Australia 9/2/2019 - 9/22/2019

Friday, 9/6/2019 - Perth Zoo

I had nightmares again, but also a dream in which my missing bag was returned to me. I was thinking of all of the items which were in my bag...why didn't the Virgin Australia baggage claim department have any record it? Would I get it back? If not, we would need to go shopping...I needed something warmer to wear at night. It would probably cost upwards of $500 just to replace the clothes, sandals, and bag itself.

I awoke with a headache at 6 o'clock. As we extracted ourselves from the cozy cocoon of the bed, we realized that it was quite chilly in the house, though we'd never have known it with all of our blankets. Craig left the room to take a shower.

My mind kept churning over my luggage, no matter how I tried to keep the thoughts at bay. I recalled that my phone had received a call while we were waiting at the gate at the Sydney aiport. My phone had been off and I had missed the call. It was a local Sydney number, but it hadn't left a message. I had figured that it couldn't have been anything important. They had originally called our name over the loudpseaker about the bag; if they had something further to say, they would have announced our names again while we were still in the airport, right? Or if they called on the phone, they would certainly leave a message.

But it still niggled at the back of my mind. Things weren't adding up. Did this mysterious missed phone call have anything to do with it? I made up my mind to call the number and find out. The phone was answered by a familiar voice: the woman who had told me the situation with my bag at baggage claim in Sydney.

I explained who I was and she confirmed that she had indeed been the one I had spoken to: "Blue sports bag, wasn't it?" Yes, it was. She explained that she had tried to call me directly afterwards, to tell me that the bag had been found. It had made it to Sydney after all, and had put it on our flight to Perth.

My mind was racing. So my bag wasn't lost. But why on earth wouldn't they have either left a message or made further attempts to contact me? It had been 2 days! They couldn't have assumed that we would just collect it in Perth, as we wouldn't even bother to look for something that we had been told was still in Los Angeles.

I yanked my thoughts back to the issue at hand: what now? How do I get the bag? She gave me a claim number and said to call the Perth airport. She also said that the bag was now considered abandoned. Abandoned? After a single phone call where they hadn't left a message? Not only did they have my contact information from the report I made in Sydney; the bag itself had a prominent tag with my cell number and e-mail.

I became very agitated. I know how "abandoned" bags are regarded in the USA...either as security threats or thrift shop merchandise. After two days, would they have destroyed and/or discarded it? I called the Perth airport phone number that she had given me, but there was no answer. This ordeal didn't help my headache.

I filled Craig in on the details of the situation when he returned from his shower. We agreed that we should get to the airport as soon as possible. If the bag hadn't yet been discarded, we wanted to get to it as soon as possible before they had the chance to do so this morning. But we wondered whether we would be able to see the right person. We had had an experience in Boston a year ago where our bag was basically irretrievable for 24 hours because it was locked in the cargo hold and the person with the key was off-duty. I expected the worst.

Sonam and Sonam worked from 2:30 a.m. - 6:30 a.m. again. When they got home around 7 o'clock, we explained the situation and Sonam Tshering drove us immediately to the airport. He knew where Baggage Services was, but when we got there, the window was closed. We spoke to a woman at the check in counter, and she referred us to a supervisor who would have a key to the baggage office.

The supervisor told us to go back around to Baggage Services and meet her there. She and another woman opened the window and then disappeared into a storage room. If it wasn't here, we would have to spend the day shopping, getting me enough gear to make it through the rest of the trip.

The supervisor emerged from the doorway, in seeming slow motion. Her right arm trailed behind her, and we couldn't tell at first if she was carrying anything. I held my breath. And then we saw the bright blue fabric of my duffel. I literally jumped up and down and clapped by hands! What a relief!

I texted Sonam Choki to tell her that we had been successful, and we were on our way back to the house.

The moral of the story is this: don't believe anyone. If we had simply ignored what the baggage claim folks told us in Sydney, and had just waited to collect our bags as usual, both bags would have appeared, we would have re-checked them onwards to Perth, and we never would have had all of this hassle and stress at the beginning of the trip.

Reunited with my luggage!

We drove back to the house, and were greeted with the smell of a delicious food as we entered. Sonam Choki had breakfast ready to hit the table. She had made a traditional porridge with flour dumplings, which was absolutely delicious! She had also prepared one of my favorites: French toast.

We were so grateful for the hospitality. Sonam Choki was uncomfortable when we verbally thanked her. We were used to this from Wang Jun in China. In their respective cultures, "family" does not thank one another. It is the duty of younger people to care for their elders, and they become uncomfortable when thanked for their efforts. Sonam Choki, though shy by nature, was quite adamant about this.

We explained that our culture is the opposite. In order to spread kindness in a world where it often seems to be lacking, we make it a point to thank people for for anything that they do for us. It has become subconscious; a triggered response. To NOT thank someone for something feels unnatural and passive aggressive. We mean no disrespect, in fact, quite the opposite.

We explained that the way we get around this in China, as suggested by Wang Jun, is to just say "good" any time we are tempted to say "thank you." This would become an inside joke with the Sonams, just as it is with Wang Jun. And of course there would be times when we would forget, and let slip a "thank you," but we always covered it with "Sorry, I mean, good!"

We had coffee and I felt like I could finally focus, now that my bag was recovered. The one thing that Craig and I wanted to experience in the Perth area was a visit to Rottnest Island, home of an impossibly cute marsupial called the quokka. Since Sonam Choki doesn't have classes on the weekend, that would be the best time for us to go with them. We hoped that Nim could join us as well, but he had to work on the weekend. However, he had been to Rottnest Island before, so he told us to go ahead without him. (Though he did say that he suspected he would learn a lot more about the place if he explored it with us.)

I looked up the information for booking a trip to Rottnest Island. The Rottnest Express ferry had two options: leaving from Perth or leaving from Fremantle. Perth is more expensive and time consuming, as you must navigate the Swan River before getting to the ocean. Sonam Tshering explained that Fremantle is only about half an hour drive away, and there were more departure times available there. So I made reservations for the four of us to leave Fremantle at 7:30 a.m. tomorrow, and return at 4:30 p.m.

Sonam Choki's professor experienced a family emergency, so her class for this afternoon was switched to an online lecture that she could watch at any time. This meant that she had the whole day free. They asked us if we wanted to go to the zoo, which sounded great to us!

Craig was wearing the Bhutan T-shirt that Sonam Tshering had given him last year, and the Sonams followed suit and wore their own Bhutan T-shirts today. Represent!

Nim drove the five of us to the Perth Zoo. He knows his way around town very well, having lived here for four and a half years, and we appreciated him driving all of us around.

We arrived at the zoo at around 10:30 a.m., bought our tickets, and the first exhibit we encountered was the reptile house. Sonam Choki does not like reptiles. She had worked nights cleaning at the zoo before. One of her assignments was to clean the glass in the reptile house, which freaked her out. As most of the reptiles are nocturnal, they were all on the move, which made it all the more terrifying for her. Suffice it to say, she waited outside for us when we visited that exhibit.

In the reptile house, we saw Bell's hingeback tortoises, a pebble-mimic dragon, a carpet python, a tiger snake, a veiled chameleon, a rough-scaled python, a common death adder, a dugite, a black-headed python, a woma, an olive python, a perentie, and various types of skink.

We had not been familiar with skinks prior to this. They remind us of oversized geckoes. They are more rounded and cute than reptiles such as iguanas. The shingle back (bobtail) skink was absolutely adorable.

The perentie (largest monitor lizard native to Australia) looked quite interesting with its spots, it looks straight out of Aboriginal dot painting.

We reunited with Sonam Choki and proceeded to the little penguin exhibit. They were adorable, the smallest penguin in the world at an average height of only 13 inches and an average weight of 3.3 pounds. Their coloration is a survival adaptation. Their dark blue backs camouflage them from predatory birds, while their white underbellies camouflage them from marine predators. They were all adorable; swimming around and squawking.

They are the same type of penguins that we saw in New Zealand in 2003. Back then, we had hidden behind a blind on Easter day with our guide Stan to watch from the top of a bluff as they exited the ocean on the beach below. It was a very raw, natural experience, but obviously it was at a great distance. This was the first time that we had seen these little guys up close.

A keeper fed them, and gave a short informational talk about the penguins. She made sure to educate people about the hazards that pollution can pose for wild penguin populations, and encouraged people to clean up any plastic they may encounter in the ocean. Two of the penguins here at the zoo were rescued, each blind in one eye due to encounters with pollution.

Little penguins at Perth Zoo

Next was a wetlands area where we saw various types of birds: brolga, glossy ibis, green pygmy goose, Australasian shoveler, pied heron, radjah shelduck, freckled duck, yellow-billed spoonbill, pied stilt, Eastern cattle egret, royal spoonbill, blue-billed duck, and black-necked stork.

Next we entered the frog exhibit. The frogs were awesome - the white lipped tree frog was so cute! So were the green tree frog and the splendid tree frog. While we were in the frog exhibit, we video chatted with Sonam Choki's family for the first time. It was really nice to be able to give them our regards; we hope to meet them in person the next time we are in Bhutan.

The Perth Zoo dates back to 1898, and they kept the now-empty caves which once housed a sun bear and golden jackal, back before zoo ethics changed so dramatically. Today, the zoo is not just a place for human entertainment. It is a research center. It has breeding programs for endangered species, the benefits of which are twofold. Zoo-bred individuals can be introduced to the wild to bolster populations, and they also help to maintain genetic diversity in zoo populations. Zoos are an insurance policy against extinction, and their own populations can't become too inbred. The zoo partners with various grass roots conservation groups around the world to help to safeguard wildlife.

Next was the Australian Walkabout Bush Walk; where you could walk amongst the animals of the Outback. Some are in glass enclosures, but others can roam free (although there are double gates to make sure they don't follow you out of that area of the zoo).

The first animal that we saw here was the dingo. As someone with a keen interest in the Lindy Chamberlain (aka "the dingo's got my baby") case from the 1980's, I was very interested to see a dingo close up. I had expected them to look a bit more scrawny and mangy, more like a hyena. But these were handsome, healthy looking canines with luxurious coats, orange on their backs and white underneath (not unlike our cat Inca). What a beautiful animal! They are technically an introduced species, but they were introduced 5,000 years ago.

We saw an emu, but it was lying down, so we couldn't really appreciate its height. An echidna was asleep in an underground burrow.

We learned that kangaroos and wallabies are pretty much the same animal, but kangaroos are bigger. We had close-up views of red kangaroos, Western grey kangaroos, Tammar wallabies, and Western Brush-wallabies. One kangaroo's pouch was hanging very low, belying a joey inside, though we didn't actually see any babies.

We saw a lone quokka who hid at the back of the paddock facing the door through which keepers must eventually enter to feed him. He was so focused on it that we couldn't get a good look, but we will be visiting Rottnest Island tomorrow, where we will hopefully get to see some up close and personal in the wild.

The Tasmanian devil kept doing rounds of his enclosure. He would circle one pen, then pass to the next pen and circle that, compulsively. A kid asked his mom why, and the harried mom replied "because he can", which amused Sonam Choki greatly. I was surprised by the small size and cuteness of the real-life devil, who really looks nothing like his animated counterpart.

The koala area was across from the Tasmanian devil. There were three koalas in the area...a mom and baby as well as another adult. The mom and baby were quite fun to watch. The mom gave the baby piggy-back rides as she walked. At times, the baby asserted its independence and dismounted from mom's back. Mom then climbed down the tree backwards. Baby followed suit, and as it neared the ground, it jumped over on to mom's back. The other adult was engaged eating eucalyptus leaves. We spent quite a bit of time observing these adorable creatures.

Baby koala wants a piggy-back ride

We saw a numbat, an endangered endemic Australian marsupial which reminds us of a cross between a squirrel and an anteater.

In a bird area we saw the bush stone curlew (who looks like a roadrunner, the real bird, again not the cartoon) , forest red-tailed black cockatoo, Baudin's cockatoo, and the delightfully cheerful and bright red-capped parrot.

We could only faintly see a komodo dragon behind some foggy glass.

Nim and the Sonams got a little taste of Bhutan at the red panda exhibit. These fluffy little guys, who tend to resemble a cross between a fox and a raccoon more than they resemble giant pandas. They probably only share the name because they both feed on bamboo. The red panda is endemic to the Himalayas, and can be found in Bhutan, though they are elusive and endangered.

While we were at the zoo, Sonam Tshering got a phone call asking him to work cleaning at the zoo tonight. This was synchronicity, as he had never worked there before.

There was an Asian bull elephant who kept passing a stick back and forth to a female in the next enclosure. It was the Sonams' first time seeing an elephant. We also saw lionesses, zebras, a giraffe, and Southern white rhinos.

We sat down in a gazebo area where an Indian family was enjoying a curry which smelled delicious. We realized that we were hungry as Sonam, Sonam, and Nim broke out some snacks that they had packed/bought as a picnic: watermelon and potato chips. While we were here, zookeepers took a female elephant out on her daily walk and passed by.

We saw an extremely shy sun bear, which had been rescued from poachers in Cambodia. As such, it was quite nervouse, pacing around its enclosure and hiding. It only really came out as we retreated from the glass. We felt badly for the poor thing, which was clearly suffering from PTSD (photos of it in poachers' traps were on display next to the enclosure).

There was one enclosure housing three gibbons: a mother, a baby, and an older sibling. One of the volunteers at the zoo told us that the mother had proudly presented her baby to the zookeepers. The gibbons used their long arms to swing around their enclosure.

"Jungle School" is an area of towers set up for orangutans to be able to learn skills which will help them in the wild, including social skills, the importance of staying up in the trees, and building nests. The Perth Zoo has had a successful orangutan program. Two wild-born orangutans procured in the mid-1950's have begotten 3 generations of offspring, comprising 14 individuals.

Smaller primates included ring-tailed lemurs, black-and-white ruffed lemurs, tufted capuchins, pygmy marmosets (which are adorable until they open their mouths and show off their piranha-like fangs), emperor tamarins (with their curled white moustaches, piled up on one another during a feeding frenzy) , meerkats (fur shining in the late afternoon sun, digging for live grubs that a keeper dropped for them), and baboons.

The Perth Zoo has a Galapagos giant tortoise which is over 50 years old, and was born at the San Diego Zoo. He was nowhere to be seen. Still, I posed next to his sign as I was wearing my Darwin-as-Che-Guevarra Evolution Revolution T-shirt.

We capped off the zoo visit with spotted hyaenas, radiated tortoises, and African painted dogs.

We had been at the zoo for 6 hours, and we still hadn't been able to see everything (we never made it to the nocturnal house). The zoo is massive and it was a great way to spend the day. The zoo offers very reasonably priced memberships which we could see would be a great investment for families. It is a great place to take a nice walk with a stroller (or "pusher", as they call them here).

We left the zoo at around 4:30 p.m., which gave Sonam Tshering just enough time to get changed for work and then return to the zoo. It was his first time cleaning at the zoo, and he got to drive a golf cart between the various exhibits.

We chatted with Nim and Sonam Choki and enjoyed some delicious sweet corn on the cob. Sonam Choki then made dinner...potato dashi, dahl, and rice with lassi.

Sonam Tshering's cousin Kinley Zangmo video called from Bhutan. We haven't seen her since our 2017 visit to Bhutan. We gathered around the phone and chatted with Kinley and her precocious and adorable daughter Bumchu. Bumchu's friend was there, and the two girls entertained one another and us. Bumchu's facial expressions as she ate sour candies were precious. We were also able to see Bumchu's cousin, baby Gogo, crawling around. She recently celebrated her first birthday. It was really nice to see them all and get a chance to catch up with them!

At 8:45 p.m. we called it a night. I took a shower and got into fresh undies and jammies...the benefits of having recovered my luggage. I would no longer have the missing bag weighing heavily on my mind, and I should finally be able to get a restful night's sleep. As I got into bed I heard Sonam Tshering arrive home from working at the zoo.