The Vegemite Test

We’ve been asked quite a few times what we think about Sydney, Australia and after 5 days I think we’re finally at a point where we can formulate a fair newbie assessment.  Here is goes:

Sydney has the vibe and culture of San Francisco, the weather and beaches of San Diego, the style and craziness of New York, scattered with the suburbs and seaplanes of Seattle. 

Basically, it’s a married version of all the “awesome” elements from our favorite places in the US.  So, we’ll be moving to Australia soon 😛

We had a few more things to check off our list before heading to Melbourne tomorrow.

1. Taste some Vegemite
2. Visit the Uber office
3. Pay our respect to the evolving Martin Place siege memorial

We hit two birds with one stone when we visited the Uber office because their Vegemite stash was staring deep into the pits of our bellies upon arrival.

I don’t think my butter/vegemite proportions were accurate

 

 Who liked it ?

Curtis seemed to favor this salty Australian treat while my face turned into a serious cringe at the realization of a sodium explosion equivalent to swallowing a gulp of Dead Sea water.

Did I mention we also crashed the Uber holiday party? We even crafted up some snazzy gifts for the white elephant gift exchange wrapped in the kewlest bags we could find. Let’s just say one of the bags included the entire complimentary travel size bath collection (with elegant slippers) from our hotel room while the other was filled with obnoxious tourist gifts (exactly what a local is in need of).

McDonald’s Bag & Park Hyatt Bag

Thank you Uber Sydney for taking us to lunch, introducing us to Vegemite and including us in your holiday celebrations!

On our way back home, we visited the Siege Memorial growing out of thousands of floral bouquets and stuffed animals placed in the center of Martin Place (just outside the Lindt cafe). It was so incredible and emotional to see the amount of people who came out to honor and support the victims of this horrific event and provide strength to the families they left behind. God bless and may you RIP.

In the evening we headed off for Shabbat dinner with the family. We finished off the evening surrounded by amazing people and wonderful food. It was just the taste of home we were missing.

 

A climb into the clouds

We spent the entire day in our hotel room meditating, pacing the room and building pillow forts  in mental preparation for climbing THE WORLD’S LARGEST STEEL ARCH BRIDGE. Did I mention I have a case of acrophobia?

Armed with adult diapers and matching onsies, we set off on a leg shaking climb into the clouds atop the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

Walking the arch of the bridge was actually the easiest part. The mesh screen catwalks preluding the arch & exposing the ground 10 floors below our feet were probably the most nerve racking. Or, maybe it was the steep zigzagging open staircase/ladder with the wind whooshing past our ankles. It’s the stuff nightmares are made of… but damn was it fun.

After we made it to the top with soiled pants, we relished the view and took a good 30 minutes to just soak it all in.  We watched the sun set and the night fall before walking under the twinkling stars above and the illuminated city below.

There is a very fascinating phenomenon that happens on the bridge at night called the “black rainbow” The luminous city lights from below project the bridges’ shadow into the sky resulting in a black arch splitting the sky. Wish we were able to capture that in a photo; it was pretty kickass.

Sydney Harbor Bridge

My rock

No big deal

Don’t be fooled by our smiles

No hands … see!

This looks fake right?

Pretty incredible view

 

Getting Some Altitude

Today we decided we wanted to eat lunch.  But not just any lunch; a FANCY lunch at Jonah’s in Whale Beach.  The only problem is that Jonah’s is pretty far away and we had no car.  So we did what any reasonable people would do and took a water taxi to a seaplane and flew to lunch.

Shirley was freaking out pretty much the entire time but I was having a blast.  I mean come on, look at these views.

The view above the plate wasn’t too bad either.

After we got back, we met up with our friends from Morocco, Arielle and Ayesha, for drinks and dinner.  Since we had such a good time hanging out up in the sky in the seaplane, we went to Blu Bar, the highest bar in Sydney on the 36th floor of the Shangri-La Hotel.

For dinner we wanted to try some real Australian food.  Everyone kept telling us that we needed to try a “burger with the lot” but we had no idea what that was (it’s also sometimes known as an Aussie burger).  Luckily we were able to find one at Grill’d and it’s fantastic! Imagine a burger but with pineapple, fried egg and beetroot added to it.  It sounds terrible, but it tastes surprisingly good if you can get your mouth around it all.

We finished up with a nice stroll around Darling Harbor (which was teeming with Santas) and capped it off watching Interstellar on the largest movie screen in the world (sorry Texas, everything’s actually bigger in Australia).

A Shoebox Hannukah

We spent the whole day shopping, wandering and looking for a menorah to no avail. Sydney, you can do better! Jesus was a jew; he would have celebrated Hannukah & his Birthday too! All the stores were filled with XMas decorations but not a single remnant of Hannukah was found.

It was time to get my DIY (do-it-yourself) spirit on and craft something up for the festival of lights. An empty shoebox from our shopping evidence stash, some birthday candles, hotel matches, and a Swiss army knife made it happen.  Tada!

My first Hannukah present

Shoebox Hannukiah!

Oh #$%^

All was good and dandy until the box caught on fire and started hotboxing our room in putrid smoke. Worried the ceiling sprinklers would go off, I ran with it towards the balcony and started to blow on it while realizing two things:

1. Blowing on it will only feed the flame
2. It will probably scatter embers onto the wooden balcony floor

The flame bigger now, I raced it into the bathroom, smoking out the room even more. Hoping no embers fell off behind me, I scurried it off for an emergency swim.  We spent a good 15 minutes airing out the room and chasing the smoke away with towels. #Winning!

We were so famished after our heroic attempts so we treated ourselves to a delightful dinner at our hotel waterfront restaurant. The food was great but the dessert … no words. Have you ever had a creme brulee the size of a pizza?

The biggest creme brulee ever

Good night world!

Sydney Under Siege

Alas, we finally made it to Sydney after a 15 hour voyage from the Maldives.  Thankfully, most of the flight was spent in a comatose state at a flat 180º.  We’re most excited to be in an English speaking country after two and a half months of sign language and terrible accents on our part.

We arrived at the Park Hyatt which has a terrible view of the Sydney Opera house but somehow we’ll manage looking at it for 5 days.

We’re here!

Oh my word

Upon hotel arrival, we turned on our phones (which have been out of commission for a while) and started receiving simultaneous pings with frantic messages inquiring about our whereabouts. Turns out a few minutes after we left the airport, it went on lock down including all other monumental sites in Sydney in response to a terrorist siege 3 blocks down from our hotel (which also went into lock down mode).  With nothing else to do, we spent the day sleeping, watching the news and exploring our hotel.

View from our room

Up on the roof

More selfies

Excited to see the Opera house in person

Downtown Sydney turned into a ghost town and there was still no progress with the hostage situation at the Lindt Cafe.

We were really looking forward to spending the evening with my lovely cousin, Simonne, who I haven’t seen in around 11 years.   Her and Zvi took on the role of tour guides and showed us all around the suburbs of Sydney.  We had a wonderful feast and watched the sunset from the Iceberg Club at Bondi beach.

Iceburg Club

Catching up with family

Thank you Simonne & Zvi! It was so wonderful to catch up you 🙂

Laila Tov to all. Wishing the hostages a safe return home tonight.

Stuck on an island for 7 days

So what is there to do on an island for 7 days without a Wilson volleyball? We found some things …

Catch some rays

Staring contest

Skip … lots of skipping

Go crazy …

Stop using your feet for silly things like walking

Fly

When you wear yourself out from island parkour, lay back and ogle at that phantasmagorical vault of heaven … for hours.

Peaking through

Temperamental showers

Orange splash

Epic flash

Fire in the sky

Island hide-n’-seek is also a fun game to play with the local critters.

These obvious crabs

This curious piece of sand

This walking shell

That’s not a leaf

We see you Mr. triggerfish … keep your teeth to yourself

That’s not a coconut

You can always go chasing sharks … until they chase you.

Hiding below our bungalow

Scratching bellies on the sand

Pondering over potential human ankles

A little close to the shore buddy

The shark playground

This pufferfish looks just as friendly as our shark friends

Here they are in action:

Corny photo ops are a must; especially when you’re on your honeymoon.

Wow … we are pretty good looking

We have been here … hey don’t wash that out!

Reflecting color

Collecting sand and making memories

Cheesy smiles

❤

Skip over and out!

Shirtus Survival In The Maldives

Here at Cocoa Island we need to hunt for our food. So, first we did some rounds and inspected the inventory up close.

Looks like good visibility today!

Jumping in with clothes … because why not

Inspecting

Not sure these would taste very good

My big fish

I think I see a job fish in the distance

Next, we went in for the chase using old school MacGyver techniques. None of this fishing pole nonsense.

Oh you think you caught something?

Oh what do you have there?

Nice job fish

I caught like 17 of these little fun sized guys

Oh wow … look at that Solider fish!

I caught a big one … Coral fish

My coral and fun sized fish were released back into the wild to help populate the sea. But, Curtis’ fish were another story … they became next day’s lunch.

Catches of the day

Crispy battered Soldier fish

Lemon seasoned Job fish

After a hard day’s work, we watched the sunset and waited up for the stars.

Team Shirtus

Making laps

Sunset

Good night fish

Flying to paradise

We’ve been so fired up for this leg of our trip and we can’t believe it’s finally arrived. Our trek has continued onward to the Maldives for a nice solid week of R&R.

We left Thailand late afternoon and had a stop-over at the Singapore airport.

Flight Status Screen

Oh look whose breathing underwater

We arrived the following day at the Malé airport which has its own dedicated island and a boating dock as a parking lot.

After a 40 minute boat ride to Cocoa Island, we were greeted with the most stunning scenery.  We jumped out and spun a 360 to take in an internal panoramic snapshot of paradise. The sky was piercing baby blue with cotton candy clouds reflecting in the aqua clear waters. Basically … heaven.

Hotel entrance

Heading to our room

Ah … here we are

We threw down our backpacks and set off to explore.

It’s going to be a good week

View from our upstairs bathroom

There is a thief stealing our fruit

These crabs are doing it on our porch

 

Last day in Thailand; Let’s make it memorable!

It was our last day in Thailand so we wanted to maximize on the exploration and fun . We started off with a delicious breakfast on the Chao Phraya River while catching up on some world news. It’s always exciting & surreal to see a company (more like family) you’ve known since infancy headline with world changing strides.  #GoTeamUber

Oh what is this?

Saweet

After breakfast, we headed over to the floating markets of Damnoen Saduak.  We thought it would be a good idea to top off our bladders with coconut juice before heading on a 2 hour journey through the canals.  

Slizzurp

Let’s do this!

And we’re off!

The floating markets were a wondrously fascinating tourist trap.  Each vendor tried to outdo the other using crazy merchandise balancing acts in their slim-fit boats. If you stared at a vendor too long, they would pull your boat in with a wooden pole reminiscent of a Chinese telescopic back scratcher. And, if you didn’t buy anything, laser beams would shoot out of their eyes boring guilty holes into your heart.

You have arrived

Rocking our new dos

You buy from me ok?

Upcoming traffic jam

Spaceship hat

Mango lady is not amused

Counting hats

Uh oh … she’s about to pull us in.

There is no escaping now

No room

Impressive balancing skills

Traffic jam of impending doom

Our last boat stop was the lavish Wat Prok Charoen temple where we were presented with flowers, incense, and gold leaf papers to plaster all over the Buddhas so they don’t feel naked.

Wat Prok Charoen Temple

Nice new camera son

I put these where?

It’s all in the detail

Testing out the new lense

The Shirtus

Can’t I just put this on Curtis instead?

This looks like a good spot

Things got interesting on the way out. We saw a local with full body sak yant tattoos battling river weeds, a dog with blue eyebrows, and flying fish.

Sak Yants are done with sharp bamboo sticks

Looking glorious

Curtis probably took 100 photos of these fish. I’ll leave you with one.

On the way back home, our driver pulled over and introduced us to some extremely tasty local eats from these makeshift stands clinging to the shoulder of the freeway.  Sounds safe right? Totally worth it! We gorged on pomelos and red bean sticky rice smoked inside a rod of bamboo. Delicious.

Our driver Opas grabbing us some local treats

Stands lining the freeway

Crack it open and pull out the surprise

Red bean sticky rice!

Curtis.. what are you doing .. oh nice camera

There was one more thing we had to do before we left Thailand.  I needed to chow down on my share of Mangosteens. We made a surprise pitstop at the local fruit market and we bought a kilo of my favorite fruit of all time. Yum!

So good

Heaven

We get to end our last night looking into this awesome Batman skyline from our hotel room. What a beautiful and adventurous day.

Put on your yellow shirts; it’s the King’s birthday!

We wanted it to be a couch potato day today but neither of us could sit still.  Instead, we sprinted to the maze of mega-malls that infiltrated the heart of Bangkok.

It was time to get pampered so we started with some snazzy dos.  Curtis cut off 2 months worth of dreads and on top of finally being able to see, I decided to go black and purple … because why not?  Plus … we needed to look our best for King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s Birthday.

Black & Purps

Uber making an appearance at our salon

Lookin’ good

At some point, we wandered into a mall pharmacy to get some sun screen for our trip tomorrow. It’s pretty amazing what you find over the counter here. Anyone need some grab & go Botox injections?

 

The King’s birthday celebrations began around sunset and the streets filled with locals wearing royal yellow shirts and holding yellow candles in honor of their devotion for the King.

The gathering begins

Pictures of the king are on every corner

Celebrating

We finish off the night with some sushi