Next Stop: Melbourne Australia_Chapter 3

Flinder Street Train Station

The next thing that captured my eyeballs would be the yellow-ish ancient train station. Flinder Street Station that have the crowd coming in and out every second of the day, I saw this famous train station in some of the pictures of my friends that had their vacation in Melbourne before. But watching it before my own eye is a brand new experience. As usual I was blast away by the level of detail in the architecture itself, makes me wonder with the advance of construction techniques and sophistication nowadays, will the builders be able to craft something this beautiful? The homes in Malaysia sad to say have little to no detail in it. I'm not talking about those small houses, but those were built with millions in prestigious residential areas such as Mont Kiara, Country Heights and even our government buildings. I can't see the culture or civilization that the buildings in Malaysia are trying to present to the public, they have mixed architecture styles, being the most common with two Roman Pillars in front of the house, and whole building painted in white colour. Correct me if I'm wrong, But I see no specialization of construction in the building structures in Malaysia. However, the traditional houses like the Minangkabau's with the building roof resemble the cow's horn. Does make some difference. 

Funny thing I said to one of the train officers was that I want to go to "Flintstone Station", he patiently put up with my ignorance and checked the transit map again, there's no such station, and thus corrected me it's actual "Flinder Street".. It was indeed a funny experience. Because Flintstone reminds me of one of the childhood cartoons back in my childhood. What kept me amazed was the timeliness and integrativeness of their train system, using the same MyKI card and trains arrived precisely on the time specified on the LCD screen in every train station. Passengers running to catch the train before it departs, me being one of them. I can go every corner of Melbourne with it, Jolly Good. Saving my transportation cost of taking cabs or renting a car. (Not that I can drive yet) 

As you might have imagined, the burger I consumed last night was not really enough to last through the whole morning. So my first priority was to find any food that can fill my hungry stomach. One problem with Melbourne is that they have so many Coffee Shops and they sell too many buns but not Rice. Of course I could get some rice from the Chinese stalls, but why would I eat the same things that I can get from eating in Malaysia, doesn't make sense right? So in the process in looking for food, I got into this alley filled with coffee shops and some food stalls, I got a Vietnamese Rice Roll and a small bowl of Meat Soup. The food I got typically cost me around A$5 in total, which I think it was a good bargain, but think closely it would be around RM15.00 for just two informal food like the picture below on the right. Advice from my friend is to stop converting the price in Australian Dollar back to Malaysian Ringgit. (Kudos to those have the same complication. lol).

Vietnamese Rice Roll & Tomato Meat Soup

The afterthought of the food is that the rice roll with pork within the rice wrap, tasted not fully cooked and raw, and was served cold, or maybe I'm just too Asian, wanted everything in hot and rice. Though the Meat Soup was hot, exact name is Morrocan Meatball Soup, which in my opinion is just some beef meatball covered in Tomato Sauce. Doesn't have much other seasoning or flavor in it. Well, you got to try it to believe it. One man's treasure is another man's poison. Perhaps it might just be the right food that you have been looking for your whole life. Anyhow, it fulfilled the duty to filling my empty stomach, and I'm good to go. Another thing that I must mention is that all the food in Australia are served in large portion, typically 2 times the normal size of the food I order in elsewhere. So it would be a great saving for people that are traveling in pairs or pack. The weather in the morning is still freezing cold and the hoodie protected me from the cold blasting wind. I would really love to have a pair of glove the next time to shield my bare hands too. (To be continued...)