[Travel]- Holiday Trip To Perth and Albany

Every time I travel, the experience always teach me something new. There is always a story behind every moment, every picture and every video. These are the experiences that I cherish and sometimes I remind myself to make the same mistakes a few times so that I have something to blog about and that I won’t run out of ideas.

When I read travel blogs, mostly it is always about the picturesque locations, breath-taking views and the envy-inducing scrumptious-looking food images. But what happens before a particular journey? How does one prepare? What happens in the airplane especially when you travel with parents? What surprises await you in the hotel/apartment?

This time round, it was a family trip to Perth City and sisters-trip to Albany, a small town in Western Australia.

Pre-Flight Rituals

Before any flight, certain mandatory rituals take place in my house while getting ready to go to the airport. Searching for the luggage locks is the first one- no matter how safely we have kept them in the most common place in the house, the entire family spend atleast 37 mintues looking for the locks. If a survey is done among Indian families, locks-searching would be the universal pastime of every Indian family in the world. An intensive bomb-squad operation happens. Once found, there is a pin-drop silence. And here comes the next most important move, a ritual that my family has been religiously following for years- a move that requires decades of training, almost equivalent to that of a naval force diver’s physically and emotionally demanding ice-cold water training. And the ritual- is to move the luggage out of the house without knocking or hitting anything. If anything unintentionally obstructs the movement, there goes everything to a halt. Everyone enters the house for a water break.

Supersitions- 1
Intellect- 0

Hand-Writing Lessons at the Airport

Filling up the departure/arrival card should be officially declared as one of the top 10 things that you should never try doing it in front of your parents.

Dad: That doesn’t look like M?

Me: No pa. This is M.

Dad: Write M properly.

How else could one go wrong writing the alphabet M- one vertical line, a slanted one, another slanted one and then a vertical line. Filling up the card reminded me of how Indian kids go through the pain of driving when the folks are in the car.

“Stop.”

“See, Red light.”

“Slow. slow slow. aiyo you ah.”

“ Look Car is coming.”

“Slow. slow.”

Driving at these times is when you realise how fast an old man who walks slowly on the pavement, can overtake your car.

After filling up the card, there is always a final round of supervision- scanning every alphabet on my card.

“Gaya, Next time ah, write neatly.”

I collected all the cards and gave it to the stern-looking officer who was annoyed, looking at one of the cards. He picked the card and frowned at my dad, “Sir, you are supposed to put a cross, not ticks in the column"

God is great!

Kadavul Irukaan Kumaru!

In-Flight Entertainment and inside the flight entertainment

I browsed some channels and one particular show captivated my attention. I switched to that channel. While watching the in-flight entertainment, in a highly-spirited voice, my mum who was right beside me, “What you watching ah?” Followed by a thrust, which proves the scientific theory that Force= MA. Pushing me to the side, MA took a peek at my screen to realize that her daughter’s screen displayed the title "Sex and the city Season 6"

This was when I understood God was not great all the time. This was when I knew all 108 million Hindu Gods had been partying all night and because of the extreme hangover, decided to sleep in late. With no available God working at that time, it clearly meant one thing- Gods never really care about their devotees at the most difficult points of their lives.

I had to rescue myself, on my own. I quickly cooked up a story. Acting completely clueless and blur like Mustafa centre salesmen, I stammered pretentiously, "Ah I... Changing channel... Don't know what movie is this" and then swiftly tried pulling out the remote control from the side case to switch channels and I tell you, that was the second when I became an atheist.  The remote control was stuck in the seat case on the side. I tried with all my means but my efforts were in vain. Pulling it out from the case was nearly impossible.

Singapore Airlines(SIA) has not changed their old tv screen and remote control for the past 25 years. That was for sure. I actually spotted a toddler palm print of mine, on the tv screen. When airlines like British airways has touch screen and remote that works fine with my gentle touch, SIA made my life miserable. It took me ages to pull the remote out by which I knew my name was taken out from the family will.

Room Sweet Room

The apartment, located right in the centre of the Perth city, was a best choice made. Especially when you travel as a family, a city location is the finest way to go. Other than spending $95 on grocery shopping on the first day, we also set the smoke detector beeping loudly when we were frying sausages in the smoke-filled apartment kitchen.  

         (Apartment in Perth)

But the aussies were super cool. The receptionist called and calmly asked, “What is happening, m’am?

“Just cooking.”

“No problem. Open the balcony door so that you are safe. Happy cooking!”

***
My favourite feature in the apartment was the dream-brewing bed. Never in my dream, I thought I would dream of such dreams- right from living the life of mother who had an illegitimate child to an item dance girl to a psychopath living in the country side.

For all those who are reading this and do not know what an item dance girl is- here is my explanation. An item dance number became popular in the 1980s in Tamil and Hindi Cinema. These girls usually dance for a song that has no relevance to the film but 99% of the films had one such dance to greatly emphasise the fact that we hail from the nation where Karmasutra was written. Thus, item dance numbers were ‘hot’ as some films in fact succeeded because of these dances, major credits go to the item dance girls. These woman were victorious, highly-sought after dancers by producers.

So in my dreams, I was the item dance girl dancing, with an ankle guard on my left ankle. In real life, I had an old injury on my left ankle. If dreams were subconscious thoughts of our real lives, I have nothing much to say any further.

Bole Chudiyan

Due to unforeseen circumstances, my parents had to cancel the trip on the 5^th day. Therefore, I had to call the SIA travel line to change their departure dates. It was 1.30am and I dialed the Australian Branch of SIA. A lady answered my call.

“Hello M’am. How can I help you?”- she spoke with a heavy Indian accent. Apparently, it was one of the call centres from India where they manage flight bookings. So I made the arrangements. Few minutes into the conversation, I heard “Bole chudiyan” song being played from her office. Someone was having real fun man! Doing that very famous bangles-shaking hand movement was tempting. But my left palm was holding on to the phone and thus, couldn’t do it. Sorry, Kareena!

My parents left Perth that afternoon. My younger sis and I continued the journey to Albany which was an hour flight journey from Perth. With freedom comes responsiblity but I am an Indian kid. An indian child travelling without parents mean ‘with freedom comes hourly reporting.’

My Plights  in the Domestic Flight

My sister and I took the domestic flight from Perth to Albany. A domestic flight need not be this small. Apparently it was. The toilet was so small that I actually struggled to enter it. I was slightly embarrassed and worried that the flight attendant would push me inside like those Japanese train officers. The intestine-shuffling moments galore throughout the journey as the pilot was probably playing with every button on the system. The plane bounced, joggled, jolted.

        (Albany Airport)

We arrived at the world’s smallest airport. Collecting our luggage and other internal organs that dropped out,  I was standing in the middle of the airport. I could see both the ends of the airport. It was that small. Coming from a nation that is quarter-filled with flight terminals, it was quite a surprise for me to see this airport. Like how comedian Kumar says, Singapore has ‘terminal illness’, we have new terminals on its way. We visit the airport. We have learning journey to airport. We study at the airport. We go there to have dinner. We bring our kids to watch the planes. So having landed on a platform, that has no resemblance to my kind of airports, it was indeed a pleasant shock.

Food, Weather and Places

Got extremely excited to see chicken satay on the menu. So to the Australian waiter,

Me: May I have the chicken satay?

Waiter: sorry what, m'am?

Me: chicken satay?

Waiter looking all puzzled and confused and turned back to look at his menu board.

Waiter: which one?

Me: no 3?

Waiter: oh chicken SAA-TE-YER.

Me: ah ah that chicken saateyer.

You don't saateyer to a girl whose blood count measures more SATAY than blood. But I really loved how huge those chicken pieces were. Just like the vast landspace in Australia. We had the best Mexican food in Albany at 6Degrees. We were so fiercely hungry that we had massive meals- chilli wings, pulled lamb quesadillas, prawn tapenade. Ordered the same food twice.

The best breakfast we had was, egg hollandaise in Dylan's Terrace. This classic dish consist of two poached eggs atop a bed of spinach, respectively, on a toasted bread. Both are finished with a warm, satiny emulsion called hollandaise sauce, which is poured over the top. It’s silky hollandaise that almost tempted us to order another plate.

With such scrumptious meals, my waistline expanded like the never-ending coastal lines of middleton beach and my thighs became permanently-pregnant with triplets, had difficulty fitting in the new shorts that I bought just for this trip.  To everyone who told me it was summer time in Australia, clearly is a traitor. The weather at night, can be as cold as 10 Degrees Celsius. Totally unprepared for such a cold weather, I ended up wearing three layers of shirts and two layers of pants.

 

                                          (City area, Albany) 

More than Perth city, I liked Albany. Even though the weather was something I couldn’t handle at times, the town itself was very calm and pleasant. It was extremely safe because there were very few people. Most of them are old people who are spending their retirement life in Albany. A 15-minute walk is all you need to spend to see all the shops, library, supermarts in Albany. My favourite beach was middleton.

 

                                (From the GAP bridge)

We had a tour guide from Great southern tours on the 2^nd day to bring us to a few places- strawberry farm, windmill farm, the GAP. As we were chatting, she mentioned that the population in Albany was only 20,000. That is like half the crowd in Mustafa Centre on Sundays. However, she being from Perth, felt that 20,000 was a massive population. And that the traffic gets worse during lunch periods. Oh on that note, Albany has no traffic lights, only roundabouts.

So I told her that the train crowd in Singapore may intimidate her and that it can get so crowded that I sometimes wonder who actually stay at home?

The roads in Albany at night become quite empty like my bank balance. And when certain food outlets display as opened ‘till late’ basically means they close shop at 9.30pm.

With massive consumption of calories and slight reduction of life's worries, the holidays ended.