Brisbane November 15-20

Arriving around 10 in the morning, we relaxed a little before heading out into central Brisbane, which was easy due to the excellent Ferry service along the river. We soon reached the fantastic Streets beach, the only free open air public riverside beach in Australia.

With wooden boardwalks connecting different levels for toddlers and children and adults, it was very popular on this Saturday afternoon.
Later we walked back past the buzzing bars of the south beach area, before managing to miss pretty much all buses and ferries that could have carried our tired bodies home….

On our second day, we took a fast catamaran ferry, known as the City Cat into the city, and then did a walking tour of the downtown area. Brisbane is quite a pretty town - quite modern, and very beautiful to look at. We found ourselves back at the Streets Beach, the largest free open air swimming area in Australia. Lara was so happy splashing around that we could have stayed there for hours. Unfortunately there was more rain - the worst thunderstorm for 20 years. We got very wet, but finally made it back to the hostel.

Next day we collected the rental car. A large blue Toyota Ascent- rather too big and too nice. We were terrified of the huge amounts we would have to pay if we bent it, so we were super careful for the next 7 days. It was unfortunately an automatic car, so we hopped and jerked kangeroo-style out of the city to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary- the largest there is. Here we enjoyed the small zoo experience- we listened to animal lectures about Koalas and Snakes, and held both animals. We also wandered around the Kangaroo field with roos, wallabies and Emus. It was interesting to compare this with our experience the next day. (We planned things badly, so we had to do the world-famous Australia Zoo the very next day!) Here the legacy of the late Steve Irwin - “The Crocodile Hunter” was very much in effect. His dream of “conservation through exciting education” is certainly being pushed hard, as are images of Steve himself - they’re everywhere! It was rather overwhelming, but then he was a larger-than-life figure. We also found a larger-than-life crocodile to play with, and had lots of fun there. All in all, the small koala sanctuary was far more fun than the mega-zoo, and allowed us to get closer to the animals, and feel like we’d learned more.

To see all the photos, just click on the Kangeroo family!

Brisbane

Interview with Emma about Taiwan

Here are Emma's views on Taiwan. Sorry, only in Hungarian.

Emma eating with chopsticks

Click below to see a video of Emma eating with chopsticks. For non-Hungarian speakers, what she says at the end: "That's how it's done, see?"

Flight Taipei-Brisbane Nov14

This was an evening flight - we didn’t take off until 10:30, but this made it easier. The girls slept through most of the journey - Lara in the bassinet, and Emma curled up on the floor after watching Mamma Mia for the 3rd time! (she says this is the highlight of the trip so far) We grown-ups were exhausted after the trip and shocked by the heat in Brisbane, after the rainy weather in Taiwan. (We didn't know what was in store for us though...)

To see all the photos click on the family:

Flight to Brisbane

Taipei Nov 13-14

In the morning we visited the “Children’s municipal recreation centre” It didn’t sound very fun and to be honest it was a bit too super-organised. It was empty on this Thursday morning, so Emma and Lara had huge bouncy castles and playgrounds to themselves. They did also have a space and science centre.

As we left it began to rain again. After getting completely soaked on the last two days, I had my raincoat with me and as I fiddled with this and the rain-cover for the pram, a passing Chinese family stopped and gave us their umbrella. We caught up with them in the car park to thank them and ask directions to the nearby Confucius temple, but they misunderstood our question and gave us another umbrella!
This is our favourite example of how kind and helpful the people are here. So many people stop to ask if we need directions, or just to smile at the children. Actually, Chinese are crazy about kids, the city is full of great facilities for mums and babies - they even had special Breastfeeding rooms in metros and museums.

The Confucius temple was beautiful and peaceful, but rather touristy and museum-like, so we wondered about the religiousness of the Taiwanese, until we found the Bodao temple around the next corner, where the real temple life was going on at full speed. Dorka was in some sort of paradise herself, and she is the family’s temple fan, so we had to drag her out after only one hour and 100 photos!

Here and at the Longshao temple, the next morning, we could see a very wide range of people from businessmen to young mums to old grannies all popping in to do make their prayers. There were also busloads of Chinese tourists too, so these temples were packed. In fact here we could see more white faces in 5 minutes than we’d seen in 3 days in Taipei so far! “So this is where they keep all the tourists” I said as we arrived.

On the long walk back to the hotel, Dorka stopped for a fascinating massage, where they actually pummel people using butcher’s knives. She said it’s not painful at all after a minute or so, and quite nice after 10 minutes. (I suspect it’s nicest of all when they stop)

We visited the Palace Museum on our last day. Though the main exhibition wasn’t too much fun for the children, there was a separate Children’s exhibition which was, like most facilities in Taiwan, fantastically well-designed. Emma played a lot of Chinese culture-related games: Chinese printing, marionettes, she made a classical Chinese painting out of puzzles, she had to recreate a famous painting positioning magnetic pieces.

Then it was a rush back to the hotel, to pick up our stuff (the very nice staff had allowed us to occupy the room until 6:30) and then onwards to Australia!

See all our Taipei photos, click on the Confucious Giftshop!

Taipei 2

Taipei November 9-12

Our first day was lost to jetlag, as we slept away most of it, only waking up in time to check out the local night market before heading back to bed! Over the next few days though, we managed to get out and see more of Taipei.

On our first rainy day (the first of many) we visited “The Living Mall” where we learned of the excellent Baby Boss – a mini replica village with child-sized shops, restaurants, a garage, fire station etc. The kids can have 20 minute job experiences, where they can try out being a dentist or a gold miner or a million other jobs. It’s not cheap, but very well organized. Emma was an air stewardess and then a fire fighter. I have to say she took the 10-minute “orientation” explanations in chinese with great patience! In fact both children were able to play with others without any chinese. We're so jealous!

Walking back to the hotel in the rain, we kept looking in every food shop we passed, hoping to pick up baby food. After an hour, we became a little desperate, as we realized that Chinese kids don’t eat that stuff. We learned that they just eat rice with soft stuff mixed in. but of course you can’t buy it in shops… People were a little confused by our question, but terribly helpful. In the end Dorka found an expat, who told her of an expat shop that had what we needed.

On our next rainy day, we climbed to the top of Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world, at 508 m. The weather didn’t allow us to see too much, but we enjoyed looking down on the city. Emma and I counted 4 helipads, and the living mall we were in yesterday. There were huge exhibitions of carved coral, which is something of a specialty here, but somehow I don’t think we’ll be squeezing any of that in our backpacks…



To see all the photos, just click here on Lara!

Taipei 1

First long leg of the journey over!

Well here we are in Taipei! The journey here was a long one, but surprisingly smooth. The kids are both heroic travellers and took all the unusual conditions very naturally. The train journey from Budapest to Vienna was easy except our start was a little rushed. We started off late as I forgot a few things (these were only the forgotten things I remembered while still able to get them. There were quite a few other things that I only realised at 30,000 feet!) at the station Dorka's family were there to see us off. They made it to the train about half an hour earlier than we did!

The journey was smooth and it wasn't long before our friends Björn and Sally were greeting us in Vienna. The breakfast the next morning was phenomenal and it's a wonder I didn't have to pay extra overweight costs for my tummy!

The flight itself was longer than I remembered - 11 hours to bangkok, then on to Taipei, for another 4 hours. Things were complicated by the fact that the plane had to be emptied and a security check performed before we could get back in the same seats. This meant waking up Lara and Emma at Midnight and trudging through another security control at 12:30 before starting all over again. And of course, as it was 5am Thai time, they served breakfast right away. The bassinet was a real help as we could pop Lara in there and have our hands free. Emma curled up on a seat between us and hardly moved. She did roll over once and stick her arm right though my breakfast, but it was actually quite funny as we tried to wipe butter off arms, clothes, hair, seat etc.

Finally we got to Taipei, found our driver - thank god for airport pickups- and then all fell asleep on the 30 minutes trip to our hotel.

Tired but triumphant that the longest single journey of our trip was pretty easy, we settled in to rest for a few days...

To see all the flight photos (before I broke the camera) click on Sleeping Emma below:

Flight to Taipei

Bassinet fun

I wasn't 100% sure what to expect when our excellent travel agent reserved an infant "bassinet" for the flight. 14 hours on an A330 could have been hell, but the last few hours were much easier due to this this super little bed, hanging right in front of our noses. Very solid and very safe- well except for when Lara wasn't having too much fun hanging out of it!

5 days to go!

It's really getting close to the start of out trip. Last night we held our bon voyage party and it was lots of fun. Thanks to everyone who came along!
Talking about our plans all night made the whole trip suddenly seem so real and close (which. of course it is)
This time next week we'll be on the island of taiwan! Yeay!