Cairns, Great Barrier Reef and Mission Beach

I've managed to cover 5 cities in the span of just 2 weeks and attended a whole slew of activities. Traveling is hard (and fun) work and at the same time, I am sad to say that I only have less than 3 weeks before ending this trip and making it back to Japan. I still have yet to cover what I've been doing since leaving Airlie beach; and I have a lot to cover after going through my photos. After sitting down for the last 2 hours writing and realizing that I still have to cover my trip to Adeliade, Sydney and touching down in New Zealand, I will have to wait for another time as this post will get ridiculusly long!

Australia – Cairns

I hopped on a late night bus from Airly Beach to Cairns to arrive in the morning. I had no idea what to expect out of this city at first, but all I knew was that this was a great place to catch a boat to dive the great barrier reefs.

Cairns is a cosy town, situated right by the waterfront with an assortment of palm trees and nice parks near by. A botanical garden is situated just out of the town cetner and a few zoos are near by but I didn't have the time to catch a bus to make it all the way out there.

I came in and got a place for $19/night at a backpacker's hostel and booked myself on a 1 night 2 day diving trip to the great barrier reef the next day. The trip set me back $270, a little on the pricy side but it's just one of those things that I've have to do while in Australia.

While killing time in town, I had the pleasure of meeting a fellow backpacker by the name of Franz, a guy in his mid 30's from Switzerland that just recently quit his job working at an oil company to do some traveling. A very interesting guy as he can play the digeridoo and knows some poi. A really friendly guy. He has also been in town for the last few days and was really nice to show me around town. Especially to the grocery store.


Franz, the Swiss digeridoo player!

In the afternoon, while walking around the lagoon, I stunbled upon an Australian guy by the name of Boyd, practicing poi and is currently an aspiring fire spinning professional. As I approached him he was quick to greet me. I really like friendly people. At the time there were also some young Japanese people around practicing juggling, poi, the digeridoo and the african drum as well. I knew that this was a really cool crowd of people so I naturally dropped my stuff, pulled out my poi set from my bag and started practicing with them.

I ran into Franz by the lagoon and naturally invited him into join the fun, and so he did as he brought out his digeridoo and came to join up with us. We hung out outside until the evening and had a great time practicing. I took a photo to commemorate the event. I really enjoy the gathering of random people doing something they enjoy doing together. I do believe that sharing and helping is what brings people together. As the evening drew to night, we eventually packe up our stuff and headed home in preparation for tomorrow. For me, my adventure would take me out to dive the great barrier reefs.


An afternoon of african drums, digeridoos and more!

The Great Barrier Reefs

I made a booking on boat going by the name of the Rum Runner. It looks like a sailing boat but it's powered by a motor. The mast and sails were there mainly for asthetic purposes. There were 16 people on the trip including myself. The boat was run by 2 deckhands and one divemaster. I got to meet all sorts of people on board, joining from the UK, Germany, Columbia, Switzerland and more. A very international group of people and I had a great time hanging out with them. The food on board was pretty good too. The ocean was clear and it was a bright sunny day. the sun was exceptionally hot and I kept on applying sunscreen to prevent myself from getting burned.

On the first day, we did 3 dives, 2 during the day and one more night dive. The great barriers reef were very beautiful and there was plenty of aquatic life to be seen. I caught sight of cray fish, a hermit crab, an assortment of clown fish and more. My best description of diving would be like swimming in a very large aquarium. Personally speaking though, I thought that the dive sites of Sipidan in Malaysia, where I got certified, had nicer corals, but still the great barrier reefs was something to see.


Top: Jumping off the boat, BottomHanging out



Left: Dinner time! Right: Roast beef, it's what's for dinner!

The great barrier reefs can also be easily enjoyed while snorkeling. Just that diving lets one go a little deeper into the waters, the experience is pretty much the same (and even a little cheaper). For those that have a chance to make it out to the Cairns, I would highly recommend having some fun on a boating trip out.

Of an interesting note, I was thinking about how much money these diving boats were making. The dive boat I was on took 16 people onboard at about $200 gross a person. The hostels that book these tours seemed to take about a $30-$40 cut and then there is a $10/day reef tax to pay for people going out to the great barrier reefs. Doing the math, a boat like this brings in $3200 over a 2 day period, operated by 3 people and the boat is owned by someone else that manages the business.

Doing the math, I let's assume that the deckhands might get $200/day and the divemaster might get $350/day. For the 2 days, we are looking at about $800 total for the 2 deckhands, and day $700 for the divemaster, or about $1500 in costs for manning the ship. Say that food for 16 people over 2 days costs about $200 extra so the that would bring the total expenses up to $1700, leaving about $1500 for the 2 days for the owner of the boat. I don't think that's too bad of a deal to be running an operation like this.

I did some research into prices for boats while in Australia (after passing by a marina for the boats) and used small live aboard boats go for about $40,000 ish or even cheaper. I would guess for a boat of this size might run into the $120,000 to $160,000 range and estimating at about $750/day for the owner and a $160,000/day price tag on the boat, I believe that the boat would pay for itself in about 7 months. I did not include mooring fees and maintenance into the equation but I would guess that a boat like this would end up paying for itself within 2 years (assuming that business is good during the high season and business might be slow during the slow season). Sounds like a good and fun business to run to me!

Mission Beach

Mission beach was introduced to me by Franz before leaving on my diving trip. I did some reading into it and learned that it was a beautiful 3 km stretch of beach about 2 hours by bus out of Cairns. It's a sleepy little area and not many people go out there, but I decided to go there, just to be off the beaten path.


Mission beach, 3 km of beach. It just keeps going and going
I arrived at the bus stop at Mission Beach after a morning bus ride and got picked up at the bus station by a car taking people back to a backpacker's lodge called “Scotty's”. The place ran at $24/night but it was a really nice place, complete with a pool, lounge, kitchen and more. The city around the area is a little quiet but a really great place to get away from it all. I walked the beach and along the streets back to find all sorts of resort houses in the area. I found out that there were a few companies in the area offering skydiving packages where people got to skydive onto the beach. Sounded like a lot of fun, but I didn't have the time to participate.


For $24/night, it's like staying at a resort!

I did meet up with Franz at the backpacker's lodge to find him doing some part time work, a night shift job just watching over the place in the evenings and then he changed over to cleaning the pool and doing some odds and ends for free accomodation and an extra $40/day. Not bad if you just wanted a place to hang out and relax. I also found some other people working at the local bar, getting paid $20/hour in the evenings and working for about 5 hours.

It's not bad working here and I think it is a great way of funding a trip through Australia. Doing something like this in Japan, unfortunately, is simply impossible as bar work pays about $7~8/hour. It's a different world.

I walked the beach and hung out at the backpaker's lodge before catching a bus back to Cairns as I would be catching my flight to Adeliade and a fire show. But this is all I'll write for now. Will have to catch up on my writing another time!

Australia – Airlie Beach

Airlie beach is a backpaker's haven, where nearly all backpackers traveling along the East coast of Australia to make a stop, as this place is the jumping point via boat to the Whitsundays Island, known for the whitest and finiest sands in the world. Word has it that the sand is so fine on the Whitsundays, the sand was used to polish the lenses on the hubble telescope before sending it off to space. Naturally, upon heading such a story, I had to make my way up there to see the sands for myself.

Taking the plane from Brisbane to the Porsipine airport, I covered 600 km in an hour to arrive at Airlie Beach. I checked into the Youth Hostel by about 5 pm and grabbed some groceries to whip up some food. The nice thing about the youth hostels in Australia is that many of them are equipped with kitchens, making cooking your own meals a viable option. As I noted before, a decent meal will run into the $10 range, now with a kitchen available, the cost of eating drops down to $3 a meal or up to $8 if you're on a splurge (excellent for whipping up a nice dinner after a long day of trekking).

I had the fourtunte of meeting a fun variety of people at the hostel I was at. There were a bunch of people from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan I met up with and had dinner with them. The included picture is a group shot of us enjoying a beer outside trading stories of our adventures.

The interesting thing I learned from them is that finding work while traveling in Australia is very easy. Actually, the jobs they have out here are very interesting and I'd consider them fun! Work for travelers as a deck hand or diving assistant (with training up to dive master) on a sailing ship / tour boat is readily available. Fruit picking, hostel work and restaurant work is also available but I would consider the jobs on the boats to be the most fun. The pay isn't that bad either with wages starting at $16.30/hour, way better than the minimum wage in Canada or Japan. Working while traveling in Australia is very feasible to earn cash while traveling and a chance to meet other interesting travelers.

Of another interesting note, if one were to look up the bulletin boards in Airlie beach, there are plenty of messeges to be found for people running boats looking for some crew to help out while they travel up and down the Australian coast. All you need to do it help out with running the ship and you'd have a free ride on a boat (with some chances to stop by some interesting islands, go snorkeling or diving). The options for traveling through Australia is nearly endless. Unfortunately for me, I wasn't able to take advantage of these offers since most people are heading South to Brisbane or Sydney for Christmas or the New Years.

Over the weekend, I took a 1 day tour to the Whitsunday islands, which included some snorkeling, hiking to a view point and a visit to the beach with the incredibly white and fine sand. The Whitsunday island is very beautiful, with surrounding ocean having a clear blue hue, surrounded by shining white sand. When I made it out to the Beach to play with the sand, I found it very fine, like playing with powder. The sand dissapears after just taking a handful and throwing it into the air. As a cautionary note, people have had problems with the sand getting into their cameras, gumming up the gears that move the lens around. I kept my camera on the boat for most of the time and brought it out for a little bit to take a few pictures; and even then, I still got a little sand in the camera. Fortunately after some use, the sand seems to have fallen out.

For those that are making a trip out to Australia, I recommend making Airlie Beach one of your stops!

Oh, and I ran into Santa in Australia. :)

The news and Freedom; some comments about Malaysia

I have for the most part stopped paying too much attention to what that the news says. There are problems with it in the US and even other parts of the world. Election coverage of the US election is biased, where even the news pundits themselves are going out of the way in dubious manners to to defame certain politicians.

I have traveled to Malaysia where I have had the opportunity to stay at guesthouses run by local people living the country to learn that similar things happen here. One of the guesthouse I stayed at is partially managed by a journalist and I have heard from him that he is limited in the kinds of articles that they can publish. Especially ones that are critical of the government.

He would tell me that should the newspaper publish a critical article of the government, they would be called up by a member of the government and have “tea” with them where they are reminded that their charter to operate could be nullified. Also, to keep the officials happy, newspaper would be encouraged to let go of the reporter to show their sincerity. It would seem to me that Malaysia too, lacks a completely free and open press.

In Kuala Lumpur, I had an interesting experience with a Indian taxi driver while being transported away from the batu caves (a very large cave near the city). he would get a phone call from one of his buddies letting him know not to use certain roads back to the city as they are blocked off in anticipation for an upcoming protest. The protest is about the marginalization of rights of the Indian ethnic groups. I am not entirely sure about the details, but the one things that was certain was that the ethnic Indians were not happy with the way the government treats them.

I would read the local English newspaper (the Star) days after the protest. The newspaper paints an obviously biased picture for the government, calling the protest “illegal” and that the government found it unfortunate that the Indians could not use the system to voice their concerns. My opinion is that the system is likely broken.

The Chinese in Malaysia

I have read from one of the SE Asia Lonely Planet guide book that though the Malays run the government, it is the ethnic Chinese that runs the economy here. I have traveled through several cities in Malaysia and have had the opportunity to meet many Chinese Malaysians (technically, the Chinese born in Malaysia refer themselves as Malaysians and the Muslim population is regarded as the Malays). What I would learn about the co-existence between the Chinese and the Malays was quite fascinating.

Malaysia is a country that has not signed the Charter of Human Rights and that officially means that the government does not have to guarantee the equal rights or treatment of it's citizens. The laws in Malaysia prevent ethnic minorities from running for positions in the government, barring both the Chinese and the Indians from cabinet positions.

Though the ethnic Chinese do not have a say in the government, they more or less have a strong voice because should the government treat them poorly, Malaysia's economy would be sure to suffer.

The Chinese Malaysians I met are 3rd generation Chinese and they are caught in an interesting and yet odd predicament-- they would consider themselves foreigners in both Malaysia and China, a people without a homeland. But I would find this fascinating because they harbour little anger for the government so long as they are able to go about their business and make a living for themselves. Should things turn for the worse in Malaysia for them, some of the people I've met would simply consider leaving.

I find this mindset fascinating because in other places in the world, I believe that there are ethnic groups that would fight a bitter and often fruitless battle with the government to attain these rights-- if the game is rigged against them, it is simply just better to not to play it and look for a house with better rules.

I believe that if more people played by these rules, the government might become more responsive instead of the typical elections held approximately every 4 years, because ordinary people can vote with their feet at anytime.

Singapore

Since starting off my journey in developing countries such as Thailand and Vietnam, landing into the metropolis that is Singapore was an incredible shock to me. Getting out of the airport and onto their rapid transit system, the first thing that struck me was how developed and clean the city was. The buildings, roads and and was exceptionally well kept. I would even say that Singapore is cleaner than Japan.

The skyline in Singapore is scattered with all sorts of incredibly nice skyscrapers and had the look of a cutting edge city. The first question I had to ask myself was, “how was a metropolitan city built in the middle of south east Asia on such a tiny island?”

Shipping and Finance in Singapore

Though an engineer in training, I have a strong interest in economics. The key factor for the development of any city, is that there must be an economic value a city produces that allows it to thrive for the population to grow and the development of infrastructure. What Singapore thrives on is the shipping and banking industry.

What is fascinating about Singapore compared to it's neighbor Malaysia is that Singapore has a port which does not charge tariffs on goods passing through the area. The location of Singapore position at the tip of Malaysia allows for easy access of ships to deliver their goods to Oceania and Asia. From what I have been able to learn from the people I've met there is that Singapore is also able to easily acquire a wide variety of goods from the ships that passes through her ports.

Though I am not entirely sure how the financial industry developed in Singapore, I am very curious as to how it developed.

Multi Culturalism and Breaking the Language Barrier

It is interesting to hear that Singapore isn't all that interesting from many other travelers. What these travelers may mean by this is that Singapore just seems to be another modern city to them. Fortunately to me, there is a whole slew of interesting beneath the surface of Singapore that fascinates me.

As a person that has lived in Japan for the last 2.5 years, one of the largest challenges that Japan faces is the English language barrier. No matter the number of years students in Japan have learned English Japan, their proficiency is generally rudimentary at best. The general Singaporian can probably speak 3-4 languages. Those of the Chinese descendants will speak Cantonese, Mandarin, English and Malay. The Indian descendants will speak several Indian dialects in addition to English. The the diversity in languages spoken in Singapore makes it perfect as a base for international trade. Many multinational companies operating on the Pacific Rim prefer hiring people from Singapore instead of Hong Kong because of their language proficiency, and they don't speak with a thick Chinese accent.

It is oft quoted by the Japanese that it is hard for the Japanese to learn English because it is an isolated island country, though Japan is also heavily involved in international trade in a similar way to Singapore. What I believe that needs to be pointed out to the Japanese is should they want to become proficient in English as a nation, it is crucial to create an environment where English can be used in a common and daily situation.

During my travels to Denmark in September, I learned from the students that it was only recently that some classes were being taught in English at school and University. As a result of this, there is an interesting language gap between the current and older generation, with the younger generation being very proficient in English and the older generation (ie. grandparent generation) with limited English skills.

My Experience

I had a particularly great time in Singapore. The Singapore doller is about 0.7 to 1 Canadian dollar, making things in Singapore 30% cheaper than buying things in Canada or Japan. The interesting things is that Singapore is touted as one of the most expensive countries to travel to in SE Asia. Though this is true, when we are talking about meals going for $1 or less in Vietnam or Thailand, traveling through Singapore is still entirely affordable.

I was able to afford a guest house for about $17/night for a dorm room in the city. Meals were in the ball park of $3-4 and still very reasonable. Transportation using the rapid transit or taxi was also very cheap. I was able to have a great time sampling the food in Little India, shopping in China town and going through the more expensive shopping district on Orchard Street. In the evenings, the nice restaurants and watering holes along Clarke Quay were usually fairly busy.

I wasn't able to experience the wild night life however, since I was traveling light and had no dressy clothes to get into the fancier party places. But from what I saw from the outside was that the Singaporeans definitely knew how to party it up.

I had a great time hitting the national library, which held plenty of interesting events, that included a a drama performance by young children, an evening aerobics session held outside, an art show and more. I even found some massage chairs that operated for free in some of the lesser traveled areas in the library that I used for a good 30 minutes to relax. Who would have known that I'd have so much fun checking out a library.

Of another interesting note, I stumbled upon an Indian rock group singing in Punjabi. I had a hilarious time listening to them call out to the crowd in a thick Indian accent. I never would have thought that I'd be listening to a Indian rock performance in Singapore.

I ended up staying about 4 days in Singapore before moving on to Malaysia. In the future though, I would consider moving to Singapore for a while for fun. It seems like a pretty nice place to live. Though the only thing that might irk me about the place is how some of the people I've met there are somewhat money driven, but I guess it is to be expected for the financial capital of SE Asia.

Back Online

So it's been a while since the last time I posted to this blog. The bad reason for this is that internet access is sometime hard to come by and if I do want to some writing, my writing often occurs when I have nothing better to do (usually at night, after I am pooped from traveling around). This problem has now been rectified as I have invested myself into a ultra-portable laptop. Running in the $350 range with only 4 GB of hard drive space.

I am now operating off the Eee PC computer developed by ASUS. We are now on the way to ubiquitous portable computing as I have mentioned before. I am now working off the wifi network at the guest house I am staying at writing this post from the comfort of the dining table.

A shot of the Eee PC is depicted here for reference and a quick outline of the specs are as follows:

4 GB flash memory
7" size
1 kg in weight
512 MB ram
Xandros Linux
3 USB ports
approx 4 hours battery life
External monitor connector
Memory card reader
Wireless internet
Web camera


This ultra-portable computer is perfect for a traveling person like me with minimalized size and a rich set of features. I am now able to easily fit this computer into a hand bag and pull it out whenever I have a free moment. Though one of the limitations of this computer is the small HD size, (approx only 1 GB of free space to use), I am currently hooking the 60 GB external HD to this computer for all my storage needs (ie my pictures and loading new sets of music into my iPod mini).

As a result of my experiences with this computer, I am very confident that ultra-portable computing will be the next big thing to hit. The next big thing to happen in the coming years is the development of an extensive wifi wireless network to supplement internet connectivity to these mobile devices. What me will see in the future is the development of a roaming wifi network, allowing computers to connect between different routers seamlessly. I believe that these networks will eventually either supplement or replace cellphone networks in the future.

Commercialization of these wifi networks will likely happen and if the cellular carriers are on the ball, they will eventually transition to equip themselves to develop a high speed cellular internet system to keep up with ultra mobile networking devices. Interestingly, if a large wireless internet platform were to be developed, I believe that such a network will be very cheap as wireless routers only cost in the $100 range. What we may find is a wifi network consisting of open routers allowing for either free or very cheap internet access.

Deployment of wireless networks is significantly cheaper and easier than deploying ground lines and these networks will piggy back off these ground lines. The wireless ultra-portable revolution will likely have been started by Apple's iPhone but it is the computer makers of ASUS, Intel and the OLPC initiative that will drive the creation of these networks.

Watch out for companies developing full coverage of wireless internet networks and applications them. This will be the next multi-billion dollar market.

Oh.. and I forgot to mention that postings will be more frequent from here on in :)