Yours truly was away in Australia for ten awesome days. Ten sounds short, but it felt like a month. Now that I'm back in the hot and humid Malaysia, I'm trying to get use to sweating and feeling hot again. There was never a day in Queensland where we weren't cold. Strong cold wind blew almost every 5 minutes. But we had to use sunblock because their sunlight was very, very hot. I could feel the burning sensation piercing through my thick jeans.

We started off in Gold Coast, visiting Harbour town, Warner Bros. Movie World and Carrara market. Things in Queensland aren't cheap but Harbour town has the cheapest stuffs among all shopping areas that we visited. But the wines and chocolates in Queensland are cheap! Movie world was something like Singapore's Universal studio, though I actually prefer Universal studio because I think it's bigger and somehow more interesting :/


Then, we headed north to Sunshine Coast, where we explored the late Steve Irwin's Australia zoo. Honestly, I expected the zoo to have more animals but it was still fun because they let us touched and played with kangaroos and koalas, which I'd never seen before (in real). Koalas are super cute! They are like soft toys or teddy bears, and they kinda have a slight smile on their furry face all the time, even when they're sleeping. Somewhere nearby the zoo, there's a drive uphill to a watch area where we can get a view of Glass House mountains. There were four mountains, just beautiful... But I kinda have very little photography knowledge so the pictures I took made the mountains look uglier than in real view :P I was most fascinated by the farm tour in Maleny Dairies haha. I wanted to see a countryside farm. The tour guide allowed us to feed milk to calves, feed grains to chicken and brush the cow. We went cheese tasting and bought some. The best part was when a staff of the cheese shop asked us to take as many tubs of yogurt back home because they were about to expire. Woah! We somehow became like excited kids and took 4 tubs. They were delicious, partly maybe because they were free ;) We also went wine tasting at Maleny Mountain Wines. I have to say the host was incredibly generous because she let us taste more wine than supposed. Cheers to the lady host! By the way, I got a little high afterwards.



Our last few days were spent in Brisbane. On the first night there, we had dinner with our Aus PR cousin, where she treated us all with some seriously good steak at the Spanish Garden. She works in the mining industry, not the workers who mine for metals, but the one who designs plans on how to go about to get the metals from underground. Cool? She's the first person I know who's in this kind of industry, and she's a female. Cheers again. So I learned a little about mining that night. Oh and the beer they serve in Spanish Garden is really the best beer I've ever had. Refreshing, light and not bitter. I'm more of a wine-drinker but I just love that beer! It's called 'Beer off the wood', I don't know why the long name... We also visited my sis's university, some street malls and some parks (parks are everywhere in Queensland). My sis brought us to La Dolce Vita where we all tried Italian hot chocolate which basically was melted chocolate. I am a chocolate-lover! So I slurped down slowly with care, making sure I didn't drip and enjoying every teaspoon. It wasn't that sweet, which makes it easy to drink.


In that ten days, I fell in love with Aus coffee. Their coffee seems to be really thick and milky and creamy and aromatic. You don't need to add sugar because it's already delicious with just coffee and milk. Every cafe or shop we went served great coffee, even Starbucks lose. Now I am so craving for their coffee. I'm also craving for their weather. I'm sweating so much now. Back to Malaysian life. Cheers people!

By the way, if you're wondering, autumn just ended and Queensland is currently into winter.