Travel | GlobalSalsa: travel writer Belinda Jackson

Jan

Coffee, rain and hair straighteners; Bourke St’s got it all

I was catching up with a recently ex-Sydney coffee fiend in the CBD today, so thought I’d better take him somewhere that flashes Melbourne’s serious coffee expertise. A truly great cafe in the CBD? Some would sneer that doesn’t exist, and that I should head for Carlton, Fitzroy or South Melbourne. Online searches drew a blank up the Spring St side of town, so I gave up and thought I’d see what I found on the way, hoping for inspiration.

Through the near-blinding rain that has been a feature of Australia’s eastern seaboard these past few weeks, I walked down the top (ie Paris end) of Bourke St and had a mild revelation.

How could I have forgotten: tiny little Von Haus (good for cosy evenings and slices of lemon tart, 1 Crossley St), Mess Hall (outside tables great in the sunshine, not so great for asthma sufferers, 51 Bourke St) and Pellegrini (allegedly Melbourne’s oldest espresso bar, fine for mama’s slap-up pasta, but I’ve found the espresso bitter in the past, 66 Bourke St). I wandered past boho Lane’s Edge (39 Bourke St) and then clocked Society (23-29 Bourke St), which has dwelt in my subconscious only as a place for great cocktails.

It being a 10.30am catch-up, it might have been a little early for Flaming Lamborghinis, but it was the best looking interior in the street, and not too crowded, so I pulled ‘George’ (whose name has been changed to preserve his identity) into a black-velvet booth and we ordered coffee.

Now, I’m not mainlining that much caffeine at the mo, but when I gets it, I want a hit – and am a little bit past being served a soupcon of latte for $4, so I asked the grey ponytailed waiter (think Byron, rather than Byron Bay) for the biggest coffee on board. He said they all come in the regular cup or a larger mug. A mug o your finest flat white, then, please sir.

Reader, he turned up with a satisfyingly large bucket. George, a raging addict who’d been inhaling coffee since the early morn, had a regular skinny latte. And it was good. Not bitter, not too milky, a touch of chocolate. George even got another one to go, so he could keep his caffeine levels up on the way back to the office. It was the old-school Lygon St roaster, Dimattina. Bonus points for the ladies’ loo, which features a $2 hair straightener to iron your locks turned lank on humid days like today. Too fabulous.

Jan

Revenge of the weather lords

It hit 30 degrees on the weekend here in Melbourne. Right. Well, that’s summer out of the way then.

And with the end of summer comes the end of holidays. On the first week’s struggle back at work for many people, I am delighted by the response from one PR (that’s public relations person, to those on the know – as a rule, overpaid punters who turn blind at this journalist’s requests) who I emailed for a price for a hotel to run in a travel story. I asked last week. Silly me. I forgot that even non-Christian countries delight in the holidays that Christmas affords. “I just got back from a long break. I will get back to you shortly,” he told me for his week-long silence, obviously still stunned at his misfortune to find himself in the walls of an office once again. At least he’s honest.

But really, I shouldn’t moan about the weather. I could be up to my armpits in sludgy brown flood water, with swimming cows and snapping crocodiles floating down the main street – to wit poor, soggy Queensland at the moment.

Yet Melbourne, I have to say I’m disappointed you, turning on today’s sporadic rain, grey skies and general morbidity in mid-January. But then sometimes, you get your priorities right. A quick trip into the city while the definitive grudge sport, the Australia v England cricket series, the Ashes, was on, and the streets were full of smug, boozy, benevolent English people. On the tram, an older Englishman gave me his seat, saying, “I don’t normally do so, but I’m feeling quite happy today.” Reader, I took the seat.

While I’m not a cricket tragic, our drubbing was made worse by the fact it was done in mostly miserable weather, which would of course made our northern-hemisphere visitors more comfortable and therefore happier. Then, on the last day of the Melbourne series, the Aussie sun came out and did the job. The English fans were still understandably smug, but now they were at least sunburnt and smug 😉 You takes your revenge where you can gets it…

Jan

Hot to Shop: Singapore

The joke goes that Singapore is the only shopping mall that’s been admitted into the UN.

Tiny Singapore’s shopping is defined by Orchard Road: 2.2km of malls that are linked by sub-subterranean passages, skybridges and subway tunnels so that you can actually visit the city and breathe only air-conditioned oxygen.

But would you really want to?

Get in touch with your inner sweater and hit the streets of Kampong Glam (I loved it before I visited, purely for the name alone), the back streets of Chinatown and pumping Little India.

To read more, click here! You know you want to…

Jan

Shark el-Sheikh: a fishy tale

This is so weird, even by Egyptian standards, that I have to share…

The beach resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, on Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, is famed for its diving and snorkelling, wide beaches and high temps. But there has been a snake in paradise, or more specifically, a large shark, which has been terrorising tourists. The score stands at: oceanic whitetip shark 5 (4 injured, 1 killed), humans 0.

The Lovely Andrew sent through a link to an Austrian site quoting the governor of Sinai, Mohamed Abdel Fadil Shousha, who says locals reckon the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad “put the murderous shark in the water to damage Egyptian tourism. [It is an idea that] cannot be ruled out.”

The Accidental Tourist loves a good conspiracy theory, but notes that the Sinai peninsula is flooded with Israeli tourists taking advantage of Egypt’s limping pound, and flock there for cheap sun holidays.

But wait, there’s more, as MCN dropped this little link in my lap from Macedonia Online which states that the shark has since been assassinated by a Serbian tourist, dubbed Shark El Sheikh and now the new hero of Egypt.

While the hero himself, Dragan Stevic, was at the time too drunk to remember what actually happened, his friend Milovan reports that “Dragan climbed on the jumping board, told me to hold his beer and simply ran to jump. There was no time for me to react or to try to stop him, he just went for it.” He jumped, he hit the water, and complained it was too shallow, but in fact had actually landed on the shark’s head, killing it instantly. Who says drinking is bad for you?

Surprisingly, the Egyptian press didn’t run the story, which has since turned out to be a gory hoax, complete with fake pic: apparently this plankton-eating basking shark was snapped in the US, not Egypt.

PS: sorry for the silence over December – this was lurking in drafts for toooo long. Happy New Year all!

Jan

Jacarandas and moody blues

“BALFOUR Street, New Farm?” asks the airport bus driver. “Are you sure? There used to be a real rough, scuzzy backpackers’ down there.”

“No, really. There’s a new hotel and it’s supposed to be quite swish,” I assure him. The rest of the minibus has its ears open, so it’s with a flourish the garrulous driver pulls up in front of the wide verandahs of an urbane-looking Queenslander and declares: “Well, that’s a turn-up for the books. Not bad looking at all.”

click here to read more about Spicers Balfour, in Brisbane. Yes, Brisbane.

Jan

Best wishes for 2011, wherever you find yourself in this wonderful world!

Dec

Why phones are the new fire

Because my Blackberry can’t take pix to save itself,
here’s what The Age saw…

In the last century, it used to be said that television was the new fire – in that we all crowd around it to stare into its depths, mesmerised by the flickering light. Let me suggest that for this century, the new fire is the mobile phone.

I came to this realisation via two separate events – the first was while sludging through the mire of technicality associated with downloading tv programs onto your mobile, a genius invention that lets you further screw your eyesight on the tram to work, watching Two and a Half Men, because you haven’t got enough of Charlie Sheen, even though, anywhere in the world, at any given moment, some lazy network is playing a three-hour back-to-back marathon of hackneyed repeats.

The second time I realised that mobiles are the new fire is at a U2 concert last week. Bono and the boys were in fine form – before the concert, Amnesty was taking petitions through the crowd, collecting signatures for more public toilets in Nairobi (althoug I suggest such unmonitored spaces are ripe picking grounds for Nairobi’s thriving mugging scene, but then I stayed in hotels there, with toilets aplenty). Then, during the concert, Bono made a reference to the newly released Burmese leader, Aung Sang Suu Ky and the world AIDS epidemic.

To capture the moment and our hearts, he asked the 60,000-strong crowd for a minute’s silence and to raise our mobiles on high. I’m tellin’ ya: once, at concerts, it used to be candles, then cigarette lighters. Now phones.

Nov

Feed me, Portuguese

You can end up in a world of pain, trying to be authentic in an ethnic restaurant. Try, for example, lunch yesterday in Madeira restaurant in suburban Melbourne, a Portuguese restaurant, if the name didn’t give it away. Actually, we were there to talk about the former Portuguese colony, Macau, off the coast of mainland China, so ethnicity was the name of the game.

My only true desire was for the pasteis de nata, the egg tarts for which Portugal is famous, so it was with glee I learned of the new delights of the espetada, a vertical skewer hanging from a frame, which is brought to the table, the juices from the marinated meat dripping into the rice or potatoes heaped below. Embroiled in a dinner-party war? A few of these puppies slung on the table and you’d totally win.

In the name of authenticity, we said no to the kangaroo espetada, but went for beef, lamb, chicken and, er barramundi (there was no Portuguese cod). All’s well.

Would you like entrees, perhaps? asked the waitress. Ah, no thanks, we said, patting our waistlines. Not even Portuguese chorizo (grilled, spicy sausage)? said the canny saleswoman. Well, ok then. Since we’re in a going local.

And bread? I think we’re fine. Not the traditional Maderian garlic bread, bolo do caco, which we make inhouse? Oh, we must have that, if it’s Maderian.

And come dessert time, the tarts were on order, except for one non-sweet-eater, who declined any dessert, ordering just an espresso.

Wouldn’t sir like a brandy with that? The table witnessed the mildly sheepish grin of the man who’se already tried the Portuguese beer, the slightly carbonated Portuguese white wine, and is planning to return to the office for the afternoon. No thanks.

Oh, says the waitress. All Portuguese men finish with a short black coffee and a Portuguese brandy.

The table does the hard sell for her. Go on, we all encourage Mr Non-Dessert. He relents and declares the imported brandy ‘actually very good’.

It just proves the old adage learned long ago when I was cutting my teeth in design magazines: say it in French (or in this case, Portuguese) and it always sounds better.

28 Nov 2010: As a coda to this piece, written a few days ago, I notice a euro-bureaucrat saying recently that to haul itself out of its crippling economic blues, “the Portuguese are going to have to find a way to make things that other countries want to buy from them”.

Enter the espetada.

Aqui e, Europe’s financial woes solved!

Nov

Hot to shop: Dubai

33C outside, -4 inside at Ski Dubia, in the Mall of the Emirates

In the US, they’d ask ‘do you want fries with that?’ In Dubai, they ask, ‘do you want the world’s largest aquarium/tower/shopping mall with that?’

You’d think Dubai might have tempered its outlook after being ravaged by the global financial crisis, but no. It’s still got a one-way ticket to Hubris Central.

Spotted in the malls: Jimmy Choo’s collaboration with the Ugg boot, a Versace cafe (serving Illy coffee) and the world’s longest street of watch stores.

For record-breaking, up-to-the-second shopping, it’s all here. Click to read the full story here

Nov

Singapore’s new groove

It’s a country built on shopping malls, where chewing gum is illegal and nerdism is in, so the brief was to find the new, hip, not-necessarily-so-shiny Singapore.

Doing the research, it was tough, people, tough. The travel brochures would advertise traditional Singaporean cuisine “now off the streets and in a shiny, hygienic compound”, which for some says ‘no salmonella’ but for those of us blessed with cast-iron constitutions, says tickets, queues and compulsory fun.

IT’S on the drive from Changi Airport that I see the bumper sticker, catchcheatingspouse.com.sg. Hmmm, perhaps Singapore isn’t as staid as I’ve been led to believe.

To read more, click here…

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