I'm loving this song at the moment:
It pretty much sums up my attitude towards Australia: it's at its best when it reminds me of somewhere else. The hardest part of not travelling is, well... not travelling. If I want a Thai studio (the Swedish one comes later), I have to staycation.
Not that I will be completely Sydney-bound this year - I managed to talk my parents into letting me visit Perth in order to catch Lady GaGa in concert. Never one to let a travel opportunity go to waste, I managed to bargain up to a fortnight in Ubud/Bali before or after the event. Why Bali, you ask? A few years ago I wouldn't have thought twice about dismissing this extremely popular tourist destination from any kind of itinerary. It was simply too full of Aussies. I had heard that there were cultural sites of interest, but I imagined that there were plenty of other Asian destinations that offered a similar level of enchantment, without the drunken revelry of my fellow countryfolks interfering with my peace of mind.
Fortunately, the travel writers I follow were less prejudiced than I (on second thoughts, maybe they just weren't Australian), and reading one enthusiastic rave about Ubud after another eventually wore broke down my resistance and had me googling AirAsia flights. So unless I change my mind at the last moment (which is, admittedly, quite likely) it seems I will be discovering my own version of 'paradise' before too long. Until then, I'll just keep listening to Imagine.
It pretty much sums up my attitude towards Australia: it's at its best when it reminds me of somewhere else. The hardest part of not travelling is, well... not travelling. If I want a Thai studio (the Swedish one comes later), I have to staycation.
Not that I will be completely Sydney-bound this year - I managed to talk my parents into letting me visit Perth in order to catch Lady GaGa in concert. Never one to let a travel opportunity go to waste, I managed to bargain up to a fortnight in Ubud/Bali before or after the event. Why Bali, you ask? A few years ago I wouldn't have thought twice about dismissing this extremely popular tourist destination from any kind of itinerary. It was simply too full of Aussies. I had heard that there were cultural sites of interest, but I imagined that there were plenty of other Asian destinations that offered a similar level of enchantment, without the drunken revelry of my fellow countryfolks interfering with my peace of mind.
Fortunately, the travel writers I follow were less prejudiced than I (on second thoughts, maybe they just weren't Australian), and reading one enthusiastic rave about Ubud after another eventually wore broke down my resistance and had me googling AirAsia flights. So unless I change my mind at the last moment (which is, admittedly, quite likely) it seems I will be discovering my own version of 'paradise' before too long. Until then, I'll just keep listening to Imagine.
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