The Journey Down Under

November 8, 2025

We said goodbye to family and left the Rhino with our favourite mechanics before heading to Pacific Central Station under milder-than-expected skies. What followed was a long but uneventful travel day to Ruston: a city bus, a Greyhound-style coach, a train, and finally a pickup from our friend Rob in his delightful electric Mustang.

The next day, I focused on banking as much horizontal time as possible. We did venture out for a delicious meal at our favourite Tacoma Thai Pepper restaurant—the food was as good as ever. After some football and a bit more rest, we made our way to SeaTac Airport, where security was, let’s just say, thorough. Cotty felt quite violated :( and despite our NEXUS cards, we still had to unpack nearly everything from our tiny bags.

Eventually, we boarded our flight to Manila. Luck was on our side—we had three seats to ourselves. Cotty took some hilarious photos of my makeshift setup, but laugh as you will, I managed to get fairly horizontal and even sleep a little. We arrived in Manila not feeling great, but not awful either. After yet another round of security—where I lost two of my well-traveled manicure tools :(—we had plenty of time to make our connection to Singapore.

We’d heard Changi Airport was one of the nicest in the world, and it didn’t disappoint. With a long layover ahead, we explored nearly the whole place. Walking helped; I felt fine while moving, but queasy whenever we stopped. Eventually, we reached Terminal 4 and checked in for our final flight to Perth. This leg was by far the roughest—freezing cold and delayed twice (once mid-air!). By the time we got to the rental car counter, I was beyond grouchy, but the kind attendant turned off the blasting AC, which helped immensely.

Our Airbnb turned out to be lovely. We enjoyed long, glorious showers and slept as much as humanly possible. By morning—now November 11—we walked to the grocery store, stocked up for the week, headed out to see what we could see.