Do you come from a land down under? Where women glow and men plunder?

G'day y'all!  We made it to Melbourne - about a 20 hour trip from Bangkok.  We flew AirAsia, which I kind of can't recommend enough.  Its a low-cost carrier here, and our tickets were about 1/3 of what we thought they'd be.  Which leaves money for buying steaks and a pet kangaroo.  AirAsia is sort of JetBlue or RyanAir style, but with a few nice touches.  Por ejemplo, one can rent an ePlayer for the flight which is loaded with movies and TV shows.  We've not done this before, but since we had a full 9 hours to enjoy we thought this was a good opportunity.  We watched the "A-Team" and it was surprisingly B.A.

Hot travel tip: when travelling with someone, do not leave home without a headphone splitter.  This has allowed us to share iPods (thus cutting down on the need for charging), ePlayers, watch stuff on our laptop, etc.  At some point I need to make a list of all the handy travel tips we've gathered on this trip.  Put some good travel karma back into the world... I'll get to work on that.

So far Melbourne its sunny, breezy, and the people are mucho friendly.  The city seems like the love child of Portland and London, I'm pretty sure I want to live here.  The coffee is crazy good, the streets are immaculate, and the public transport is awesome.  Melbourne is smaller than I'd thought it would be - we walked a pretty good chunk of it yesterday even with jet lag and a short night's sleep.  We wandered through the downtown business district, sampled at Victoria Market and watched the boats practicing at Docklands in prep for the Audi regata.

We're staying in the village of South Yarra which seems pretty fancy.  Tons of coffee shops, boutiques, and well-preserved housewives in workout gear.  The US Dollar is still in the pooper so we have a bit of sticker shock as compared to Thailand.  Fortunately, even in my parasitic haze we were able to make some critical shopping trips in BK and stock up before we arrived.  Even so, all the chocked-full-of-beautiful-boutiques are calling to me.  Hear them?  They're like, "ROOODDDDNNEEEEYYYY!!!! BBBBBBUUUUUUUUYYYYYYYY SSSTTTUUUFFFFFF!"

In mere moments I'm headed back to the Melbourne Airport to collect my Mom, who should be an absolute basket case after 36 hours of travel on 4 flights and a 16 hour time difference.  Perhaps I'll get her a cup of the coffee that I just drank, which had a scoop of ice cream in it.  With caramel and rock salt and god knows what other addictives.  I shouldn't be allowed this in the morning because it makes me feel like dancing and writing in ALL CAPS.  BECAUSE THAT'S HOW IT SOUNDS IN MY HEAD.  SO MUCH SUGAR! GOTTA GO!