Day 4 - Yarra Valley / Melbourne CBD

It was a day with a mission… a mission to rescue Paul's camera which was misplaced at our lunch place yesterday. That explained why the four James Bonds woke up early in the morning at 8 plus. Unfortunately our chronically bad habit of taking a long time to wash up and have our Nutella bready breakfast meant that it was not until 10 plus before we could move out of the room.

The guys were getting quite dry and heaty for the lack of water sustenance, having gone the camel way for the previous day. We were rather inconvenienced and irritated by the lack of a kettle to boil fresh drinking water in the hotel room. Which hotel wouldn’t have a kettle in the room? (Apart from the Hiltons and Marriotts that charge exorbitant prices for the bottles of mineral water in the fridge)

Pissed and dry (no pun intended), we confronted the Indian looking lady at the reception. It was the same staff who helped us to check in last evening. We suspected that either she worked round the clock, or that she stayed at the motel hotel and didn’t go home at all. When we complained to her about our hydration problem, she mocked us that the tap water was drinkable. What the heck!

Humiliated and tails between the legs, we sheepishly hurried out of the hotel to continue with our mission to rescue Paul’s camera. We made a small detour to Little Collins Street, and took some photographs of Esther's former residence. Esther is our colleague who did her university studies in Melbourne a few years back. She specially requested the photographs for nostalgic purposes as well as to see how her beloved apartment has changed. We gladly obliged.

Little Collins Street is just off the main Elizabeth Street and flanked by a humongous commercial buildings on one side and cosy residences on the other. Cafes and coffee houses adorn the bottom floors of the buildings. People in trenchcoats walked down the street, heads crouched and necks tucked within the shawls to protect against the cold. It seemed a nice place to chill out at despite the cold.

Esther’s old apartment

Front view of Esther’s old apartment

Getting on with our mission, we needed hot wheels. We checked out several car rental companies to see if there were any cheap cars for a day’s rental, but most of them were out of available cars. The remaining cars were priced out of our budget, like a Ford Falcon going for more than A$100 for a single day?!

In the end, we went back to the place to try our luck (good old Budget Cars, where we got our monster truck previously). The (Australian-born) Chinese staff who served us yesterday was manning the counter again. He seemed to suffer from temporal memory loss as he didn't seem to recall us though we interacted with him just the previous evening. Yet he appeared quite conscious of his actions as he did not make his cock-head-tongue-clack-hand-gun unique gesture. We thought we wouldn't experience it again and we were disappointed. He got us a Hyundai Accent for A$41 rental cost and insurance of A$22 which we contemplated heavily upon. Hence the total worked out to be A$63, about 26% cheaper than the average A$85 per day cost that the monster truck cost.

Upon going up to the carpark, we spent a good 15 minutes just searching for our car. You can’t blame us – the carpark was dimly lit and every car looked the same. It seemed like a scene out of some teen-slash flick; we half expected a deranged knife-wielding killer to pop out and deliver a life-ending stab from the back while we went around searching for our car (not to mention there was construction work going on which made the car park a real eerie place to experience a thriller experience!).

We were glad to find our car finally. It was a bright red Hyundai Accent in brand new condition. Though John swore never to take a Toyota Hyundai car before, he grudgingly went along with it (what to do when you’re poor and broke). The other guys, however, were excited about it.

Paul, Daniel & Andrew posing with the budget Hyundai Accent,

all complete with cock-head-tongue-clack-hand-gun unique gesture

After posing for pictures, the four tried to get into the car but failed. How the hell does one get into the car? Break the windscreen? We tried numerous ways and methods to turn the key (never knew we could be this creative) but the key simply refused to budge. Finally the door was opened but the ignition key simply refused to turn. Moments later, the car started crying for help – it emitted piercing loud sirens that made us looked like we were car thieves!

Defeated, the James Bonds summoned their Q, the Chinese staff from the office. His first words when he emerged from the elevator (it was a multi-storey carpark) was, “What’s wrong with you guys?” The blushes came out of the James Bonds when he simply pressed a button on the key (the key was a darn remote control, damn it) and popped the locks open. Shaking his head and making mental notes about young James Bonds with no techno-sense, he handed us the keys.

“You guys sure you can drive this?” he asked, one eyebrow going up.

“Ummm… yeah.” came the response from the guilty schoolboys.

“Well… alright”, he shrugged his shoulders and walked off towards the elevator.

Just as the elevator doors were closing, our hero tilted his head to one side, winked his eyes and clacked his tongue while pointing a finger gun at us. The embarrassment was worth it!!!

And so, after a good laugh, Paul launched the Hyundai Accent rocket towards Immerse Spa to pick up the camera. It was a less-than-90-minutes drive this time as we were familiar with the roads and had little time to waste. As usual, John fell asleep on the journey there. Surprisingly, Andrew joined the acclaimed snoozer as well. Daniel managed to stay awake to enjoy the scenic drive. He realised the rows of green field in Yarra Valley has more than wineries to look at when he witnessed nature’s procreation of a baby cow. Our friend then realised he was looking at animal porn.

(Sorry! The split seconds of catching the wonder procreation process was too short to capture it)

When we got there, we managed to find out that the beautiful waitress whom we took a photograph with yesterday was called Aneeka, but she was not the one who located the missing camera. It was some other staff that manned the gift section. By calling her "some staff" meant that we did not manage to catch her name. What a shame. So much for gratitude these days. Tsk tsk.

Driving back to Melbourne, we stopped by Smith Street upon Andrew’s friend’s recommendation. This street is fully lined with many factory outlet shops. We happily packed our car at one corner, and marvelled at how cheap the goods are. Moving from Adidas store where all of us picked up something, we moved on to Timberland and Nike. Paul took the Big Spender Award with the purchase of his Timberland sandals. Nike was rather disappointing because the things were not as cheap as we expected. Still, John was delighted to find that he got three Nike T-shirts at A$7 apiece after an unexpected further 30% discount.

Adidas Factory Outlet

All of us showing off our prized catches at Adidas factory outlet store

After the shopping spree, we refilled our gas tank and parted with the car. The petrol bill came up to A$15.20, meaning that the Hyundai Accent had a fuel efficiency of about 8.0 km/litre which was rather poor considering its small size. Not surprisingly, Hyundai cars’ poor reputation for fuel economy was justified yet again (John’s high-fives all around).

It was dinner time by the time we were done with everything. We witnessed an accident while waiting to cross at one of the traffic junctions. A car apparently ignored the turn-right-from-left rule and tried to turn right from the right lane. It ploughed into a car from the opposite direction that was trying to turn left. The car spun and almost decapitated a lady jaywalking crossing the road. It missed her by inches. She seemed none too concerned about almost losing her life after counting her limbs and checking that nothing fell out of her handbag. She plugged in her iPod and continued her journey nonchalantly, unaware of the attention that the accident had attracted. We, on the other hand, were badly shaken.

After recovering from shaking legs and jangled nerves, we realised we were hungry. One of the items on the wish list of this trip was to have a good seafood meal. Some nice, fresh yet cheap seafood was what we were looking for. Back at our hotel, John noted a couple of good recommended restaurants from the Qantas in-flight magazine. One was "14 Elizabeth Street", which was supposedly on the same street as our hotel. We happily traced the street to locate "14 Elizabeth Street". As the sky got darker and darker and our tummies got hungrier and hungrier, there was still no sign of the restaurant. We asked around, and met with puzzled looks. Disappointed, we returned to the hotel to drop the six-pack of Hahn beer we bought en-route.

The fact of the matter was that there are actually two Elizabeth Streets within near vicinity. One was "Elizabeth Street, Melbourne CBD", which was the one we stayed along. The other was "Elizabeth Street, Richmond", which was about 5km away from the CBD area, at Richmond area. So near and yet so far, we could have feasted on the cheap yet good seafood dinner. Sigh.

A close encounter with “Elizabeth St, Richmond” – so near but so far

But all was not lost. We trudged our way to the reception and through the Indian lady (she never went home!), managed to get a recommendation to a good place that specialised in oysters. Or rather, the hotel staff browsed through www.menulog.com and printed the recommendation for our reference. The restaurant was aptly called Oyster Little Bourke, located at a secluded dark end of Little Bourke Street.

Oyster @ Little Bourke Street

It wasn’t far away. We arrived there in due time after a short walk. The restaurant was simply yet elegantly furnished with dark wood and glasses. We were impressed at how professional the waitress was, bringing us to our seats, holding the chairs for us, unfurling the napkins on our laps and taking pains to elaborate on each of the item on the menu. She sure knew her menu stuff very well. After her excellent recommendation, we forgot that we were out for a seafood dinner. Instead, we ordered veal cutlet, duck breast rib-eye, half a dozen of freshly shucked oysters and cooked oysters and grilled garlic prawns. Toast bread was complimentary and it went down well with the creamy butter that went free flow.

The oysters that soon arrived were a dish from heaven! You pick it up and holding it close to your nose, you whiff at the scent of the oyster. The freshness simply blew us away. There was no fishy or sea smell at all. Then you spear the meat off the shell using a little fork-like apparatus that was provided. You take a good look at the shiny texture of the meat that is glistening seductively. Next you embark on the ultimate moment of placing the meat on your tongue and letting your senses take over, closing your eyes in the process. The succulent meat was juicy to the bite, and every drop of the remaining juice from the shell was delightfully savoured. We found ourselves licking the empty shells when the deed was done. The toast bread and the bread spread were fragrant and they complemented the fresh oysters very well indeed.

The bread spread is the best that Daniel has tasted ever. In fact, he thought the bread could become a main dish. He didn’t mind having the recipe for the spread to start a business (too bad he’s no Hawthorne).

A mixture of freshly shucked oysters and cooked oysters

Grilled garlic prawns

Veal cutlet

Duck breast rib-eye

The bill came up to a jaw-dropping A$148.50 and left us shell-shocked. We recovered quickly after John pointed out the fact that we didn’t have lunch so the A$148.50 was actually spread out between two meals. That sure made us feel better.

After dinner, we tried to take a group photograph in front of the restaurant. There were round tables and seats outside and we placed our camera on the adjacent table. We then contorted our bodies in an effort to squeeze into the picture so you could imagine how pathetic we looked. A group of amused passers-by stopped by and offered their help. We were really grateful to get out of the uncomfortable position! One of them even volunteered to be in the photograph too. One of their friends also commented she was still single. It was too bad that we didn't take down her contact so we could not send the photo back to her for her safe-keeping. What a pity (for Daniel).

Enthusiastic passer-by who can’t resist the temptation to be in our photograph

We strolled along in the chilly Melbourne night air. Walking around the street, we chanced upon Hard Rock Cafe. The setting was very different from what we had in mind of a typical Hard Rock. Never mind that we only went inside to use the washrooms. Of course, one of the must-do things when visiting Hard Rock is to buy their merchandise. So, we bought some severely overpriced T-shirts and mugs.

As we moved along, we saw Monash University. It was then an idea came to our mind. Remember the advertisement done by the third Singapore university, Singapore Management University or SMU, some time back? Being a new kid on the education scene to challenge the two incumbent universities, they differentiated themselves apart by branding their education as “different”. It was basically nothing more than having a few enthusiastically looking people who jumped around meaningless in midair. We decided that it was timely for Monash University to have something similar, and we couldn't resist ourselves to rebrand it. So this is our take on Monash University graduate: "We are different".

Before Daniel joined Monash University, he was a nerdy bookworm

He always thought there was something different about the Monash University graduates

They seem to jump high and aspire to soar

… and the ability to contort their body pull off amazing stunts

He decided to enrol into the university…

.. and realised things are indeed different here!

Even though we were sweating after the series of star jumps, bat-man jumps, cat-walks, convocation jumps, or SMU jumps, we were quickly reminded of the cold from the wind assault. As we walked past one McDonald's (they are everywhere these days, aren’t they?), we thought it was timely to order a cup of hot tea to warm us up. Little did we realise that we invested more than the tea itself -- we took back the styrofoam cups to hotel for our usage because the hotel simply didn't provide any. Simply brilliant. How’s that for enterprising spirit of the “Monash grads”!

Cost-cutting measure of reusing McDonald’s Styrofoam cup
(noticed how the cups’ rims were chipped off after multiple usage)

We made our way down Batman Avenue (yes, there's really such a road) to check out the Ferris Wheel and Eiffel Tower. It was freezing cold. We set up the camera for timed shots and a group of rascals punks youths fooled around under our watchful eyes. Thankfully they did not do anything to wreck our group photograph.

Ferris Wheel @ Batman Avenue

Eiffel Tower look-alike NGV @ Batman Avenue

This Saturday night was quieter than last evening’s Friday night. There was no Fight Club tonight unlike the last. We hypothesized that it could be because all the week’s hard-earned money had been spent last night and there was not enough money to go around for the whole weekend so the people don’t tend to hang out. We did see a few pubs and joints swelling with people catching a footy game on telly so the love of sport could well be a contributing factor too.

We passed by Flinders’ Railway Station and observed the crowd there. It was lively; there were people walking around in every direction and there were some kids playing Frisbee inside the station. We also noticed the blatant evasion of fares – passengers simply walked through fare gates that were spoilt and didn’t bother to pay their fares. There was no enforcement by the transport company and no ethic-minded soul to point it out either. Well well!

Lord of the Fries — brisk business at 12am in the morning!
(Open till 4am on Fridays and Saturdays)

The last stop before we headed back to the hotel was to visit the popular Lord of the Fries which we had noticed the previous evening. We ordered two packs, one with Belgian sauce and another Italian sauce (not African sauce). We helped ourselves to a generous serving of chicken salt which was available freely to all customers. It was unfortunate that Daniel closed the flap on which the chicken salt was placed upon and this led to the fries being showered liberally by the salt. Worse, we couldn’t get back fast enough to enjoy our dose of salty fries. They turned out to be soggy.

Back in the hotel we feasted on the combination of Lord of the Fries, beer (from the Redhill Estate brewery) and potato chips. The soggy fries tasted really good. The beer was superb too and quenched the parched throats. And the potato chips provided an alternative to the fries.

Lord of the Fries

Redhill Estate brews chilled in ice-cold tap water

We wondered why no one ever thought of such a heaven combination. But we realised the reason the very next day.

Daniel was obviously the first one to get knocked out by the beer, despite having drank only half of it. The other half was generously donated to John who gulped it down shamelessly. Before long, the four James Bonds were fast asleep, tired out from the day’s activities.