Up and Down in Pretoria

Good morning South Africa!

Brrrrr.... goodness! A very cold morning! Almost like winter in Australia.
A cup of hot tea would give me warmth. I tried rooibos tea, the south african tea. It tasted a bit weird, but as I kept sipping, it actually tasted very nice and relaxing. Hmmm... I was starting to love this tea.

This morning we went to Soweto (South West Township) known as the place where Nelson Mandela hid in a very small house during the apartheid war. The wooden house was well maintained. Many memorabilias of Mandela and his family, from pictures, certificates, furnitures, wardrobes, and big painting of him were still kept in good condition. A very nice african woman with very soft voice took us for a tour around the house. She explained many things but we hardly could hear her :-)
And, well of course, we took quite many shots of the place (and ourselves) before leaving. You do understand asian tourists are wellknown for their hobbies of taking photographs here and there, right?

Next was Apartheid Museum. Sounds boring? No, this one is far from that! Besides, interesting museum is one kind of good spot to visit, ey! Surprisingly this one is big and modern! There were different heights of big wall made of small stones, representing the different treatments to different races people experienced during those days.
We had to buy tickets to get in. NON WHITE was written on Lazarus' ticket and mine (Lazarus was our driver. He was a very informative African man!), while others got WHITE (I wish Lazarus got White ticket!). What is it?? We got no clue.
At the entrance, the white and non-white visitors were separated through different gates, different lanes with different views. Hey, what a fun museum, playing this game! The visitors were expected to experience how it was to be in such condition when the apartheid still happened. Of course, I got different treatment from my other friends who got White card, as I got non-white card! Interesting! Though, I wished I could taste a bit how it is to be treated as White!
Even the toilet choices were "White" or "Colored and dogs". Well you know where I had to go to pee. Don't laugh, hehe!

Finally, we were all united in one path. There were lots of mirrors placed randomly, I noticed the people's differences from one another from the reflections. I guess it was what the mirrors for, to make people aware and accept that we're all different. Along the way, there were ancient paintings of bushmen history, old id-cards with race status of the person written on it, video about the apartheid, lots of cool posters. At the end of the path, there's an open space with a row of buttons. When we press those different buttons, different heights of fountains would spurt out! Fun! Again it resembled people's differences. This museum was totally cool and very conceptual!!!
Too bad, we were not allowed to take pictures. But, rebelious as I was, I discretely took some shots!
Ooppss.. the guard came! Run, my friend Irma, run!!
After running we felt tired, we sat on a bench, still in the museum area. Surprisingly, that bench was written "EUROPEAN ONLY". Jeezz...

We planned to go to Gold Mine afterwards, just across the museum, but the weather was getting worse, too windy. So we decided to go home and just relaxed.

Oh ya, Ica, Irma and I just exchanged our beloved millions of Rupiahs for hundreds of Rands/ZAR (South African money)!!! We're rich tourist!!! Actually, this is just the beginning of getting poor! hahhahaha..

After dinner, a cup of hot rooibos and some tv-watching plus chit-chatting... we went to sleep. This time I found out that my room got heater!!! Aaahhh...it's a great day. Sleep well everyone! I could smell the peacock lightly, before i fell asleep...