Astrophotography - NSW

So i've got a fair bit of free time in the evenings during my regional work out in the outback, the best thing about being so far out is the lack of light pollution, now that its coming into winter and the haze is dropping out of the sky you are given the light show that dreams are made of. Never have I felt a part of something so much greater than myself.

Melbourne home from home

whoops its March and I should probably update my whereabouts in the world to anyone thats still interested in my adventures (sorry Nan) so i'm currently living out in the wilderness for my 88 days farmwork and thought while i'm on my day off I can reminisce about being part of city civilisation and living in the most liveable city in the world (several years running) MELBOURNE!

Where do I even start, first things first; for backpackers/young professionals the wage is awesome compared to home (UK) I earnt triple (even after the exchange rate) of what I did back home in hospitality, making working in a bar a job you can actually survive on. Also the rent is lower than what i would pay back home but again receiving more.

Brunswick

I lived in suburb Brunswick north of the CBD which was one of the more hipster neighbourhoods, think vegan cafes, op shops, vintage clothing and tons of cool bars lining the main road through it (Sydney Road) which is like the less pretentious sister to Fitzroy (another hipster neighbourhood with a higher rent price) in Brunswick you had your easy boozers, such as 'the Retreat' which often has live music, a chill vibe and an eclectic mix of people that frequent it. You've also got Edinburgh Castle, which has great food deals and a great quiz night. If your into all styles of music Bar Oussou was my favourite Brunswick haunt, home to the most incredible Jazz musicians on thursdays, guaranteed good open mic performers on mondays and awesome world music day parties on sundays. for great takeaway pizza the more expensive but delicious 400 gradi lives on Sydney Road, and for Brunch Lux Foundry is pretty great.

Fitzroy

If you can afford it Fitzroy is also a great place to live right in the centre of another creative hub, the main streets Brunswick St and Lygon St are home to some of the greatest independent design shops i've come across travelling, so many amazing young fashion designers it's also home to some great bars and eateries, Naked for Satan being my personal favourite brunch stop, they also have a rooftop bar with a decent view of Melbourne, and during the week 12-4 its 9$ for each platter. Alimentari is another great brunch place.

CBD

The CBD is home to my favourite bar in the whole world which i safely can say i spent nearly every night of my 6 months there with my work gang, Heartbreaker on Russell st, which is an american style rock and roller dive bar, great music, jukebox, pool table and great whisky selection, the bar tenders are all great humans and its open till 3am every night, perfect for hospitality workers!

not too sure on eateries in the city but Affogato down Hardware Lane, is a cheap brunch spot, and Hardware Lane itself is a cute boutique street filled with lunch and brunch places.

Another great after hours spot is Loch and Key another late night hospitality haunt open till 5am every night, cute snug rooms to keep at those early morning drinks and a balcony for the chain smokers, plus friendly bartenders even past 4am

St Kilda

Don't know heaps about St Kilda, but from what I've seen the night life and bar scene is pretty good down there, 29th Apartment being a great small bar with a good vibe, La Roche is good for food deals, and their chicken parma is the size of me. The sunsets down there are great, especially along the pier where you can also see fairy penguins .

Other spots - 

NGV Friday nights ( CBD; Dj's booze and art exhibitions

Buck Mulligans (Northcote; Whisky and books) 

Royal Botanical Gardens (CBD) Moonlit Cinema

Ceres Environmental park (Brunswick) 

Queen Victoria Summer night markets (Food and Music) 

Amazing street art (CBD & Fitzroy, Hosier lane) 

Batu Caves - Kuala Lumpur

I only had a day or two in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia while I wait for my flight to Melbourne to start the next part of my adventure. I heard the Batu Caves were unmissable so thought I would go check them out and see if they compared to other places I had seen on my trip like Marble Mountain (previous post) The Batu Caves were incredible the most sacred Hindu temple in Malaysia, the ornate statues and the size of the cave itself was like nothing I have ever seen, like a whole other world. The temples themselves are Hindu temples protected by statues of their Deities, the largest being a 140ft statue of the Deity Murugan whose sheer size is mindblowing. The caves are definitely worth a visit the biggest cave and the one worth seeing above the others is free entry which is a bonus! One of the smaller temple caves is 5 MRP to get in and was worth paying to see the statues inside of the cave. Outside the caves are monkeys hanging about, you can buy bananas from the nearby stall holders to feed them if you dare but they do jump and they will bite if they feel threatened not that it stopped me going and hanging out with them but consider yourselves warned! if your in Kuala Lumpur for a day or two get to Batu Caves there only half hour away by train and was the only thing I found worth doing in my time here.

Ha Long Bay

Our last stop in Vietnam was to the world famous Ha Long bay, a Unesco world heritage sight and one of the 7 natural wonders of the world. It was so incredible to see in real life and the pictures look terrible compared to how beautiful it actually was like stepping into the film Avatar. We booked a 2 day 1 night sleeping on a boat with Golden Dolphin Tours, the first day we went from the harbour out into Halong Bay for around four hours cruising around all the islands and then went to a small village on the water and borrowed some kayaks from the locals and kayaked around the amazing limestone cliffs it was very surreal after we went back to our boat to watch the sunset and have some drinks, followed by karaoke of course, we then went to our cabins which had air con and were really cute and old fashioned, waking up on the water and seeing Ha Long bay out my window was probably one of my most incredible moments of this trip the next day we sailed around the islands and stopped at a pearl farm where they showed us how they cultivated the best pearls and the process behind it. 

pearl farm - Ha Long bay

Ha Long bay - at night

 

view from our cabin on Halong Bay

Pearl farm worker

I thought the tour we did was pretty great and I loved sleeping on the boat, it was around 70USD but I had friends that did their own thing minus a tour and said it was pretty easy to get around on your own, we didn't manage to get to Cat Ba island as we ran out of time but i'd recommend spending 4 days doing both.

HANOI MONSOON - HALONG BAY TYPHOON

A picture says 1000 words, its raining it hasn't stopped the monsoon has hit us and a typhoon has hit Halong bay, were currently about to escape to the hills of Sapa and go live in the village for a few days, more posts coming soon when were back in the city.

Hoi An - town by Day & Night (photo post)

Da Lat Waterfall Canyoning

Finally have semi decent internet again still not great but enough for this post, so Da Lat was our next stop after the sand dunes of Mui Ne, Da Lat is basically a giant forest area north of Mui Ne and its significantly cooler there (17-18 degrees) and lots of rain this time of year. The town itself is pretty basic although one place I would definitely recommend at night is the 100 Roofs Cafe, it was designed by a student from the crazy school of architecture, and is basically a massive skinny building with loads of hidden rooms and narrow tunnels and staircases that you can play hide and seek in, and the drinks are cheap, if you've ever been to Budapest its basically like a mad ruin bar on steroids, people go missing in this bar for several nights at a time. 

one of the rooms of the bar- not my photo

from the outside- not my photo

So in Dalat the main things to do are trekking to see the villages and waterfalls and Canyoning, we chose the latter as we heard it was one of the craziest things you can do in Vietnam. We went with a tour company called Viet Action Tours (£40 equivalent) who I would highly recommend they had all the right safety gear etc and some of the cheaper tours don't. We left our hostel at 8:30 and were driven in a minibus up to the hills where the waterfalls were, here we learnt how to use the guide ropes got given our helmets (and nicknames I was Rambo) and practiced scaling down a few steep hills. Once we got the hang of it we then moved on to the actual sheer cliff faces, starting with a cliff not a waterfall (20m) we scaled one by one down the face, not gonna lie stepping over the edge of a sheer cliff with just a rope is pretty terrifying and it takes quite a lot to scare me. After this was scaling down the 25m Waterfall, the rocks are super slippery and it is pretty difficult to get down and stepping over the edge again you think the guide is joking when he tells you you'll be fine, but hands down one of the best experiences of my life, you then trek through the forest to the last waterfall which is trapped in canyon so you basically hang most of the way down and drop into the waterfall (nicknamed the washing machine you'll find out why). After this was cliff jumping (optional) and a zip line down to the bottom of the lake followed by a lunch in the town (included) and then we were dropped back to our hostel. If your in Da Lat and a bit of an adrenaline junkie you must do Canyoning, 100% recommend. 

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g293922-d7987929-Reviews-Viet_Action_Tours_Day_Tours-Da_Lat_Lam_Dong_Province.html

VIETNAM INTERNET FAILURE

So i've been offline for a while and wont be able to post properly for another two weeks! basically the whole of Vietnams internet system is down due to some underwater pipe burst thing, heres the article if your travelling Vietnam soon as a heads up, http://tuoitrenews.vn/society/36372/internet-users-in-vietnam-should-expect-two-weeks-of-slow-connection on the plus side when its back up again I will have some great things to post about as we've done some pretty crazy things the last few days. Including scaling down 25m waterfalls in Da Lat but ill go into more detail about that later. Currently we are stranded in Nha Trang for 7 hours as our hostel decided to screw us over with the wrong bus times, but at least theres a beach here.

I'll be back posting soon so keep an eye out. 

White and Red Sand Dune tour Mui Ne

So today we went on a tour of the famous red and white Mui Ne sand dunes (£4.50) through our hostel ( which is amazing you should stay here) Mui Ne backpacker village. We were picked up in a jeep at 1:30pm and taken first of all to the fairy springs which is basically a super shallow river path you follow through walking bare foot through pretty amazing scenery, lots of sand and limestone cliff heads and tropical trees, after this we got back in the jeep and stopped off at the fishing village in Mui Ne, while everyone stayed at the top I decided to be really nosy and take my camera down to the actual village, the village itself was empty except for this adorable little boy who ran out of his house to give me a shell, its amazing that it doesn't matter if theres a language barrier with children, he led me to his house to show me his toy truck and was completely adorable. after this I said goodbye to my new friend and we went to the white sand dunes which were absolutely incredible (see pictures below), we rented quadbikes during the sandstorm and decided to impersonate mad max through the desert (£15 for half hour) once we spent an hour here we then moved to the other side of Mui Ne which was the red sand dunes, where you could surf down the hills on mats which we didn't do but it looked fun. Here we explored for another hour and watched the sun set over the desert before heading back to the hostel for 2 for 1 Whiskeys, day well spent. 100% recommend.

me and my new best friend - fishing village Mui Ne

Fairy Springs - Mui Ne

Local little boy who showed me his house in the fishing village - Mui Ne

White sand dunes - Mui Ne

Red Sand Dunes - Mui Ne

Red Sand Dunes - Mui Ne

Quad biking in the white desert - Mui Ne

Fairy Spring - Mui Ne 

Red Sand Dunes- Mui Ne

White sand dunes - Mui Ne  

White Sand Dunes - Mui Ne