My visit to Melbourne and Sydney

I took a 10 day trip down 1 day after my last exam paper. Spent exactly 5 days in Melbourne and 5 days in Sydney. Although I have been to these 2 places before, it was such a long time ago and I can hardly remember what I did during that trip.

In Melbourne, my friend's girlfriend kindly offered to put us up at her place. She is staying in a studio apartment for 1 person so her place was basically just a room with the kitchen, study area and bed all together and a small attached bathroom. It was quite a cosy room but definitely too small for 7 people. We were all crowded and squashed in the place. My friend and his girlfriend shared the bed of course, while Christine and I shared the sofa bed and the 3 guys slept on the floor. Being in someone else's place, it was uncomfortable because we had to watch our behaviour and try to be considerate to the owner. However my friend's girlfriend was a super nice girl and it made things easier. Of course, we did have to sneak in and out of the place and go down to the public bathrooms to shower. Her rent did not include electricity and water unlike my place. Perhaps it was just Melbourne, or maybe because her place was really posh but her rental was really expensive. It cost $910 per month and is much more expensive than mine considering the fact that she still has to pay electricity and water bills on top of the rental. However her place looks like a hotel and they provide a stove, fridge and microwave for each room. Plus they have facilities like a basketball court, swimming pool, pool tables, cable TV, table tennis and a games room. You could even borrow games like Cluedo and Monopoly there. It was practically like a high class chalet. I do think that these facilities are unnecessary and it's not worth paying extra for things which you do not need but who am I to criticise? It does open my eyes more though, seeing that I noticed many of the residents there were Singaporeans. It makes me aware that S'poreans are pretty well-off if they can afford to send their kids overseas and let them stay in expensive apartments. I wonder if these kids understand how lucky they are?

Basically we went for 2 day tours, visiting the 12 apostles (now known as 11 apostles after 1 collapsed yesterday) and took a trip to watch the little penguins (previously called fairy penguins). They were fun but expensive and we actually ended up with the same tour guide for both tours. That was good because our guide was pretty good although he had weird tastes in music. He kept playing these kiddy songs related to wherever we were going. For example, when we visited the koalas, he played a koala song for us.

We also spent a lot of time walking to and fro from our place to the city. It was quite far and I ended up with aching legs and blisters on my right leg. We went for 2 buffets as well, 1 normal lunch buffet and another seafood buffet. The seafood one wasn't very good and it was expensive. I'm not a big fan of seafood so I kept more to the meats and fish. I suppose those who enjoy crabs, prawns and shellfish might have liked it a little more. However, they didn't serve enough prawns (which the rest really enjoyed) and the guys kept complaining about it. After the buffet 1 of them was whining about it and saying that the buffet was a rip-off and our host heard it. I would have been hurt if I were in her position because she was the one who had suggested the buffet. I guess guys need to learn to be more sensitive and have more tact. He could have waited until she was not around before he complained.

I much preferred Sydney to Melbourne. It might be because Sydney reminded me a lot of S'pore, with all the hustle and bustle of people in the city, the many shopping malls in the city and the train stations had the same kind of entrances our MRT has. As you can see, we stuck pretty much to the city for the 5 days. Our motel was near the red light district and was about a 15 minutes walk to the city. Heh, even though our cab driver warned us about the prostitutes and transvestites the red light district was supposed to have, I didn't see any. It might be because we hardly went out at night except to get dinner.

The motel room was wonderful compared to our squashed conditions in Melbourne. There was a queen sized bed and a double-decked bed. Again, in Sydney, we did touristy stuff like visiting the Sydney Opera House, Sydney bridge, Sydney Aquarium, the Sydney observation tower and Bondi Beach. We also took the monorail around and went to the Chinatown there. We went to all 3 of the more popular markets, namely Paddy's Market, Paddington Market and the Rocks Market. Pretty amazing huh? Needless to say, we covered plenty of ground on foot and this time, I ended up with multiple blisters on both feet. It came to a point where I was in pain on every step that I took but being "ti ki" as the guys call me, I managed to keep up with the group.

I was happy to find a bakery similar to those we have back home like Breadtalk and Four Leaves. In fact, the one in Sydney and Melbourne was called Breadtop and they even had those meatfloss buns. Can you believe that they don't have bakeries like this in Brisbane? I miss my ham and mushroom bun from Four Leaves.

Bondi Beach was beautiful and it wasn't too crowded, probably because it was winter. There were people surfing though and we spent our time watching them and just chilling out on the rocks, watching the waves and feeling the seabreeze going against our faces. The view was gorgeous and we took lots of photos. The thing is, we went down to Bondi Beach to try our this restaurant called Hurricane because Crystal highly recommended it. Unfortunately it only opened at 6 pm and we were there at 12 pm. So we had heaps of time to kill and spent the time checking out the shops there. We ended up buying loads of stuff from the Rip Curl shop there because it was having a sale. I bought 3 bags while Chris also got 3 similar bags plus a small wallet. The guys bought sandals and T-shirts. All in all, it was a good sale and we got a good bargain from that shop. Hurricane didn't disappoint us. I shared a plate of ribs and steak with Chris and the serving was quite big. The whole rack of ribs was huge and we only ordered the half rack. The steak was tasty and not too tough while the ribs were tender. Yum yum!!!

I can say that we really overindulged in food for these 10 days. I feel so bloated and unhealthy from eating too much meat and carbos. At least I bought a few oranges to eat. Now that I'm back, I need to start a vegetarian diet....hahahaha....just kidding....I could never turn vegetarian, I like meat too much.