05/12– 6 nights in Sydney

Having reached the furthest point of our travels in New Zealand, we are now slowly working our way back to our inevitable reunion with the UK and life back in the real world. We stopped over in Sydney for 6 nights and will then move on to Melbourne and Singapore before checking in with my family in Kuala Lumpur and our flight back to Blighty. This series of big cities signals our winding down, with nowt else to do but plenty of eating, shopping and the occasional bit of leisurely site seeing.

Sydney is famed for being one of the great world cities (whatever that’s supposed to mean) and I hoped it would do much to dispel the less than fond memories of my last visit to Australia. Thirteen years old at the time, I went on a road trip with my parents from Darwin down to Ayers Rock. Anyone familiar the northern territory will know that this was never a great idea, and all that I remember of this are endless miles of red dust, flies, blistering heat and even more blistering rows as we argued over directions (this was the pre tom-tom era) from the confines of our rented Ford Taurus.  In the end, we never made it to Ayers rock, aborting the road trip due to crack in the windscreen…though I think the cracks in everyone’s patience played just a big a part in the decision.

I had a pretty clear idea of what to expect from Sydney; a sunshine harbour city that is cosmopolitan yet sporty. I imagined it to be a place inhabited by the beautiful people, strapping surf dudes and leggy blondes. I obviously didn’t get the memo that Sydney had been annexed by China. Such is the proliferation of Chinese and Asians that there were times in downtown Sydney that it felt like we were back in Hong Kong again! This was no bad thing, however, as we were missing Asia and this halfway house offered more opportunities for some top notch Vietnamese and Chinese food.

Unfortunately, there’s not much else of interest to show or say about our stay in Sydney as it was all very pleasant but also terribly generic. We visited the Sydney Opera house, and caught a riveting performance by the Chinese Folk Orchestra, wet our feet on Manly beach, visited various museums, galleries and markets and ate some fantastic Vietnamese and Chinese food thanks to Leanne, Si Phong’s friend and our gracious local guide. It probably speaks volumes about what we’ve been getting out of our final fortnight that the highlight of our time in Sydney was the lobster noodles that we had on the last night…which easily knocked Bayswater’s Mandarin Kitchen in to a cocked hat.

We did manage a day trip to the Blue Mountains, another UNESCO World Heritage site. As you can see from the photographs, we didn’t get to see a heck of a lot on account of the heavy fog.