G'day, mates! Australia is a country I'm familiar with. It's basically Little Malaysia, the "foreign enough to be considered worldly, but somewhat close by" choice for the college-considering Asian Tiger parent who think they're liberal, but God forbid you suggest to them that you don't move back home with them after you graduate. More than having a thousand acquaintances and friends who've studied in Australia (and a few who've stay on) I also have family there; so I've spent my childhood all over Perth, Adelaide, and Melbourne. I'm thrilled to make my return Down Under (my last visit was a decade ago) with a trip to 2 of its biggest cities. Here are 10 things I did during my short stay in Sydney.
April 28, 2017
Sydney, Australia: Bondi Beach, fine dining at Bondi Icebergs Club, and Bondi to Bronte Coastal Walk
Lunch at the award-winning Dining Room of the exalted Bondi Icebergs Club with a view of Australia's most photographed pool and Sydney's most famous beach on an unseasonably sunny Autumn afternoon - my day out in Bondi was one of superlatives.
It wasn't the warm ripples of the South China and Caribbean seas nor the calm waters of the Mediterranean, but the dramatic waves crashing against Bondi Beach hardly left me cold. But then again, I'm not a Bondi Iceberg. As part of their initiation into the coveted club, new members honour the long-standing tradition of swimming three Sundays a month in the ocean pool - even during winter. It's a ritual harking back to 1929 when the Bondi Icebergs Club founders made winter swimming a rite of passage for members. "How deep is your love? I really need to know..."
Fortunately for the rest of us land-lubbing visitors, "Everyone is Welcome" to dip their toes (except on Thursdays, when the pool is being cleaned) in the famous ocean pool, all year round. As much as I love the water and as drawn to the sea as I was, I chose to enjoy the ocean pool from an elevated view with a glass of rosé and fine dining at Icebergs Dining Room, followed by a leisurely, carb-burning (or so I hoped) Bondi to Bronte coastal walk to take in the stunning ocean views.
1 NOTTS AVENUE, BONDI, NSW 2026, AUSTRALIA
April 24, 2017
What a whirlwind the past week has been: three cities (Kota Kinabalu, Sydney, and Melbourne) in two countries, catching up with friends and family in Malaysian Borneo and Australia, and spending the weekend getting reacquainted "Down Under" *boomchickawahwah*. I write this as I sit comfortably in my apartment 25 floors above Melbourne's CBD: taking the day off to do my laundry, have a moment (or several) to myself, and tend to my blog. On the topic of catching a breather, I only recently chanced upon these lost photos from almost 10 years ago. I had the pleasure of staying at The Dhara Dhevi in Chiang Mai, Thailand in 2008 - an era before social media and Posh, Broke, & Bored existed. All I had from that trip were one: poorly-composed, badly-taken photos on a digital camera the size of a credit card which I lost when I reformatted my hard drive and two: a few battered polaroids whose already fragile existence were threatened by sun damage and fading, as if time had come to claim it from my memory. For the better part of a decade, that dreamy stay in came ever closer to vanishing from my memory as the polaroids began to discolour - that is, until I discovered that my mother had, without me knowing, backed up all my hard drives. Which is how I managed to blog about my pilgrimage to Beijing and also this post about a Sweet Escape that nearly escaped me. Won't you join me as I revisit the restorative calm of The Dhara Dhevi, Chiang Mai?
April 10, 2017
"Where are you from? No, where are you really from?" SPURRED BY QUESTIONS ABOUT MY HERITAGE, I TRACED MY STEPS BACK IN TIME WITH A VISIT TO MY ANCESTRAL LAND.
BEIJING, CHINA - AUTUMN 2008 & WINTER 2011:
BEIJING, CHINA - AUTUMN 2008 & WINTER 2011:
A loaded question* that isn't always motivated by malice but is so fraught with oversimplification that at worst, is an inconsiderate leapfrog over the complex nuances of cultural identity for a conveniently-labelled pigeonhole system, and at best, is an invocation of this tedious dance: "Well, I look Chinese because I am ethnically Chinese, but my ancestors were immigrants so my nationality is Malaysian. I speak 3 languages + 1 Chinese dialect because not everyone has the privilege of their native tongue being widely spoken around the world..." And yet, sometimes going back several generations still isn't enough: some people won't be happy until I can prove that I'm related to Mulan and yet when I ask them about their history...crickets. Dishonour! Dishonour on your whole family! Dishonour on your cow!
*The other question I loathe (a favourite among white-worshipping/Eurasian-fetishising SE Asians who covet my above-average height and aquiline nose): "You got ang moh blood or not? Are you mix?" Yes, I am 'mix' - a mix of my mother and my father. Bore off.
BROUGHT TO YOU BY THIS MONTH'S TRAVEL LINKUP: 'A PLACE THAT INSPIRED YOU'
April 01, 2017
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