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| Twelve Apostles, Australia |
In about 4 days, I will be flying to Australia. I will spend four weeks visiting the famous landmarks of the Land Down Under. I have been checking the weather forecast in Oz everyday since the news of country-wide bush fires broke. Somehow I know the temperature is going to be just right during my stay. I could not wait to see the Twelve Apostles, Uluru, Great Barrier Reef and Wave Rock. A week in Fiji then follows. I am not a big drinker; however, a Kava session is going to be a highlight in Fiji. Tonga is my third destination. I am in for some amazing choir singing there. Maybe I would even get to see the Tongan Royals at a Sunday service. I wanted to go by sea from Tonga to Samoa but there are no regular ferries between countries in the South Pacific. So I become an incidental tourist in New Zealand. I am not into extreme sports so I will be spending a lot of time with nature and sheep, breathing the pure air and riding on a train or bus. My 18-day stay in NZ might just be long enough for me to visit both islands. My new life will start in the Cook Islands on April 1st, 2013. (To be continued)
The journey deviated from my plan greatly. The hot weather in Australia was unbearable for the most part. Oz was a great disappointment. Then there was a hurricane in Fiji. I did go to Tonga; however, I had a near fatal accident on one of its offshore island, 'Eua. My wounds were babdly infected. I then went to and stayed in Auckland for 4 days, trying to get medical attention for my injuries. Subsequently, I had to return to Vancouver on St. Patrick's day to recover from the tropical ulcers. Six months after my return to Vancouver, I headed back to Asia and eventually ended my roaming in Rarotonga. Cook Islands did not turn out to be the place that I would want to stay for the rest of my life. I stayed in Rarotonga for 4.5 months without developing a sense of belonging.
ReplyDeleteAs I look back to this very first blog of mine, I realize that I have changed so much over the past decade. From a desire to find my Shangri-la to settle down to just wanting to explore the world, I have come full cycle to deciding where my final resting place would be. The more places I visit, the more I found out that I don't know about this world. I have yet to find a place where people are content with their status quo. I became a rubbish can where strangers just deposit their pains, worries and secrets. Now that I have quit Facebook for good, I can start a fresh chapter in my life. No more connections with people that I meet in my journeys and from the distant past might actually give the real freedom that I have been yearning for all these years. LOL
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