Tasha and Lisa Backpacking Adventures

Gallery: SKY DIVING

t_l — Wed, 9 Apr 2008 11:09:00 GMT

quick update

t_l — Sun, 6 Apr 2008 18:21:00 GMT

Just a quick hello to let you all know that we are alive and kicking! Um so far we've been to Auckland, paihia (bay of islands), Workworth, Raglan (surfer town), Taupo, Wellington, Nelson, Hokitika, and currently in the Franz Josef Glacier. We did the 47 metre bungeejump in Taupo, did black water rafting in the Waitamomo caves, swam under the 55m bridal veil falls (SO cold), went surfing in the incredible beaches of Raglan, and now we are going sky diving in two days over the Glaciers. That leaves the 134m bungee in Queenstown.....or perhaps the canyon swing?

There are just too much extreme things to do here, and sadly it does cost a pretty penny to risk your life....so after the sky diving we may be done with the adrenaline rushes. But NZ has much more to offer than just extreme activities, it is incredibly beautiful. Picture the most vibrant green grass, majestic rolling hills, bright blue skys, deep blue lakes and glowing red rivers, random palm trees, huge trees with massive low canopies, and lots and lots of sheep. The place is magical.

And we are so Happy to be here

WE LOVE YOU

ALL FOR NOW

T AND L

Hello Newzealand!

t_l — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:07:00 GMT

Hello everyone!!

Haven't got much to update you on, we just arrived a few days ago in New Zealand. I think we were a little sad to say goodbye to Australia but were very excited to meet up with Vaden Kurt and Kyle here in NZ. Besides we will both be back someday soon(lisa very soon). We flew into Auckland about 6:30am and were soooooooo happy to see the boys!!! Such a strange but great feeling to meet up with familular faces in a different country.

After catching a Taxi we made our way back to the hostel the guys booked, and then went to starbucks to try and get some caffiene in us so we could face the day. Didn't really work, Lisa and I ended up having naps anyway. We stayed in Auckland for about 2 days, and we mostly just walked around the city or chilled at the hostel. Auckland reminded us a little bit of sydney and a little bit of calgary. It Looks a lot like downtown Sydney but has the feel of downtown calgary. During our small explorations of the city we managed to find a good kebab place and a massive music store, which was so amazing that I would move to Auckland jsut for that store. They have crazy sales on millions of records and cds selling them for as little as 2 dollars. It's like a warehouse just full of cds, books, records, mags, all for great prices, and incredible variety. I picked up a random cd by Denison Whitmer and it turned out to be awesome, considering I only bought it because the album art was cool. Turned out to be 2 dollars very well spent.

After our 2 days in Auckland we went to go pick up our rental vehicle, the RAV 4. We thought it was like a jeep sort of thing, with a roof rack and reasonable space for 5 passengers. So we head on down to the place and pay and then we go take a look at our sweet wheels. Turns out there is no roof rack and lets just say we were going to be nice and squishey in our little RAV. Biggest problem was, how are we going to fit 5 people's backpacks, a didge and a guitar case in the thing? Vaden is good at tetris so we figured we would find a way, and with a lot of bungee cords and a tarp we sure did. Of course our makeshift roof rack had to be re-evaluated about every 15 minutes at first, but eventually we got the thing nice and secure and we were off.

First stop we planned was the Bay of Islands, so here we are in Paihia, a nice little coastal town. The boys wanna go diving, so we might head south and find a good place for that. We want to go to Lake Tuapo and the watimo caves. Travelling NZ is a bit different than Australia, because we don't really have any concrete plans on where to go, and what to check out. So we're just gonna kind of drift around. Hopefully see some of the Lord of the rings sets, like the shire. Bungee jump, and sky dive? We shall see.

Keep you posted. For now we are heading south and that is all I know.

Take care all

LOVE YOU ALL.

T and L

Cooran-Noosa-Hervey-fraser-cairns

t_l — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:20:00 GMT

Hello to Everyone!!!!

It has been a long while since we last had a bit of a chat via the blog. Apologies again, we have been busy...you know...having the trip of a life time and all. And I'm not even kidding, this trip has been absolutely incredible!! Especially the last few weeks.

I believe we left the last entry off at surfers paradise? Hope so, cause I'll start the update from there. After Surfer's we headed up to Cooran to stay with lisa's lovely cousin Vicky and her wicked family. They live in the most beautiful place which I doubt I can explain in words, but I'll try. Basically they live in this super long one level house up on this hill surrounded by a vast array of green hills and trees. In the evening the sun sits just above the hills and it casts this incredible glow across the whole valley. You can see cows, trees, sometimes kangaroos, a little creek at the bottom of the hill and way too many cane toads. At night, if it's clear, you can see millions of stars. You could easliy just stand out there and stare at the sky forever, it's an incredible feeling.

We stayed with Vicky, Richard, Aston, Laura and Nathan for about a week, and what a good week it was. It was a home away from home, not to mention we ate like queens the whole time. Vicky and Laura are outstanding cooks. Aston will agree with us on that one. I didn't know such a little person could eat so much, and he was sick most the time we were there (trust me, neither a sore throat or lack of taste buds could stop this little eating machine). Laura and Lisa and I actually got a chance to put our cooking skills to the test. lisa lou bought a Veggie cook book so we picked out a few things to make and we made a scrumptious dinner of Potato leek soup, spinach and riccotta gnocchi, lemon/orange salad and laura made an incredible pavlova to polish it off. It was tasteyyyyyy!

During our stay in Cooran Vicky took us to the Australian zoo which was a bit surreal. After seeing it on TV and with the massive amounts of steve irwin memorabeilia around, it was like whoa, we are at the Australia zoo, we are actually here...in Australia, at steves zoo. Wholy CRAP. It was awesome, we fed some roos, which are SOOOOO cute and saw lots of other animals. We saw a show which invloved snakes, birds, and a massive crock. It was really really cool. The Australian zoo kicks the shizen out of any other zoo I've ever been too, even Singapore's.

After the zoo trip and seeing a few art galleries in Cooroy (i think),and copius amounts of white wine and m&m's.... we finally arranged a hostel in Noosa and Vicky agreed to drive us up there(Thanks Vicky!! we miss all of you!). With that we were off continuing our journey up the East coast.

Finally in Noosa, we found ourselves at the Halse lodge in yet another 14 share dorm, with folks across the globe. Finally met a few americans, and of course about a zillion canadians and germans, and a handful from the UK. Once we got ourselves settled we decided we need to regroup and replan the trip a bit. We had about 2 weeks to do a lot of things we wanted to get done, and we had a long way to travel in that small amount of time. So we actually begun, planning!!! First things first, go surfing!!! And that we did. We took a two hour lesson and had one hell of a time I's say. We both stood several times and even caught our own waves. That's all it really takes to get you hooked. The next day we took a day to relax our sore muscles and buy a rash gaurd to do some more surfing the next day. The next morning we got up early to buy some food for a picnic and then we rented ourselves some boards and headed down to tea tree bay. I was a tad intimidated when i got there, and wiped out pretty good, lisa caught a few waves. I mostly just got in the way of the surfers. There is a lot more than learning how to stand on the board that you need to learn, you also have to learn the logistics, like who has the right of way and what not. Lisa tryed to get me up to speed as we headed to another beach with some easier waves. Once we got there I had a blast, and lisa lou did too. After all that surfing we were both pretty dang sore the next day.

Next thing on our list was the infamous Fraser island. The largest sand Island in the world, and according to fellow travellers...paradise. So we booked a bus to hervey bay, and then booked a 2 day camping tour to the island. After a good 4 hour bus ride we arrived in Hervey bay, had enough time to get some fish and chips attempt to sleep despite the loudest most horrific singing coming from the drunken people right outside our dorm room. It was actually pretty funny, would have been funnier if we didn't have to get up at 6am the next day. On a good 2 or 3 hours of sleep we were off the Fraser the next morning. We took a farey over the the island and watched the water turn from green to vibrant blue. The first day of the tour was jam packed, we travelled along 75 miles of pure beach, walked in virgin rain forest, walked in Elli creek a fresh water creek crystal clear and beded with white sand. Headed to Indian heads and the Champagne pools. All of which were so beautiful, the view from indian heads was unexplainable. We saw the pinnacle (coloured sands) which were sacred aboriginal grounds, where the women would do ceremonies. We also had a chance to see Maneho a ship wreck on the beach. Just a massive rusting old boat. It was really cool. After all that we went to our campsite and more or less just went to bed. The next day we travelled to two lakes, one which we had to walk across a mini dessert to get too. The other was perched lake surrounded by trees that secrete tea tree oil into it, making it look like you are swimming in a cup of tea, because the color is yellow, then red, then brown as you go deeper. It was really nice and made our skin so soft. After that we started the long drive back to the farey and back to hervey bay where we were scheduled to catch our 24 hour long bus ride to cairns.

I was sad to leave Fraser, because it was absolutely paradise, the most beautiful place I have ever been in my entire life. We will try to put some photos up really soon to share with you. When we got back to Hervey bay we had some pizza and were off on the long long journey to cairns. Not much is to be said about the bus ride, it was long, we got about an hour of sleep maybe, and the toilet stopped working...but people kept using it....enough said. The scenery was again breathtaking, as we make our way up the coast everything is super green and more lush, more like a rainforest, also more hilly as well. Last night we finally got here in Cairns thank goodness. And here we are staying at a hostel called calypso, which is dead right now. I think everyone is either skydiving or sleeping....not sure what we are to do next. Most likely book a snorkelling tour of the reef for tomorrow. So hopefully that will work out and we can tell you all about it. On the 23rd we are off to NZ!! Stoked about that!!! We plan to do some bungi jumping out there, and black water rafting. We will keep you posted as much as we can.

LOVE YOU ALL, and happy easter coming up.....
Hope everyone is happy and healthy!! (Except Tasha's mom who has pink eye, hope you feel better and get healthy!!!)

SENDING LOTS OF LOVE FROM CAIRNS,

Tasha and Lisa.

Gallery: cooran-noosa-hervey-fraser-cairns

t_l — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:17:00 GMT

little hello video

t_l — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 19:19:00 GMT

just a short little hello

LCD Soundsytem

t_l — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 19:38:00 GMT

Finally got a chance to upload a video from Big Day out.

This was the last song LCD Soundsystem played for their set, and it rocked, SO WATCH IT!

Gallery: Random

t_l — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:36:00 GMT

Finally a New Entry!

t_l — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Dear loyal followers of our travel blog:

We are terribly sorry that we have left you with nothing to read for such an unacceptable amount of time. We were sort of busy, doing things...so we would actually have things to write about. So wake up from you kip (nap) and get comfy, grab yourself a Cupa and some Bickies(tea and biscuits) and get those reading glasses, cause I'm about to finally, add a new blog entry:

I believe we last left off with an entry from Coffs harbour? I will do my best to pick it up from there. Coffs was fantastic as you might recall we had a little hike and lots of icecream (that's a staple in the diet now), we forgot to mention how many Canadians we met in our hostel. At one point a whole bunch of us were in the TV room and we got to talking we realized that 9 of us were all from Canada and the other two people with us were from London and Amsterdam. So we all decided that we would share a bag of chips and watch Eurotrip which was cool to watch with Europeans because they commented on it with things like....we're not actually like that...haha. It was just super cool to be in one room with people from all over Canada, and the world, and we were all just watching a movie. The best part of travelling is definitely the people that you meet, it's such a great collective feeling knowing that your all from different place, but ultimately doing the same thing, and looking for the same good time.

Between meeting some great people and making a lot of pasta we managed to hit the beach in coffs, it was raining but why not. We rented some boogie boards and hit the water. The water got a bit rough and I unintendedly flashed lisa when a wave claimed my bathing suit top...I'm just glad it was her who I flashed...we soon had to get out of the water because the rip tide was too strong, lisa had to get a little help from a nearby surfer. But all was well, except for the middle aged man spread eagled on his beach towel in nothing but a bikini cut Speedo....about 5 feet from us. I had a few questions for that man, I'll let your imagination think of what they were.

Alas we needed to leave Coff's because it was time to travel up to Byron Bay!! After a train and bus ride, we made in the rain and in the night. We cared our packs onto yet another bus that was labelled, the arts Factory lodge. After a short ride with our very talkative English driver, we finally got to the lodge aka hippy commune aka the coolest hostel in the world. The is stretched out on a few acres of land lush with tropical plants, and even with a large pond in the middle. You can stay, in a teepee, tent, cube, wagon, hippy bus, surfshack or a few other wicked abodes. We were lucky enough to be in the Surfshack...with 10 other lucky people. The only problem with 10 share dorms, are you either get great roommates, or crappy ones that come back wasted at 6am turn the light on and leave the door open so the mozzies can eat you alive. At that point you can try to sleep, or join the party...but getting off topic. We found ourselves with not only awesome roommates, but wicked people to hang out with for our five day stay. But back to the lodge for a moment.....you basically don't need to leave the place, there is a kitchen, a pool, a reading room, hammocks, chill out area where the hippies play guitar and juggle, a cinema, and last but not least the Buddha bar/restaurant/entertainment hub. You can also make didges, play pool, arcade games, go on the net or go on a Bushwalk. As you can see, it would be any easy place to settle down, for a long time. And that's just the lodge, Byron bay itself is equally alluring.

So back to the Surfshack, turns out we made a good call choosing to stay there, because amongst all the animals that call the arts factory home, we had just little spiders and one hunchman (spider as big as my hand), but the teepees had Rats, as did the wagons, and the tents were good if you were okay with being soggy because it rained A LOT while we were there. All in all the surfshacks were a good place to be, minus the close proximity to the buddah bar...but as I said most the time you are part of the party....even if you don't want too, because sleeping is not an option. The Shack had about 5 bunkbeds and various old school surfboards hanging from the ceiling. I had top bunk and there was a nice neon board adorned in a painful amount of spider webs, directly above my head.

But now to tell you about our roommates!! Two of our roommates were from Calgary, and actually were in a band with a few of Lisa's friends (small world), the others were Shaun from liverpool, Tom#1 from Manchester, Tom#2 from liverpool, and Nia and Shophie from whales. We made the best ties with these people and hung out with them basically the whole time, but the thing is one person introduces you to another, and another, and so on. You start to get to know and meet so many people from so many different places and it's such a great feeling. Everyone is really open and friendly and awesome. The Arts factory was just like a huge family, by our 5th night you know everyone and recognise everyone and it feels like home. You all head over to the Buddha bar for 2 dollar glasses of wine, or 10 dollar jugs of byron ale, or you head to town and hit some clubs with terrible music. There are of course good bars with live bands, and actual music. But we ended up at Coca Mungas, a place you would leave if you weren't with a good group of people, and have had a few. Haha, there is also a bakery that stays open 24hours to feed the endless amounts of partiers throughout the night. You can get cheese buns, or Mango sweet chilli mince meat pies, at 5 am..if you want. How great is that. When we weren't at coca mungas grooving to terrible tunes, we were walking around town or back to the lodge under a massive blanket of stars. The beach in Byron is nice, but the night sky is even more beautiful. I have never seen so many stars.

During the day the shopping in Byron is incredible, there are a million little hippy like stores, and cafe's and surfshops. You can always find somewhere to spend your time, if you leave the artsfactory that is. After our fifth night most of our friends were moving on and we had new roommates, more Canadians!! By then we figured it was time to move on too. Afterall we had pretty much milked the arts factory for all it's worth, we made didges, lisa made good use of the volleyball court, we played a lot of pool, and made teams with some Argentineans/Israelis my team usually lost horribly to lisa's.....we saw a fire show at the Buddha bar and even went on a bushwalk learning about the deadly berries that hung unexpectedly hung above our heads (the juice from the thing is like acid, and if you burn the leaves the fumes will kill you), also the best leaves to use to wipe your bum haha. We learned a lot, met some great people, and fell in love with Byron, like everyone does....but it was time to move on....as lisa's aunt was awaiting us in Brisbane.

Soooo here we are now in Brisbane staying in Annies beautiful house on stilts, with it's view of the city skyline. It proved to be a safe haven for us, and a nice break from the sleepless nights, mozzie bites and basically a lot of partying. We took a few days to settle ourselves in and then Annie and Chris were nice enough to drive us up to Noosa for the weekend. While we were up there we stopped by Vicky's (lisa's second cousin) beautiful house on the hill. We had a lovely lunch with Vicky and her great kids, Aston, Laura and Nathan, and Richard her husband. Vicky made some home-ade dips which were soon claimed by the fingers of 18 month old Aston. He could not get enough of the guacamole (I'm sorry I don't know how to spell that). I was lucky enough to taste my first Keesh. Which was AMAZING, made me wonder why I eat anything else. We had a really nice time up there and are planning on heading back up there, but I will let Lisa fill you in on where we are heading next...... Hey there folks! This upcoming weekend we're planning of backtracking down the coast a little bit to the Gold Coast where we're gonna check out the beaches, and maybe do a speed boat tour! Then from there we're gonna head 'er back up to Noosa and stay with Vicky and her wonderful family for a few days, where we may serve as babysitters for a night or two. From there, we're gonna stay in a backpackers in Noosa so we're closer to the beach, maybe do a surf lesson or two, then take a tour up to Fraser Island for a few days. As Fraser Island is just off of Hervey Bay, we may be able to time it right so that we meet up with Vicky and her Daughter Laura, and soak up some sweet Shakespeare, not to mention hopefully sun! I hear that its quite rainy up the coast. Places like Rockhampton, about halfway from here to Cairns, are experiencing extreme floods, and it is the wet season, so we shall see! From Hervey Bay, we'll make our way up to Cairns, and do some snorkelling on the great barrier reef, and again hope for some glorious sun. Then its off to New Zealand my friends! Thats about all our plans in the near future, I hope you enjoyed your bickies and this wonderfully constructed blog mostly by TashaBarrie. WE LOVE YOU!! and go buy some sweet chilli sauce, and have yourself a lentil burger if you know whats good for you. haha, Hugs from Australia! XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

p.s forgot to mention we did speed dating in byron bay on valentines...that was interesting....but we're off to go get tea (dinner) so next time!!

Gallery: coffs harbour

t_l — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:39:00 GMT

Gallery: Sydney

t_l — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:31:00 GMT

Gallery: bermagui

t_l — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:16:00 GMT

the coast near canberra

Gallery: aquarium in sydney

t_l — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:06:00 GMT

A short stay in Sydney, and off to Coffs Harbour

t_l — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 14:18:00 GMT

Good afternoon/morning/evening!

Well, we are now in Coffs Harbour, sadly we only stayed in Sydney for a two days. But they were a good two days. We found ourselves a really nice hostel for the second night and even made it to the Sydney aquarium. Which was absolutely amazing. We walked through the oceanarium and there were 6 foot sharks swimming right over top of us, not too mention sea turtles and Stingrays at least 5 feet across. So beautiful. We will post photos soon. Due to the rain we never made it to bondi beach, but that just gives us a reason to go back!

We left Sydney yesterday at 7am and got to coffs harbour at 4pm. It was a beautiful train ride to say the least. Australia is just the most incredible place, everything from the trees to the sky seem more beautiful here. And everything is all nice and green from all the rain. No rain here in Coffs though! We seem to be running from it. Today we walked up muttunbird island, (i think that is what it is called, i have no idea..) It's just a little like 15 mintute hike up this really big hill that looks over the harbour. It was very beautiful, it's a good spot to do whale watching, when they are in the area. I think they come around in september-october. So we did not see any whales, but we did see these guys catch like a massive fish, it was a like 2.5 feet long. After our little hike we went to get some icecream and the old icecream guy wanted to tell us stories about the days when he was a swordfisherman. And he would smuggle the swordfish from the states into canada, and all this. It was funny. He wasn't a very good story teller, he would get all wide eyed, and pause during the wrong moments for intense empaphis, when there really didn't need to be one. For example, " And I was paid in cash...Wide eyed...pause...swideways glance...Eventually I was paid by cheque." Okay buddy, thankyou for the icecream..we will be on our way now. Yes, it was funny. Anyways, after that lovely little event, we went to book our train seats to Byron bay!!!! YEAHHH. We are going there tomorrow at 4 pm, and will get there 8 pm. We shall dwell there for the next 3 weeks at least. SUPER STOKED. Everybody get presents from byron bay. haha.

Well. That is all i have to say..oh wait..one more thing..

I LOVE AUSTRALIA

okay.

We're good.

Talk to you guys when we get to Byron Bay.
LOVE YOU ALL.

PEACE

two for one!

t_l — Sat, 9 Feb 2008 00:13:00 GMT

Hello everyone!! Sooooo we've been traveling snail speed for the last week or so. and we'v e been busy! Since we last blogged we've left Melbourne where we took af flight to Canberra with Andrew also. It was the shortest flight I've been on which took a total of 48 whole minutes! After arriving in Canberra, greeted by Andrew's amazingly lovely mom Kerry, we drove through the vigorously planned out capital city of Canberra, where Kerry took us to do a bit of sight seeing, to the national museum of Australia, then to the Telstra tower. The next day, Andrew (Lisa's cousin), Tash, Kerry and I went out for a little road trip out to the coast as Canberra is couple hours inland. We drove about 3 hours to a place called Narooma for a lovely lunch where we met up with Lisa's great uncle and Aunt Ian and Mary. They are wonderful!! We stayed in a caravan park by a tiny costal town called Bermegui. It reminds me a bit of Tofino. Its pretty quiet and has a wide range of glorious beaches! We also got to meet Ian and Mary's good friend Pat Thomson, who is nearly 85 and just so happens to be a successful Jazz singer! She has a magical personality and was a joy to meet!! Although it was pretty rainy those couple days, we ended up getting a bit of sunlight the last day we were out there, and we to a beach called horse shoe bay, and we got to do a bit of bodysurfing! We also went to this place called the blue pool, which is this old concrete rectangular pool kind of carved to fit just right at the side of the Tasman sea(?) Pacific ocean (?). Andrew, Kerry, and I took the jump while tasha checked out waves crashing against the rocks. After a dip we went to the "Gelato Clinic" which actually used to be the Bermagui Vetrenary clinic, but they then it turned into a glelato shop so they just crossed out Veterinary and replaced it with a gelato. [as a little side note: it is 12:25 at night, and tash and I are crouched in our tiny downtown hostel in Sydney! So I apolagize for any spelling mistakes that will and may be made! ] We're both doing well, and send our love and hugs!!

Switch over, Tasha here now. Between the Chili chocolate gelato's, the Canberra art gallery, the awesome vegetarian restaurant called Au Lac, the relaxing at Ian's eating scones and drinking tea, spending time with all the lovely aussies in Canberra, seeing the coast, and despite all the rain, we had a really amzing time in Canberra. Everyone says it's a bit boring there, but we think it's beautiful and worth visiting for sure. It's very comfortable and not too busy, MUCH different from things here in Sydney.

We left canberra for sydney via bus, at around 11 am, and arrived here about 2:30 pm. We took off into the busy streets carrying our massive packs in search of a hostel with room. Being the weekend, the first 3 we tryed were fully booked. As we went in search of another one, we ran into to lovely ladies lisa knew from highschool, very lucky. They are doing the same thing as us, traveling up the east coast. They are a little ahead of us, and plan to head to Byron Bay soon, but we will most likey be there the same time so we will have some people to hang out with up there. After a chat we exchanged numbers (they gave us there numbers..since we don't have one). Then we continued our search for a place to sleep. Finally we found a place, very small, and not very luxurious at all. But 20 bucks a night feels just fine, as does having a place to crash. We plan to look for a nicer hostel tomorrow, when we have more time to search and a have a place to stash our packs while we do so. After we found this hostel we went exploring and found ourselves at the harbour. We saw the Sydney Opera house!!! For real, it was amazing. It was beautiful, and surreal. We will most likey take the ferry from circular quay too manly so we can see most of the harbour for cheap. After almost dying from being so excited from finally seeing the opera house for real, we decided it would be wise to get some quick food, and some groceries to last. After that we thought it would be cool to go to a movie, so we decided to go see Juno! Which lisa has now seen 4 times I believe. But it is a great movie, go see it if you have not done so. It was really expensive for us to go, 16 dollars an adult for the ticket, but the theatre was super nice, and we can say that we saw juno in sydney. So that is worth 16 dollars, I would say.

I forgot to mention the amazing sleeping person in our room. We finally got to our room like 3:30 pm, and there are like 10 beds in there, so there was this duded sleeping, out cold, and when we came back like 3 hours later, he was still out. That guy slept like no one I've ever seen. We noticed he's finally gone, he must be nocturnal. Kinda funny. But yes, that's about all we've been up too so far, I think we will take the train to Bondi beach if we can find some time, everyone tells us we need to go, so we must. Just another side note for you: it is killer hot in here, the fan is just not doing the job, I think I am melting.....do not be alarmed....i will keep it together.....just very warm in here....

SOOOO, this is about all we have to say I think, for now. We will be in byron bay hopefully on the 12th, so far we will most likely go by train, excited to experience that. We will keep you posted.

Happy valentines to everyone if we don't post anything before then.
Love you all!!! Miss ya!!!

LISA AND TASHA

Gallery: Big Day out!

t_l — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:38:00 GMT

Melbourne owns my heart.

t_l — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:31:00 GMT

Hello everyone!!

Tasha here, just thought I do a little update while I take a look at the large amount of photos filling up my memory card. It's too bad that it takes so long to upload them, otherwise between the two of us we would probably have 10 galleries and hundreds of photos for you. Sadly we can't do that, but we will be putting some big day out photos up pretty soon. We didn't really get much time to tell you about it last entry, but it was absolutely amazing. Between us both we saw, Spoon, Arcade fire, Bjork, Battles, Krafty Kuts, Kate Nash, Lcd soundsystem, Unkle, and Pnau. Pnau was a band we'd never heard of and it was insane, they were like electronic, chanting goodness, they had people dressed as giant strawberries dancing on the stage, enough said. Sadly we did not get to see Rage agianst the machine, because there were just too many people and Lcd soundsystem were playing at the same time. Lcd was genious. And it's always fun to dance in a giant room with screens, smoke and lasers. It was really really cool. I think lisa mentioned last post that we went to see Henrietta's brother play in his band in this little bar downtown. It was pretty awesome, the show was called the "make it up club" and the bands that come through do complete improv. It's super cool, and really awesome to know that what you are hearing, may never possibly be repeated in that exact form. And if it's great sounding, it makes it even more special. Henrietta's brother's band was like listening to the world explode while traveling through space, it was crazy, but very cool. There was also a band that was playing from Japan, they were about the same sort of sound. Grundgey improv, little electro, very cool. We also had some very cheap australian beer, that proved to be, well, cheap, but pretty good. It was a good night, we also went to a vegetarian restauraunt before hand. It was absolutely delicious. Melbourne is just covered in vegetarian and vegan places to eat. Which makes me want to.....live here.....ahhhh. There are also countless amounts of art galleries, and the street art here is incredible in quantity and quality...if you into that sort of thing.

We haven't had a good solid day to explore the city yet, but we have had a little taste. Lisa is a little bit sick, she has tonsillitis. But don't worry, we took her to the doc and she got some meds, and she is getting much better. I think tomorrow we are going to head into the city to see some more galleries. I was lucky to see the Until Never street gallery and NGV today with Andrew, as lisa stayed home to rest. Both were amazing, and I'm not leaving melbourne until lisa see's them too! So hopefully tomorrow she will.

We fly to Canberra Feb 2, I think. So the day after tomorrow. We will probably stay there for about a week, and then we will be off to sydney!!! Super excited. Sad though, cause we LOVE Melbourne. Melbourne, has my heart for sure. Even if it rained today.

Lisa will write the next blog I think, so we will talk to you soon.
Until then, stay warm, stay happy, know we love you.

Tasha and Lisa Lou

Hello Melbourne!

t_l — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 17:26:00 GMT

Hello Everyone! Lisa here: I'm surprised to hear about the extreme Temperatures in Calgary at the moment, its odd how we can be having such a moderate winter and then it quickly turns into a blizzarding freezer! Its a bit cooler here in Melbourne than in Perth, but its stiil in the mid to high 20s, rather that the 30s, its quite comfortable. sorry guys.

So after arriving pretty late into Melbourne at around midnight on January 27th, My third cousin's Brett and Shane's partner and wife Naomi and Jackie came to pick us up! It was about a half an hour to a subberb called Geelong, about a 45 minute drive from downtown Melbourne. So we stayed at Jackie and Brett's house for the night with Shane and Naomi also who are just moving into a flat in Melbourne. We selpt on an air mattress which was funny because everytime one of us got on the bed we would nearly wind the other person unsespectantly laying down. haha.

I think Tasha felt a bit more a home, bacause we were among vegetarians. Ones that even eat vegetarian bacon, which we have yet to try. So the next morning we quickly hopped on a the local train into Melbourne. It was quite relief because we just narrowly caught it. After passing through the southern cross station, we finally met up with My cousin Andrew and his girlfriend Henrietta at the Flinders station. It was really nice to finally meet them as I've been eager for a couple of years! So off we went from there to the Big Day Out Melbourne!! It was absolutely packed with people. There was an estimated 45, 000 people in attendence! It actually reminded me a lot of the Stampede with the abundence of rides like the zipper and the huge catapolte ride too. There had a small assortment of shops and lots of different bands tees available. Tasha and I both got a Big Day out tee. I can't evenstart to explain how cool some of the bands were! But I will attempt soon, hopefully in a couple of hours, as Tasha, Henrietta, Andrew and I as gonna take a train downtown to see one of Henrietta's brothers play in an phycadelic improvised japanese gig. Should be interesting!! So sorry that I have to rap this up so abrumptly. I misseveryone SO HUGELY! Brenna, I'm sorry to hear about your spill, do tell me more deets. How was Red? Big hugs going to everyone from Tasha and myself. xoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxooxooxox I LOVE YOU!

I love it when blogs get erased

t_l — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 14:55:00 GMT

Soooo everyone, the reason why you have not seen a blog entry for a while, is that we actually did write one. An extremely long one covering the past week in excrutiating detail, and it did not save. So that was a bit discouraging, and it shall never be replaced. It was full of over-taking humour and charm. But let's not dwell on the past. We must move forward, so I will do a summary for you of the past week.

After arriving in perth, and staying with pat for the first night we caught a train to Mandurah where michelle picked us up and took us to Australind where we stayed with Jo and Duncan and their amazing 4 kids. We only stayed one night and two days but it was great. They have a swimming pool that Duncan built which we spent a lot of time in, we also went to a few beaches and lisa and I even came within arms reach of some dolphins in Bunbury. We all went to Bussleton also, which is a really great area with a beach and a 2 km jetty (dock). We walked it and I got my first aussie sunburn, but it is gone now luckily. We ended up jumping off the jetty of course and most of us got stung my jellies, including me, but they were just small little buggers so it wasn't too bad. After the swim we went to get icecream at the mickey D's which has a lot more variety of things here. Like mango juice and slushies. All good. After the trip into bussleton we went back to Australind where Jo and them all live and we said our good byes to the kiddlins, which was hard I'm tellinh you, because they are all really really amazing kids. Very different each of them, but just really good kids. All in all at Jo's we swam, saw dolphins, a giant spider, the sunset, horses, kangaroos, and some beautiful beaches.

The next stop was back to Rockingham where we started here in Perth. Once we got back we decided to hop a train to Fremantle, took about an hour to get there. It's this amazing little area with a great collection of shops, pubs, restaurants, and icecream places. We've had a lot of over priced, but very tastey icecream the past week. When we were in Fremantle we stumbled upon a didgeridoo shop where lisa pretty much enhililated. She has the cirular breathing down and everything. One of the guys that worked there was REALLY good at it though, he was trying to teach is some techniques, it was pretty sweet. We also walked by this club where I though coldplay was playing live, but it turned out to be this aussie guy doing probably the best cover we will ever hear. After our jaunt around fremantle and after buying a few little things we got back to Rockingham and went to sleeeeeep.

That brings us to yesterday, which was Australia day. AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE OI OI OI. haha. Lisa and I did not find a party on the beach but we did find a night club called liquid. Lisa's cousin Robbie took us and said he would watch out for us, which he did, until he disapeared. But it was all good we were fine on our own. The music was lame, but you could somewhat dance to it, and we did until 5 am. So that basically updates you to today!!! Yay. It's about 1 pm here, and we woke up about an hour ago haha. Not too many plans for today except pack, we fly to melbourne tonight at 6pm and should arrive there about 11pm, and then Sunday is the BIG DAY OUT. So everyone get excited. Cause we are. Any requests for band tees anyone??? I plan on buying like 20 of them at least. Maybe. We will for sure update you on how it goes.

Cheers mates!!
Sending love and hugs from the land down under.

Tasha and Lisa.

ps. the other blog entry that did not save, was even half written by lisa. Only half because we decided it works better me typing and her telling me what to add in here and there. So sorry momma mar, we tryed. Maybe I'll get lisa to do the next one, if at first you don't succeed....

Gallery: Western Australia

t_l — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 15:53:00 GMT

Gallery: Singapore Zoo

t_l — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 12:49:00 GMT

Gallery: Singapore

t_l — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:39:00 GMT

random photos from Singapore

Welcome to the sunshine

t_l — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:29:00 GMT

Hello everyone!

Greetings from Rockingham Perth. Lisa and I arrived here yesterday morning. We were greeted by lisa's great aunts Jenny, and Pat in the perth airport. They took us to Kings park to see the city skyline of perth, and some HUGE beautiful gum trees. It was a bit windy, but of course beautiful and very sunny. After we explored the park a bit, we headed to Pat's house. Were we met several other lovely people in Lisa's large family. We had a BBQ and then me and lis just passed out. We were so tired. I had probably been awake for 27 hours straight. We were happy to sleep.

Today we went down to the beach!!! Palm trees all around. We swam in the Indian ocean, I believe. I saw my first jelly fish. Lisa got a tiny sunburn, and I got a serious shorts tan haha. We headed over to Jenny's house afterwards for pizza and wine. Now here we are ready to hit the sack again. Now that we have a free computer we might try to upload some photos from singapore. Tomorrow we are going to mandina, or madrine, or something of the sorts. We will tell you how that goes. For now we send love and miss everyone as always.

We will soak up some sun for you,

LOVE LOVE LOVE and big HUGS

Lou and T

Walk until your feet fall off.

t_l — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:47:00 GMT

Hello everyone!!!

We have finally just found refuge again in this little internet cafe after an entire day of walking around the city. Check out was at 11am so we had to keep ourselves occupied, a first it seemed like a daunting task, but alas Singapore has many things to see, one of which being the art museum. So that was our first stop this morning, and it proved a good one. We saw many things ceramic, silk, LARGE scale paintings, art of seal carving, acrylic, oil, you name it. We saw a few political and philosophical pieces and stuff that was just wierd. They had a few videos playing of interesting performance pieces as well. And it was only 4 dollars to get in. Not to bad at all. After the art gallery we headed to this little cafe sort of like starbucks but they sell pastas and salads, and really expensive coffee drinks. Lisa had ceaser salad and was not pleasantly suprised to see that it came with raw smoked salmon allllll over it. But she gave it a shot, but to no avail. Tasha on the other hand is down with the smokage of the salmon and ordered a sandwhich full of it. After the break at the cafe we just kept walking down to this CRAZY buddist district (upon reccomondation of the barista at the cafe shop). This place was insanely busy with people of all sorts, beggars, people praying, buying flowers, just walking around. All of these people which made us feel super tall. Lisa is taller that most of the men. The place was just so busy we didn't really want to hang around long, so we just kept walking, soon we needed a rest and just sat down on a bench and before long it just started to rain. At first it was a nice refreshing sprinkle and then in turned into a monsoon. Luckily we had boughten an umbrella from seven eleven earlier, but we still got DRENCHED. After the nice little shower we eventually found ourselves in an underground MRT station, which is apparently were the hip youngsters hangout to break dance and skateboard. Not quite as cool as Haji lane, but still pretty awesome. We sat down and watched some of the kids breakdance, some of which were amazingly good and pretty young. We took a lot of pictures and rested our feet until we headed for the Singapore river. When we decided to leave and we finally made it to the river we were just super tired and wandering pretty far from our hotel area. Plus we needed drinks badly, best place to find a drink and chill atmosphere, haji lane. So we headed down there and ended up at a morrocan cafe, where we got watermelon juice, which is actually made from real watermelons, like if you mushed up a watermelon and put it in a glass. SO GOOD!! We also had a tuna sandwhich which wasn't raw and super super good. We also met some really nice locals and had a good chat about singapore and Canada. Then we ordered some sheesha which was way to strong so we kind of just gave up, and then lisa split hot sauce all over the carpet in the cafe by accident. There was even a sign that stated if you spill, you buy a new carpet. We were like, well we would rather spend our money on hostels and sweet souvineers, so we hid it under a pillow, felt really really bad (they were really nice) then peaced it out of there. Also worth noting, is instead of out of order signs on broken stuff, they put signs that say "Work in progress". For instance, there was a blank advertisment board by a bus station and there was a nice little sign that said, work in progress. Kind of funny. Same with on these broken pipes. It's like they are trying to be sincere, like, really we will fix it. It's funny. The birds here are funny too. They look wierd. This is Tasha writing by the way, lisa is narrating, I'll make her type the next blog, which will be set in AUSTRALIA. In about an hour and a half we are heading back to the hotel to catch our bus to get to the airport to hop our flight to PERTH. We are super excited about that. So far in our travels to singapore most people keep to themselves, we look forward to the open and enthusiastic aussies that we will soon meet!

Any how, we are going to end this blog entry here. We love you all and miss you all and the music that was playing in here caused me and lisa to laugh uncontrollably ( lisa wants me to say we laughed incessently). We laughed HARD. Just thought I'd leave you with that tidbit. Lisa says once again that we love you guys very very very very much!!!!

Tasha says PEACE OUT.

Rain? Nope not too much

t_l — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 13:07:00 GMT

Jan 18-19 08

Well greetings to all from singapore!!! Thank you everyone for all of your comments they made us soooo happy to read, and made us miss you all even more hehe. Were not missing the snow that you mentioned, that is for sure. It rained just a little bit here this morning and last night but yesterday (18th) the weather was superb!!! We did infact get to the zoo yesterday and words cannot describe how beautiful it is. When you walk in you are completely engulfed in tropical foliage. Basically it's like your following paths through a rainforest and then you come across an enclosure or say, a manned wolf, or a mouse deer. All of the enclosures are a photographerds dream, because there are no cages, no wires, barely a two foot wooden fence that blends in with the plants. It's really like taking a safari. Even the lions were barely contained it was somewhat strange. The whole zoo is about 2 km and we did the whole thing in about 5 hours. We got to see an elephant show and stubbled upon a KFC right in the middle of the zoo (strange). There was also a ben and jerry's on site where I bought some icecream for an insane sum of money, but enjoyed it sooooooooooooooooooo much. Lisa bought a pizza for an equally absurd amount of money but it was our day out so we splurged. I almost bought auston this crazy glow in the dark snake shirt but it was like 60 bucks, sorry auston, I'll keep my eye out for something cooler and less pricey.

After the zoo we caught a cab back to our hotel and did we ever get a chatty taxi driver. This guy was talking about everything from Britney spears to Bangkok. It was funny. When we finally did get back to the hotel lisa took a nap and I went down to the pool. After we met up again we took a stroll down to a place called Bugis Junction. After me not being able to find flip flops ANYWHERE we asked a nice shop girl that we became friends with down in Haji lane where I could find some. She said Bugis junction, so we went off to find it expecting a small mall.....well. It was like a multiplex of stores, shops, and even an outdoor courtyard in the middle decorated with dancing fountains. These fountains are insane like I cannot explain them to you, there are like streams of water that shoot out of the ground out of this like iron rose, and it all lights up and the different streams interact with eachother to create shapes. It's really cool. We did finally find me some flip flops, actually and so much more because they have the coolest clothing here. Every teenager here wears black skinny jeans and converse. EVERYONE has converse shoes. We also found this graphic tee shop amongst all the millions of stores, with the most amazing T-shirts and coolest designs. One talks about the history of headlessness, lisa's personal fav. My fav wa probaby the penguin holding a skull (so random) haha. They were super cool, and super expensive so alas we did not purchase any. We did how ever find a food court that was more like a series of extremely busy restaurants. The mall itself was like sunridge in calgary on boxing day. SOOOO busy. But yes, we treated ourselves to one of the restaurants and it was sooooooooooooooooooo good. Lisa had the red hot chilli pepper and chiken on penne pasta, and I got the vegetarian fav on rice, followed by goldmine cheesecake. It was so tastey. We probably scarffed it down in 10 minutes flat.

After the mall we started to walk back to the hotel when we noticed a sweet record shop called Street Records. Inside we found a pretty chill atmosphere, records lining the walls, music posters, a black couch and a really nice shop guy with dreds past his butt. We talked with him for a bit and scourred the records, turns out his aunt lives in vancouver so he'd been to Canada. He was super nice and recommended some music to Lisa Lou. We didn't have any cash left with us so we didn't buy any, but we may go back. Also our friend from haji lane told us about some good clubs here, apparently there is one called Zouk and it's supposed to be the "hardest" (as she said) club here in Singapore. We think that means cool. There's also one called Beatz and MOS. Beatz apparently plays the likes of the cure, the smiths, the strokes, and placebo. Cannot go wrong there. We might check out one of these places, but were not sure for nowwww.

Ummm so today we might go to the art museum or just chill, not sure. We fly into perth monday morning. Will try to keep you updated but if not, we will talk to you when we get to perth.

As for your lovely comments:

Benson: lisa says that once you take a look at our pictures you'll feel like you've been here, and Tasha says you are a noob and should be super jealous that you didn't see the reptile exhibit in the zoo. Were talking 500 pound turtles and komodos, to bad you weren't here. Lisa just hit me, and told me I'm awful, you have a good sister ben. She says that she loves you.

Auston: Tasha says I saw a kid by the pool the other day that reminded me of you SO much, he looked, moved, and talked EXACTLY like you. It made me want to come home and play skate with you. Buttttt not yet. I Love you too. Enjoy being a single child while you can. And please refrain from touching my CD's.

To the moms and dads: Your comments warm our hearts! Glad to here that you all are doing well, and happy that jayna has book Sanfran!!! We miss you guys a lot , and are very happy for your support. Sorry if we don't call too often it is just a lot easier to do it this way. We will also send some postcards soon. WE LOVE YOU. And tasha is glad that caros mail came, and is asking her mom to open it and give it out to everyone in calgary it is for. To john: stop being a worrier, Tasha is alive and kickin haha. WE LOVE YOU ALLLLLLLLLL LOTS. will keep in touch. Lisa also says that she'll soon reply to the lovely emails she's gotten! Tasha says I LOVE YOU MOM.

Kasey: Lisa cannot wait to read your journal and she's keeping one too. She also has found so much clothing that you would like, when she finds the perfect piece she wil buy it for you!! BIG HUGS and LOVE

Grandma and graps: Thanks for the phone numbers, not sure if you should have posted them on the net, but all in love. Miss you guys lots, and am sorry to hear about the snow. I'll do some suntanning for you. We are staying safe and eating well...for now haha. Will keep you posted. LOVE LOVE BIG HUGS

Friends: You know who you all are!!! WE miss and love all of you soooo much, many times have we mentioned that we wish you were here to experience all of this with us. But you are all in our hearts and we will try to write lots so you can experience it with us. We wish all of you well in clagary, or where ever you may be (germany, vancouver, denmark?)and where ever else all of you are headed. Will try to get souvenirs for all of you. LOVE LOVE LOVE BIG HUGS

Until next entry. WE SEND LOVE FROM SINGAPORE!!!