To start off our well deserved week long break, we had steamboat on fri! (4 sep) It was an impromptu one that thwarted liying and my plan to go to harbourtown for some good shopping. But I still had some retail therapy at david jones where i splurged on some natio products. Free gift gimmicks FTW!

Steamboat was awesome. We had so much food left over and the japanese beancurd and our chin chow dessert is still in my fridge after 9 days. Weiling lost track of time so Diane had to divert the cab to my place, she just flew here from Singapore for vacation. What can be better than a hot steamboat to welcome her to rainy and cold perth that night!!?
On monday, we had the lengendary broadway almond criossant for breakfast, helped weiling and april move some stuff to their new place and went for disappointing dimsum at northbridge. Welcome inn dimsum is REALLY bad. Then we brought diane to the museum and art gallery. Cooked dinner at Weiling's place. Microwave roast chicken was suprisingly good! Since we were heading off early in the morning for the road trip the next day, I slept over at april's. And hence began my never ending road trip...

Tuesday morning, we sent poor kahbeng to uni and embarked on our Pinnacles/Yanchep road trip! On the way, we spotted ANZ mascots running around the streets! It's a piggy bank and an ANZ atm! Super cute!

The drive was really long, about 4 hours. Never ending roads and slopes. The scenery was kinda boring too, I thought there would be tons of wildflowers by the road since it's the season, but the flowers were kinda scattered. Luckily we had sour worms, red rocks chips, and other junk to keep us awake during the drive.

I was entrusted with the directions. Thankfully we didnt get lost.
Wind farm along the way.

We stopped in the middle of nowhere for lunch of sandwich and juice! We own the road yo!

And then finally, we reached the pinnacles! Second time there, so it wasn't anything extraordinary to me... I loved the open space and blue sky though!!

This photo looks so photoshopped.

We have amazing jumping skills!
After driving through the pinnacles desert, we drove many hours again down to Yanchep where we would spend the night. On the way there, we were so low on petrol we almost had to push the car along. The roads there were so rural, petrol stations were so so so far apart!! In the end we found one and pumped an expensive tank full of petrol, stretched a bit, had ice cream and continued driving to Yanchep. Reached Yanchep and found our accomodation. After checking in, we went out in search of food after talking to this weird old lady who had blue mascara. The sun was setting and there wasn't any road lights nor directions we thought we would die in wilderness. But luckily, we asked for directions from a friendly deli owner who own a HUGE dog and he recommended dinner at Yanchep Inn in the Yanchep National Park.

We were all so tired by the time we reached Yanchep Inn. Especially Weiling and april cos they drove the entire day. Dinner was not bad, but kinda bland italian food and sticky date pudding. Love sticky date pudding with ice cream! 2 aussie blokes at the next table thought we were japanese. LOL. The night sky was amazing at Yanchep, a gazillion stars shining so brightly in the pitch dark cloudless sky.

The next morning we went to Yanchep National Park again, this time for the park. They had cute cute koalas!

And plenty of ducks!

Had good lunch at Chocolate Drops Tearoom. Baked potatoes, nachos, scones and mango tea! and of cos, chocolates!

There were a thousand tiny dead insects stuck on the car plate and side mirrors. Damn gross. They must have been stupidly attracted to the bright headlights the previous night and crashed in our car. We thought the rain would have washed them away but no, they stuck on even more. EW.

We went to the crystal cave at the park, the guide was really nice I thought. This cave's kinda different from the one we went to down south. So it was a nice experience. The wildflowers at YNP were pretty too!

Since there was really nothing else to do at Yanchep after the visit to the park, we drove back towards perth rather early. But since we were so early and not hungry for
little caesars pizza yet, we decided to pick up kahbeng and drove there together. And as usual, some smart ass would screw up the directions and we had to drive like 1 hour plus a lot just to get to little caesars! We could have just followed google maps and got there in 40 mins!! Anyways, little caesars is this awesome pizzeria with the best pizzas in perth. It's a really far drive from perth but after having it, we all agreed it was well worth the journey. We bumped into James from CMM there too, though no one said hi.

We had pisagne, which is a lasagne pizza, white rock's roast, which had veal and potatoes with cream sauce and also janes addiction which was prawns and prosciutto. WONDERFUL.
And not to forget the dessert pizzas! We had eskimo joe dine-in since there was icecream. It's malt cookie and raspberry sauce with vanilla ice cream!! YUMMIEST. We also had 2 other dessert pizzas takeaway cos we were so stuffed but cant bear not to try more!! We bought apple strudel and a mudcake pizza takeaway. But lemon cheesecake pizza was so tempting too!! We were all piling on alot alot of italian fats!!

After dinner was a trip to king's park for the night scenery. Really beautiful!!

That night, I bunked over at april's again cos we were going to swan valley the next day. In the morning we had the apple strudel pizza for breakfast!! How sinful.

Had wine tasting at the various wineries, something we didn't do the last time we went. The Sandalford wines were either too sweet or too bitter. Not nice at all. But they did have many other interesting things.

Like this wine bottle holder.

And the nice price list chalkboard.

We then headed to margaret chocolate factory.

While waiting for the food, we did colouring! LOL! like little kids. But well, since they had it on the table and didn't specify it was for kids only, why not right?! Very nostalgic, doing colouring. But we forgot the colours of buzz lightyear.

Bailey's cheesecake was AWESOMEEEEEE. The ham sandwich we had was also very very good. And the REAL hot chocolate, i.e. chocolate pastelles melted in hot milk, was superb too.

We went to Lancaster, which is a very rundown looking winery but had really lovely wines and friendly and funny staff. It was raining when we got there and was so cold and windy!! Good thing the wines warmed us up a lil.

The cheeses at Lancaster were GOOOOOD! I got the chili cheese and a dessert wine, late picked chenin, in the end. We then went to oggies for ice cream, the lady remembered us!

Houghton wines were nice too but their grape juice is still the bestest.

I insisted we go to a strawberry farm cos they're in season! Strawberries grew from flowers did you know?
Cos we had an overload of italian fats and were sick from the thought of more italian food, we cancelled plans for ciao italia that night and cooked asian food at my place in the end.

Omelette, beef vindaloo and mixed vegetables!! I would never get sick of asian food i swear.

After dinner, we went to alwyn and rachel's place for majhong!!!!!! So shiok! Haven't played majhong in like the longest time! Played till like 1++ am and went over to april and weiling's new place at claremont for the night. Cos they were expecting an IKEA delivery the next morning, and ikea sent a sickening sms telling us that the delivery is at 7AM, we thought it was better to camp there in case we couldnt wake up. We slept at like 4am after pumping up the air mattress and having korean noodles for supper. I love suppers.
The next morning, ikea actually came at 6.45am! WTH! The delivery man told us that they don't usually deliver this early but apparently we requested. WTH! We didn't even say anything about early! And the reason why we 3 girls had to camp at claremont was because ikea demands an additional 50 bucks to the 90 bucks delivery fee if we required the delivery man to move the package up to the apartment. major pissed off. So the guy dropped the package at the lobby and we had to lug the friggin heavy double decker bed and mattress up ourselves. IKEA is stupid and we are all boycotting them.
After getting the package into the house, we immediately went back to bed and woke up at noon and spent the entire day setting up the bed which caused injuries to all of us. But we still managed to do it. Dinner was at ciao that night. We so deserved it, after so much hard work, ciao was an awesome place to be for dinner.

After dinner, they sent me back to my place and I thought it would finally be the end of the extended road trip and I can snuggle in my bed. But it seems, I am not fated to be in the house. Just after like 10 minutes in the house where jelaine and I killed a HUGE cockroach in the kitchen, we had a black out. AGAIN. It was so frustrating!! Why power trip again!? And the worst thing is that Jelaine called Brian and he said calling for an electrician is expensive and would only do so if we pay for it!! Like what?!!! It's his house and he should be reponsible for this kinda stuff!!! I didn't want to re-live that terrible few days without electricity like the other time and called april to ask her to come back and pick me up to stay over at her place, again.
So yesterday was again away from home for me and we spent the day shopping at carousel with Diane. Actually, it was more of Diane shopping with us. LOL. I bought a domo-kun tee shirt and 2 tops from valleygirl!!! So happy from retail therapy!! At night, we sent Diane to the airport and came back to my place to try out our burbur hitam dessert for spring feast. SUCCESS!
While waiting for the burbur hitam, I went back to my room and plugged in my handphone charger, and then, blackout AGAIN! But this time I finally realised what it was that caused the trip, it was my power extension ): It was working fine all the while!!! But oh wells, at least we had kahbeng in the house to help us get the electricity back.
And so, after an entire week, I am back sleeping at home and the road trip finally ended.
I am exhausted. But happy.