So after Malaysia, Rosemarie came back with me to Melbourne to hang out with us for a couple weeks while Scott was still not allowed to BLT (bend, lift, twist). She is a good sister/sister-in-law.

As usual we tried to cram a million things in so we had to have a group meeting about our goals, and a whiteboard, and a schedule. This is normal family behaviour, right? Rosemarie wanted to see an emu in the wild… unfortunately we didn’t find any of the four-legged variety for her.

We checked out Moomba. Saw some waterskiers and some jetpack people and some skateboarders. Got tacos and horchata from Dingo Ate My Taco.

Piccolina vegan pistachio ice cream. Yum.

We made Nagi’s beef rendang and tried three player Unfair a couple times. Still hate it. Scott sold it after that.

Rose and I drove across town so I could play free pickleball and she could have a swim. Then we went to Girls & Boys ice cream shop, the completely vegan ice cream shop I love. The lady scooping our ice cream told us about her explosive diarrhea. But the ice cream was amazing, as usual.

The next day I dragged Rosemarie to my usual pickleball session where we accidentally dressed the same and confused every single person there. They still have not recovered from this.

We went to the new St Kilda Pier to see penguins for free. They haven’t opened the penguin viewing platforms though so instead you have to cram together at the fence and hope a penguin decides to come out into the open. A few did, but I forgot to put the memory card in my camera so this fantastic phone picture is the only photographic evidence you’ll get.

Rosemarie really wanted to use our new mixer to make a pavlova. It turned out great! We brought it to family dinner at Jemma’s house.

My friend Steph told us about a free archery session we could do for International Ladies Day. It was fun to try a new thing and catch up with Steph (unpictured).

White-plumed Honeyeater
Magpie Goose
A lot of Magpie Geese
Emu

We went on an excursion to Serendip Sanctuary, near Geelong, to try and find Rosemarie an emu in the wild. It’s a lovely state park, with lots of different short walks and bird hides. The emu was technically in an unenclosed area, however I think it does get its food from the park, so not sure if that counts as wild or not. Most of the emus I’ve seen have been in campgrounds though, so I guess that’s just kind of how they get their food.

On the way back we stopped at Tofu Shoten, where we ordered one of everything. This was something like a strawberry mochi red bean deluxe dessert. It had a lot of elements. I liked some parts but not the others. Rose and Scott got things with matcha and coffee and I can’t remember what else. We also bought some biscuits that I really liked, and some savoury tofu for cooking later.

Cookin’ sisters.

Our final project was to make roti at home. The dough was easy enough to make in the mixer, and once we accepted the sheer quantity of Nuttelex we needed to stretch and form and shape and fry the roti, they turned out pretty good. We made plain roti and egg roti, served with a random curry pack we had in the freezer, and then a dessert course of Mars bar roti. Epic meal.

Unpictured stuff:

  • Between each of these activities, we played A LOT of board games. We played Everdell, Orleans, Kingdomino, Wingspan, Unfair, Qwixx, Empire’s End, Drop It, Welcome To, Deep Sea Adventure, Concordia and Crokinole.
  • We did NOT play Finspan because it arrived two hours after Rosemarie left. Womp womp.
  • We took Rose to the footy and we got drenched by ice rain and had to move undercover but still had a good time.
  • Rosemarie helped me fix up the backyard that desperately needed some attention. We did some major lemon tree prunage. Thanks sister.
  • We went to trivia in the boonies with Ash and Charlie and we won!
  • Rose did a bit of work, Scott did a couple job interviews.

All in all, it was an excellent visit and we were sad for her to leave. I wish we could spend time together all the time.

Some might say that wolfing down a spicy som tam salad and a spicy nasi goreng immediately before going on a 5 hour bus ride to the Cameron Highlands was a risky move.. but thankfully we survived. Iron stomach. Our bus broke down on the way but they organised a replacement bus quite quickly and the new bus was better so all good.

Eventually we made it to Tanah Ratah where it was at least 10 degrees colder than Kuala Lumpur. Our hotel booking got upgraded to a two bedroom place so we had lots of room to spread out.

The area is known for tea and strawberry farming in particular, so I had strawberry juice several times. It looked like they grow all sorts of stuff in the area, there were really crazy looking vertical farms on the hillsides everywhere.

The next day we took a half day tour of the area. It was very foggy/cloudy/misty so we didn’t get to see that much of the view, but what we did see was still beautiful!

The first place we stopped was the Boh Tea Plantation. I think Boh is kind of like the Lipton of Malaysia, but the scenery was awesome and we really enjoyed the tour of the tea factory. We saw how they do the plucking, drying, rolling, fermenting and more drying. It’s a pretty quick process. We weren’t allowed to take pictures in there though.

So many colours of flowers.

After that we stopped at a couple other places to admire the views. :D

We went for a short walk on the side of the road on the way to the Mossy Forest where the guide pointed out a bunch of edible plants. It was so lush. The guide said “OK?” after literally every sentence he said and it really made Rosemarie and I giggle. OK?

The Mossy Forrest was indeed very mossy. And moistly. And cold. We were wearing every layer of clothes we brought and still had to keep moving to stay warm.

There were tons of these endangered carnivorous striped Malayan montane pitcher plants (thanks Wikipedia) in the Mossy Forest. Pretty neat.

Then we went to a tourist trap strawberry farm but it wasn’t really strawberry season so instead of buying anything I looked at birds.

Found some!

That was the end of the tour. We asked to get dropped off on the side of the highway so we could walk to a restaurant that was serving bamboo biryani. I didn’t know what bamboo biryani was but after seeing it on a billboard I had to try it. Turns out it’s rice cooked inside tubes of bamboo which they dramatically knock out of the tube onto a plate in front of you. I couldn’t really taste the bamboo but whatevs it was a fun gimmick.

Afternoon snack. Mangosteen are so good. It was only the very tail end of the season so they weren’t even at their prime but they were still amazing. Next time I go to Malaysia I’m going to make sure it’s mangosteen and durian season.

We went on a short hike to a garbage-filled waterfall and then warmed ourselves back up with a giant steamboat hot pot. This meal was a splurge meal for us… I think it was $20 hehehe.

In hindsight we should have booked a morning bus to Penang because we didn’t really have anything left to do in the Cameron Highlands at that point. Instead we slept in, had roti for breakfast again, went for another short hike along garbage-strewn streams, and attempted to find birds.

We had Indian food for lunch and epic mango smoothies before catching the bus to Penang, about another 5 hour trip.

Cameron Highlands is beautiful, and the cool temperature feels great after being so sweaty in KL, I would recommend going there, but you only really need one full day there and then you can continue on.

In hindsight, it was not the best decision to book an international flight leaving at 6:15am when we live quite far away from the airport. Waking up at 3:30am is not fun. At least there was no traffic.

KUL airport is super far away from the Kuala Lumpur as well but the train was very straight forward. I got some cash and lunch in town and then headed towards DQ’s apartment where Zeph met me at the monorail station. DQ works at an international school and they have been living there for a few months. Their apartment is pretty amazing.

This was the view from DQ’s shower!!

That first evening we went out for nasi lemak and a little walk around the neighbourhood. Nasi lemak is like a super popular customizable meal where you get to pick all sorts of different bits to go with your rice, and then it comes with sambal, fried anchovies and peanuts. Delicious.

Because this was a carry on bag only trip, I only brought my 50mm lens, my 16mm lens, and my cheapy telephoto lens to try and reduce weight. Most of the time I only brought one lens on my camera out with me, which was a fun challenge. I greatly underestimated the size of the Petronas Towers the first time though, haha.

It was really nice spending time with Dan-Que again after so long. We have been friends since Grade 4!

The next morning Dan-Que and I went out for an epic roti breakfast. We ordered way too much haha. But each one was like $1-2! If I remember right we got plain, egg, egg + onion, and banana. It came with three different dipping daals/sambals.

After breakfast we went to the market to try and buy a variety of mangoes to do a taste test. There were lots of different types and they were so affordable (1 kg for $1.40 AUD!!) but they were a little pushy about buying many kilos at once, and there is only so much mango we could eat in time, especially when it’s already ripe. So we ended up with like 3 kg of mango but only two different types, heh. We did get to try slices of a few other varieties, and another dude let us try salak/snake fruit (not great imo).

Later we went for another walk to KLCC Park, alternating outdoor time with mall time for temperature regulation. That is a Oriental Magpie-robin. We also saw a Black-naped Oriole.

We stopped in a food court for a snack. Dan-Que ordered cendol and a sirap bandung on my behalf for us to try because I was completely paralyzed with indecision. The cendol is an icy coconut dessert with pandan jelly and beans. It is nice and refreshing and not too sweet. The sirap was ultra ultra sweet. We couldn’t pick the flavour at first but then eventually figured out it was rose flavoured.

We had Indian food for dinner and then had to try and meet up with Rosemarie at the subway station, 2000s style, because she had no internet. We had come up with a plan ahead of time, and then just had to be there and wait for her. Remember when we had to do that all the time?!! Our dinner ran a bit long, and we weren’t 100% sure which metro exit she would come out of, and what she would do if she beat us there, which was a little bit stressful, but we just used our sisterly intuition and it worked!!! Reunited.

The next morning we all went to Batu Caves. It is so colourful and cool! Unfortunately it was raining quite a bit. The rain cooled us down a lot, but it made it hard to take pictures on the fun rainbow stairs, and also we didn’t see any monkeys, which is unusual apparently.

It is a pretty neat place though.

After showers and wringing out our shoes we headed out again. We had regular bak kut teh, which is a very porky soup dish, and dry bak kut teh which is the same thing but caramelized, and doughnuts and kangkung belacan (water spinach with shrimp paste). I liked it, but I wouldn’t want to have it too often.

We walked around some more touristy areas.. Chinatown, some neat alleyways, some hipster shops, and this bookstore that I’m pretty sure I saw on an episode of Amazing Race.

Assume that every activity is separated by showers and/or swimming. I was having like 3 or 4 showers a day those first few days. Dan-Que’s apartment has a really great covered pool, which is epic. I am cry-laughing in this picture because someone turned on the jets on the lounge beds and my bathing suit kept filling up with air that I could not get out.

Night time photoshoot at the Petronas Towers. It was going so well until it started POURING. Even though they only live 10 minutes walk away, and we were prepared with umbrellas, we got fully drenched again. A moistly day!

After another roti breakfast the next day, Rosemarie and I met her friend Daph at the KL Bird Park.

I didn’t realise that hornbills were so huge! It was a pretty good bird park, and we saw monkeys too, but I was also having some kind of allergic reaction to something for the last day or so and my eye was getting hella hella swollen at that point so I was a little miserable.

Daph made some calls and organised to take me to a clinic, where I saw a doctor, got an antihistamine and steroid shot in my bum, and a prescription for the next few days, all for $30 AUD and done in like 45 minutes. Amazing. I am very grateful that she was able to help me out with that. My eye felt better almost immediately and by the evening it was back to normal size.

Daph took us to her favourite banana leaf restaurant for lunch. All the curries and pickles on the leaf are unlimited! And then she added on calamari and goat. You eat with your hands! It was really delicious and lots of fun. When you are finished you fold your leaf over a certain way and then they know you are done.

We went back to Daph’s house for a rest and to wait for the daily rain to pass. Weather apps do not work very well in Malaysia, but her dad said he thought it would stop raining at 7PM and he was pretty much spot on. Years of experience > computer modeling.

Daph took us to her local night market and explained what everything was and we all bought different things to bring back to her house for a feast. Her information was so interesting and helpful! We tried rojak (fruit and veg salad with a sauce), stinky tofu, a Chinese pulled sugar dessert thingy, corn in a crispy shell, salt baked chicken, carrot cake, a vegetable stir fry wrap thing, longan juice, and probably a bunch more things that I have forgotten.

Finally we caught a Grab back to Dan-Que’s place and the next day Rosemarie and I continued on to the Cameron Highlands!

Good things that happened in 2024:

  • We saw the Aurora Australis twice, kind of.
  • We saw the Cirque du Soleil show Luzia and was shocked and awed, mostly by the contortionist.
  • We went to a restaurant where you could eat unlimited pierogies, what a dream.
  • I went on an epic trip to Christmas Island where I saw amazing wildlife and learned a ton about photography.
  • We went on a pleasant weekend away in Torquay.
  • I saw a performance of Wallace and Gromit Wrong Trousers with a live brass band and it made me cry with happiness.
  • I competed in the Victorian Weightlifting Championships and nearly had a perfect competition.
  • I played a heck of a lot of pickleball.

Favourite Books:

I watched a lot less TV this year and instead started listening to audiobooks, which works a lot better with knitting as I never used to look at the TV enough to follow what was happening. That plus bed time reading.. I got through a lot more books than last year! These were my favourites:

  • Solito by Javier Zamora – intense true story of a little poop-obsessed kid trying to get from El Salvador to USA
  • In Memoriam by Alice Winn – man, WWI really sucked
  • Know My Name by Chanel Miller – the world is so exhausting and unfair
  • Five Little Indians by Michelle Good – another pretty sad book about kids that had to go to residential school in British Columbia
  • Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin – at times frustrating, but interesting story about friends that make video games
  • Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi – multi-multi-multi-generational story about a family from Ghana to USA, my favourite part: when they said segregation wouldn’t have been so bad if the white people just left them alone
  • Greenwood by Michael Christie – another Canadian book, makes you grateful for nature
  • Educated by Tara Westover – shocking, fascinating story of a girl with insane Mormon parents

In summary, the more depressing or disturbing the better, especially if also set in Canada.

Board games:

I played 21 games this year, with 26 different people, in 11 locations.

14 were new games! Everdell, Unfair, Empire’s End, Scribbly Gum, Inis, Pollen, Brass: Birmingham, Disney Villainous, Portrayal, Quadrapolis, Habitats, Vivid Memories, Zoo Vadis, and The Fuzzies. Definitely not all of those new games were good. Brass was so confusing, Villainous was torturous with 6 players, and Zoo Vadis was SO annoying as a quiet person. But I really enjoyed Empire’s End, Pollen (going to make my own travel version), Quadrapolis, and even The Fuzzies (Jenga with pompoms).

Our most played game, by far, was Wingspan. Mostly on Steam with Scott and Rosemarie on the weekends. I played 39 games with Rosemarie over the year! (Of which she won 48% of them!!!)

PBs:

No snatch PBs. Clean and jerk 58kg -> 59kg in comp. Total 108kg -> 109kg. No other PBs on squats, deadlifts or presses. No wonder I felt like retiring.

Pickleball game has improved heaps but not as easy to measure.

Great new recipes:

  • Everything that you can put in an air fryer
  • Brussels sprouts are actually tasty!
  • Dumplings like you can get in Chinatown (I used peanut butter instead of sesame paste)
  • Dense bean salads, like this one

Favourite bird pics:

Because it was HARD WORK to get this picture.

Because it looks like a moody painting.

Knitting:

Year of the beanie, apparently! Learned colourwork, continental knitting, intarsia and cable knitting.

2024 goals: Use camera more!!! (That dusty thing in the corner?) Design bird sweaters. (Started this, then abandoned after I realised designing clothing patterns is an extremely difficult task due to people coming in many many different sizes.) Be more comfortable being me. (Maybe a bit TOO comfortable, jk.)

Last years thoughts: “Hopefully Scott ends up getting a new job soon so that we go back to traveling and doing more fun stuff again.” HA HA HA. :(

This years thoughts: While it mostly didn’t seem that bad at the time, upon reflection, 2024 wasn’t our best year. Unemployment x2, injury, chronic illness, saving up for trips that might not actually happen, and leaving weightlifting. But alas, we truck along. Hopefully we can get things back on track again in 2025.

OMG I’m so behind in blogging I can’t really remember what we did on this trip. So how about I just show you some pictures.

Winkipop
Bells Beach
Amazing ENORMOUS seafood platter
White-faced Heron
Spicy momos at the farmers market
Boardgames at the Airbnb
Ramen dinner
Entertaining ourselves while we waited for brighter aurora
Lil’ smudge of aurora
I like that the signpost looks like a microscope pointer. Exhibit A: Milky Way
Knitting in the sun

Scott did a good job of planning the whole weekend (other than picking another Airbnb that has no bathroom door). It was a nice relaxing weekend away with delicious meals.