“Selamat Ari Gawai Gayu Guru Gerai Nyamai” (long life, health and prosperity) to all Dayak (Native in Sarawak, Borneo) especially to my friend Samuel and his wife.

During this festive season, our big white cat statue is decorated with Gawai Dayak Day theme!!! We can’t wait to take its photo in Dayak’s costume and holding a Dayak’s Shield.

We went to take photo yesterday evening (Gawai eve). Wow, it was not crowded but we have to take turns!!! When it was our turn, I quickly setup the tripod. Before I had done with the tripod, another group came, and we let them take their photos first. Finally, before we finished shooting our photos, another group came again.

My right hand was on SiewPeng’s shoulder, can you see it? I was actually holding a remote control of my camera on my right hand. I did not use the timer mode, but I used wireless remote control mode with 2 seconds delay instead. Since the shutter speed was 1/2 seconds, we tried not to move our body when taking the photo. I used ISO 200 but not higher to reduce the photo noise. I like my new camera.

Next to the cat statue, there are also lights and shields hanging on the poles.

Hello to all tourists who plan to visit Kuching, this is a really good place to take photos and tell that you have been to Kuching. You may know that “Kucing” means cat in Malay. Yes, Kuching is also known as cat city.

Many people who come here just simply park their car in front of the cat statue. Sometimes it can be dangerous to the traffic, because it is just in the middle of a roundabout. Therefore I suggest you to park your car at the parking space near the shops or make sure that it is safe if you want to park in the middle of the roundabout.

After the photo session with the big white cat, we went to 3rd miles, and Ban Hock Road to take the decorated lights. We will show you in the coming post.

We can’t bring food items into Australia, but we can bring food out of it!

In our short trip to Perth, we have also found a few yummy food to share. First of all is the famous Ferrero Rocher chocolate, except that the ones that we found were called Ferrero Garden because it came in different flavours and colours as their wrappings.

That was the first time we have ever seen Ferrero chocolate in a different theme. We were so surprised and we decided to buy it and share it with our friends. Unfortunately, there was only one left. We searched high and low but we couldn’t find another one.

At the end, we still decided to buy it. But wait…we suddenly spotted some cracks on its container. There were cracks on top of it and at the corner too. That led us to the counter to ask if they would have kept anymore in stock by any chance. Well, something quite shocking happened, but maybe because we were not used to it. The cashier at the counter immediately picked up the phone and called out for customer service! And her voice travelled to the entire supermarket!

Soon, a friendly customer service lady came to the counter and she took over our case while the cashier continued serving other customers. She went away with that box of Ferrero chocolate and came back with a sticker in the picture above! Yes! We got a reduce from approximately AUD10 to AUD4.80. And we were two happy customers! Haha… And she explained that they didn’t have any left because this batch of Ferrero chocolate was the last bit of the stock that the supermarket had for last year’s Christmas celebration.

And we also found a huge mountain of Weet-Bix at the supermarket too. And I really mean a huge mountain of it. We want to bring all of them back if we could. We can actually get them here in Malaysia but they are much cheaper there.

They look and taste delicious, especially with chocolate milk.

They are healthy too!

Well, let’s not forget to mention the yogurt that we bought. It was the Vanilla Black Cherry flavour. We just couldn’t resist the temptation of the taste and also the price. We wouldn’t buy it in Malaysia because it is just too expensive.

A cup of yogurt a day keeps the doctor away! Hehe…

The yogurt also came with fruit bits! Absolutely yummy!

As vegetarians, we really encountered quite a lot of challenges when it came to food during our trip to Perth. We ate a lot of hash browns and chips. We tried to ask for vegetarian cookings but it wasn’t easy. Fortunately, they have sandwiches and pizzas on order and we got to decide what we wanted in our sandwiches and pizzas. However, the price for eating out is rather expensive. Therefore, we bought a loaf of bread and a chocolate with hazelnut spread back to the motor inn. Don’t worry. We didn’t eat that for every single meal. Have a nice day and take care of what you eat!

Once I entered our motor inn room, I noticed that the smell of this room was same as my hostel years ago in another part of Australia. I guess Australians use some sort of similar or same detergent, which make me have the feeling of going back to my hostel in Toowoomba. Yes, my nose is very sensitive.

The room is equipped with a fridge, and anything that we needed (except forks, spoons and kitchen). Most importantly, the concept of the motor inn is interesting.

- Although the room is not really big, but there are chairs and a table.

- Soon it became like this where SiewPeng and I put some stuff on the table and chairs. :p

- We had a window next to the cupboard.

- Looking through the windows, we could see our neighbour. Did you notice the dried plant? You can find the detail of it here.

Can you see that there is a car right ourside our room?  This design is called a motor inn. Motor inn is a hotel for motorists, which provides direct access from rooms to parking area. I like this design. Compared to our normal hotel or house, we need to walk out from our room, walk along the corridor, take a lift or walk down the staircase, then we have to walk out from the main entrance, only then we can get ourselves out of the building. Whereas from our motor inn room, we can touch the sky once we open our door.

- Once we opened our door, we can see another motor inn room, and behind it there is a place that sells cars.

- Our bed.

- Red curtain, bed sheet, and the door.

- There were a fluorescence light above each of our beds. It was too bright, and we switch it off while we were sleeping.

- The tap water was not labelled with red and blue colours.

We can’t find a plain mineral water sold at the receptionist office. All of the bottled water are flavoured. The nice lady told us that the tap water is good, then I remembered years ago I did drink the tap water without boiling it which we can’t do that in Malaysia.

-Washroom.

There is a swimming pool, but we did not have time to swim there. Generally, the services provided was excellent except the receptionist working hours is too short. Our flight was early and I requested for an early checkin, we have waited for about one hour from 7am to 8am before we can check in. When we check out at midnight, we just put the key through the hole underneath the door of the receptionist room.

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Booking of the Motor inn

We went to travel agent to have our visa done, and we asked the travel agent to check the hotel as well. But most of them was above AUD$300 per night. Wow… We desided to find it ourselves.

I search the internet for the hotel and I called a the hotels in Perth using my mobile, and surpricingly the rate was only RM 0.18 per minutes. There was a special offer from my telco - the yellow guy :p.

First, I called to a hotel which the rate was only AUD$ 60 per night, the receptionist transfer the line to her manager, and the answer I got from him was that their hotel is not for international guess because it is very old, lack of maintenance, and will surely dissapointed us. He also told me that there is only 8 rooms. From this conversation, I relearned the Australian slang and started using it. I would pronounce ‘ai’pple instead of apple and ‘die’ instead of ‘day’. I believe MunYin (SiewPeng’s sister) will learn that.

Next I called this motor inn, and a friendly lady answered the phone, then I made a booking successfully through the phone without have to pay any deposit. It was easy and convenient. We may consider to stay there again if we go to Perth again.

Can you see a small white dot on the top left corner? It is the Venus - the second nearest planet to the Sun in our Solar System. In Chinese, it is called “Jin Xing” where “Jin” means golden, and “Xing” means star. It is the brightest object in the sky after the Sun, the Moon and airplane’s flashing.

It is always called a morning star or evening star, because we cannot see it in noon and in midnight. Why? It is because Venus is one of the two inferior planets from the Earth which means whereever the Sun goes to, the two inferior planets (Mercury and Venus) will always follow the sun because they are orbiting the sun in a smaller and nearer path to the sun compared to the Earth.

From Earth, we can always see that the Venus is not far from the Sun (=< 47 degrees) :-

A) At noon time, it does exist just next to the Sun but we can’t see it because the sunlight is too bright.

B) At midnight, it is still surrounding the Sun but the Sun has set, therefore we can’t see it too.

C) We can either see it in the early morning (East) or in the evening (West) where the sunlight is not too strong, and the Venus is above the horizon.

It was a quiet morning in Perth, where we stayed in a motor inn. I woke up early and woke SiewPeng as well to see the Venus.

I like the sky in Australia because I can see the stars clearer compared to Malaysia. I have seen Milky Way in Toowoomba. But during our short trip to Perth last month, it was a bit cloudy at night, and we missed the Milky Way. I hope I can see the Milky Way again.

In Malaysia especially in the city, the light pollution from neon, street light, and building lights prevent us from seeing the Milky Way. May be we need to go to a undeveloped rural area in the country to find the Milky Way in a totally dark night sky.

After taking the pictures of the Venus, the sun slowly rised in the horizon. The Sky turned from black to dark blue, then orange to blue, and finally light blue. The night has gone and the new day is waiting for us.

“I like to see the sunrise.” - It is the sentense that I have repeated many times. You can find it in many of my previous posts if you are following my blog.

-  A lovely dandelion outsides our windows at the motor inn that we stayed.

The macro modes on my camera are tricky.  There are  2 macro modes - macro (10cm above) and super macro (0 cm above).  But I use none of them for the above dandelion.  I found that zoom to max at 20X (560mm) under normal mode does better job.  And I am satisfied with the closest distance (1m).  The reason is I can only use widest angle at super macro mode, and need to get very close to the subject, the worst thing is there is distortion at 28mm, why not I use superzoom instead.  Compare to my old DSLR SLR has a 75 - 300mm lenses attached to it, when I zoom to 300mm, the closest shooting distance is 2 or 3 meters, which not allow me to do a macro shot.  I am satisfied with my new camera because it still allows macro at the longest focal point.

-  Christmas tree seed.

-  This Christmas tree produce a lot of seed in Autumn.

-  I am not sure what plant was this but I guess it was a dandelion because it was just next to the lovely dandelion.  Look at its green seed.  It was not totally dry and dead, there is a hope for new life.

-  Dried leaves and branches but not its seeds.

-  1.  White rose.

You may ask that why the white rose is not in the center of the picture.  I have cropped this picture and want to show you the seed of the rose.  After the flower drops all its petals, the lower part of the flower will sometimes grow bigger, it will become the fruit which has seeds inside.  If it does not turn into fruit successfully, it will dry very soon.  I like to collect the dried flower without petals long time ago from my garden.  I have a magenta rose in my garden, and it is very rare that the rose can produce fruit in my garden.

-  2.  Red Flowers.

-  3.  Yellow Flowers.

Well, can you match the above 3 flowers to the pictures below. :p

-  Plant A.

-  Plant B.

-  Plant C.

Years ago, I thought that Toowoomba is the only “Garden City” in Australia, but there are also other garden cities in Brisband and Perth (As I know).  That is nice because we are surrounded by gardens in Australia.