I see you've played knifey-spoony before

I arrived back in Hanoi last Friday after spending two weeks in Australia with Jamie, visiting Adelaide and Sydney. There are a ton of pictures from the trip now up on the Picasa site, so if you're looking for a way to avoid work (like I am, since I'm posting from the office), I'd recommend checking them out. Especially the album on Featherdale Wildlife Park for some sweet shots of me and Jamie with koalas, kangaroos, and emus. And little kids, since it was actually just a petting zoo. But the best petting zoo ever.

Australia was a great trip, although it took a little while to get used to the cold, the clean air, driving on the left side of the road (and shifting with your left hand), and everyone not staring at me all the time. Adelaide is a small city, despite having 1 million people, but it's nicely laid out with a ring of parkland surrounding the downtown area. The best part is that it's right in the center of some of Australia's best wine producing regions - the Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale, and Adelaide Hills. Naturally, Jamie and I spent two days wine tasting and I flew back to Hanoi with four bottles of delicious wine wedged into my backpack, secured with dirty clothes. The wine regions reminded me of Northern California, with rolling green hills that are part pasture land, part vineyard, part olive groves (we also did olive and cheese tastings).

Still, the highlight of Adelaide had to be an afternoon trip to Mt. Lofty, a (fairly low) mountain on the outskirts of the city, where we heard there were good views of the area. After taking a public bus out to a park and ride lot where we planned to catch another bus to the summit, we learned that the summit bus only runs twice a day, and we had missed both runs. Well, we're already here, we thought, I guess we'll just have to walk the 3 miles up the road to the top. After about 30 seconds, we got sick of trudging along the shoulder of the road, and decided to give hitchhiking a try. So Jamie stuck out his thumb, and after one car of old women blew by us, another car pulled over and a hand waved us up the road. We probably should have been a bit more wary, especially since as the car pulled over and backed up a bit, it slammed into and up onto the curb, but we figured it'd work out. We're intimidating guys. We climbed into the back seat of the car (which was filled, strangely, with pillows and beer), and met the two guys who were giving us a ride. Or, more accurately, we tried to decipher their drunken Australian accents as they asked us which footy team we followed (Jamie mistakenly answered the Adelaide Crows, to which they yelled "Aww, no! Gotta be the Port Adelaide Power!!) and if we were in the Navy (um, what?). Fortunately we made it up to the top and they let us off, at which point we figured that was the end of them. But no, they found us again, which resulted in a pretty awesome photo opportunity. The guy on the right was the extra-drunk one, as you can probably tell:

Sydney was great as well, much more of an international (and huge) city, set right on a fantastic harbor and with much more going on than Adelaide. We spent a ton of time just walking around, every day stopping in the afternoon for beer and hot chips (french fries, most delicious in wedge form with sour cream and sweet chili sauce). Here's the requisite Sydney opera house photo:

We also took a day trip out to the Blue Mountains, about an hour and a half from the city, where we did some hiking (and beer drinking, naturally) and saw some amazing views of what we both agreed looked sort of like the Grand Canyon, if it were filled with trees. Massive sandstone cliffs dropped off into a wide valley that was covered in eucalyptus, and there were tropical birds everywhere. Other Sydney highlights were going to our first Australian Rules footy match (go Sydney Swans!) a ferry out to Manly Beach, and delicious meat pies (filled with beef and topped with mashed potatoes, mushy peas, and gravy).

And now I'm back in Hanoi, which is actually starting to feel quite a bit like home, motorbikes and all.