Thursday, October 23, 2008

Preparing for Perth

Oh no.. we have only couple more days before we fly off at 1 am next Wed.  Looking at the growing list of things to bring, it seems like we have an awful lot to carry to Perth - stroller (thank God we decided not to bring our own car seat), tin of LMM milk, Papa's camera things including a tripod, then there's the LMM's potty, a whole stack of diapers (he uses 5 a day so we need at least 60 pieces), numerous milk bottles, a baby carrier and everyone's clothes... 

Speaking of clothes, not sure if you belong to the "buy new clothes before a trip" category. I am damn sure Lead We doesn't belong there but his mum and my mum and I do.  And so while I'm planning what to bring and yes...what to wear, I also jotted down a short list (hopefully it stays vertically challenged) of new must-haves ;)

This will be the very first trip with the LMM. We are a little apprehensive about how the trip will turn out with the LMM around but guess its always harder the first time round.. then you get seasoned.  He just turned one and eats easy (bread, fruits, rice, vege, meat).  There should be alot of babyfood available in Perth but even if I don't manage to get any on the first day, the LMM should be able to survive on some of our adult meals. We'll keep feeding him bread and fruits hahaha..

And so the accommodations have been booked. We stay a night at Denmark in a Ocean front chalet called Surf's Up (along Ocean Beach Rd), we stay 2 nights in a Pemberton farm parked in the middle of the Karri forests, we stay 3 nights in Magaret River and finally, we stay 4 nights in Perth City in Aaron All Suites... all the selected accommodations come with full kitchens for preparing the LMM's meals.

I also managed to buy the Aussie dollar we required for the trip at just 95.6 Singapore Cents to a Aussie Dollar. So everything there is at a discount to our currency. There seemed to be a shortage of Aussie notes in Singapore. I later found out that all the money changers bought their notes at a high of 1.2 - 1.3 and were reluctant to change them out at the current parity rates. So they kept all the notes, telling customers that they don't have Aussie.  Thank God my bank has some stock and the relationship manager reserved some for us.

The next thing I need to do is to research on all the highly recommended restaurants in all the places we'll be visiting since food is a priority in any of our overseas trips.  Hope to do some trout fishing (and have that fish cooked for lunch or dinner or heck, a snack), try that marron thing which seems to be the local flavour seafood, eat plenty of Albany Rock Oysters and all its cousins/relatives, drink plenty of wine (who's taking care of Travis??) and beer, Ostrich steaks. This trip I hope to be brave enough touch a goat, or a pig at the farm, touch that live fish and feed a lamb.. yieks, maybe I should pack my golf gloves along.