Well, I finally made it south of the equator after India and had a week of business with a Taiwanese colleague in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth in which I learned a very useful lesson about never trusting anyone else to book hotels for you.
First stop was Sydney and we let our customer organise the hotel for us (on their insistence), things dragged on a bit with no hotel confirmation and it was only a couple of days before we were due to arrive that we finally got confirmation of our booking. “Sorry guys” the email began, “everything downtown is booked up for Chinese New Year, Mardi Gras and the AC/DC concert so you’re a bit out of town”. He wasn’t wrong.. We were in a small suburb called Hornsby, a one bar town, the sort of bar that is almost empty on a saturday night and where everyone does a double-take at seeing a new face in the bar. On the second night we decided to go into the city centre and took the train, it took 90 minutes each way including the walk either end, after that we gave up and decided to wait for Melbourne (I’m back visiting family in Sydney later this week and decided I could wait).
So, we moved to Melbourne on Wednesday morning and had a day full of customer visits, I was quite excited about getting out in the city for a few beers and taking a look around. When I plugged in the address my colleague gave me to the GPS I was surprised to see it pointing at the airport, surely this was a mistake??? “Errr no” he replied, “I stayed here last time I was here and had an early morning flight so I just booked it again”, super, super job! I urged him to have a nap while I drove there, secretly fuming, swerving excessively round corners and roundabouts and taking great pleasure on seeing his sleeping head jolt from side to side. (p.s. this was the hotel with the spider”. Actually it wasn’t even a hotel, it was a motel with butlins style chalets filled with plastic chairs, formica and outdated fittings (including a ludicrous combo telephone/radio/alarm clock which was surely a mid-80’s Amstrad cast-off).
Anyway, next stop was Perth, we did much better here and had a cheap hotel pretty much in the centre of the city, no complaints this time. We stopped one night and had a few beers in town, checking out the next morning. Our day of customer visits came to an end at 3pm giving us 9 hours before our flights around midnight. My colleague suggested finding some kind of cafe with wifi access so we could write reports on the trip and send important emails. I had a better idea and grabbed the GPS, scrolled across to the sea, picked a random point on the coast north of the airport (figuring it would be easy to get back going the opposite way to rush hour traffic) and set off. We ended up at a place called Sorrento and drove along the coast past the millionaire’s apartments with rows of yachts until we found a place to park (I’m guessing North Beach). I stripped off in the car park, changed to my swimmers and ran across the beach to take a dip (it was 40C at this point), a great plan which quickly came to a skidding halt as I realised the water was freezing cold and deepened from ankle deep to waist deep within a couple of footsteps, the final nail in the coffin were the submerged rocks scraping my legs and feet. I stumbled back out and made do with wetting my ankles. After about 45 minutes I was pretty much sizzling and decided an escape was needed before I burnt to a crisp, we retired to a beachside cafe until it was time to return the car at 7pm.
Anyway, I’m now in Melbourne after taking an overnight flight from Perth to Melbourne on Friday night. I barely slept on the flight and arrived in Melbourne at 6:30am, taking a bus to the city centre and then another bus to the hotel only to be told I couldn’t check in until 1pm. I asked if there was any way I could check in early to be told “there is no way sorry”, quite frustrating considering that about 5 people had checked out while I rearranged my bags to take one with me and leave the other behind. Anyway, I went out for a walk, sat in the park for a while, saw a dead possum, saw a live possum, walked past an IMax theatre (no shows till the afternoon), walked through the traditional australian area close to the hotel and slowly made my way back at around 10:30 feeling like death to try and find somewhere to sit down and sleep. The guy saw me wandering in and had a change of heart, letting me into a room, I could have hugged him!
Traditional Australian archway (I’m guessing aboriginal?) close to my hotel
That was pretty much it for that day, I didn’t leave the bed until Corky texted me about dinner (ex-shanghai, if any of you remember Swiss James’ blog (it was called I Shanghai or something you might have seen him on there). He treated me to some standard Australian fair at a place Sichuan house, where we enjoyed Hui Guo Rou and spicy eggplant before heading out on the town for a few (a lot) beers. Sunday was another write off and as I was getting out of bed at 5pm for my late lunch (a paracetamol and some traditional australian lasagne and chips) I realised that I’d spent something like 26 out of my 36 hours in Melbourne in bed (long time readers might be getting a sense of deja-vu) with nothing but the view from my hotel window to show for it:
Just after I’d finished my lasagne I got a text from Matt saying he was going out for dinner with a couple of mates, would I like to join? Naturally I said yes , especially as we would be eating traditional australian food.
Traditional Australian “Sichuan Hotpot”, as seen on Crocodile Dundee, served in a “billabong”
The man himself, posing in front of a photo wall presumably influenced by Tuol Sleng, readers of I Spy Shanghai might be glad to note his return to a more western shape following his return from China
I finished the night with a couple of beers at my new favourite bar, introduced to me by Matt on saturday night. To get there you walk down a dodgy looking bin-lined side alley off Lonsdale street, you then turn into an even dodgier side-side-alley to a place at the bottom picked out by graffiti and smokers. There’s no sign, no lights etc to signify anything there but upstairs is the sort of no-nonsense bar I like, it’s kind of reminiscent of The Temple of Convenience back in Manchester, several choices of bottled beer (I went for Melbourne bitter, this singles me out as a tourist according to Matt), a couple of spirits and wine, oh and a guy in an awesome pink suit. Great music though, the hour I spent in there last night was pretty much all The Cure and Talking Heads. As I left I asked someone what the bar was called, “Sister Bella” they said, I’ll be back tonight I reckon!
