On our second full day in Sydney, we went off for a day trip to the Blue Mountains. You would have heard of the Blue Mountains and the three sisters if you’ve ever been to Sydney- it is one of the more popular day trips leaving from Sydney, the second is probably trips to the Hunter Valley for wine tasting, which we did not end up doing. What is the blue mountains you say? Wikipedia says this:

Consisting mainly of a sandstone plateau, the area is dissected by gorges up to 760 metres deep. The highest point of the range is 1,190 metres above sea level. A large part of the Blue Mountains is incorporated into the Greater Blue Mountains Area World Heritage Site, consisting of seven national park areas and a conservation reserve. The Blue Mountains area includes the local government areas of the City of Blue Mountains, the City of Hawkesbury, the City of Lithgow and Oberon.

Capische?

This was part of the package that was put together by the lovely people at VisitNSW. It was something that I was really looking forwards to, as the last time we were in Sydney I did not visit the Blue Mountains. So something new, which was really good. It costs about AU70 for a day; it seemed like ours were the cheapest in the market as other places were selling it for circa AU100.

The price might have somethind to do with the fact that the cost for the Scenic Railway and cable car was not inclusive – something that was a bone of contention with half the passengers there who did not expect to pay extra during their ‘tour’. Quite a few of the passangers chose not to fork out the extra AU28 for the Scenic World ‘attraction’; and spent their time waiting for the rest of us for nearly a whole hour.

Anyway, back to the tour. We were picked up from our hotel around 8am on Monday morn, and I must admit I was very, very hungry as we had not have breakfast before. On the itinerary it say that we were going to stop for tea and snacks, so I thought I was going to be fed naturally . It was another GLORIOUS day in Sydney – temperatures later that day willl rise up to 35 degrees in the city. There is glorious, and there is just plain too freaking hot…and today was one of the too-freaking-hot day. The coach was jam-packed by the time we got on (they do pickups all the way from Bondi as well) and we were stuck at the fold-down seats of what was the back of the van . It was boiling, although the little van/people carrier/bus thingy tried its best and the aircond was at full blast, although that was still not enough.

Our driver cum tour guide was very knowledgeable, having grown up around the greater Blue Mountains area and lived in Sydney all his life. Our first stop was a quick 5 min photostop at the Sydney Olympic Park, the main site of Sydney’s Olympic games in 2000. Unfortunately it was closed to visitors and traffic as AC/DC was playing that very night. However we managed to snap a quick picture of what was open to traffic….

The ANZ Stadium, part of the Olympic Park development

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Our second stop was by a river. Literally by a river. In the middle of nowhere. In our itinerary, it was stated that we would be served light refreshments. I was hoping for a spread of breakfast related stuff like danishes ect…what we got were juice poured from large industrial sized bottles, some trail mix and jumbo packed biscuit assortments. Ha. My own fault really, the last time I went for a day-tour in Melbourne, the guide brought us fresh coffee and pastries baked by his wife and fresh fruits. So I stuffed my face with raisins…the whole objective of that stop was not to show us anything at all, but rather, to get people to pay up. Which was really odd, you would think that you would get passangers to pay up when they board your bus, rather than make a special stop in the middle of nowhere. Seeing that mine was already paid for courtesy of VisitNSW, we just sat there stuffing our faces with trail mix for 30 mins. Very odd, and a waste of time in my opinion.

The rest of the day after that is abit of a blur, we stopped three or four times for a variety of views of the famed three sisters. The view is usually obstructed by the mist that apparently emates from the eucalyptus tree – however, it was such a glorious day that our tour guide declared we had the best view possible. And we did – I’ve seen numerous pictures of people visiting the Blue Mountains to be greeted by a virtually non-existant view of the famed Three Sisters. As you can see, we had marvellous views…

Bacon braving the ledge.

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We were told that there was a magnificient waterfall waiting for us at the end of the trail. I was expecting something that I could dip my toes in to cool down – and was sorely dissapointed when it was a waterfall far, far away and not of the magnitute that I was expecting! Still, a pretty sight

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Tourguide drama time – there’s a ledge that is invisible to everyone else and apparently he does this on e-v-e-r-y s-i-n-g-l-e trip to impress the punters i.e. tourists. Sigh. I feel like a tourist on a short leash – reminding me again why I don’t usually go on tours.

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Bacon chilling on the lovely bench when we stopped at the tiny village of Leura for lunch .
After lunch, we headed for the highlight of the day, the Scenic Railway Discovery centre. This brings us down to the valleys and deep in the rainforest that forms the base of the Blue Mountains. As mentioned earlier, there were some disgruntled customers that were annoyed that they have to fork out extra after paying AU70 for the trip. So the group was practically split up, with half the people on the tour choosing to stay on top, hanging about near the toilets. That’s right. The tour guide requested that those choosing not to pay the AU28 stay by the toilets whilst we have a wander about in the rainforest for about 40 minutes.

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We hopped on the Scenic Cableway to travel deep down to the rainforest, and it was absolutely breathtaking. If there was a moment where I went ‘wow’, it was on the Cableway. Ignore all the other walks that we’ve been doing throughout the day, this was most definately the best views. It wasn’t proper scary, but quite relaxing. It only took about 2 mins which is a shame, I would have loved to stay on much longer.

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Bacon struggling to snap a picture of my super sweaty face on the way down the cableway – he IS scared of heights, so I’m real proud that he came along for this!

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The railway from bottom-up

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Once we were down in the rainforest (which, to be honest, was not that enthralling for me as I did come from the land of Rainforests) our guide took us for a wander around the 2.8km walkway towards the Scenic Railway that will bring us up to the top again. The views were lovely, as expected, and it helped that being so deep in the jungle it was slighly cooler. Man, those people who chose to wait by the toilets were definately missing out big time. Halfway though the trek in the jungle I decided that I was really sick of the three sisters. Yes I was. We’ve spent all day just viewing the three sisters from different vantage points, it would have been lovely if there were something else – even the walk itself was more interesting than the variety of ways you can view the three sisters from.

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Bacon loves being deep inside the rainforest

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My favourite picture of the three sisters taken deep inside the valley. Nice.

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It is very nice, and we were very lucky that we were there on one of the best days in the year, blessed by the spotless skies and lovely sunshine.

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We reached the end of our trek at last, and hopped on the Scenic Railway. The part where you board the train in a sun-lounger position should give it away – thank god we were warned by Lee the night before that it was going to be an almost completely vertical ascent on a 90 degree rockface for the initial 2/3 of the ride and VERY SCARY. Not only were we vertically shooting up a rock surface, the surface of the rocks were so close in front of us that you could touch the surface if you just reached out from your vertical ascent seat. The Indiana Jones song also kinda gave it away in my opinion..heehee. Very exciting – even though I did close my eyes for nearly the whole ride. Obviously no pictures, I was more concerned at not losing a sandal!

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I would call this the vertical railway rather than the scenic railway – there was nothing scenic about the fact that it runs like a roller coaster with the obligatory stomach dips!

After all the thrills in the rainforest, our lovely guide took us kangaroo hunting. No, not literally, but he wanted to point out some wild kangaroos for us. Me & bacon were not that bothered, seeing that we saw loads of wild kangaroos during our last trip to Philip Island in Victoria. Poor guy drove round and round and could not find a roo to save his life. We spent more than 30 mins on the wild kangaroo chase to come back with nothing – shame, I’m sure we would have found a better use of time than driving around kangaroo hunting.

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Failing to spot a kangaroo, our tour guide then took us to what was purported to be an aboriginal carving of a kangaroo on a rock surface on the ground. The only problem with showing us that is that he do not actually believe it to be real, rather, he believe that someone must’ve carved this fairly recently. Ha. So another pointless side trip! SO TIRING.

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We ended the day by going on the River Ferry sailing from Homebush Bay to arrive in style under the Harbour Bridge and past the Opera House to disembark at Circular Quay. As we boarded the ferry, there were loads of oddly dressed passengers disembarking – of course, they were the AC/DC fans heading to the Olympic Park for the concert! The river ferry journey took about 30 mins, and it was so stuffy in the cabin that it felt like a sauna. It was much better once I stepped outside on the deck, but the sun was still shining down mercilessly on us, it felt that I’ve gone two shades darker in that 30 minutes.

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It was immensely tiring, but for some stupid reason we decided that we would reaccquaint ourselves with the city and take the 30 min walk towards our hotel instead of the 5 min.train ride. Sounded like a good idea at that time….yep, stupid. So off home we headed….and not really considering where would we go for dinner. After 5 minutes I was parched and super tired, needing to stop for a slurpee. But as bacon tend to do, we got disctracted by the amber liquid again. Actually, we got distracted by the steak.

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The Customs House bar at the heart of Sydney’s financial centre holds a steak promotion on Mondays & Tuesdays for their Black Angus sirloins, a bargin AU10 for a 250g prime piece of steak. We decided that we were going to go for the steak, and I got my favourite Bees Kneez whilst bacon got some sort of Cooper’s beer again. Ahh….yummmm.

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Done rare, just the way God intended cows to be eaten.

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I heart bees kneez.

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After dinner, we walked home slowly, better now that we had been fed and watered. I was ever so glad to have got home, even the harsh bright lights in our room fail to annoy me. We took a shower, and collapsed into bed, with a cold litre of diet coke by my side. It had been a very, very long day. Do I think a trip to the Blue Mountains is worth it? Probably, if you drive yourself there and take a few days to explore the lovely little towns. A day trip is good if you are a tourist-in-a-hurry, but definately not enjoyable if like me, you like to take your time to explore and really get to know the area well. All we seem to do is travel from one vantage point to another, ticking things off our itinerary, which included the stupid stop by a river in the middle of nowhere. It might be due to the sweltering weather, but I was so tired by our second ‘vantage point’. It would also be better if the prices would be all-inclusive, I understand why people wouldn’t want to fork out an extra AU28 for the rides, and if that is the highlight of the trip anyway, to NOT include it seemed slightly cheeky and it caused all that drama that kinda put a damper on the whole trip by the group waiting by the toilet. Saying all that, I would definately recommend a longer trip if you are visiting the Blue Mountains, I think there is so much more to be explored in the Blue Mountains that we had only scratched the surface with our whistlestop tour.

This post took me the better part of a record breaking THREE HOURS…OMG! Can you see now why I’ve been so slow posting up my great Australian adventure?? I leave for New York in a few weeks time, so I need to get my Sydney postings out fast – promise I’ll be faster than what I have been doing thus far!

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We woke up fairly early on our first day in Sydney….Well, 8ish that is. We were meeting Zona & Lee at 10 for dim sum, but I wanted to head towards Woolworths for some water. It’s so bizzare – if there was somewhere I remember so vividly in Sydney, it was the Woolworths’ at Town Hall. I remember the most bizzare things, don’t I? So we hopped there for some water (89 cents for a two litre – can’t go wrong!) and then back again for Slurpees at my local 7-11. What is fantastic about the Base is definately the central location. It was just utterly fantastic. 3 mins walk to the Town Hall Station which brings you to anywhere you want, really (direct train to Bondi Junction). Being so close to Town hall also allows easy access to shopping arcades like the Galeries Victoria ect. It’s also quite walkable to other points of interest as well, about 30 mins or less to Circular Quay or Darling Harbour.

We walked towards Chinatown (Haymarket) for breakfast as none of us had eaten yet. They took us to East Ocean for dim sum – which incidentally, I had included in my Awesome Guide to Sydney! Woo! When we got there, it was still fairly quiet, with only a few tables occupied. It was unbelieveable that by the time we left, patrons were literally lining out on the streets awaiting a table! How weird – but I guess by then it WAS lunch time.

We ordered simple dim sum staples of char xiu bao, har gao, siu mai and bacon’s favourite – deep fried prawn parcels. Speaking of bacon – it’s just so funny when people that I either met through my blog or speak to mostly online (including dreybee) refer to bacon as ‘BACON’ like its his real name. Tee hee hee. Love it. I much rather be Mrs. Bacon. Ooo…bacon…nom nom. Back to our breakfast…..It was a right shame that we were unable to order much – as we had planned to have lunch after breakfast. Well, not IMMEDIATELY – but fairly soon after breakfast, after all it does take us some time to get to our next destination. Heehee.

Breakfast complete, it was then time to start heading to our next destination. It was a little out of town (to say the least) and it was somewhere that left to my own devices I would have never made it there. We drove, and we drove, and we drove some more. Out in the suburbs we went…and then further. OMG. By the time we got there, we must’ve spent nearly one and a half hour in the car! I wouldn’t say this was part of Sydney..well, not the part of Sydney that is synonymous with the Opera House and such anyway. And it was actually quite great to go off the beaten path….WELL OFF actually.

Cabramatta is actually 30 KM away from Sydney, and can easily be confused as being displaced somewhere in Hanoi. It was extremely strange – in comparision, chinatowns around the world seemed very western. This is where the Vietnam war generation settled a few decades ago, and everywhere you turn in Cabra (och, I picked up the local slang) signs in Vietnamese are aplenty. You can also find signs of all other SE Asians cultures here as well, including Thai & Cambodian.

The entrance to Freedom Plaza (central Cabra) via the Friendship Arch.

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Although the population is primarily Vietnamese, cultures from all around the South East Asian region is catered for. I saw loads of traditional chinese bridal stores, stores selling prayers paraphenelia and market stores selling delicious durians (hee hee hee) and all sorts of familiar flavours. An over-saturated maket of sugar cane juice and lovely bubble tea can also be found about one in every three stores. From bakeries the lovely smell of asian pastries and buns wafted out…really bringing me back to Malaysia’s Chinatown area. Sigh… There are also loads of grocery stores selling all sorts under the sun – I purchased a bento box and a one-egg tamagoyaki pan in a dusty chinese grocery store….which incidentally, also sold a made-in-malaysia cake mix of a brand that I’ve never heard before…

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Hee hee. If you’re Malaysian, you would recognize the brand in another context – PONDAN means gay…and with Malaysia being a ‘Muslim’ country, you would also know that this brand would NEVER see the day of light in its country of origin – homosexuality is actually illegal in Malaysia.

It was also another typically scorching day in Sydney, with temperatures rising up to the 30s. I can only say ‘lovely’ for so long….soon it was time to seek shelter in a restaurant. I, as usual, was hankering for a good ole bowl of pho…so Zona went around looking for the restaurant that she had been to before. We found it right at the entrance to Freedom Plaza – unfortunately it was closed for renovations. KJ recommended a Vietnamese restaurant (amongst the 1000 in the area) which I had not written down when I realise how far it actually was from the city (equating to the unlikeliness of me hiking it so far on the rail and having no idea where I’m going)….but somehow the name came to me then,so off we went looking for this famed restaurant.

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It was the queues outside the doors that gave it away. This is Tan Viet Noodle house, an unassuming restaurant amongst loads of other similar looking eateries. We joined the queue with half a dozen others – always go to the restaurant where there’s a queue! It was fairly quick – we were seated after about 10 -15 minutes. Inside it was chock block filled with vietnamese families chowing down their sunday lunch – the signs are definately good! We were quickly presented with a thin menu – they don’t do alot in the restaurant, that’s for sure! But what they do, they do it WELL

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The red scrolls hanging from the ceiling hints that this restaurant is probably run by vietnamese-chinese….not to mention the name TAN is a dead giveaway.

We looked around, unashamedly staring at plated of other patrons. Mostly chicken, but there were also a smattering of orders of other items in the menu. The signature menu item was the Mi Ga Don – which is Crispy-skin chicken, egg noodles garnished with fresh lettuce, coriander, and shallots and other condiments. There is a choice of starch available – either egg noodles in soup or dressed in a little sauce. Basically, it is the chicken that makes the dish. Yum.

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Condiments of nuoc cham, salt & pepper and a pileful of fresh beansprouts.

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Lee laughing at the crazy Malaysians arranging the food for *grace* before digging in. Instead of saying grace before a meal, Malaysians concentrate on arranging plates and taking a picture of their food .

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I had the broken tomato rice with a side of the crispy-skin chicken. Utterly delicious…the skin was super crispy, the chicken was well-seasoned and tender. The tomato rice was deliciously savory and tasty….and goes very well indeed with nuoc cham (standard sauce of sugar, lemon, chillies & fish sauce) and the amazing texture of the crispy chicken. A small serving of pickles and light chicken stock soup on the side just tied the whole dish together. It was delicious.

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Bacon had the Bo Kho – Vietnamese beef stew. Made with cubes of beef and tendon, this was slowly stewed with carrots and potatoes. It went terribly well with the dry egg noodles on the side. Vietnamese cuisine remains one of my favourite food of all time because of the liberal use of fresh herbs in their cooking as edible garnishes…and fresh beansprouts. The flavours of dried spices (star anise, cinnamon ect) combined with liberal squeezes of lemon and usage of sriracha sauce and fish sauce is heavenly, and unlike anything else in the world. Nom nom….

It was definately the reprive we needed from the hot sweltering sun. I’m glad we ended up there, so much so that I didn’t even mind not being able to order my beloved pho. The chicken was definately unforgettable…and even the Bo Kho was the best that I’ve ever had. I had a side of iced vietnamese coffee…again, it was lovely and authentic as expected. A word of warning for those who are a wimp with coffee – never try vietnamese coffee if you don’t like your coffee extra, extra strong! The beans are roasted in marg, extracting the flavours and aromas in an incredible way that normal roasted beans could never achieve.

After lunch, we walked around some more, looking at wonderfully weird shops. Bacon wanted beer, but we were actually unable to find and bars around – shocks and horrors! We settled for Coke (and more bubble tea for me – I was definately in bubble tea heaven) in a bustling food court. I love it how Australians love their food courts – unlike here in the UK, the food courts are not crammed full of american fast food chains, local cooks actually own and run their stalls selling home cooked food. Yums. No, don’t worry, I am not actually going to eat some more! However, being a weird and wonderful food court, we spotted an unusual menu item….I’ve circled it in red:

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Hmm. Do you think it’s a ‘Sunday’ special? Or maybe it’s to help guide you to the Pearly gates? Heehee. Either way, weird english is well and alive Down Under ! Love it! OMG, I just realised next to the Bible salad is a paw paw salad – were any bears hurt in the making of the salad? No, I’m not batting an eyelid on the chicken feet salad – because as a proud Chinese girl I am not afraid to admit that the chinese do love their chicken feet .

We eventually headed back to Sydney, well and truly satisfied in our tummies.With the weather being so perfect, Lee kindly offered to stop for a schooner or two in Balmain before heading over the Anzac bridge over to Sydney. Obviously bacon jumped at the opportunity, so they took us to some of their fave bars near their old neighbourhood in Balmain…again, not an ordinary trip for the regular tourist; but this was what I loved the most during this trip, seeing Sydney through the eyes of locals rather than just concentrating on Darling Harbour and the Opera House.

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This was the first bar we went to – the Exchange hotel in Balmain

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I thought of Skipps when I took this picture. 30 degrees outside, 0 degrees inside. Definately a sight for sore eyes

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Bacon marvelling at beer. Actually, the sight of any beer makes him grin like a cheshire cat. He interrogated Lee on Australian beers and promptly made it his mission to try out every single one recommended by Lee. And because they were served in schooners rather than the regular english pint, it was easier to get more in and not fall over in drunkeness.

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Good, huh?

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We also popped by the bar opposite, dickies bar, where they had a lovely massive beer garden up back. I was still trying to digest my lunch and could not have another drink, but the boys continued with their beers

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Another bar, another tap. I love this one.

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It was soon sunset, and we decided it was probably the right time to head back to Sydney. The last of our plans for the day was the mahoosive Sydney Chinese New Year Parade – as luck would have it, I celebrated the whole of Chinese New Year in Australia…of all places. It was also the first time in my life I actually had the full 15 days of Chinese New Year off. It was customary in the old days for chinese people to actually take the whole 15 days off (abit like taking the weeks of Christmas off) , but those were back in the days where holidays at any other point of the year was unfanthomable…I doubt taking the full 15 days is customary now, even in China. The Chinese New Year parade was one of the highlights in Sydney’s annual diary (I missed mardi gras by ONE NIGHT) and I think an excellent homage to the large Chinese population in Sydney.

Heading back to Sydney, I was most excited to actually be on the ANZAC bridge, with its signature two soilders on either side of the entrance of the bridge coming from Balmain – one Australian and another New Zelander ( for some reason I typed in Canadian!!). The bridge brought us to Prymont – where the famous Sydney Fish Market stands to the right of the bridge.

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Sorry about the horizontal lines – I took this in the car. But isn’t it lovely, sunset over the ANZAC bridge?

We parked up near Darling Harbour and walked about 30 mins towards Haymarket, where all the action is. For some reason we thought it was a good idea to get some food in us (I was seriously still full after lunch, but at the mention of food my eyes still lights up!), but nearly everywhere in Haymarket was pretty full of tourists and locals alike who came out in full force for the parade. So we popped up to one of the food courts in Haymarket (I don’t remember which one) and had our pick.

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I chose Laksa…thought seeing that I’m in Australia, might as well. Funnily enough, for me, growing up in Penang, laksa always meant thick rice noodles in a tamarind broth made with spanish mackerel and topped with sliced cucumber, mint and shrimp paste. However, the Laksa that most people in the world know is actually curry laksa…rice sticks in a creamy curry broth with dried tofu cubes, pig’s bloood, beansprouts and a variation of chicken/prawn/fishball. And that seemed to be the unofficial national dish of Australia – its literally everywhere and everyone knows what a good Laksa is! I guess in many ways its like chicken tikka masala here in the UK.

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It was creamier than what I was used to, and I had to add more chilli paste to it to ensure that it passes my spicy test – the main reasons I hate thai food in the UK is dumbing down of spices to cater to local palate, and the same is true with this bowl of laksa. However, everything else was pretty good, and definately beat the wimpy laksa imitation that wagamama serves up in their chains. I have no idea why people think that what wagamama serves up even half resembles the original dish.

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By the time dinner was done *burp* (bacon had sweet and sour chicken with rice in case you’re wondering about the lack of a picture – I know, like wtf right?) the parade had already started on the roads! We parked ourselves in a spot, although Lee being like 10 feet tall had the best view of us all, we had pretty good views too from down below. Now, I’ve been to the Chinese New Year parade in San Francisco, and count that one of the most impressive parade I’ve ever seen in my life, but Sydney just absoltuely threw me away. From rollerskating dim sums (my fave) to about 100 dragon dances and 200 lion dances, it was simply amazing. The variety of participants was astounding, from local schools to the TVB (the international TV channels for the chinese diaspora) man and local kung fu schools, the mayor and even the Sydney Wildlife Council (they paraded to the ‘Eye of the Tiger’ – cute, seeing that it was the year of the Tiger ) participating, I really, REALLY loved this. It just brings together Sydney as a multicultural melting pot in a harmonious manner. I am ever so glad to be lucky enough to be in town at the same time as the parade.

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Here are some pictures of the night…

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By the time it finished at 11, we were all dead tired from all that walking, standing and eating. We had been to China, Vietnam, Australia and then back to China. It was most defiantely time to say our goodbyes, especially since our tour guides had to work the next day! We can’t thank them enough for spending their Sunday with us – otherwise we would had just hung around the city (like most tourists) and not been exposed to what Sydney is REALLY all about. Throughout the week they unveiled more of Sydney to us and made us feel that we really belonged in Sydney, even though we were only short-term tourists….so stay tuned!!

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Contacts

East Ocean Restaurant

http://www.eastocean.com.au

1/421-429 Sussex St
Haymarket NSW 2000, Australia
(02) 9212 4198

Tan Viet Noodle House
100 John St
Cabramatta, 2166

Exchange Hotel

http://www.exchangehotel.com.au

94 Beattie Street
Cnr Beattie & Mullens Street
Balmain NSW 2041

Happy Easter everyone!

At last, some respite from the daily grind. I’ve been very caught up in work as well as plotting my departure from the company….I can now reveal that I have been offered a new job with a different company (yay me!) and will shortly be leaving. Boo Hoo. Oh well…that is life. I’ve been spending weekends preparing for interviews and thankfully, that all paid off. It’s slightly sad though, I’ve been with this company for 3 years and would have really loved to stayed on other than the fact that there are no opportunities left anymore for me to grow in the direction that I want to – for those that know where I work at, you would totally see my point. Ah, well. I’m just glad to be going back in the same direction.

So yes, exciting times ahead !

Anyway, back to Australia!

Day 7 was basically just a lie-on-the-beach-and-relax day. We were due to fly out of Gold Coast in the evening, and wanted to spend the one day just relaxing around beaches and doing some shopping. After spending the morning lazing on the beautiful beach-pool, we quickly showered and checked out at 11. It was unfortunate that the hotel did not have a proper shower which we could’ve taken a shower before leaving for our flight, otherwise I would had happily lazed there until 4 in the afternoon.

I must say, this has gotta be the most AMAZING pool ever. Sigh. I wanted to stay there as long as I could, seeing that we were checking into a hostel that night in Sydney, this was no suprise, really. Oh well. Paradise can’t last forever.

We popped over to Australia Fair, the local mall, as I wanted to purchase some sandwiches ect to snack on during our flight that evening. It was heaving – possibly because it was 36 degrees outside. After a few dark and moody days, I can’t believe that it’s bright and sunny on the day that I was due to leave! Grrr. We had lunch in the food court (nothing exciting at all) and then beach-hopped our way to the airport. It was a 9 mile drive, in which we must’ve stopped 5 times at the numerous beaches down the Pacific Motorway towards the airport. We stopped at another mall when it got too hot for some bubble tea…nom nom.

#’;It was just really relaxing driving down the motorway and stopping at random neighbourhood beaches
all the way along. The further you get away from Surfers Paradise, the quieter it is (obviously). I love getting into local beaches….and would throughly recommend renting a car to anyone – it’s easy enough down the Pacific Motorway as it goes all the way from the airport.

We arrived in Sydney around 9-ish local time…and really couldn’t decide if we want to take the shuttle train (around $15 per person) or a taxi – because it really don’t cost much more with taxis. A rail replacement bus was in place, and seeing that it only went to Central instead of Town Hall, we settled on a taxi instead. at AU39, it realy wasn’t much more expensive than the rail shuttle.

We headed towards Base Sydney – the hostel that came as a package of my free Sydney trip. NOW, the adventure REALLY starts! Unfortunately, it was Saturday night, and we were two very tired over-the-hill travellers. Saturday night in a hostel is like Saturday night in a college dorm….drunken, loud, smelly and ugly. The package came with a private room for two, so at least I didn’t get drunken people collapsing into my bed in the middle of the night. It was a sparsely furnished room ( a bunk with a queen sized bed at the bottom) and a small two-drawer side table. And that was it. No hangers, no rails, no nothing. There is a hole in the wall where ventilation from outside was piped in; so at least we have some air. However, because it was a hot sweltering summer, it wasn’t very cool.

I went to sleep in semi-shock – which could only be expected as I had been spending time in a 5 star hotel. I’m glad to report however, that it was really on Fridays and Saturdays that the hostel is riotious – all the other days in the week it was quite pleasant really for a hostel. There is the occasional stinky and stoned teenager, but overall it was fairly sane.

Apologies for the lack of updates – I have been superbly swamped at work with aggro and tiredness….not to mention other posts that I wanted posting up immediately!

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Day 6 was a slow and leisurely morning for us. We had initially planned to drive to Brisbane, but vetoed that after reception recommended that we headed inland towards the rainforest instead, the famed Tambourine Mountains. So off we went, after making a stop at the local HSBC for some cash. We had not gone very far at all when I spotted the below shopfront…

This is the super adorable bright pink http://www.cupcakeshop.com.au/ little cupcake & cookie shop in Southport. I allowed myself one cupcake (it was about 10.30am and I just had cup noodles for breakfast). After some hard thinking (there were LOADS of pretty little things in there!) I eventually settled for the wacky Elvis cupcake – peanut butter and jelly. Yum yumx.

Mid-morning break over, we continued driving inland to the Tambourine Mountains. There is a skywalk there which brings you deep into the rain forest that we were hoping to get on….not too sure why, I’ve had more than my fair share of rainforests! The road there even resemble the roads that lead towards rainforest mountains in Malaysia, i.e. Camerons. How weird is that. There are loads of shops and restaurants on the way, and we decided to stop for a little wander about.

It is just typical that it started RAINING as we got close to the rainforest – it rained, and rained, and rained. Trouble in paradise? We took one picture and had to run for cover from shop to shop at the Gallery Walk street. Sigh. So much for hiking to a waterfall or going on the Skywalk….although I did smirk to myself slightly as I am not a rainforest sort of person .

At the end of the short commercial road, we saw the word DISTILLERY. Oooh. How lovely is that? Headed there with no hesistation at all, helped that it was sheltered. It’s less of a proper distillery, rather, it’s actually a restaurant/bistro/deli/dairy. The Liquid Amber restaurant serves up classy food like steaks and lobsters, whilst the bar serves up regular grub (i.e. burgers…posh wagyu ones) on top of their regular selection of beer. There is a deli/fromagerie as well serving cheeses and other posh deli food ‘for you to take away as a picnic’.

Of course, we went directly to the brewery for beer. For AU$10, you can get a ‘selection’ of 4 1/3rd pints.

Cool. I like it how they provided a small card explaining what the beer is like. Usually a good idea…but just look at bacon’s reaction on the beer…

Hmm. Four beers, and none of them greeted with a smile. I had a try of every one, and hated all of them to a certain degree. It was so bad that bacon failed to finish any of them. Heh. It was suprising to say the least. As we were trying to finish it admist bitter beer face, a bunch of other tourists walked past us shook their heads and said, ‘You too huh? Vile stuff’. So its not only us then.

The beer feels unfinished, a superbly heavy profusion of hops and malts with very heavy bitter aftertaste. No good. Anyway, if you’re heading that direction, it’s a good place to stop and take shelter – the restaurant looks fab anyway. Directions are available at their website here.

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There seems to be bits and pieces of ‘the old Country’ up in the mountains . Devonshire cream teas??Whatever were they thinking?

After that ‘adventure’, we headed down from the mountains to Surfer’s Paradise – we never really seen it in the day of light and it would be nice to take a walk down the beach when I’m not dead tired! We parked about a mile away from the actual heart of Surfers Paradise – nearer to Main Beach actually, as it was free parking for 4 hours…love the australian system. the nearer you get to the hub of Surfers Paradise the more expensive it is, but 1 mile is not too bad a walk, especially when you’re walking on golden sands next to the rolling surfs.

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I’m always happier by the sea – it’s like it replenishes my soul. Even in wind, I truly need to belong to the seaside.

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Bacon seems to adopt quite well to the seababy life; seeing tthat he’s a landlocked bull. No, nothing naughty, he’s a Taurean!

We came across some marvellous sand sculpture….how amazing is that?

Just proof that I was actually there

We walked along the numerous shops and eateries catering to the large profusion of tourists of all nationalities. The shops, especially those selling Australian products like UGGs. You can tell with the Japanese speaking staff in those shops, and the determined smile on the salespersons’ faces to sell you a pair of them furry boots. I was honestly on the hunt for UGGs as my last pair had died a painful death…but their pushiness just pushed me away and I didn’t actually come back from Australia with a pair !! Argh…

By the time we got back to the hotel, it was fluffy white clouds against brilliant blue skies again..

For dinner, I wanted to do something asian again. Yeah. I know this sounds exordinary, but the selection of asian restaurants/food in Australia is about 1000 times better than in the UK – i.e. in Leeds there are about 5 restaurants specialising in noodles, but none of them really tickle my tastebuds. Most are tasteless, some are overly oily but the major problem is they DO NOT GET IT. It never tastes like what it should taste like, and I can only assume they get away with it because people prefer it this way. Oh well.

After long consideration, we popped over to Southport to have a look-see, and this ramen place looked the busiest amongst the rest.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but Ichiban-Boshi was an Australian-wide chain of ramen restaurants. I had, however, have my heart set on Chicken Katsu-ju.

Yumyums. Comes with miso soup as well, which I love. I don’t get restaurants that charge for miso soup – c’mon man, its really cheap to make, and to charge me £2.50 for some miso soup??!

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Bacon went for the Ramen set, served with a side of rice,pickles and gyozas.

I found it slightly strange that it came with a full portion of rice – were you supposed to eat it just with the pickles?

My Katsu-ju was as what I expected, eggy sticky rice with chicken fried in breadcrumbs with pickles on the side. Bacon’s ramen was shoyu flavour with slices of naruto maki (the spiral steamed fish cake), sice of belly pork and other assortments. He was unhappy with the sweetcorn and seaweed, but seriously, it’s not that bad. I’ve much definately had worse.

And that was day 6 for us!

Just like everyone visits Surfers’ Paradise whilst in Gold Coast, you’ve GOTTA do a theme park whilst you’re there. Dream World, Movieworld, Seaworld, Waterworld ….the list seemingly doesn’t stop! I had not been to a theme park in years, and was quite excited in going to one. I picked Movieworld as it’s a cross between the different worlds – entertaining yet offering the more traditional theme park rides. Also, I love cartoons! Like actual ones with talking animals and stuff. Yeah, I still watch cartoons, so sue me

Up Movieworld’s version of Main st. Can you see bacon on the left struggling with my waterproof bag?

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The Shrek 4D show – absolutely loved it! I asked bacon what is the 4th dimension – he thought it was smell. However, it was water-squirted on our legs as an imitation of creepy crawley spiders!

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This was taken inside the Stunt Driver show – if you think Seaworld dolphin shows with cars, you wouldn’t be far off. Very cool though – very fast exploding cars splitting into half ect. Nice.

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Scooby Doo Spooky Hotel. Hmm. From the outside it looked like a fairly safe ride as you can’t actually see anything and it looked like an auditorium – I was expecting another Shrek-like ride. NOOO! This was a whiplash inducing roller coaster, with the coaster moving in unexpected directions…sharp right and left turns is definately bad for your neck! The forward and backwards motion got me very confused – it was definately my suprise ride of the day.

Bacon getting drenched at the Wild West log ride. I didn’t feel like it…..because I really had no inclination of getting drenched!

Bacon going up, up and up on the lethal weapon ride. You can almost see him clutching on to the sides…I’ve even circled him in red

Although his most favourite ride of them all was the Superman ride

I love meeting the characters…

Although bacon wasn’t so keen…hmm. Don’t know why….not like as if daffy bites!

We even manage to catch the ‘parade’….obviously no connection with the Disney parade whatsoever..heh.

I love Shrek..he was really funny, I had purchased a pair of shrek ears earlier on a hairband, and as he were going past me he actually waved, pointed to his own ears and showed me the thumbs up….let’s see you get that from Mickey!!

Daffy kicking Austin Power’s butt..

Bugs Bunny & Tweety..tweet tweet

The whole day seems slightly surreal – it was Chinese New Year and there were BUSLOADS of chinese tourists – so many that it looked like we were somewhere in China rather than in Gold Coast. The whole place was also understaffed, with a number of concessions and foodstores closed for the day – even some of the restaurants were closed. This gave the place a slightly fly-by-night operations feeling…or at the brink of bankruptcy. Because most of the restaurants were closed, the remaining kiosks selling food were doing a roaring business.

The cartoon characters also seemed to be slightly rushed off their feet – like as if they only had 30 minutes in one costume before needing to run off to change into another character….the Batman ride actually shuts down for three hours in what was already a very very short working day of only 7 hours….either that or the staff are super lazy….c’mon, it only opens from 10 and closes by 5, you’d think that they would work harder.

Concept-wise, I think this place has got it right, but execution wise it really feels and looks like a poor relation of Disneyland – it’s like as if they’ve tried their best, but yet still not got it quite right.

We headed home at around 4ish – and as you could probably imagine, dead tired. We took a nap before heading out for dinner, but not before I manage to snap views from our room:

View of the swimming pool…..nice huh

View of the swiming pool & Biggera Waters, the river that the hotel was next to.

View into the top end of Surfers’ Paradise – the hotel is unfortunately 10-15 mins walk away from the hub of surfer’s paradise…which was not made clear to us when we booked. I guess it’s alright – as we had a car to drive around with.

We drove into Surfers’ Paradise proper in search for dinner….and as proof of how tired we both were, not only did I not remember to snap any pictures of the broadwalk, the night market….I did not even make it to the restaurant that we were supposed to eat at, and ended up eating at a Korean place that we saw on the way. You know its bad when after all that, I don’t even remember snapping a picture of the name of the restaurant, only remembering that it was connected to the other Marriott hotel, the Marriot Courtyard Surfers Paradise.

But I did had yumms bibimbap, chicken and kimchee soup…

The last picture contained the side dishes (okazu in Japanese, not sure what is it in Korean) . One of it was sweet and sour SPAM – how weird and wonderful! We were also served kimchee, wakame salad, sliced konyakku ect. If I am Japanese-food deprived here, I’m even more deprived of Korean food – there are not even imitation Korean restaurants around here…SIGH. Oh well. Anyway, in case you think me strange, there is a MASSIVE Korean community in Gold Coast – lots of Korean convenience stores, restaurants and shops.

We headed back to bed pretty soon after dinner – hanging out with cartoons does that to you sometimes