Best Of: While Matt Was Away...

The hiatus is still in effect as the hunt for accommodation continues. The market here in Melbourne is a tough one with plenty of scam artists and morons that you have to be on the lookout for. While I’m not necessarily writing new content, there’s plenty of great posts you can check out. Here’s a list of the top ten most read articles:

Travel Apps

How To Book A Flight Like A Boss...

50 Things I’ve Learned In Australia

Matt The Conservation Volunteer?!?

Asiana Airlines Business Class Experience

The Australian Toilet Experience

Tips On Saving Up For A LONG Trip

Seoul Food

Australia - Quirky Things

The #1 Skill You Learn While Travelling Solo

Keep active on the comments and twitter, I am around and will hopefully be back to writing soon enough.

Hiatus Househunt Firestorm

I must say, this blog is a lot of fun to write for. So far my posts have touched 6 continents and my articles read almost 2500 times since I started the blog in December. I’ve been bringing you guys a dedicated 2 posts per week now for 16 weeks. Just to give you guys an idea to the dedication to my blog/readers, for the last 6 weeks I’ve still been churning out 2 posts a week despite working 45hrs/week and commuting 2+hrs a day. Unfortunately due to circumstances you’ll see below, I now need to prioritize getting a more permanent place to stay. At the same time I’m very thankful for my mates who’ve allowed me to stay while I look for housing.


This past weekend I couldn’t help but be enraged, and here is my story. Recently, after moving out of the hostel and staying with some friends in the West End of the city, I’ve started looking for more permanent accommodation. A friend of mine sent me a lead that someone was looking for a roommate to share her house for a decent price in a good suburb.  I phoned her up and set up a viewing, the place was nice and had everything I’d need. Everything was looking good, phone manners were good, friend of a friend, all signs pointed to yes. Set up to move in over the weekend after my camping trip. Well to my surprise my phone buzzed on Saturday with the following:  

Useless...

A text? Are you serious? I’m not so much mad at losing the place, but more at how I’m being let go. Why is she thanking me for wasting my time? In a way it’s a blessing in disguise as with this lack of class I could just imagine how things would have been living with her. While I can imagine the effort and hard work at trying to write this obscenity, it still doesn’t cover up the lack of respect. In the end I suppose I was lazy as I went into this without having a plan B (my bad! lesson learned!). Anyways now I’m in a tailspin as I need a place, and soon. Hunting mode engaged! Thankfully I came across a place Monday afternoon that fit all my criteria and more!

There it was, a place in the city centre, minutes from the trams that take me to work within 20min (rather than >1hr of trains and trams), fully furnished, 30 floors high with nice views. All that for $600/month holy shit it’s on like donkey kong. Within hours of sending my message with my number and a request to view the place, I get a message asking me to send them an e-mail to their private e-mail. Weird? Yeah, but I’ll go with it. E-mailed her my number and asked for a viewing, instead I get an e-mail with more info about the place, more pictures, but nothing on viewing the place. Reply again, here’s my number, when can I drop by to view the place? Then I get the following:

Dear Matthew,

Thanks for writing back again,, i would have really love to show you the  two vacant rooms in my three bedroom flat  in person but  am presently in Philippine on an honey moon with my husband that is why i need just two decent flatmates because i don't want to leave my apartment empty before my arrival by of  April,2012

My property solicitor who is a busy person advice me to package my apartment keys and made the deposit of keys at the FEDEX OFFICE .There is a car space which has already included in the bills including water and there is no extra fee in the $150  per week for  you and $600 for bond per room with no extra charges in the electricity, gas, cable, phone and internet.

Since you are really interested i can contact my property solicitor to make arrangement  for you so that you can proceed on how to reserve the room for yourself before my arrival

Attached is the pictures of me and my husband in our lovely honey moon over here.

Regards

*Redacted*

Wow, this looks just as legit as my winning the UK Lotto every other week (according to them I’m a BILLIONAIRE). Seriously where to start? In a previous e-mail The girl mentioned that she was looking for a “gay-friendly” housemate yet she’s obviously not gay if she’s on a honeymoon with her HUSBAND. Gay marriage isn’t legal here in Oz so it’s obviously not her female partner (she also sent pics of them making out? she’s ugly so no it wasn’t pleasant to look at.) The “solicitor” and FEDEX key deposit are key scam indicators. While I can’t help but feel angry about all this, in the end it’s part of the experience that I signed up for. Oh well gotta keep hunting...

As much as I love writing for you all, and the feedback I’ve been getting, I have to take a break. I’m not necessarily going to stop altogether, but for the time being posts will not be regular or as frequent. On days where I post I usually get to bed at around 1am or later. I can’t help but feel as if the quality of my posts has suffered in the last little bit. So bear with me while I get my shit together. I’ll be active on twitter and the comments section. Do you have questions about my posts? Want more details? Leave a comment, I will reply!

Sydney NYE

Just as this year was my first Christmas away from home, it was also my first New Year’s Eve. Having taken up my buddy Rob’s offer of a place to crash I decided to spend NYE in Sydney. Everyone has seen what the Sydney NYE fireworks look like on TV, they’re mighty spectacular. Turns out that Sydney’s NYE is actually the world’s biggest New Year’s party attracting crowds of 1.5 million people. To put things in perspective, Times Square in NYC attracts approximately 1 million people. So obviously it is a BIG deal! Normally I end up in a club on NYE, but I didn’t come half way across the world to do exactly what I do back home, I came here to see the big show.

View Larger Map

The day started off with me and Rob plotting our journey, which park to go to etc. See, being NYE obviously we want to have some drinks. For NYE there are alcohol-permitted parks and dry parks, and anywhere with a good view is obviously dry. The only alcohol permitted park we could find that was remotely close to the Harbour Bridge was Bicentennial Park. Before we set off, we mixed a bottle of champagne with some OJ, and put it in a backpack. And so our journey started... We got to Bicentennial park and realized that the view was shit, there was another bridge blocking the view of the Harbour Bridge. Thankfully with our smartphones we plotted a course to the Balmain East Wharf which was not listed as a vantage point in the Sydney NYE website, so it should be alcohol permitted right? So after our 6.8 Km trek ON FOOT we got to Balmain East Wharf to discover that it’s a dry zone and cop central. F@#$!!

So at the park it was really busy, and unfortunately dry. We were able to get primo seats for the fireworks, but unfortunately there was at least 5 hours until they started. A lot of the evening was spent watching the cat and mouse game going on between the cops and the kids next to us drinking goon and smoking weed. We also witnessed a couple enter a port-o-potty together, and a guy get arrested which erupted in the crowd cheering (must’ve really been a dick). As the evening passed, police presence increased and they started searching bags. Thankfully being well dressed and minding our own business, we were left alone (and didn’t have our mimosa bottle confiscated/poured out). 

AWESOME!!

There are two fireworks shows over the course of the evening. The first one is around 10:00pm and is the family show. This is catered to those with small children who might not last the wait till midnight. It was nice as it was starting to get long waiting till midnight. When the countdown finally began, sadly we got it wrong a few times. Since our vantage point was behind the Harbour Bridge, the numbers on the screen were backward. Also what threw us off was that the countdown started at 90 seconds. Finally the new year came and I saw what was one of the best fireworks shows ever! Overall the trek was well worth it! Both me and Rob were completely drained when we got home, especially as it was 2:30am by the time we walked back. We walked almost 14k, and I was wearing my dress shoes... Me feet were thoroughly blistered! If you’re in this part of the world during the holiday season, you’d be a fool to miss out!

The Art Of Being Cheap

Being cheap (or frugal if you prefer to sugar it up) is an art. Obviously like anything else practice makes perfect. Australia is an expensive place, and I’ve already gone over how to stretch that Aussie dollar. Last week I also covered getting some cheap eats while in St. Kilda which although not really “on a shoestring,” it’s an affordable luxury while on that budget! I’ve had a learning curve here as well, having realized that you can’t necessarily be cheap with everything. Honestly sometimes it’s worth paying the extra 25 cents! At the same time however, if you see a good deal there’s no shame in jumping on it. I’ll give you an example of both extremes where I messed up and succeeded.

sigh...

#27 of my 50 things I’ve learned in Australia was that ALDI is a lifesaver if you’re on a shoestring budget. Seriously this place is the shit, with cheap everything! Even the $8.99 six packs of beer aren’t bad at all. But here’s where I made the mistake... I went cheap while at ALDI! I needed sandwich bags to pack a lunch to go volunteering. Here I had the choice of the 99 cent pack or the 69 cent pack of plastic bags. Of course, why pay 99 when you can pay 69 right? What’s the difference? Well it turns out that the 69 cent bags are “snack” bags, and hence you get the result from the picture above... I’ve succeeded in making myself look like an anal-retentive dork packing my sandwiches individually. In retrospect, I should have just spend the damn 30 cents, it would have made my life a whole lot easier! Thankfully I’m almost done this set of bags...

This is the most amazing thing I've discovered!

Recently, now that I’m working, I’ve decided to cut down on my coffee expenses as they add up quickly here in Melbourne. It’s particularly expensive since you can’t get the regular stuff at a coffee shop. This past weekend I bought a travel mug at Coles in the hopes of making my own coffee in the morning and saving the $3 for a small coffee that I pay every morning. While at the grocery store I came to the realization that I need both milk and sugar on top of getting coffee... This was getting get bulky, expensive and inconvenient. Like magic I saw the following product on the shelf which was an answer to my prayers. That’s right folks, instant coffee with milk and sugar in a toothpaste tube! Just add water! It looks ridiculous but I’ll vouch for it. This is probably the closest I’ve gotten to the taste of a double-double since I left Canada. Instead of $3/day it’s now $3/week yeaaah!

As you can see, the art of being cheap is one learned through trial and error. I got greedy with those sandwich wrappers and I pay for it every day... (and no I won’t let them go to waste either! - see article title!). Then again on the flip side I had the coffee which was a BIG risk as I’ve never seen such an invention. Like every other skill, practice makes perfect. Although far from perfect I have become much better at the art of frugality.

St. Kilda Cheap Eats

Another way to stretch that Australian dollar is to take advantage of daily and happy hour specials. As I explained in my post My City, St. Kilda has plenty of bars and restaurants with daily specials. Thanks to some friends who’ve pointed me in the right direction I’ve been able to come across some amazing cheap eats in my neighborhood. There’s two particular cheap eats I want to focus on in this post, parmas and steak. Both make fantastic meals and are a great treat to have for cheap on certain days of the week. When on the noodle diet these two meals are a luxury you can treat yourself to as it won’t break the bank.

Village Belle Hotel - 202 Barkly St. Saint Kilda, VIC, 3182

Lets start off with parmas. What’s a parma you ask? Don’t be embarassed as I had to ask my friends when they first brought me out. Parma is short for chicken parmigiana, but unlike back home they don’t serve it with pasta. Here parmas are more of a pub meal with many offering specials of $10 pot and a parma. The best so far has to be at the Village Belle Hotel located at Barkly & Acland. On Thursday nights the special of the day is $13 parmas which seems like a rip off compared to the $10 pot and parma specials, but boy oh boy you get your meals worth! Upon entering you go to the kitchen counter and you have the choice of 5 different parmas: Traditional, Hawaiian, Bolognese, Hot Mexican, and Aussie. I’ve had the chance to enjoy 2 of these, the Hot Mexican (topped with ham, mild chili sauce, jalapenos and cheese) - pictured above, and the Aussie parma (topped with bacon, grilled egg, cheese and gravy. The parmas themselves are gigantic, but that’s not all you get! Your meal is complete with two sides, fries and salad. It’s definitely a massive meal so only come if you’re hungry. Regular prices on these range from $19-$21 so at $13 a pop you’re saving a bundle!

The St. Kilda Branch - 204 Barkly St., Saint Kilda, VIC, 3182

Steak is a meal that’s usually reserved for a fancy night out. Back home a steak dinner is average $25. Here in St. Kilda there are plenty of places that offer $12 steak night on different nights of the week. Of these, the best I’ve had so far is at The St. Kilda Branch which funny enough is located across the street from the Village Belle Hotel. Now you’d think that you’d be getting some sort of cheap bottom-of-the-barrel steak but no, you’re getting a porterhouse which here in Oz is a Striploin for you North Americans. You also get your choice of 3 sauces to go with the steak: garlic butter, peppercorn, and mushroom. Your meal comes complete once again with both fries and a salad. Now drinks are a little pricier considering they’ve hooked you in with the cheap steaks, but $16 jugs aren’t so bad, there are worse prices in the neighborhood. With this deal, despite the more expensive drinks you can have a steak dinner and be travelling on a shoestring budget. I highly recommend you give this steak a shot!

Thanks to these deals you can enjoy great meals at low prices. These were a godsend when I was running out of money not too long ago. I hate the noodle diet so thankfully I was able to take a break and have a decent feed with meat, veggies and beer. Even though the meals are at low prices, you’re definitely getting a high quality plate. Whether you’re craving for a parma or a steak, while in St. Kilda be sure to drop by either of these bars for a fantastic meal.