Wine, Chocolate & Caves – Part III/VI (Margaret River)
June 13, 2016 4 Comments
Taking a road trip with our son, Elkan, and reenacting some of those familiar 2002-shots with our boy standing in front of us was quite a surreal experience. After all, Felicia and I just got married 14 years ago when we had our belated honeymoon in Perth. While many of these attractions remain unchanged, our 12-year-old boy reminds us the passing of time. While age takes a slow toll on my appearance and body, I still feel like 25 deep inside.
Yesterday afternoon, we arrived safely at our 3rd pitstop – Margaret River. It was like a Little Singapore, there were so many Singaporean-travelers here! We bumped into them everywhere – from chocolate factory to caves to Coles supermarket! Singapore should open an embassy here!
We stayed 2 nights at a big cozy 2-bedroom cottage at Margaret River. It consisted of 2 warm bedrooms, a fully-equipped kitchen and a very spacious living room. It was very well-maintained, warm and comfortable.
Day 1 – we visited the wineries and local-food (chocolate, nuts and nougat) “factories” yesterday. Do not expect to see any food production in those “factory” or “farm”, they are actually tourist retail outlets where shoppers get to enjoy lots of generous samplings. Too bad, all of us aren’t wine lovers. Most of these factories closed at 5pm. The sun set early in winter and by 530pm, it was nightfall. The only place to loiter after 5pm was at Coles Supermarket (our favourite evening hangout place) where we bought groceries for our meals.
By 8pm, we finished dinner and we got nothing to do. We were so bored that we played hide-and-seek in complete darkness. The cottage was only big enough for us to play 5 rounds. By 9pm, I worked on my vlog and blog while the three of them watched a horror movie via the large LCD TV through my iPad Netflix.
Day 2 – We decided to drive down south to Augusta and Leeuwin to visit the cape and caves. It started drizzling the minute we arrived at the Leeuwin Lighthouse.
We did so much stairs-climbing today. We took 176 steps x 2 up and down the lighthouse at Leeuwin, 500 steps at Western Australia’s largest cave, Jewel Cave and 320-step staircase x 2 at majestic Lake Cave. Thankfully, all these attractions are naturally indoor. The rain didn’t really dampen our tour.
It will be another 4-hour long drive tomorrow. We will be heading to our 4th pitstop, Albany. The weather forecast doesn’t look very good for now. Hopefully we get sunny weather tomorrow as all the attractions are outdoor. Rain or shine, it will be a wonderful and relaxing road trip for all of us.
Enjoy the vlog and photos.
12 years away from home - Singapore. Writing my stories here for my lovely mum & dad, friends and most importantly, for my wife & son back home. A self-confessed gadget freak, a spontaneous prankster on the outside and a warm loving heart inside. Enjoying a happy life with loving families, friends plus a dream job. Realising mum’s motto – “Exceed Yourself Every Day”. Always believing that “Simplicity is Beauty”.
THE WAHBIANG BLOG 
Hello, I like your travel vlog very much. I was wondering how do you project Netflix from iPad to apartment TV? By hdmi cable and iPad lightning adapter? Netflix requires Internet connection to stream, did you buy a local data SIM card to access internet or via apartment wifi?
Appreciate your advice as I am looking to do the same for my kids during upcoming WA holidays. Thanks!
Dennis
Hi Dennis,
Thanks for your kind words and glad you enjoy my travel blogs.
There are 2 ways to project Netflix via your mobile device to the hotel TV or portable projector.
For iPad or iPhone – you need to get an Apple HDMI adapter and any HDMI cable. Connect the Apple HDMI adapter to your device and connects the HDMI cable directly to the hotel TV or your personal portable projector. Most hotels’ TVs come with HDMI ports but there are some that don’t. So, it boils down to luck.
For Android mobile devices, you don’t need any HDMI adapter. All you need is to buy a Google Chromecast and connect it to any HDMI TVs and projectors. Google Chromecast is small and acts like an Apple TV. It will wirelessly output screen content directly to the TV.
For Wifi and internet connection, I register an international unlimited data plan from my local telco. It cost about USD18/day for unlimited usage of data and I “hotspot” it with the entire family. It is certainly faster than most hotel wifi.
Hope this helps! Enjoy your WA trip!
Wahbiang! Thanks for sharing, this is indeed very helpful. I am gonna go with iPad connection since nobody in my family has an Android device, lol.
Here are the accessories I mentioned earlier:
1) Apple Digital AV Adapter: http://www.apple.com/hk/shop/product/MD826AM/A/lightning-digital-av-adapter
2) HDMI Cable – http://www.apple.com/hk/shop/product/MC838ZM/B/apple-hdmi-to-hdmi-cable-18m
3) Google Chromecast (for Android phone only)- https://www.google.com/intl/en_us/chromecast/?utm_source=chromecast.com