmichael, just 18 years old (who lost her whole family in the wreck) and the ship‟s apprentice, Tom Pearce, also 18. Pearce‟s heroics that night (including pulling Eva to shore and scaling the huge cliffs to seek help) were instrumental in both their survivals; he was awarded a huge 1,000 pound cheque by the Victorian Government and the first Gold Medal of the Royal Humane Society of Victoria. Unfortunately, despite the huge public interest in the pair, with the people yearning for a romantic outcome to the tragedy, Eva and Tom did not get together; after her successful recovery, Eva returned to Ireland.

After Loch Ard Gorge, we continued eastwards along the Great Ocean Road, a 243km stretch of single lane road carved as close to the coastline as it’s possible to get! It was built after the First World War primarily as a means of providing employment to returning veterans; it took 14 years to complete and it‟s absolutely spectacular. I was lucky enough to be sitting on the right-hand side of the bus for an unobstructed view of the vast, deep cobalt-blue waters of the Bass Strait and the Southern Ocean stretching as far as the eye can see. (The Bass Strait refers to the waters between the Australian mainland and Tasmania to the south. The Southern Ocean surrounds Antarctica. Interestingly, some geographers deny the Southern Ocean‟s existence; rather they think of these waters as part of the Indian Ocean or the Pacific Ocean.) On the day I saw it, the ocean wasn‟t tranquil and clear but instead choppy, breaky and utterly magnificent. The Great Ocean Road is never straight; it bends faithfully following the coastline. It‟s a monument to an extraordinary feat of endeavour and one of the finest sights that I‟ve seen on my Australian travels so far.

We also stopped off at a rainforest, the Great Otway National Park (what’s a rainforest doing here?!), providing further evidence of the amazing natural diversity of this country. Here, we saw that other icon of Australia; the koala. This marsupial sleeps around 18 hours a day apparently digesting the indigestible (to most other living things) eucalyptus leaf and is dangerous if roused.

From here, we passed many stunning beaches which have the cool and salty feel of a European coastline. My favourite amongst them are the incredible Apollo Bay, Lorne in Loutitt Bay and Torquay. Also en route is Bell’s Beach, a surfer beach immortalised in the classic Kathryn Bigelow movie Point Break. Spoiler Alert for those that haven‟t seen it (Why haven’t you seen it?! Go and rent it out!) This is where Bodie goes to surf at the end of the movie in the eye of the legendary 50 year storm.

Unfortunately, our tour guide, Tom, informed me that the movie’s ending wasn’t actually filmed here at the real Bell‟s Beach but was filmed somewhere in America – what a downer! From here, we drove past Geelong, in the western outer suburbs of Melbourne and easily the biggest city I‟d seen since leaving Sydney.