Mozzeenet

Can’t believe it’s already 2010 and the first month is now over too! Also can’t fathom that it’s a decade since the Year 2000.  It certainly doesn’t feel like that was ten years ago.  I remember celebrating NYE in 2000 in Sydney sitting on the banks of the harbour near Kirribilli and watching the spectacular fireworks bursting over the harbour bridge. I don’t think many fireworks displays can beat Sydney’s.

For 2010 NYE I was in Melbourne – surprising to think that I’ve lived here for over 4 years now too. If you had asked me in 2000 where I would be in 10 years, I may have said Melbourne as a possibility but it would have only been a vague notion that I might have moved somewhere other than Sydney by then.  And if I hadn’t met Andrew, likely that it may never have happened. But I’m very glad it did!

We celebrated NYE with some of our immediate family (from both sides which is a rare occasion) at our favourite restaurant, Afghan Village in Camberwell. It was fantastic and a great way to start the year. The rain bucketed down at 10pm so we were quite glad we hadn’t decided to go into town to watch the fireworks also!

It’s almost a month since our trip to Malaysia and Singapore and as often happens, it seems like a very long time ago.  However putting the photos up on Flickr has helped me remember some of the great things we did and saw over there.

It was great going back to KL again after our honeymoon there last year because we knew a lot about the city already but had time to explore a lot of places we didn’t see before. Favourite experiences this time round were the Islamic Arts museum, Old China cafe in Chinatown and the luxury of staying at the KL Hilton.

Singapore lived up to its reputation of being incredibly humid and next time I would stay closer to a a train station as the walk from our hotel was a bit too much.  Highlights were chilli crab at a beachside hawker centre in Eastern Singapore, the Singapore Zoo Night Safari, temple in Chinatown and a great middle eastern meal in Little India.  Also was amazed at how clean and organised Singapore is – makes for very easy travelling.

Sabah on Borneo was our last destination (apart from a final night in KL at the end) – staying in the capital Kota Kinabalu or KK as it is commonly known and 1 night at Sandakan on the other side of the island to visit the Sepilok Orangutan sanctuary which was a real highlight of the whole trip.  The orangutans are so cute and human-like.

From KK we visited an island for a day and went snorkelling which was a great way to spend my birthday and we also hired a car and visited Mt Kinabalu which was also spectacular.

Seeing animals in a zoo falls short of seeing them on an African safari but Melbourne’s Werribee open range zoo gets closer to that experience than others.  We visited it for the first time last weekend with friends.

On the safari tour we drove amongst rhinos, zebras, giraffes, hippos and various other smaller animals.  On the walking trails, we saw lions, cheetah, wild dogs, monkeys and meerkats (in enclosures).

It still feels weird that those animals are here in Australia and that they’re captive in a zoo. On the positive side, the zoo does breed endangered animals and releases them into the wild e.g. a Mongolian wild horse that was close to extinction.

Looking forward to seeing some exotic wildlife on our trip to Borneo in Malaysia in the next couple of weeks.