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Southern Australia - the Festival State
I flew to Adelaide on my first internal flight with Tiger Airways and was surprised to find out that in Australia you can have as many liquids of whatever volume you like but you can't carry fruit across statelines. They do have rather odd rules. I met a girl called Sophie on the plane who told me lots about the bushfires - it sounds completely crazy. And crazier still, about 90% of the firefighters are voluntary as very few country towns have to money for a fire service. The bushfires tend to happen in extreme heat (high 40s celsius) together with strong winds and travel at an insanely fast pace. Last year had the worst bushfires in nearly 30 years and the town of Maryville was completely destroyed as bushfires closed in from every direction on Black Saturday (over 400 individual fires on one day!).
Anyway, I arrived in Adelaide, set my watch back 30 minutes (finally also twigged that Zoe had been 30 minutes behind in Darwin for the last month and that probably explains the difficulty in co-ordinating phone call times!) and met Mei Ling's great aunt, great uncle and uncle. Amazingly Mei Ling had only just met her relatives that morning so I was extremely grateful for their hospitality in taking us both in for a few days! At 6pm (Central Australian Time) began my Vietnamese Culinary Adventure (the following paragraphs pretty much just feature food - I was very well fed!): Pho (a Vietnamese beef and vegetable noodle soup that was just so fresh and yummy!). Then we went to another relative's house (I lost track at this point - Mei Ling seems to have relatives in every corner of the globe!) and then Mei Ling's uncle John (he's 25) took us to a shopping mall. In 2 hours Mei Ling and I did not make it past the amazing womenswear sale in Myer - I got a really nice shirt for $15, reduced from $60! On arriving back home we had some dry sweet rice with a creamy cardammon rice pudding which I mixed together and it went very well together!
On Friday we teamed up with more relatives and relatives' French friends for a wander around Adelaide town centre (saw the pig statues on Rundle mall, the river, the conference centre) and then had lunch at the Chinese centre. We had more amazing food - spring onion fajita-like things with veggies and pork, some kind of Chinese porridge, pork dumplings and pork buns. We then had a tour of the Chinese school, a seafood factory (I stayed in the boardroom for most of it), West Lakes and Semaphore beach. We wandered around the night food market (some of the most amazing organic and fresh foods - with free samples everywhere!) then had a Chinese banquet dinner in the city courtesy of the seafood factory owner (who is somehow very good friends with someone Mei Ling is somehow related to lol).
On Saturday Mei Ling, John, his girlfriend and I went to a yum cha restaurant. For those who don't know (like me until that day!), yum cha is kind of like tapas but people come round with trays of lots of fresh food and you grab little plates of whatever you want to try. I couldn't tell you everything we ate but it featured at least 8 different types of dumplings including hairy dumplings (yum!), special fried rice wrapped in vine leaves, chicken feet (I had a whole one! It wasn't too bad actually - just spiced chicken skin with the added challenge of not swallowing of the many tiny little bones!) and so much more. I literally could not move afterwards so it was good we drove to Mount Lofty to get a gorgeous view of Adelaide. There we randomly bumped into Kat Green again (I'm starting to think it's fate...) and took some rather windswept photos! In the evening we went to a relative's house and I discovered that I love ricepaper wraps! You have to soak them in water for a few seconds and then keep it flat - once it sticks to itself, it's ruined! But they were yummy and followed up with fruit for dessert, most of which I didn't have a scooby doo what they were. If Mei Ling remembers, I'll edit it. We then did some karaoke - I feel that we performed some rather amazing duets of Madison Avenue - Dont' Call Me Baby, Bonnie Tyler - Total Eclipse of the Heart and and Ace of Base - All That She Wants. I do recall we even got a 92% for one of them! As a reward for the beautiful singing, we went to a late night chocolate shop (I love Adelaide for having one of these!) and we had just amazing white hot chocolates and waffles.
On Sunday, I met Kat for ice-cream at the same chocolate shop and a wander around town. I then met Mei Ling, John and his girlfriend for bubble tea (any type of cold tea - I personally think fruit teas work best - with either jelly pieces (yuck) or tapioca balls (works surprisingly well)) which I actually quite liked. We'd planned to go to the Barossa Valley (where Jacob's Creek is made!) but sadly the car was playing up so instead we wandered around the botanical gardens and Glenelg beach - including the museum (okay, so it started raining!). Sunday evening we did more karaoke and had more great food including a stewed frozen apricot type thing which was so sweet and so yummy. If I ever find that fruit, I will definitely attempt to replicate that.
And sadly that was the end of my time in SA! Back to Melbourne, and to my new house!
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