I now have rather fond memories of our first attempt at the next level up (the so-called “easiest” trails). Well, Zhiyan had the common sense to pull out early, and soon after that, I realised Daniel – along with our only copy of the map – had vanished too. So Tommy and I inched forward past the deathly-steep cliff face, and somehow the trail turned into this – what seemed to us – ridiculously steep path. (We worked out later that we meandered onto a more difficult path. We should have read the map more carefully.) The thing about skiing is that once you start, there’s no turning back, so we gave it a go, but quite soon, both of us were down, skis off. Taking our skis off was a mistake, because there we couldn’t get the skis back on with the amount of ice that had formed on our boots. We then had fun stumbling through quicksand-like snow, which was determined to consume the two of us. (Hint: never walk through the parts between the trees.) We somehow stumbled back to a chair lift station, counting our blessings that we were able to extricate ourselves. To add to the experience, the chair lift down was downright scary – it was steep, windy and a long way down. By the time the chair lift dumped us back at the top of the Friday Flat area, I was stunned to the extent that I pretty much couldn’t ski at all. But we made it back. Alive.

Me in the happier parts of the ski field

On the second day, I was up there again, this time to take photos and play with the snow with Ru Jih. Wong, who was also with us, said he wanted to ski back down, and I foolishly agreed – I had studied the map now and yes, I was able to identify the correct path this time, but I still couldn’t ski down. The skis came off, wouldn’t go back on, and it was another walk back down to Merritts. Tried twice, failed twice.

From Thredbo, we also brought back the finding that UAI is inversely related to common sense. One of the chair lifts had a closed intermediate station. The chair itself passes very close to the concrete platform of the station. The results: Daniel was the only one who completed the operation successfully; Zhiyan didn’t get anything damaged but ended up being carried up to the top of the mountain; Tommy got one pole snapped in half and the other bent; and I got both my poles snapped. We had carried them between our legs.

Tommy and I with the outcome of our misadventure

We didn’t have a fire alarm go off this morning, but we did have a prank phone call to wake us up. Breakfast was at a cafe next to the Victoria Markets, and we had a look at the markets following that – we got ourselves a couple of blocks of cheese… and saw some prodigious confectionery-making. We then proceeded to the Melbourne Museum (again) to see what we missed yesterday. This was followed by lunch at Chinatown (again) – we were going to go to the Greek restaurants on Lonsdale Street but they were rather pricey. Shopping took up the rest of the afternoon – AJI ICHIBAN (^_^), Myer (which, like the rest of Melbourne, ran out of scarves), the Basement, this strange little antique shop, and a fancy stationery shop. Frantic dashes between Southern Cross station and the hotel ensued, the consequence of some slight miscommunication, and then the flight home was uneventful bar my humiliating defeat in Scategories.

Lots planned for tomorrow – last day! Off to bed…

Melbourne has been an interesting experience so far – very modern and stylish, and oozing with pride. We had lunch at a delightful little bakery called Laurent Bakery; we then went to see the Pixar exhibition at Federation Square. We had a look at Melbourne Central followed by an hour of public transport confusion. We popped by the Docklands and it was positively unexciting… we’ll check it out again later cos we might not be looking at the right things. We had dinner at a French restaurant (called Aux Batifolle – excellent wine and creme brulee) and we decided to call that a day.

Two things I don’t like about this place so far: the trains and trams sure run on time but they don’t seem to ever go where you want them to go. Secondly, I swear we chose the worst few days weather-wise for a holiday.

Signing off…