Australian wildlife

One of the great things about visiting Australia is all the wildlife that you get to see. Here are some of the coolest creatures we've seen and met during the past two weeks...

Wild horses aka "brumbies" in the outback:


Parenti lizard, at Palm Valley:


Thorny devil lizard, on the road between Palm Valley and Kings Canyon (roadkill, but in surprisingly good shape):


Wild camels, between Kings Canyon and Uluru:


Sergeant Major fish (among many others), at the Great Barrier Reef:


I'm not sure what kind of parrots these are, but they were all over the place at our hotel in Port Douglas:


Two snakes, spotted while cruising in the Daintree rainforest:


Wallaby, at the Koala Conservation Centre on Phillip Island:


Koala with joey, at the Koala Conservation Centre:



Wombat, at Warrook Farm, between Melbourne and Phillip Island:


Kangaroos, at Warrook Farm:



We also saw some kangaroos in the wild; the same grey ones while at the Blue Mountains (outside of Sydney), and two red kangaroos just outside of Alice Springs which were too quick for my camera reflexes.

There was a dingo appearance at Ayers Rock Resort (not very exciting, looked like a dog, and again, ran away before I could get my camera).

Of course, there were many many penguins at Phillip Island, but as photography was not allowed there, I don't have any photos of those either. They were super cute, though; very tiny (less than 12 inches tall), usually clustered together in small groups, and quite noisy while greeting and preening each other.

Aussie-speak

D and I have been quite amused by all of the Aussie-speak over the past couple of weeks. Some of our favorites:

"head luggage" - When the Qantas rep was telling us that our bags were overweight, she suggested we put more stuff in our "head luggage" since it wouldn't be weighed. So helpful!

"chilly water" - Australians don't drink cold water or iced water, they drink "chilly water".

"gorgeous" - Australians apply this adjective to food quite often, to mean delicious or tasty. I tend to think of it as a visual descriptor, but I guess they don't.

"cheers" and "that's okay" - D and I often say "thanks" and get a "that's okay" in return. Apparently it's the equivalent of our "you're welcome" or "no problem". We also noticed other people don't say "thanks" at all; they say "cheers".

"fuzzy wuzzy angels" - This one came up when our guide was explaining some history to us at Kings Canyon. Apparently during World War II, when ANZAC soldiers were injured and had to be smuggled back through Japanese enemy lines, they would be guided by Papua New Guineans. The soldiers' nickname for these guides was "fuzzy wuzzy angels", because their hair was fuzzy, and they were like guiding angels.

"silly o'clock" - On the day before our early morning Uluru tour, our guide said goodbye to us by saying she would pick us up the next day at "silly o'clock", meaning really really early. I don't know if this is a common term or just her being funny.

"wet bum" - D was very amused every time our snorkelling guides told us not to sit down with "wet bums" on our boat.

"aces" - We'd heard this one before, but it's used much more frequently here.

fine dining in Sydney

Quay

Quay is located at the "Overseas Passenger Terminal" between the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. It has an unbeatable location, and is very pretty and modern inside.

We were seated at what appeared to be one of the best tables, in a small sub-room jutting out into the harbour. However, our server's attitude was a bit off-putting; throughout the evening she was overly snarky. For instance, when I asked for regular coffee, she pointed out that there was no such thing, only "real coffee" drinks like espresso.

The food was generally quite good, but there were one or two (of of eight) courses that I was not that impressed with. My experience was not improved by the extremely slow pacing of the meal, especially as I was a bit sleepy to begin with.

Anyway, onto the food!

I ordered a "Quay Butterfly" cocktail which had limoncello and butterscotch schnapps in it. That sounds terrible but it was sweet and yummy.



The first course was a very cute (and delicious) amuse; it contained two kinds of raw fish (hamachi and I think tai?) with fish eggs (not sure what kind but they were very good) and horseradish cream:



My only possible complaint would be that the horseradish flavor was not sharp enough, but I like my horseradish quite strong.

Next up was another raw fish dish; bluefin toro with six tiny accompaniments:



One was a bubble of soy sauce-like liquid, another was a smudge of edible silver, and a third was caviar. I've forgotten what the remaining three were, so they must have been less interesting. The fish was good but I only liked maybe half of the accompaniments.

Then, we were served a confit of squid and octopus, in a squid consomme:



This dish tasted fine, but wasn't that interesting (both to look at, and to taste).

I liked the next dish but D did not. It came with crispy pork belly, abalone, and silken tofu w/ mushrooms. I think I just like tofu better than he does:



Neither of us were very happy with the next course; quail with chestnuts, walnuts, mushrooms, truffle custard, and bitter chocolate pudding:



All of the components tasted great by themselves, but the dish did not seem to come together well as a whole. I enjoyed the truffle custard by itself, but the bitter chocolate pudding especially tended to drown out nearly all of the other flavors. Ironically I think this is one of their signature dishes.

Next was a confit of lamb with pinenuts, artichoke, sunflower seeds, rosemary, hops, and okra shoots. It was fine but nothing to write home about:



There were two desserts; the first contained jackfruit shaved ice and custard apple ice cream:



I thought the presentation was nice and I enjoyed the tropical fruit flavor. It worked well as a palate cleanser, too.

The second dessert was perhaps my favorite course of the evening. It was a beautifully arranged plate of raspberries, violets (again, edible), almonds, and vanilla cream, with a sugar "crisp" of sorts:



It tasted as good as it looks. Nuff said.

Finally, we were served tea and coffee (or espresso, rather) and petit fours; chocolate wrapped caramel (yummy) and some kind of nutty macaroon:



To sum up, the food was quite good, the service was so-so, and the views were incredible. I'm glad we went, but would not recommend unconditionally.

Tetsuya's

Tetsuya's was something of a different experience. The service was impeccable; our water was always full (and I drink even more water than usual when travelling), my napkin was always folded, and most impressively, the pace was properly adjusted with no prompting when it became clear that we were faster than the average diners. I felt the food was more consistently excellent, as well.

We started with a mushroom and chestnut soup, which had a strong Japanese flavor:



It was simple but delicious. D thought it may have been a bit too simple, though.

The soup was followed by a "softly smoked" salmon, topped with a mostly-cooked egg yolk covered in caviar, encircled by a ring of cream:



It's unfortunate that they smoked the salmon, because otherwise I might have liked this dish very much. As it was, I ate nearly half of it anyway.

Next was a savory custard with crab and leek:



It was basically like a fancy chawan mushi. I liked it, but again, perhaps slightly too simple.

We were then served a raw shrimp salad with cilantro. There were dabs of oil on the plate, but I've forgotten what they were:



I liked this fine with the creamy sauce, but D liked it better without.

The next course was Tetsuya's signature ocean trout, with a black sesame crust, and a salad of konbu, apple, and daikon:



I was surprised by the pink color of the trout, but apparently it was a special Tasmanian trout. Again, too bad they cooked it...I kept eating it for the sesame crust (delicious) but eventually gave the rest to D. I ate all of the salad, though.

This was followed by the least impressive course, a terrine of crab wrapped in seaweed, with avocado sauce:



I thought that the crab texture was destroyed by making it into a terrine; instead of being pleasantly chewy, it had a texture similar to kamaboko (fishcake), which made it too spongy for my taste.

I didn't try this barramundi, but D liked it second best to the trout of all the courses that evening:



I did eat the spatchcock (young chicken) with edamame and braised daikon. The waiter said it was served with "bread sauce", but I'm not sure what that is or what it's supposed to taste like:



The chicken was tender and fairly flavorful. However, it paled in comparison to the next course, which was a wagyu beef, served on a mushroom, topped with a soy sauce-flavored jelly. It came with wasabi, lime, and sea salt, and the waiter recommended we try them each with the meat:



I loved this dish; it was my favorite overall. I ended up using generous dabs of all three condiments and they made the beef taste amazing.

At this point we started with the desserts. First up was a spiced pear sorbet with orange jelly, and a custard apple chai "bavarois". We were meant to use the spoon to mix up the chai before drinking it:



It was interesting in concept, but I wouldn't say I was super impressed with the taste; it was almost bland. I like my tea flavors very tea-ish.

The second dessert was much better; it was billed as a "strawberry shortcake" with vanilla bean ice cream, but was entirely liquid:



The lower layer had a cake-y flavor but had a grainy texture like applesauce. It was really creative, and happily, it was delicious too.

The last dessert was a chocolate "chiboust" with lemon curd and coffee marshmallow:



The flavors sounded strange together but actually went well, although the lemon taste was quite weak. I preferred the strawberry shortcake, myself.

The petit fours were quite good; I especially liked the green tea marshmallow, and the buttery coffee-flavored bite-sized cake wasn't half bad either. The macaroon was good, but French macaroons are increasingly common these days:



Overall, I liked Tetsuya's significantly better than Quay. If I return to Sydney (if I have enough lead time) I'll probably try to secure another reservation at Tetsuya's, but I don't think I will go to Quay again, at least not before I've tried some of Sydney's other fine restaurants.

Sydney by night

I was playing around with my camera a bunch on the first day in Sydney, and I took some night shots that came out pretty well, in the Circular Quay area:

thoughts on Sydney

A few random observations...

We almost didn't bother to go to the Sydney Fish Market, because we thought it would be like Tsukiji in Tokyo, where it's mostly worth going only to see the fish auction at sunrise. As it turned out, we were pleasantly surprised; there were lots of seafood shops inside selling yummy-looking food, and it was a picturesque area to hang out generally, although we did have to dodge lots of seagulls.

The Harbour Bridge is somewhat less impressive than I expected. It's pretty industrial looking, and walking over it gave us good, but not great views. I'm not sure why it's one of Sydney's premier sights. Anyway, as a result, we decided not to bother with the 3+ hour, $200/person bridge climb. Well, that and D's afraid of heights and I'd have had to drag him anyway.

We went ate at two excellent restaurants while in Sydney: Quay and Tetsuya's. Quay has an unbeatable location and the food is quite good too, but Tetsuya's is on another level. For one thing, the service is noticeably better. At Quay, the pacing of the courses was so slow that we were nearly falling asleep towards the end, and the service staff did not pick up on any cues to speed up, until I explicitly asked. (Although, to be fair, it does seem like the Australians spend longer eating than Americans. This was especially obvious to us coming from Korea, where the food would come so fast that we couldn't keep up.) Also, the food is more consistently "polished"; there were one or two dishes at Quay that were very creative, but I felt the ingredients did not come together well. Maybe that's why Tetsuya's is a harder reservation to get; we made ours in April and I heard from a friend that they were booked out by late May or early June, for our date in early September. More on the restaurants to follow...

Our tour to the Blue Mountains was a great change from the hustle and bustle of the city. We went with Boutique Mountain Tours because we read great reviews on TripAdvisor, and in fact we had a great time; there were only six people on our tour (I believe the max is 12) and our guide David managed to keep us ahead of and or away from the big tour groups, for the most part. He even found us kangaroos! We had an encounter with three kangas during which I of course took a billion photos, some of which we've already posted. Some friends took their Boutique Wine Tours to Hunter Valley, and they reported that they had a great time as well. Highly recommended.

Meat pies and pasties are yummy. Why don't we have them in the US? Australians also eat "mushy peas" which are like mashed potatoes but with peas instead of potatoes, and I like them very much.

Bondi Beach was surprisingly uncrowded for such a major tourist attraction, and the sand was fine and soft and amazingly clean. Actually all the beaches were quite nice; we walked from Bondi to Bronte, and stopped by Coogee as well.

Both Sydney and Seoul have painted bike lanes, for better visibility (green in Sydney, red in Seoul). I was thinking we should try that in the US, and maybe the roads would be slightly safer for bikers. Or not.

However, drivers in Sydney are terrible. D and I both nearly got run over a couple of times looking the wrong way (like the American tourists we are), and our guide David would regularly curse out other drivers, for good reason. All the road rage seems very counter to the normal Australian friendliness; for example, when we were walking the coastal trail, some random teenaged guys pointed out dolphins to us. We almost ignored them because really I'm just used to teenaged boys who only make stupid jokes, but it turned out to be one of the highlights of our walk.

Sydney has a Running Festival inspired by the Bay to Breakers! Theirs is longer (14km) but is similar in feel; a few competitive runners and otherwise just a big party. I guess the B2B must really be a big deal if other countries are imitating it.

There seems to be a culture of "chocolate cafes" in Sydney. I saw Guylian cafes, we went to a Lindt cafe, and there were others as well. At the Lindt cafe, the milk and the chocolate for the hot chocolate were served separately, so we could adjust to taste. It was delicious, with none of the dry aftertaste that I usually expect with hot chocolate.

We had a great time at the opera! (Yes, even D.) We had front row seats, which meant that we couldn't see the surtitles, but the story was Romeo and Juliet retold anyway, so it didn't matter much. The benefit was that we could see directly into the orchestra, which was fun. During the end of the second act, one of the French horn players was visibly falling asleep, which amused me very much.

Seoul, Korea: Day 3

I think I'm going to start writing in less detail, because this is taking way too long. But, for now, here's the wrap for Korea...

We didn't have much of an agenda on our last day in Seoul. After getting packed up and checking out, we went to a nearby Korean BBQ place to try "samgyeopsal" (grilled pork). Luckily, our second Korean BBQ experience was much better than our first; the waitress spoke excellent Chinese (yay!) and helped explain how to eat everything, and the food was yummy, too. Actually, it turns out that in general, Chinese goes a lot further than English in Korea. I'll have to remember that next time. After the meal, instead of getting candy or mints, we got free yogurt drinks (aka "yang le duo"). I love the yogurt drinks; I used to drink crates of them when I was a kid spending summers in Taiwan, so I was pretty happy about that.

We went walking around the neighboring area after eating; first to Shinsegae, a department store, and then to Namdaemun market (much like any other street market in Asia, with lots of yummy-smelling street food). Then, we hung out in the Myeungdong (downtown) area for awhile, just window shopping and marvelling at the hordes of shoppers.

I watched a street vendor guy make this fried potato strip thing, which I thought was pretty cool:


He managed to cut the potato in one long strip, so it was like a continuous potato chip. I guess it appealed to my inner geek, somehow.

Finally, we stopped by the Lotte department store, right by our hotel. We both love department store food courts in Taiwan, so we decided we had to see if Korean department stores were similar. Sure enough, the basement was filled with a huge variety of food stands. Not only that, they had a centralized ordering system, so that patrons could place an order, wait until their number came up, and then proceed to the appropriate place to pick up their food. I think the system cut down a lot on people loitering near the stands, and made everything more orderly.

We also briefly visited the "Temple of Heaven", before finally heading to the airport:


Anyway, it was a fun (albeit short) stay in Korea, and I look forward to going back again soon.

Seoul, Korea: Day 2

We weren't too jetlagged on our first morning in Seoul; getting up around 7am after a good night's sleep. We had a list of sights from a Korean friend, but no idea how to get to them, so we headed for the concierge desk, where she not only told us where everything was, but how best to get there, and most importantly, what to eat.

After a quick stop at G25 (a Korean store much like 7-11) for breakfast, we were off to the Gyeongbokgung, which used to be the main palace of the Korean royal family. We had a great time wandering around the grounds, even thought my foot was kind of gimpy from the night before. Good thing I'd thought to bring my ankle brace! I think we spent maybe 2 hours there, before heading to Insadong (a shopping area) for lunch.

I took a couple of photos that I thought were decent:



At the concierge's suggestion, we went to Gugong, a restaurant specializing in bibimbap. We decided to order one of their set menus for two people; it came with a regular bibimbap, a dolsot (stone pot) version, and a mung bean (aka green bean) noodle salad. I added an order of seafood pancake too that, and I could tell that the waitress thought we were over-ordering, but she doesn't know D like I do. Lunch was delicious! We'd been a bit disappointed with the previous night's dinner, but this meal restored our faith in Korean food. I especially liked the mung bean salad; I hadn't had anything like it before, and the pieces of noodle were nice and "crunchy" or "q-q" (as the Taiwanese say).

After lunch, we wandered around Insadong for a bit looking at all the arts and crafts stores, before deciding to hit Changdeokgung, another palace nearby. This particular palace had been inhabited by members of the royal family until 1989, and so it was grander and more modern in places. It was also only accessible via tour, so we were forced to follow around a huge group of English-speaking tourists. That pretty much killed my experience; I enjoyed our time at the Gyeongbokgung much more, in no small part due to the ability to avoid the crowds. It's really difficult to take any good photos at all, when there are people everywhere.

From here we decided to cab it home to our hotel, where we got the concierge to help us buy tickets to Nanta, a cooking-themed show that we'd heard was extremely popular. It was an interesting audience; primarily English, Japanese, or Chinese-speaking. The man to D's left was from Ghana, and said that he and his group had been in Korea for a month (!) on a cultural exchange program. Pretty cool.

There were five actors in the cast, and they spent most of the time doing percussion with various kitchen implements. There was also some juggling, some fire-throwing, some physical comedy, a little bit of audience interaction, lots of knives being thrown, and very very little speaking, which was good for the mixed-language crowd. Anyway, the show was cute, but it was very much Asian-style humor, and I wondered if it would have mass appeal on Broadway, etc.

Nanta "Cookin":


From there, we walked to a traditional Korean restaurant called Hanmiri, where we were served an amazing X course meal. I will let the photos speak for themselves; suffice to say that we were both stuffed and that all the food was delicious.