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Most of my friends were still studying for their final exams, so I decided to check a couple sights off my to-do-in-Sydney list (which is a compilation of guidebook and sightseeing-inspired places I have yet to visit in Sydney and plan to see before I leave). On Saturday, I took the Bronte Beach bus down Oxford Street to the Paddington Markets: a craft fair filled with vintage clothing, handmade greetings cards, jewelery, paintings, woodwork, and so much more, all displayed under summery canvas umbrellas. I grabbed a coffee and ventured in.

Passing by a particularly colorful booth, I paused to take a closer look at the artwork displayed on the table. They were magnificent: painstakingly detailed sketches of the Sydney skyline was etched on bookmarks and greeting cards, while the Harbour Bridge was portrayed across a canvas, dotted with paint in all sorts of colors. I stopped to examine a greeting card more closely when the woman running the booth approached me. She pointed at the card in my hand and said, "My son painted that when he was 11." I was gobsmacked. We chatted for several minutes and she (Sarah) told me more about her son, Ping Lian: he'd been diagnosed with savant syndrome (a developmental disorder similar to autism, allowing him to really shine in at least one area of expertise) at a young age, and as a form of "art therapy," Sarah had taught him how to trace and color. Ping Lian quickly caught on and was soon sketching all sorts of cartoonish figures (which she showed me through the laminated pages of the book on the table). By the time he was eight, he was sketching animals and architectural structures around his home city, Kuala Lumpur (yup, we talked a bit about Malaysia too!) and his work appeared in several solo and group art exhibitions. When they moved to Sydney in 2006, he began painting Australian icons such as the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House.

Sarah told me she's working on a book about Ping Lian's life and how art has given him an outlet to express himself. Fascinated with his story, I purchased a few cards with his Sydney images printed on them and exchanged contact information with Sarah so she could keep me posted on the book (which she's working on with autism researcher Rosa C. Martinez in New York.)

Check out more of Ping Lian's work: http://www.pinglian.com/

On my way down Oxford St, I stopped in the Australian Centre for Photography to check out the galleries. There were two: once featured photos that depicted an artistic take on outer space, and the other had photos of somber-looking Nigerian people. Interesting, but I didn't spend too much time looking around.

The rest of my walk down Oxford St was pleasant: window shopping past the boutiques, poking around knick-knack stores, and popping into Fringe Bar, which had magically turned into a vintage clothes and handmade jewelry market that afternoon. Gotta love those little surprises.

My friend Megan, a fellow lifeguard from SF State who graduated last May, arrived in Sydney last Friday to spend a month visiting me in Australia. (She actually arrived in Australia while I was in Malaysia, but she took a connecting flight to Wellington, New Zealand to visit her friend Natalie.)

Deciding to be super touristy, we took the train to Milsons' Point in North Sydney and took in the gorgeous view of the harbor and Luna Park before climbing to a platform that led across...the Harbour Bridge! The view was incredible as we walked across the water, ships cutting across the glassy surface towards Circular Quay and out towards the northern beaches. At the end of the bridge, we paid $9.50 to climb 200 steps up in one of the pylons for an ever more spectacular view, which can only be described with photos:

The afternoon ended with a couple pints at the Australian Heritage Hotel in The Rocks before I had to catch a train back to UTS for a six o'clock class.

Meg's in town until mid-May, so the next few weeks should be fun!

Enough of the fun and games: I was on a uni trip, after all.

We left the hotel at 9am to visit the Rubber Research Institute, beginning the tour on the plantation where we saw how rubber - a prime Malaysian export - is grown and extracted from plants. It was a bit difficult to pay attention with all the mossies (mosquitoes) buzzing around, but when we relocated to the rubber museum, it was more interesting to see the different items made of rubber. We took heaps of photos with the oversize tire, scuba diving wetsuit (random how that was made of rubber...), latex gloves, condoms, rubber lounge chairs...the list goes on.

From there, we hopped on the bus and made our way to a vegetarian restaurant at the base of the Batu Caves for the coolest cultural lunch I've ever seen. We were seated at long tables in this square restaurant, when a large banana leaf was placed in front of each person. Rather than a place mat, however, this served as our plate as heaps of rice was scooped onto the center of the leaf and then surrounded by an array of curries and pieces of roti (a yummy bread, kind of like a thin tortilla), all eaten with our hands. To drink, we had water-filled coconuts.

Once we were full, we were greeted with a daunting task: we had to climb 272 stairs up to the Batu Caves and Hindu shrine. Winging and cussing under our breaths, we made our way to the base of the stairs and were delighted to be greeted by...monkeys! I must've taken 30 photos of these little creatures as they chased birds, climbed up fences and raced each other up the stairs.

The inside of the cave wasn't too noteworthy, but fortunately, the view from the top of the stairs was magnificent.

Feeling hot and sweaty by now, we grudgingly boarded the bus again to drive to the Selangor Pewter Factory, where we were given a tour of the museum and actual factory (pewter looks a lot like silver, but it's actually a combination of tin, copper and antimony.) At the end of the tour, we were led into a small classroom called the School of Hard Knocks and taught how to make a simple pewter bowl to take home as a souvenir. Cool! Courtney, Alecia and I spent several minutes engraving our flat pewter pieces lovingly with the name "Reggae Bar" before pounding them into something that, in my case, somewhat resembled a bowl. As a real souvenir, several of us bought beautiful pewter necklaces.

Feeling the need to shop when we got back to the hotel, a group of us hopped on the train (something I will NEVER do again at rush hour) and headed for the Kuala Lumpur Convention Center, or KLCC, located in the Petronas Towers. Again, this was like entering a huge American shopping mall...but with much bigger discounts. I spent the next hour bopping around the Body Shop, Gap and Top Shop, gleeful over the fact that the price of everything was more than half off the ringgit value, before meeting up with some girlfriends at Chili's (yes, as in the American restaurant chain. What can I say, we were craving margaritas and fajitas after all those days of rice and noodles!) We had a lovely girls' dinner before meeting up with some of the guys at a nearby bar, where they'd befriended one of the waiters and planned out our next night of mayhem.