Before I went to Australia, I had an idea of what Australia would look like.
The majority of Australia is arid or semi-arid, and the country is famous for its vast Outback. I wasn’t aware, then, that…
Australia has large swaths of rainforest all around the country, including Queensland, where my friends and I would be traveling after our semester in Sydney. My friends and I are from temperate climates. We get the deciduous trees, the rabbits, the squirrels. I didn’t have a clue about the Australian jungle– so we booked a tour of the rainforests around Cairns.
The day of our tour, we were picked up from our hostel by a very Australian man in a Jeep.
We began our ascent into the rainforest, which was located in the mountains.
The higher we drove, the more lush the landscape became. The trees became thicker and thicker and thicker– until finally, our tour guide stopped the car and let us see for ourselves.
Luckily for us, our tour guide was incredibly knowledgeable about the plants and wildlife of the area.
Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.
Even when you don’t touch anything, Australia can be… iffy.
Despite all the dangers…
…the tour was really amazing. Really! I mean, how often do you get to eat lunch in the middle of a rainforest…
…or get the chance to try some of Australia’s more local foods?
What I found the most amazing was how suddenly the climate would change. Driving into the mountains, you could see the exact spot where the normal forest ended and the rainforest began. When we reached the other side of the mountain, the climate changed radically again.
Lookit that termite mound!
I guess what my 6th grade teacher taught us about mountains really is true.
You know, how one side of the mountain gets all the rainfall while the other side does not.
What she forgot to mention, though? How incredible mountains, and the forests on those mountains, can be.
So, leeches? Come at me, bros. Even you can’t ruin the beauty of the Australian rainforest.
(Though getting kicked by a cassowary might. Have you seen the claws on those things? And they only live in the rainforest!)
I’ve been on long flights before. Back and forth from Japan. To Vietnam. To Australia. This flight was as long as any flight I’ve taken. But it was different, somehow.
Maybe it’s because, after being gone for half a year, I was finally coming home.
And coming home meant that the dream was over. I had dived at the Great Barrier Reef, hiked the temples of Vietnam, and jumped off a cliff in New Zealand. Heck, ever since November, I had been on the road, living out of a suitcase, not knowing where I’d be the next day. But the start of the new year brought the end of my journey.
So I was a little vulnerable on my flight back to Boston.
I decided to distract myself with a movie. Unfortunately, I had turned on the most melodramatic, depressing drama film ever. In my sleep-deprived, emotionally sensitive state, it was a bad decision.
So I looked pretty awful when I arrived in Boston.
The weirdness continued when I disembarked the plane. Suddenly, I couldn’t help but be struck by the things I’ve experienced for years.
Then again, at that point, I was pretty delusional. I wasn’t able to sleep much on my flight home. My neurosis became clear after I boarded the subway to head to Northeastern.
An hour later, I finally made it to campus. I arranged housing pretty late this semester, so I was living in a dorm with roommates I had never met before. They had no idea who I was or when I was coming.
I had flown straight from Vietnam to Boston, so all I had was my suitcase. No towel, no bedsheets, no winter coat to protect me from the below-freezing temperatures outside. I dumped my hoodies onto my bare mattress, flopped down, and finally relaxed.
For a little bit.
Sort of.
I’ve been home for about a week, and everything’s begun to fall back into the routine. I’m just about over jet lag. My body has finally adjusted to the ridiculously cold Boston weather. I’ve started my co-op, my dad drove up and moved in the rest of my stuff, and I’ve even started cooking again. Everything is back to…
Yes, the adventure is over. All I’m left with are the memories.
And trust me, after these last two months, I’ve got a lot of them.
I’ve been traveling down the east of coast of Queensland for the last two weeks with three of my friends from USyd. On the way, we’ve been enjoying the Australian wildlife.
Wild koala on Magnetic Island!
Rock wallaby! Check out the baby in its pouch.
Terrible photo, but I swear that’s a platypus.
Australia is famous for its cute and cuddly animals. It’s true: wallabies are cute! However, Australia is equally notorious for its dangerous and poisonous animals. The amount of articles/memes/Buzzfeed posts about Oz’s freaky animals is absurd.
Usually, these are easy to laugh off.
Sometimes, though, it’s not so easy.
As my friends and I found three nights ago.
We were in a cute little coastal town in southern Queensland. The weather was beautiful, so we had spent the day at the beach. After a long dinner at a beachside restaurant, we were walking home to our hostel.
And then.
Our friend was bitten by a snake.
We inspected our friend’s ankle. There was only one fang mark, and though it was bleeding a bit, she said it barely hurt and mostly itched. We decided to return to the restaurant.
From there, we called 000, the emergency number in Australia. The emergency services sent us an ambulance. Fifteen minutes later, a paramedic arrived to inspect our friend’s wound.
At this point, our friend was feeling weak in her bitten leg. It might have been just from panic, as the paramedic concluded that our friend showed no symptoms of snake venom. Since we didn’t know what kind of snake bit her, though, he decided to take her to the ER anyway. We followed her to the hospital, where we sat around in the waiting room.
After a long wait, a nurse came out to greet us.
Our friend was still strapped to her stretcher, coherent, but worried.
It’s standard procedure in Australia, apparently, to monitor snake bite victims after the initial injury. However, this small hospital didn’t have the proper equipment to do this. They had to move her to a hospital about a half hour away.
One of us stayed in the hospital with her. The remaining friend and I went back to our hostel. We wouldn’t all be able to stay the night in the hospital, after all, and we had already had our hostel booked, and someone had to pack up the luggage and get the rental car the next morning.
My friend and I went back and did exactly that.
There was only one problem.
Our friend with the snakebite was also our driver, you see. She was the only one who was comfortable with, and had experience with, driving in Australia. The roads here are a bit weird: people drive on the left, not the right.
Now, we were without a driver. What do we do?
Duty called.
Somehow, we made it to the hospital without dying. After an hour’s wait, the wound was declared non-venomous and our friend was discharged.
Because my friend had to have her blood checked throughout the night, she had barely slept at all. My friend who had stayed with her wasn’t much better off. But we had an itinerary to follow. Our hostel for that night was already booked, in a town about 4 to 5 hours away.
Thus, my friends and I got to have the authentic Australian experience. Driving on the left side of the road? Hospitalized due to snakebite? Seriously, all we needed now was to be attacked by a spider or stung by a jellyfish.
But that didn’t happen until a couple days later.
And that’s how we called the paramedics twice in three days.
Hey mates! Sorry I’ve been MIA. I caught tonsillitis RIGHT before final exams, and now I’m on the road traveling eastern Australia! Hostel internet is always a bit shaky, but I’ll do my best to keep on the ‘net.
I was really gung-ho when I got to Australia. I wanted to try everything. New city? Sure. New people? Come at me. New food? I’ll eat it all up.
New sport?
This was back in August; however, we weren’t able to actually book the course until the end of October. The course takes an entire weekend, after all, and it was hard to find a date that fit everyone. So, three months later…
While diving had sounded like a great idea when I bought the Groupon, I began to have some reservations as the date came near. I mean, before I could even enter the water, I had to go through a 7-hour online class and pass an exam at the end.
This course educated me on all sorts of fun and exciting aspects of scuba diving.
So while I felt confident back in August, I was more than a little nervous once the day finally came.
But I wasn’t going to back out now. My friends and I headed over to Manly Beach at the fine, fine hour of 6AM in order to make it to the class on time.
The course itself started at 8AM. Our instructors started us off by making sure everyone could actually swim.
Then, they showed us how to set up and put on our gear.
And then, all 12 or so students crowded into a tiny pool, where we proceeded to practice various diving skills.
Now, I was probably supposed to feel more confident after learning and performing all these skills. Instead, I was pretty stressed. The instructors would demonstrate each skill once or twice, and then expect you to do it. Perfectly. Hey, don’t I get a few practice runs at least?
As expected, then, a lot of people ended up messing up once or twice the first time around. I sure did, particularly during the “take out your regulator and put it back in your mouth” exercise.
Luckily, the instructor grabbed my regulator and shoved it back into my mouth so I could breathe again. Even when I could breathe underwater, though, I was a bit freaked out. I’m used to being able to breathe unconsciously. I don’t think about it. While scuba diving, however, breathing took effort. It was always on my mind. Especially since I often felt like I wasn’t getting enough air.
I later learned that this feeling is normal. WHY DIDN’T THEY TELL ME?!
Best of all? We were in that pool doing diving skills for hours. I tend to get hungry within 2 hours of a meal, and we went for 8 without food. I didn’t even realize how hungry I was…
…until I ate lunch.
Thus, I felt a little better before our next session.
…until our instructors informed us:
Ready or not, I was going to have to do it. In order to get my scuba certification, I would have to perform all those diving skills again– but in the big blue sea, not the tiny swimming pool. We’d begin doing these skills on the second day of our course.
I had underestimated how challenging diving would be, I guess. My nerves were really getting to me. Therefore, on our first dive of the second day, I had a rough start.
WHY WAS I NOT DESCENDING?! After deflating my big ol’ inflation device, I was supposed to naturally sink. Yet, somehow, my friend and I were not sinking. We soon found ourselves alone on the surface. WHAT WAS HAPPENING?!
My mask somehow slipped off my head. I began to splash about, getting water into my eyes. And then, the grand finale:
So there I was, flailing and hyperventilating and basically having a panic attack. Thankfully, the instructor noticed that my friend and I were missing. He came to the surface to help us out.
I stopped kicking and immediately sank to the bottom.
Our group proceeded to repeat everything we had done in the pool, but in the ocean. While I was still frazzled, this time, I was able to perform the skills successfully.
By the last dive of the weekend, we had finished learning all our skills. Our final dive was just for fun: instead of sitting on the bottom of the ocean messing with our weight belts and BCDs and regulators, we actually got to swim around and look at fish.
While Sydney isn’t that well-known for its diving, there’s some cool stuff in the water.
My friend brought her underwater camera along.
By the end, I was able to actually calm down a bit, and… enjoy myself?
And that’s how I became a certified open-water diver.
The diving signal for, “OK!”
Double OK!
V for victory!
It was a stressful, physically demanding, panicky weekend. At moments, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to dive. To be honest, I’m still not sure how I managed to overcome my fear. But I somehow managed to stick it out, survive the weekend, and get my scuba license.
Which is good. Because, a month after my scuba course, I had a trip booked at the Great Barrier Reef. Coming soon!
Doubtful Sound, a fjord in the southwest of New Zealand, is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places in the world. At least, that’s what our German friend told us when my group was planning our New Zealand trip.
So we booked a day tour of Doubtful Sound as part of our trip. Doubtful Sound is quite out of the way from… anything, really. To reach it, we first had to cross Lake Manapouri. We boarded the boat in high spirits…
…but soon, we were hit by typical west coast New Zealand weather.
By the time we reached the other side of the lake, it was pouring rain. You could sense that the tour group was becoming more and more downcast. Regardless, we had all paid for the tour, so we were going on with it. The tour guides ushered us into buses, where we rode to the Doubtful Sound bay.
Our tour guide futilely tried to comfort his passengers.
An hour later, everyone sprinted from the bus to the next tour boat. The rain was getting heavier and heavier.
My friends and I took shelter inside, where we drowned our sorrows in the complementary tea and coffee.
Everyone was a little frustrated at this point, including myself. Our one chance to visit the most beautiful place in the world, and it was raining! On a normal day, I’d be out on the deck, snapping photos like a madman.
This kind of weather was a normal day in western New Zealand, right? What’s a little water? My friend and I ventured outside.
As it turns out, our tour guide wasn’t lying: the rainy weather, while gloomy, created huge, cascading waterfalls.
And as the rain continued, more and more waterfalls started to form.
My friend and I rushed back inside…
…and then back outside.
Even in the fog, clouds, and rain, Doubtful Sound was stunning.
No wind or rain was going to keep me from enjoying this ride. I spent the rest of the trip running around the boat, snapping photos and getting pummeled by rain.
When I first got to Australia, I immediately looked up gym memberships.
Gym memberships can get kind of expensive, especially when you currently have no source of income. I was a bit of a group fitness class addict at home, but here, it wasn’t going to happen. Not at these prices!
I have a Danish friend here who is maximally fit. She’s a lifeguard. She does all sorts of adventure sports. And she runs. Seeing my predicament, she decided to ask me to go running with her.
I had to stay in shape somehow. I reluctantly agreed to go running.
But it seemed as though all my gym-going back in the States had paid off.
And that’s how we became running buddies.
A picture I drew for her in class. Because drawing > developmental genetics
My friend is a hardcore sporty girl, though. Running casually wasn’t enough.
In order to do a half-marathon, she had to train. And as she trained, she sneakily started to make our runs longer and longer.
As much as I hate running, though, there’s something satisfying about being able to run longer and longer. We started at 5, then 7, then 10, and finally…
Here’s a photo we took at the Opera House! Yeah…. I’m short.
I didn’t always run with my friend, though. She continued to run greater and greater distances in preparation for her half-marathon, distances that I couldn’t keep up with. Finally, the day of her half-marathon rolled around.
So, at an ungodly hour of the morning, my friend and I traveled to Sydney Olympic Park.
The race began, and my friend took off.
An hour later, she was still going strong…
…and kept going…
…until she crossed the finish line.
It was awe-inspiring to see all these runners push themselves to the maximum, especially since one of them was my friend. I’ve always thought of runners as almost another breed of people. Runners are unobtainable. Runners are people who are more fit and motivated than I will ever be. I’ve never thought that I’d be a runner. But really, runners are just like anyone else. My friend wasn’t born with the ability to run; she had to put time and effort into her training. And so, when I saw my friend’s victorious face…
I couldn’t help but think:
I haven’t been able to get it off my mind. I want to do it. I COULD do it… right? If only I could stay motivated when I got home.
But it seems like I’m the only crazy one.
Still, I have promised myself that I will run a half-marathon when I get back to Boston. Do you think I could do it?
Which is why I’m writing this now. Remember this well, readers, and hold me up to this promise: I, Vy, will train for and complete a half-marathon in 2014. Yes. It’s going to happen. I’LL MAKE IT HAPPEN!
Well, it’s that time of year again: the end of semester, where all your professors think it’s a great idea to make all your reports due at the same time.
I’ll be tackling those reports for the next week…
…in the hopes of not failing all my classes. Though it’s going to happen anyway. Australian universities are weird.
So if I’m MIA for the next week or two, you know where I am!
(Sorry about that! I have a lot I want to write about Australia, trust me. But grades come first!)
I’m from the Northeastern US. It’s cold there. We get snow and hail and blizzards and mornings where you wake up to find your car encased in ice. People from cold climates, you know what I’m talking about.
Ok, so this is an exaggeration. But you catch my drift.
Therefore, when my friends wanted to see a glacier in New Zealand, I wasn’t sure what the hullabaloo was about. Isn’t a glacier just a big hunk of ice?
I guess I had to see what the big deal was.
So my friends and I booked a tour of Fox Glacier, located on the west coast of New Zealand’s southern island. The glacier is actually inaccessible to casual passerby– it’s too dangerous for untrained folk to venture there alone. Instead, professional guides provide the necessary equipment to tourists and make the trip together.
As we hiked to the glacier, our tour guide liked to remind us of how much danger we’d be in without him.
What’s with all the landslides? New Zealand is located on the Pacific Rim of Fire, a geographically active fault line. In fact, the mountains of New Zealand are constantly growing, at a rate of (I think) about half a centimeter per year. However, New Zealand’s geology is full of sheared, layered rock. Rainfall is heavy, snowmelt is rapid, and earthquakes are common. As a result, NZ is full of beautiful cliffs and mountains…
This is what we hiked through!
…that are subject to constant collapse.
Fear not! After a short hike, we safely reached the glacier with no casualties.
In order to safely traverse the glacier, our tour guide had us strap crampons to our boots. Ice is slippery, after all!
Kind of like these!
In fact, the tour company staff created a path for us to walk on.
So, we could safely walk on the glacier.
One of the people in my group was from Egypt! He’s never seen snow before.
It was mind-blowing. We were walking on 100-year-old ice! I seized the opportunity.
Yeah I brought cups! It was the cleanest, freshest, most refreshing water I’ve ever tasted.
The highlight of the walk was when the tour guide found a small tunnel that had naturally formed in the ice.
Photos?! Heck yeah! I handed off my camera to one of my friends and wriggled into the tiny opening…
…only to find out that the tunnel was filled with freezing rainwater. I pushed myself on my stomach, trying to avoid the frigid puddles as much as possible.
At the end of the tunnel was a small opening in the top where we could climb out. Problem is, the opening was quite high and I am quite short. I had some trouble getting out…
But hey, at least I got the picture I wanted.
So now, I have photographic proof: even the coldest, wettest, and slipperiest journey can be a good time! Fox Glacier sure was. Even if we came back soaking wet.
I might have been freezing for the rest of the day, sure. But it was still worth it.
As you might know, I’ve recently returned from New Zealand! Alive! Seriously, I consider this quite an achievement, especially considering some of the things we did. If you’ve seen the video I posted up a little while ago, you’ll understand what I mean.
That’s right.
I did the bungee.
Bungee jumping purportedly dates back thousands of years ago on Pentecost Island. A village woman, trying to escape her abusive husband, jumped off a cliff. Her husband, shocked to see his wife fall to her death, jumped after her. What he didn’t know was that the wife had actually tied vines to her ankles to catch her fall. She survived the jump, he did not. It later became customary for men to bungee to prove their manhood.
How much of this is true, I don’t know. Either way, it inspired some members of the Oxford University Dangerous Sports Club to jump off a bridge in 1979. Though they were arrested, they continued the trend in the US by jumping off hot air balloons, cranes, and the Golden Gate Bridge.
Commercialized bungee jumping didn’t begin until 1988, when seasoned adventurer AJ Hackett (who, upon many things, illegally jumped off the Eiffel Tower) opened up a permanent bungee site in Queenstown, New Zealand. Nobody expected his business to last. After all, there’s only so many tourists who’ll want to jump off a cliff before the fad dies down, right?
Wrong. The AJ Hackett bungee company flourished and grew, eventually expanding to Australia, Russia, Singapore, and more. Since the company’s humble beginnings, millions of adreneline-seekers have taken the dive.
And I was about to become one of them.
Oh god.
What was I thinking when I signed up for this?
Well, my friends signed up, so I did too. I immediately regretted it.
And I continued to regret it.
There was only one thing that kept me going.
It’s true: AJ Hackett has a no-refund policy, so I might as well get what I paid for. And I paid for a lot. My friends and decided that we should go big or go home and signed up for the Nevis Highwire Bungy, the third highest bungee jump in the world. Jumpers experience speeds over 80 miles an hour and over 8 seconds of free fall.
The Nevis Bungy is not available to the public and can only be reached by taking an AJ Hackett shuttle from Queenstown. It’s about a 40-minute drive to get there, where you can get nice and cozy and think about what you’re about to do.
We climbed higher and higher in the mountains, until we finally reached this.
Rather than starting from a cliff or a bridge, we would be jumping out of this fine platform over the Nevis River Valley.
The platform had glass panels in the floor, where we could observe exactly how much we were going to fall.
And that’s when the jitters, more than ever before, hit me.
Though, I don’t know what I was so scared of. There have been horrific injuries due to bungee jumping, but they’re the exception to the rule. AJ Hackett, in particular, has served millions of jumpers with a nearly spotless safety record. I would be strapped in not only by my ankles, but with a body harness as well.
Staff on the platform rotated the dozen or so jumpers in and out of the harnesses. I watched them, nervously, until my turn came. I sat on a chair where a man proceeded to tie my legs together, talk me through the process, and lead me to the ledge.
By now, as you can imagine, I was freaking out. All rational thoughts had gone out the window. I had no idea how I was going to make myself step off that platform.
Seriously, any cognitive ability I had was gone.
And for that totally nonsensical reason, I stepped into the air almost immediately.
Because I dislocated my left shoulder in the past, they had me hang onto my belt with my left arm. Hence the awkward one-armed jump!
The sheer force. The wind. The river rushing up to meet me. I couldn’t help but close my eyes. I didn’t open them until the bungee cord caught me and sprung me back up.
The second fall wasn’t nearly as scary as the first. However, it was at this time that I noticed a slight problem.
I guess I need to tie my shoelaces tighter, because my sneaker had slipped halfway off my foot. As I hung upside down, there it teetered , threatening to fall into the river below. My beleaguered mind latched onto one thought.
With what little core strength I have, I reached up and nabbed it off my foot…
…and concluded my jump, victorious.
So how was it?
I have to admit: it was really fun. I was freaking out before, during, and after the jump, but it was pretty awesome. Would I do it again? Maybe after five years of recovery time. Do I regret doing it? Not at all.
How could I regret it when I got a free t-shirt…
…and this video proving my jump? (Go ahead, laugh at my ridiculous yelp as I jump. So uncool…)
And, of course, the satisfying feeling that you’ve done something that you never, ever expected you’d be able to do.
