The Old Craftsman’s Forge

I originally had misgivings about this. How interesting, forget about exciting can a place called Tropical Fruit World be? Maybe expect a banana to jump out at you on a Banana Man Ride? So, you can be sure that I had raised eyebrowns when I heard that it will cost us A$32 per adult, and A$15 for kids 4 years and above to enter Tropical Fruit World. Shrugging my shoulders, I coughed up A$64 (They had a promotion where the kid gets in free). Still alot to pay to see bananas hanging from a tree. I’d rather watch Ah Meng hanging from a tree.

Anyways, Tropical Fruit World is a 10 acre working farm growing all manner of tropical fruits. Quite interesting. I didn’t know Queensland weather is condusive for tropical fruits. I’m not sure if the avacado can be considered a tropical fruit, but it is one of the main crops for this farm. They even had a plaster avacado made as a huge signage, and christined it the “Big Avacado”.

Apart from a fruit market section, as I would anticipate,

Tropical Fruit World also had daily shows (Wah!!!! Like zoo liddat!!) where they expounded on the history, legend, interesting facts about fruits, which they called the “Miracle Fruit Show”

See this chap talking about bananas. I initially thought how interesting can something like that be! Well… after sitting for 2 minutes, I discovered that it was really quite interesting! I realised why bananas are so expensive in Australia and so cheap elsewhere! ( A little about bananas later in another post)

Apart from the fruit show, there was also a tram ride! And surprisingly, somewhere tucked in this farm, was an entire advanture area, where they had mini train rides, a boat ride, a small animal farm, etc! We took the tram ride to get deep into the farm.

The kids feeding the kangaroos, wallabies and emus.

Huge fallen tree log, which had bee hollowed out to be a dijeridoo.

ok..ok…enough already about this boring place. Next installment…Paradise Country

Technorati Tags: Singapore, Gold Coast, Tropical Fruit World, Fruits, Craftsman

Things have slowed down for me to a comfortable pace, and I’ve pretty much at a stabilized plateu right now.

Which is why, it’s also the right time to get my body back into shape!

This is one of the things that I have most difficulty with. I originally tried running at night after the kids sleep, but I get really tired, and I also normally fall asleep while putting them to sleep! So, this didn’t work out very well.

I’ve also resisted joining the gym because…well, the gyms are either too far away, or are also usually very crowded.

But, enough was enough, and I was sick of being unfit. I finally did something about it, and joined St Gregory’s Spa, located at Hotel Park Royal, and just a 200 metre walk from my office.

St Gregory’s has a large Gymnasium with all the latest eqiupment. It also has a 25 metre lap pool. All of this in a nice Balinese Spa environment. I’ve been going to the gym everyday now, since Sunday, and my routine has been cardio exercises for 20 minutes, then little of weights and resistence training, and a 10 minute swim to finish off.

After that, a 5 minute soak in the Sauna, a quick shower, and I’m a brand new man everyday!

Ahhh……..

After we settled into the apartment for a bit, we headed out for our first great adventure! We were wondering where to go, as it was already around 10am or so. I was also a little tired, as I hadn’t slept a wink on the plane.

We decided to head to the Tropical Fruit Farm, about 30km south of where we were. But, befor ewe reached, we took a side detour at currumbin, to take a look at the farmers market and the chocolate factory and honey farm which were side by side.

This is the chocolate factory and honey farm we literally stumbled on while looking around the farmers market.

Excitedly, we headed straight up to the factory!

We saw one of the men who worked at the factory, making chocolate.

He was churning out so much stuff that ended up on the table like this.

But apart from this, the factory was really a yawn. We didn’t stay long, and headed next door, which wasn’t really a honey farm, but I guess just produced bee shows for the tourists.

This was …. Honey World

It was another boring place. Wah.. not a good start hor. We got out quickly, and headed to Tropical Fuit Farm, where we had alot more fun.

We got off the plane and was met with a temperature of about 8 degrees Celcius. We found out later that it was unusually cold that day.

In any case, the kids loved it…. “Just like Genting Highlands!” Kyla quipped!

While planning our trip, it was one of our criteria that the apartment we stayed in was directly facing the beach, and that we had beach front access. That made our search quite difficult, as there were so many apartments on the Gold Coast, and how to determine what is good? Everyone one of them proclaimed themselves as the best accomodation on the coast. And, I couldn’t rely on my past experience, as the last time I was there, was some 8-9 years ago, and as a student, I stayed literally in a dump.

I stumbled on an apartment called “19th Avenue on the beach”, which is a absolute beach front apartment, with the beach just 5 metres away. Although I have never stayed there before, nor do I know anyone who stayed there before, I decided to choose that, as it had a 4.5 star recommendation, and there were good comments from people who stayed there before who said it was good.

One good thing (depending on how you view it) was that “19th Avenue on the beach” was on Palm Beach, a good 15km south of Surfers Paradise. This meant that our beach was literally quiet, and the area we’re in was quite residential. None of the touristy stuff, which suffocates you when you drive or walk by Surfers.

Just diagonally opposite us, is a Macdonalds and Seven Eleven. Makes it easy to buy stuff in the night.

When we walked into our apartment, I knew we had made the right choice on the accomodation. Take a look. We have a full end to end view of the Pacific Ocean!

We’re on the 11th floor, and our unit had a balcony that ran from the left bedroom all the way to the living room. Have a look. You can see Surfer’s Paradise in the distance.

Kyla looking at the ocean from the living room.

Some more pics on the apartment.

After exploring the apartment, we looked down our balcony, and saw this!

This is the indoor swimming pool! One of its kind on the Gold Coast! The pool is heated to a 28 degrees celcius year round, and has a jacuzzi at 38 degrees celcius. we spent quite abit of time in the pool in the afternoons. The kids absolutely loved it!

If you still don’t feel envious about the accomodation, then I think something’s wrong with you. Ha ha ha.. make sure that if you are planning to go to the Gold Coast, that you stay at “19th Avenue on the Beach”! This place absolutely rocks!

I’ve finally made Krisflyer Elite Gold in 4 months, 11 days.

The most important thing on an overseas self drive trip is of course the car.

Being an AA (Automobile Association) club member in Singapore, I was entitled to reciprocal car rental deals with Hertz in Australia. Besides getting a good 10% discount on the rental fees, I was also given a lower excess rate. So, what does a power starved car junky do in a situation like this?

Well….get the car I would enjoy driving in the next seven days of course! Booking a car was easy. It was a simple 10 minutes as I browsed through Hertz’s website to book the car I wanted.

I didn’t want a 7 seater monster. I drive it everyday now. What I really wanted was a lean mean drivin machine, and thats what I got.

I got for myself, a gleaming silver Ford Falcon XR6 Turbo. Its a 4 litre DOHC Dual Independent VCT Turbo I6 engine! Capable of up to 245kW of power @ 5250rpm and 480Nm of torque @ 2000rpm, and comes with a 6 speed transmission.

Ssssswwwwweeeeeeetttttt

This baby purrs like a smooth cat when driving, and is shear pleasure to drive. Granted though, I never really got the chance to push this car beyond 110km/h. Believe it or not, I stuck to the road limit fastidously as I had cruise control. I’m proud to say I never got any problem from the police at all.

The other thing that this baby came with was a GPS navigator device.

I had some problem trying to understand how it worked initially, but once I understood how it worked, it was so easy to use. It got us from the airport to Palm Beach without any hitches, and I swear I would get one for my car in Singapore except for the fact that Singapore’s too small to require a GPS navigator.

All in all, a very good choice of car. I have absolutely no regrets with this one. In a total of 7 days, and over 700 kilometres clocked, I paid a little over A$130, with mileage utilization at 11.5km/l. Not too bad I think.

I’m sitting here in the transit lounge, sorting through the photos from our trip to the Gold Coast. It’s hard work I tell ya, sorting through 3.6GB of photos and videos.

I’ll slowly post them to the blog over the next few weeks, but here’s my very first installment!

We started out in the evening on the 5th of August, where both Chris and I got off early from the office to finish up the last minute logistics. Than we swung to pick the kids up fro mschool, where their teacher told us that they were too excited to even take their naps! But I don’t think they look very excited here in the cab ride to the airport!

Its the kids’ first airplane flight, and Chris and I have taken quite a number of measures to make sure that they enjoyed their first flight. Chris brought along some sweets for them to suck, their milk for them to drink while on take off, and we also described to them the flight from check in to take off to what they would be experiencing in terms of the loud sonuds, the pressure on their ears, and the general things to note while on a plane.

Kyla and Ariel at the check-in gates, checking in the luggage.

At the check in counter, we found out in real Singapore Airlines style that Singapore Airlines had screwed up our tickets. I had bought our tickets off the Internet, but could not buy a ticket for Elkan as his was an infant ticket. We were told that we had to call up SQ directly to book his tickets. well, it turned out that this wasn’t the best way to do this because Elkan was booked all by himself, and our booking reference numbers were different. “No Problem” they said. “We’ll make sure he is put together with the rest of your family.”

Well, all that assurance came to naught when at the check in counter, we discovered that poor little Elkan was sitted some 3 rows behind the rest of us! The ground crew was good enough to try and put us all together, but could only manage putting Elkan’s seat on a seat across the aisle from us. We had to get on the plane and negotiate with the passanger next to us to exchange the seats!

Thats Singapore Airlines for you! They screw you up, and expects you to solve your own problems. Thankfully, the nice gentleman sitted next to us on 32C was kind enough to exchange his seat for Elkan’s seat on 32D. We ended up having seats 31A and B, on the first row, which is where Chris and Elkan sat, and 32 A,B and C, which is where Kyla, Ariel and I sat.

Kyla and Ariel monkeying around on the baggage trolley as we waited to ensure that the same screw up with our sitting arrangement didn’t happen on our return flight to Singapore.

Monkey faces!!!!

Dinner at Chen Fu Ji, where a plate of fried rice cost us S$18 a pop!!!!!!!!!! Wah lau! Some more not very nice. I honestly think I cook better fried rice. Ha ha ha!

After our very expensive dinner, we headed to the boarding gate. The kids were obviously extremely excited, having not been through transit before. They were making monkeys out of themselves.

The Stewardess helping Chris and Elkan with the seat belt, and of course pampering the “cute little boy” with the free toys and stuff. You can see that this is where we were all seated.

Kyla and Ariel were really taken by their own private TV to watch Hi-5 and Justice League with. It took them a really long time before they slept. The return flight was comparatively a lot easier, as they quickly slept, having gone through the initial excitement of the new fangled stuff on an airplane.

Ariel enjoying Hi-5

Surprisingly, Elkan could still fit into the bassinet.

The wonderful sunrise on the Brisbane coast, viewed from 30,000 feet.

We’re almost there, and the kids are all awake.

This is just so beautiful

Elkan….like a seasoned traveller.

Ok. Thats it for now. I’ve covered all the boring preperation and flight stuff. I’ll touch on our first day on the Gold Coast on my next post. And….I’ve also run out of time. I need to board my flight now.

I was on the flight back from Brisbane, and happily reading the Straits Times when I saw a very familiar face, or should I say very familiar faces on the papers. It was Andrew, Linda and their entire family!

I wanted to tell Chris, but she was having her own battles with Elkan in their seats, so I just proceeded to read about why the Straits Times found Andrew and anything he did interesting enough to publish in the Singapore national papers.

Well, it turned out that this bloke whom I call friend for the last…let me see…I think 20 years happens to be the president of the “Singapore Expatriates in the Americas club” in the San Francisco Bay area!

And all this he kept happily to himself while we were having lunch last Thursday at the Starhub food centre.

Really good stuff he’s doing though. Its tough being away in a foreign land with few fellow Singaporeans with you. So, its a good thing he’s done. Well done my friend. We certainly need more patriotic people like you around.

We reached Changi at the unearthly hour of 5:50am yesterday morning. When we reached home, everyone knocked out for another 6 hours before waking up at 12 noon!

I’m in the process of going through 3.6GB of photos and videos for the trip, and will be posting them up soon.

Until then, I’m on my way to Manila today for business. I dread the trip as the bomb scare in London has made travelling all the more tiresome. I can’t imagine the hours I could possibly be spending in the Manila airport. Its bad enough as it was before the scare.

Its now 10:26pm on a Sunday night. We’ve been here for two days now, and the kids absolutely love it! A couple of things mar it though. I’ve not been feeling too well, and have sypmtoms of the flu, blocked nose, sore throat, etc. Today, I also had a headache I nursed for all day as I woke up abruptly when Kyla screamed for me in the wee hours of the morning.

But, still, its not enough to spoil our holliday. We have lots of photos and videos, and I will be uploading them soon. As broadband isn’t that prevalent in some Australian hotels/motels, I don’t have broadband here at the service apartment. So, I’m on dial-up now, and it would be impossible to try and upload my pics and videos here.

We’ve got a million dollar view from every room in our service apartment, and already had two very exciting and fun-filled days. We’re looking forward to more. Tomorrow, we’re heading out to Dream World to see the Wiggles. The kids are just dying to see them.

I’ll just leave it there for the moment. I’ll touch base again soon. I promise…:)