HELLO. I’m Atom, and you’ve received my Travel Notes:
→ On the weeks I travel, I share stories, reflections, and lessons.
→ On the weeks I stay home, I share tips, tools, and templates.
We arrived in Melbourne at midnight on November 8.
I remember wearing only shorts, a T-shirt, and a light sweater because I was shocked by the cold when we exited the airport. I thought it was supposed to be summer?? I complained to AJ, who was joining me for my first two weeks in Australia to visit his mom (Tita Mabelle).
It wasn’t until 2 AM that we found ourselves on the doorstep of South Yarra Hostel, a cheap hostel I found on Booking.com with a good location. We booked three nights in the hostel so we could be close to the city before we moved to Baldwyn North.
But on that first night, we were locked out. I informed them of our late arrival time weeks ahead. Unfortunately, in my rush of saying goodbye to everyone, I had forgotten to do send a message right before we arrived and so we were left outside the hostel without check-in details. We didn’t have Wi-Fi or data either because SIM stalls in the airport were closed when we arrived.
Thankfully, Sia, a fellow hosteller, opened the door for us thinking we were his Uber Eats delivery. He helped us reach the hostel admin, got us connected to the hostel’s Wi-Fi, and allowed us to settle in. The hostel admin is normally on top of these things, he said in a surprised kind of way, there must have been a lapse because of the public holiday (Melbourne Cup) yesterday.
Just our luck?
Anyway, we move on. My plan for day one was to (1) get my sim, (2) set up a bank account, and (3) get a Myki travel card. Instead, we slept in (surprise!).
Our day started at 2 PM. We passed by the train station first to get our Myki travel cards, then we walked in to the first Optus store we found, where we bought our sims at a discounted rate of $30 for 80GB, valid for 30 days—original price: $55. Cool!
But our sims wouldn’t work. We visited two other Optus branches to help diagnose the issues only to discover the telco was suffering from a nationwide outage. Because of the time spent with Optus, the CommBank branch we planned to visit was closed when we arrived.
I’m happy to say things quickly picked up as soon as we moved out of our hostel and into the very lively Aguirre household, our home for the next four nights.
Juancho (AJ’s childhood friend) and Tanner (a handsome two-year-old greyhound) welcomed us at their porch, while we greeted Tita Lulai (Tita Mabelle’s best friend) in the kitchen. We caught up over tempura she prepared for us.
Over the next two days, we would walk a total of 20km around Melbourne’s CBD, exploring the city’s beautiful grid-like streets and meeting with friends both old and new.
What do you want? Tita Lulai asked when it was our turn to order in Kariton Sorbetes. It was a Sunday evening, and the family was in the mood for some dessert. Kariton Sorbetes they shared was one of the few Filipino establishments in the city that actually got Filipino food good. They had all your quintessential Filipino flavors (like keso, buko pandan, and ube) and some unique creations too (like durian chiffon and turon). I didn’t miss the usual flavors yet so I wanted something different.
Turon sa pandesal, I joked.
Then we asked the cashier, and lo and behold, behind her was a container of pandesal! We couldn’t stop laughing about it. Kariton definitely got your Filipino ice cream experience down.
On the way home, Tita Lulai and Tito Alex (her husband) couldn’t stop reminiscing about Manila.
You know what I miss, Tita Alex started, Bacolod Chicken House!!!
And on and on went aour conversation. We jumped from restaurants around UP to how Ashcreek in Greenhills had turned into a McDonald’s and how SM had grown to a building D.
I’d only been in Australia for 6 days by this point, still it was so nice to hear Filipino being spoken and it was even nicer to share stories of Manila with other Filipinos.
Monday was spent packing and preparing for our 11-hour overnight bus from Melbourne to Sydney. Tito Alex prepared barramundi and asparagus for our last meal with them.
And that was Melbourne!
See you all soon,
Atom
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