If you’re already having withdrawals from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood’s awards season, you need not resort to covering yourself in sequins or clutching your hairbrush like an Oscar.  Instead, you can book Expedia’s recently released sale fares to LA from just $1102 return including taxes and indulge your celebrity obsession to your heart’s content. Flights from both Sydney and Melbourne are reduced and are available for travel until 16 June. Click here http://au.deals.travelzoo.com/flights/767568 for more info.

I am currently out exploring Melbourne, Phillip Island and the Mornington Peninsula.

I will be back on Wednesday with brand new stories to share with you; highlights include a seal watching cruise, the Penguin Parade and lunch at Montalto vineyard.

Stay tuned …

Lisa’s Deal of the Week

The Gold Coast? Tacky? Not when you’re staying at the Sofitel Gold Coast Broadbeach, which has released an exclusive rate of $179 per night ($219 if you’re after a much-coveted Saturday night) for stays until the end of April. But wait – as they say on infomercials – there’s more! This price also includes an upgrade to an ocean view room, breakfast for two and a 1pm checkout. Now that’s what I call classy. Click here http://au.deals.travelzoo.com/australia-hotels/760353 for more info.

The second I hear ‘aboot’, I know you’re from Canada (or you watched too much De Grassi Junior High).

When I hear ‘dahhhnce’ and ‘plaaaaants’ and I know you’re from Adelaide and by association, love to drink. That state should be called SAA.

An Irish lilt makes everything you say seem funnier, an upper crust English accent will result in me having a crush on you (hello Nigella) and the second I hear a kiwi, I have to suppress the urge to say ‘eh bro, put yer beer un the chully bun’.

Think you can pick an accent from a thousand paces? Give this game a go: http://www.languagetrainersgroup.com/accent_game.html

It’s harder than you think!

Special thanks go to Mel M for sending through today’s random fun.

Did you miss yesterday’s Travel Tales on Melissa Rimac? She is an inspirational travel writer and photographer, fellow dog lover and all ’round good gal – you will love her!

Age: Old enough to have a mortgage – too young to be getting overly stressed about the fact that it doesn’t seem to diminish …

Occupation: Writer / Photographer

Favourite travel destination?: El Nido, The Philippines – great snorkeling, knockout visuals and the most melodramatic sunsets imaginable.

Worst travel experience? What happened?: On a remote Pacific island, being stuck for three days in a stranger’s house whilst on a famil – very cringy, and worse of all – he was convinced that journos can survive on words.

Best tips for beating jetlag?: Copious amounts of ginger and camomile tea and don’t take off those fetching eye – shades ( the ones they give you in planes, the sort Joan Collins would wear whilst asking Dexter to grab another bottle of champagne) … for at least 24 hours.

What is the one thing you don’t leave home without?: My mega metal mug – delayed flights, collapsed roads, etc become so much more manageable when you can make a cuppa and sip tea whilst surveying calamity.

Do you stay in touch with people while you’re travelling?: For short trips, I revel in the feeling of utter, unfettered escape.

Best meal you’ve ever had while travelling?: The buffet at Soneva Fushi in the Maldives – still raving about it three years later.

Best kiss?: When my partner wakes me and agrees he’ll make coffee.

Best/scariest/funniest drive?: Just about every moment on the road in India  – everyone seems hellbent on colliding with you.

What has been the big WOW moment of your travelling life?: Mountain biking on the Tibetan grasslands – and meeting a yak hearder ennobled with pitch-perfect BBC English.

Did you miss your chance to ask a question or provide an answer on Tipster Tuesday? If so, head back there now for another shot at it!

Age: 22

Occupation: Publicist

Favourite travel destination?: Argentina – it has more to offer in one country than any other I’ve ever been to. I’ve been absorbed in the hustle of Buenos Aires for weeks, tasted some of the best wines in Mendoza, gone adventuring in the Andes in Patagonia, and been awed by the natural phenomenon that is Iguazu falls at the Brazil-Paraguay border. And can we spare a moment to salivate over the Argentinean steak?

Worst travel experience? What happened?: Being kicked out of an overnight train carriage by an intoxicated train conductor and his lady of the night. I believe it was approximately 3am, somewhere in between Bosnia and Croatia.

Best tips for beating jetlag?: Keep yourself awake for two days and then hit the sack at an appropriate hour on the second night.

What is the one thing you don’t leave home without?: A return airfare – otherwise I may never come home!

Do you stay in touch with people while you’re travelling?: Less and less with each trip. I used to buy phone cards but now I may just check my Facebook. Home is always there but those special moments when you’re travelling aren’t.

Best meal you’ve ever had while travelling?: The freshest Sashimi imaginable, served to us by the platter at 5am at the world’s biggest fish markets in Tokyo. We were seated amongst breakfast diners, but this was something of a late supper for our party… perhaps that is why everything tasted so amazing?!

Best kiss?: A tall, dark and handsome Swede on an idyllic beach in Thailand.

Best/scariest/funniest drive?: The night we found ourselves struggling to steer down the windy, cliff-facing roads of Santorini (Greece) on quad bikes in near gale storm winds comes to mind.

What has been the big WOW moment of your travelling life?: It happened somewhere in between Olympus and Fethiye in Turkey, cruising along the Mediterranean Sea in a 14 person yacht. I was sipping on a cool drink and watching the sunset after having spent days at sea with some of my closest friends whom I hadn’t seen in months.

Photo caption: This is the day we arrived in Cabo Polonio in Uruguay – a holiday town with no electricity, no cars/roads, no English speakers, no other Western tourists, and the world’s best fish empanadas. With a population of only 80, this small town is set amidst sand dunes and is only accessible by monster trucks that pick up passengers from the side of the road in the middle of seemingly nowhere.

Got a question about a travel destination? If so, please post a comment at the end of this story and everyone … yes, that means you …  will attempt to answer everybody else’s questions throughout the week.

But first, some housekeeping.

When you ask a question, please write QUESTION at the beginning of your post.

When you answer a question, please make sure you write ANSWER and then the person’s name that you’re replying to at the beginning of your post. Otherwise, it might get a little confusing.

Finally, it would be great if you can answer from first-hand experience. We want to know what you know!

So, without further ado …

QUESTION: Where should The Future Husband and I go for dinner when we’re in Melbourne this Saturday night? (We’re staying at the Sofitel on Collins).

The problem is that I have started it several times and I just find it so boring.

For both our sakes, I decided to bullet point the really interesting stuff. In no particular order, here is some of what I discovered in Johannesburg:

• To the locals, Johannesburg is known as ‘Gauteng’ (meaning  ’City of Gold’) or ‘Josie’.
• Soweto (which is an extended acronym for ‘South West Township) is not as poverty-stricken as you might expect . Of the 2.5 million inhabitants, most of them live in houses that are not much worse than Australian housing commission homes. I am not saying it’s great by any stretch of the imagination - most of the dwellings have tin roofs and dirt floors – but what I am saying is that it’s not a shanty town.
• Johannesburg does have shanty towns – they are on the other side of the city to Soweto. I heard white South African people complaining that, ‘Anything that’s not nailed down, gets stolen,’ (case in point: telephone poles and wires) but that’s all shanty town residents have to build shelter with. Imagine hectares of cobbled together iron sheeting, concrete and wire with dirt paths running between the shacks like red soil veins. At the entrance to each artery, there is a telephone centre built in a shipping container and a sprawling butchery-cum-BBQ where offal is grilled and sold cheap. That is what a real South African shanty town looks like.
• Most people living in poverty in Johannesburg die from the cold during winter. That was one the saddest things I have ever heard. Think about how many spare blankets you have in your house.
• On a happier note, everyone in Johannesburg is really, really, really excited about the World Cup in June. I hope South Africa win - they are overdue for some big happiness.
• The Apartheid Museum is an architectural and educational marvel. I learnt more about South Africa’s history in the three hours I spent there than in 30 years of paying attention. What struck me most was the Nelson Mandela exhibition; specifically the Truth and Reconciliation Act that he introduced when he came to power. Instead of prosecuting the people who committed hate crimes (state-enforced or otherwise), he legislated that all guilty parties be given the opportunity to publicly confess and for their victims to publicly forgive them. That is the singlemost enlightened political move I have ever heard of.
• South Africans eat a lot of red meat and mealie meal (called ’pup’) which looks exactly like mashed potato and tastes like Clag glue.
• The landscape looks a lot like the Northern Territory; red dirt, rocky terrain, dry grasslands which to my mind, totally supports the Pangaea theory.
• A major highlight of my time in Josie was getting the opportunity to hold a lion cub at a place called the Rhino & Lion Reserve , located about 30 minutes from Johannesburg. I also got to play with Serval kittens, got really close to the big lion daddies, saw cheetahs, rhinos, flamingoes, white lions, hippos, zebras, heaps of different antelope, vultures, leopards, blue wildebeests … the list goes on. This was a great place to get acquainted with African wildlife because for the rest of the trip, the animals I saw were in the wild (i.e. hidden by bushes, far away and shy around noisy tourists).
• Kate and I stayed at a place called Amadwala Lodge , a mostly tranquil oasis out in Honeydew. Yes, there is the odd gunshot at night and the occasional loud party in the distance but the food is good, the owners are helpful and there’s a bar right next to the pool; an unexpected luxury.

Have you been to Josie? What did you think?

Read more about my African adventures here