Ku Ku KaChew

Welcome to the world of Ku! This was originally a food blog, but I am turning it into a general collection of my life experiences :)
If you're looking for my raw food blog, you can find it here: http://atlantarawks.blogspot.com

Monday, February 24, 2014

Australia

Took a detour in Los Angeles on the way to Sydney :)

Creeper shot!

Santa Monica Pier

Yummy Eggs Benedict with tomato and avocado!

My cousin Melanie, myself, and my aunt Alicia at The Grove in LA.

Lunar New Year decorations at The Grove

Grandma's Pecan English Style Brown Ale with Georgia pecans!

Melanie, Arielle, and me at Mozza!

We were able to get on the next plane to Sydney and 14 hours later we were in Oz!

Australian moolah

All the trains are double deckers!

Coogee Beach

The seagulls gather on the same specific area on the beach all day errday

Coogee Beach

Hill top that overlooks Coogee Beach from the north

Sacred Ibis bird. They look like anteater birds!

Lizard

View of Gordon's Bay from the south

Gordon's Bay

Walk from Coogee to Bondi

We're in Australia!!


They have pools right next to the beaches :)

First meal in Sydney. It was similar to a traditional English breakfast, but everything tasted a bit different!

Jenny's corn fritter

Waverly Cemetery




Cool little coves on the beach!


Loved these rocks overhanging the coast!

Beautiful water




This bird is called Pied Cormorant. Looked kinda like a penguin!

Rock carvings

Another pool by the beach

Awesome little skate park on Bondi beach






Sydney's version of Burger King, Whoppers and all!



Watson's Bay. If you look very carefully, you can see the Sydney skyline in the distance. This was right before it started raining so we didn't take the ferry to Circular Quay.

Moreton bay bugs are a type of slipper lobsters

Yabbie is crayfish

Obligatory fish and chips at Watson's Bay

Wild cockatoo

It was a nice first day! We crashed around 8:30pm, but that was pretty much the extent of our jet lag!

Next morning we went to Bondi to try to learn how to surf. Didn't take the camera, so unfortunately no shots of this endeavor, but I will say that it was quite difficult! Just sitting on the board was tough to balance, let alone trying to stand on it! My cousin said it took about 4 times before he was able to stand up, so we didn't feel so bad with our lack of progress hah. Afterwards we did some snorkeling in Gordon's Bay! We were able to rent the surfboard and snorkel gear for free from our hostel, Surfside Backpackers. This was an awesome hostel with locations in Coogee and Bondi and I highly recommend it for anyone wanting to stay on the beaches in Sydney!


Was fairly clear here at this bay. We saw a couple stingrays and some fishies. Would have gone further but it got cloudier as we went out and the stingrays made us a bit nervous hah. On the rocks we saw some crabs and even a rat haha. Was a fun excursion!

Instead of grouper, Aussies call these fish gropers :-P

Stingarees instead of stingrays! Although we learned that this is not actually a common Aussie word for stingrays.

This bird was literally hovering in the air and not moving at all! It was like a helicopter, no flapping or movement of any kind, just hovering very still in the sky. Was incredible to see!

Victoria Bitter beer in short brown bottles called stubbies. 

This statue was outside the restaurant we went to in Bondi called The Bucket List. 100 of these fiberglass dog sculptures were planted all around Sydney as a social experiment to see who would steal public art. Each sculpture weighs 30kg (66 lbs) and all but the ones in Mosman (an area north of the city center) were stolen!

Fish tacos

Grilled calamari

Australian chicken wings. I must say, we do these better in the States :-P

Grilled haloumi (cheese)

Toasted potatoes with aoili

Jenny, my cousin Chris my cousin, Chris' girlfriend Jaicherry, and yours truly!

Huge spider!

No really. It's half the size of a cell phone!
 

Wild red-collared lorikeet eating sugar out of our hands!

This was on the balcony of our hostel :)

Ok, so I haven't been to the Toronga Zoo, but I would venture to guess that this park was WAY cooler!!

Blue kookaburra

White kookaburra




There were a ton of wallabies that were loose in the park and would hop all around and get right up to you if you had a sugar cone filled with alfalfa (that you could purchase for $1). They are so darn cute!


Look at him sitting on his tail! We couldn't stop laughing when they did this!


Hey little guy!


Wombat. These were way bigger than I thought they were! About 2 feet long.

Cassowary. These birds looked like straight up dinosaurs. Check out those enormous feet and that hard crest on its head!

Don't know what kinda bird this is

Pelicans and Sacred Ibis 

They were quite large


Koala time! 




How in the world did these kinds of hands and feet evolve??! They have 2 thumbs!!

Dawwwww


Kangaroo break


Emu

Back to koalas


I believe this is a red kangaroo. They looked like wallabies. Check out the little one in the pouch!

Penguin


Flying foxes! These are bats, but much bigger than other types of bats. About a foot tall.



Scary Cassowary

Don't get too close!

Check out how that bird is sitting. I didn't realize bird legs went forward like that!

Reptile house. This is a Perenti. 

Frog

Bearded lizard

Sand Goanna

Mertens' Water Monitors

Big ol' crocodile

Dingo


Short-Beaked Echidnas! I love these little wobbly guys!! Their spikes felt like plastic pick-up sticks. Echidnas and like platypuses (platypi?) are the only mammals that lay eggs. A baby echidna is called a puggle and mom echidnas have milk patches instead of nipples that "sweat" out milk that the puggle can lap up. Such a crazy animal!!
 



Look! They're so wobbly!!

 Bilby. Another weird animal! It's a marsupial. Photo credit to Google's image search. The Bilby that we saw was in a dark room so I couldn't get a good shot of it.

What a cutie little guy!!








I was really gonna try and cut down on all the pictures of the wallabies, but they are so darn cute that I just couldn't. So you'll just have to look at their adorable little faces :)





Look at those lashes!





Quokka!

One last koala, having a nice nap

Tawny Frogmouth Owl

Baby Quokka!



So precious!


Sydney from Milson's Point

Sydney Opera House


Check out all the sailboats!



If you look really closely (click on picture to zoom in), you can see people walking along the top of the bridge! We wanted to do this, but $200 per person was a bit steep. Maybe one day!

The Rocks

Didjeridoo!

Kangaroo and Emu pizza. In hindsight, this was a really bad choice after a day of petting these two animals... We couldn't finish it.

This guy partied a little too hard the night before hah. We were worried at first because we weren't sure if he was alive, but then he shifted his position in the sand and went back to sleep :-P

Here is our room at Surfside Hostel! It was a 12-bed all female dorm with a balcony view of Coogee Beach :)


View from our room

View from Mrs. Macquarie's Chair

Yay, Sydney!!

Totally worth the trip!


Eggplant and red bell pepper (Aussies call them capsicum) risotto

ANZ Olympic Stadium

The ANZ Olympic Stadium was the only place in Australia we found paper towels in the restrooms! All others had hand blowers.

Our seats were actually up on the 4th level, but we stayed around here instead. The stadium staff here wasn't nearly as strict as they are in the States with keeping people in their assigned seats. People were hangin in the aisles and all over. Lucky us!

Waddaya know! Krispy Kreme is all the way over here!

Australia is known for their meat pies (like little chicken pot pies of just beef) and sausage rolls.

Not just any kind of mustard. American mustard.

J Cole


Kendrick Lamar

The main event!

Eminem and Bizarre

A sky full of lighters

Eminem and Royce da 5'9" (Bad Meets Evil)

Ended with fireworks! What a show!!

Jaicherry made us a farewell breakfast of vegemite on toast! A bit salty, but not bad at all, and full of Vitamin B :)

What an amazing trip!! We left on a Sunday and were back in Atlanta the next Sunday! We had 4 full days down under and packed in so much stuff. This is definitely the start of a wonderful year of travel :-D

Asia in April!!!