The Golden Hour

Posted on January 31, 2013 by lisafindley

I’m no photographer, but I do like taking photos, especially at the golden hour–that hour around sunrise and then again at sunset. The light at these times of day makes everything look good, and photos of people are especially lovely, as faces glow warmly. One of my favorite photos from the trip so far is one I didn’t take, at the sunset golden hour, but the memory is suffused with warmth all the same.

Khao Lak sunset

I really didn’t do anything in Khao Lak. It’s a popular place to go diving, but as we know that scares me. It’s a popular place to launch snorkeling trips out by the Similan Islands, but I wasn’t feeling up for a lot of action. Happily for me, it’s also a popular place to sit on your butt and do nothing all day, and mayyyybe drag yourself to a beach bar at night. That’s what I was looking for.

Home sweet home for five nights

I stayed at Khao Lak Green Beach Resort, which has about 30 bungalows, a restaurant, and a massage hut, all on the beach. My bungalow had a fan, A/C, a mosquito net I never used, a bathroom, a porch, and a fridge. No TV, but yes wifi. It was sheltered by some palms and larger trees I didn’t recognize, and a bush out front bloomed yellow flowers every day.

The massage hut

Each day I’d go down to the beach and sit on the beach chairs, which were in the shade. This resort is popular with Swedish retirees and German families with young children, so I was surrounded by nearly naked children and stout Swedes in bikinis. All the children were discovering the joys of digging in sand with various implements, and all the adults were reading books and drinking Chang beers. It was very restful.

My perch

I floated in the ocean, ate at a few restaurants along the beach, got a foot scrub and Thai massage, and drank my body weight in water to counteract the jetlag and tropical heat that was giving me a fairly constant headache. And that’s about it, for four glorious days.

Pancakes seem to be a popular dessert here. I had mine with honey, mango, and banana.

On my last day in town, I went down to the water just about an hour before sunset. The tide was out, so the rocks that line the coast were sticking up out of the water and discouraging me from swimming. I perched on a rock and gazed out to sea, and in my peripheral vision, admired a small Thai girl frolicking in the water. I smiled at her and she smiled shyly back, then jumped away and continued splashing about.

I went back to the beach and found a large, perfectly formed conch shell. I held it up to my ear for that rushing sound, and when I looked down, I saw the girl standing a little closer to me, smiling. I held the shell out to her but she shook her head and laughed, and splashed away again. I started strolling along the water line, looking at the many colored rocks and shells and occasionally picking up ones that struck me as particularly lovely. Soon, I glimpsed the girl again, and this time she was following me and picking up her own shells.

I saw her parents–a Thai woman and a German man–walking small dogs, and they kept an eye on me but didn’t seem worried. So the girl and I wandered back and forth along the beach for about thirty minutes, picking up and showing off shells and bits of coral, and sometimes solemnly giving each other the treasures we found. I saw a green shell, which I don’t think I ever have before, so I determined to collect a rainbow. Once I had it, I arranged it on the table next to my things up by the beach chair, and the girl helped with placement, and then we took a photo of the display.

A rainbow, a conch, a heart-shaped piece of glass, and some of Seden’s favorites besides

Now we were definitely friends. She beckoned for me to follow her, and we went into the water and paddled around for a little while. We exchanged names, and hers sounded like “Seden,” which is a German name, but I could be wrong about that. She pronounced my name not merely as two syllables, but as two tones, high to low: “Lee-sah.” She’d say “Lee-sah” and point farther out in the ocean, and off we’d swim. Then she’d say it again and point up to the rocks, and off she’d scramble. Several times, she and her mom back on shore had a conversation, and I was pretty sure she was supposed to go back in, but when I said “go back?” she’d shake her head and smile mischievously, and we’d swim some more.

Of course I cut my foot on those rocks

I learned that she was six, and that she knew how to catch the tiny crabs that scuttle along the sand. She knew I talked a lot and said “wow” every time I saw a shell I liked. That’s pretty much all we knew about each other, and all we needed to know. I love playing with kids, and Seden was great fun. She was enthusiastic about showing off her swimming and fish-finding skills, but she was also just as happy climbing on the rocks I wouldn’t, and generally being independent and unself-conscious.

Just as the sun was sinking fast, her parents came along and we went to shore. I was going to ask her parents if I could take a photo with Seden (I think that’s the ethical way to photograph children, if you’re not taking a group shot or a photo that doesn’t show their face). But I asked her first if she wanted to, and she shook her head no. I asked again, and she was firm. All right, then! A good reminder to respect a person’s individual desires, no matter what their age.

So I don’t have a photo of Seden and me, grinning into the golden light and showing off our rainbow collection. But I do have the memory of sharing an hour of exploration and fun, and of her skipping ahead of her parents as they disappeared around a curve in the beach. Like I said, it’s a memory as lovely as the phantom photo it illuminates.

Happily Stuck on Magnetic Island

Posted on January 8, 2013 by lisafindley

When I was in Cairns, I found myself at loose ends. I couldn’t get anyone in town to fix my camera, and since warranties are “region specific,” apparently, I’d have to pay to have it fixed anywhere in Australia because I’d bought it in the States. The cheapest–though also the most convoluted–option ended up being shipping the camera to my parents, and having them ship it to the factory in the States.

Magnetic Island

Anyway, I sat out some inclement weather in town and pondered how to continue. I’d spent a lot of time planning how to get to Alice Springs and then to Cairns, but there all my plans stopped. And now here I was, stopped in Cairns (pronounced “cans,” no “r”).

I went to a bus company office and asked them what they recommended. My enthusiastic sales agent had all sorts of suggestions, some of which I’d never heard of before, but was intrigued by (like the Daintree), and others which I’d learned through the travelers’ grapevine were totally worth splurging on (like the Whitsundays and Fraser Island). We put together a package and an ambitious itinerary, and suddenly I was on my way again.

After the Daintree and the Great Barrier Reef, I got on a bus and headed south down the east coast of Queensland. The first stop was Townsville, which has a few sights of its own, but is also a launching pad for people visiting Magnetic Island, a short ferry ride away.

I joined plenty of other backpackers on that ferry, and we all milled around once we landed on Maggie (as Australians call Magnetic Island), searching for signage that wasn’t there to tell us how to get to our hostel. Eventually, a bus pulled up and the driver, who must do this every day, clearly called out that he was headed to Base Backpackers, so we all paid him and piled on.

Magnetic Island bus stop

This was the first of a few rural buses I’d take in Australia. They’re usually nice coaches, with the cushioned seats fit for long treks; I’m used to the CTA buses, and seeing these swank buses used for local transportation made me do a double take. But I guess if your local transportation is going to take 40 minutes through backcountry roads, it might as well be in comfort. (We’ll skip over the part where you can easily sit on a bus for 40 minutes in Chicago and not go more than 5 miles.)

The Base Backpackers franchise is known for being a place to get a cheap room and cheap drinks. I didn’t realize this was the hostel I was booked into (one of the reasons I never book with tours), and had I known it was this one, I probably would’ve changed my mind. But since I was there, I figured, hey, I haven’t partied at all since I got to this country two weeks ago. If the hostel bar will be playing loud music til midnight anyway, I might as well join in. So I had a great first night there, making friends at the beachside bar, playing ridiculous bar games, and watching the moon rise over the ocean.

The next day, I had a lie-in and then journaled down on the deck, and sunbathed and swam down on the beach. The sun was bright, a slight breeze kept me from getting too hot, and the guy at reception was playing classic rock over the loudspeakers. Perfect.

Morning view

Later that afternoon, I joined my roommate on the other side of the island, to do the Forts Walk. Apparently, wild koalas are plentiful in this area of the island, but we didn’t see any. Instead, we did a surprisingly athletic climb up a hill to see remnants of the fort that the military built here back in World War II.

If the Japanese were going to attack Australia, there were several key places they’d hit, and Townsville, with its large shipping industry and port, was one of them. Magnetic Island was the perfect place to set up a lookout. (In fact, Australia was attacked in WWII; Darwin was bombed in 1942 and 1943. Also, some subs slipped into Sydney Harbour, you may remember.) The fort hasn’t been kept up, and it’s amazing to see how much nature takes back in just 60 years.

The Forts Walk

Unfortunately, I don’t have many pictures from the walk, because the camera I was using while mine was in transit to the States started to act up. My roommate on the trip promised to email me the photos, but that never happened. Foolishly, I gave her my email but never got hers, and she’s not on Facebook, so I have to consider those photos lost. Live and learn.

But it was a great walk, with a 360 degree view from the top of the hill, and the hilly island spread out below us. Afterward, we took the bus back to the hostel, and the indefatigable young hostelers partied again that night, while I went straight to bed. Partying two nights in a row is beyond me now, but hey, if you party it up right the first time, that’s okay.

An Afternoon in Manly

Posted on November 27, 2012 by lisafindley

Every guidebook has a “secret” hint on how to see some of the more famous sites without paying the usual price. In Venice, you’re advised to take the number one vaporetto rather than an expensive gondola ride; in Chicago, go to the 96^th floor of the Hancock for a cocktail rather than the concrete dud of an observation deck. And in Sydney, instead of paying for a harbor cruise, you’re told to take a ferry boat out to Manly.

The water angle of the opera house

Sydney, I was pleasantly surprised to discover, isn’t on a semicircle harbor, but on a harbor with an uneven coastline, so there are many more houses with water views than in a lot of other cities. Manly is one of the suburbs with those views.

I actually tried to go to Manly twice. The first time, it was an ok day when I started out, but by the time the boat docked, it was drizzling rain and cold. Since I had a weekly transit pass, I just turned right around and went back to Sydney. Take two was much more successful. It was a beautiful day, and the decks of the ferry were full of teenagers carrying surfboards and families lugging beach equipment.

Manly boats

I met up with Heather, a friend of a friend, and we had a nachos and beer lunch, which is the perfect start to a lazy Sunday afternoon. We walked through town, and she popped into a few restaurants so she could say hi to her friends. She manages a restaurant, and she shared funny stories about the food service life in Manly.

The Corso in Manly

News from bygone days

Manly Beach was much narrower and much more crowded than Bondi had been, and I didn’t really want to squeeze in on the sand between sunbathing beauties and shrieking children, so we went on the short coastal walk instead. The path was full of people enjoying their weekend, and it was also narrower than the Bondi walk, so I was more crowded in general. But it was a great walk, past a pool right on the ocean that lets the saltwater spill over the edge to fill it, past a long lizard sunning himself, past a small group of suited-up divers taking rescue lessons, and right on up the small hill to a view of the coastline curving in and out all the way to the horizon.

Spot the lizard

I said farewell to Heather and got back on the ferry for the return trip. I’d timed it just right for sunset, so as the boat rounded the point and came in to the main harbor, I saw the opera house and bridge lit up in reds and golds. A lovely end to a relaxing day.