Australia,  Oceania,  Storytime,  TDM,  Travel Journal

[story time] My exchange semester in Australia: Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne & Adelaide (Travel Diaries) 2/2

I told you that life was not so good for me as an Asian student in Sydney, but I still took advantage of my 4 months exchange in Australia in 2009 to travel a little bit.

Part 2: My travel diary in Australia

My habits in Sydney

I often went to the Sydney Fish Market where sashimi was sold by the kilogram. I was so greedy (I often bought 500g of salmon to eat on my own) that I was often photographed to illustrate travel blogs

I read a lot of women’s magazines. They contained fewer ads than the French version and were more expensive (8$AU). One of my tweets for Cosmopolitan Australia was chosen and printed in their magazine. I still keep this page as a souvenir today

I don’t know if you knew it but to have an address xxxxx Sydney, you have to be in the CBD (central business district), which is actually a borough in size (it’s small and expensive and there are only skyscrapers). Then, there are other “boroughs” around the CBD, all of which form the city of Sydney. My apartment was located one street away from the CBD, and it always made me laugh that my borough is called Chippendale, like the strippers😀

This apartment, in addition to being central (even if I was only entitled to 2m² behind the cupboard), had the advantage of being 50m from Mc Donalds and 60m from my favorite bubble tea. So, all my little fortune went through there: every day: 2 bubble teas morning and evening at 4$AU each, and a few nuggets at McDonald’s in the evening if I was lazy enough to cook

Near my apartment there was a pool named Ian Thorpe (I’m too much of a fan of his, he brought home several Olympic swimming medals for Australia). I spent all my mornings there, between the Olympic size pool and the sauna

I also visited the (almost deserted) Olympic Village and the famous Olympic swimming pool in Sydney where Ian Thorpe won his gold medal

I often went to the movies too, watching 3D movies in theaters twice the size of those in France. The price was twice as expensive too (20$AU) and the seats were numbered

I even created a cooking blog, having a lot of time to waste and a big kitchen in the apartment

I have had a few missions as a mystery shopper. They paid much better than in France, between 20$ and 25$ for a mission of 1 hour + 1 hour report

I spent a lot of time at the Circular Quay not far from the Sydney Opera House

The first time I saw the Sydney Opera House, I was very surprised to see that what was covering it was just some cheap ceramic pieces

It was a very nice place to walk around, to go window-shopping, but like in the movie Nemo, there was a kind of seagull (the ones that do “mine, mine” in Nemo), a little too present for my taste, which did not hesitate to steal food. Next to that, there was a big ugly bird whose beak, strangely long, was very scary. You don’t want to get that in the eye. Once, while I was quietly eating my sandwich sitting on one of the many steps, a bird came from behind and stole half of my sandwich. Snif

One day I woke up very early and the sky was all orange, like an apocalypse scene. I turned on the TV and it was explained that the wind had blown so hard that the desert sand came all the way to Sydney. There was orange sand everywhere, everyone was trying to stay indoors so as not to rot their lungs, it was really an incredible sight

JB in Sydney

JB came to spend a month in Sydney. He rented a private room in a youth hostel for AU$30/night in Sydney’s red light district, but it wasn’t that bad. Honestly, I could have skipped classes and gone to Fiji, or the Golden Coast with him, but I really liked attending the course and I didn’t miss any classes under any circumstances

At that time, there was no 3G/4G yet so JB waited for me at the library (my classes often take place in the evening), connecting to the university computer to have high speed and unlimited Internet. Then, we would go to the hostel to cook kangaroo. Kangaroo meat was one of the cheapest in Australia, and the pre-marinated version is delicious. In addition, kangaroo farming would produce -40% more methane gas than beef

Like me, JB is too fan of the fish market and we still talk about it years later. I think that if we come back to Sydney, it will be only for this fish market 😀

We took the ferry to visit the Sydney Zoo, the famous one where you could take a picture of a giraffe with the Sydney Opera House in the background. To do that, there are steps to get up to the level of the giraffes. In this zoo, there are regular animations, where you can touch certain animals, including the koala bear. We didn’t have this chance there, but we could see them very closely, eating and sleeping (anyway, they don’t know what else to do)

It was also an opportunity to see kangaroos up close (it’s so cute). We were biting our fingers to love their meat a little too much 🙁

We took the bus to go to the Blue Mountains. To better enjoy the place, we paid in addition for a hop-on hop-off bus

Now, after going around the world, these same landscapes could have disappointed us. But at the time, a one-day trip at 35$AU like that was an unexpected opportunity. And we were so happy!

What we also liked to do a lot was to take the subway, or the ferry (as cheap as the subway because it was a quick way to connect the two parts of Sydney) and be on a beach in less than 30 minutes (Bondi, Manly…)

There was a nice path along the cliff at Bondi Beach and from the cliffs, we could see the security measures put in place (nets) to prevent sharks from getting too close to the beach. We didn’t see any in the water, but there was a swimming pool which is right next to the ocean, for those who were really afraid of sharks

And then I went to Canberra, the Australian capital. The English tours cost around AU$80 but the Chinese tours sold in Chinatown were only AU$45, so I bought this tour. Comfortably seated in the bus with other Chinese people, I was waiting for the departure when the driver who had been speaking in Chinese for 5 minutes came to see me “Miss xxx”? “Yes” ? and then the whole bus laughed. Apparently, he had been making the call since a while and everybody answered present, except me, because I don’t speak Chinese 😀 He was very nice, and made the presentation of the monuments in English, just for me

What you need to know is that in Australia everything is so expensive that agencies cannot afford to pay for both a driver AND a guide. So the driver has to drive and guide at the same time

After graduation, I spent 2 months travelling with my cousin, based in Brisbane

He took me to visit his university, which is bigger than my university in Sydney. He was staying in a house in the suburbs. I remember one day we came home quite late and there were no lights. He told me that because the house was next to a small river, it was almost wilderness: after each rain, snakes came up and it was not uncommon to see one when you opened the door. And he told me all this while we were walking in the dark

We went to the coast to see wild dolphins ( see my article) and the biggest coral reef (see my other article)

Then we went to Melbourne, we made the day trip to visit the 12 apostles, the look out..

There too, the driver was a tourist guide and drove super fast

If I remember correctly, we paid over a hundred dollars for the tour on a day like that (each). The following year, my friends went on their honeymoon to Australia and they had to break their PEL to pay for tours between A$100 and A$600 each

At the time, I didn’t know how to drive, so driving on the left seemed impossible. Now if we go back to Australia, we’ll rent a car instead and I know I can drive on the left now, having practiced without too much difficulty in New Zealand and South Africa

So don’t come to Australia without your international driver’s license!

My cousin and I finished the road trip by Adelaide. With our small student budget, we didn’t visit any paying monuments or attractions, and it turned out to be a short trip (only 2 weeks). But it was my first road trip and I liked it very much

I missed the New Year’s Eve fireworks in Sydney by 4 days because of my visa
I didn’t dare to stay 4 days after my visa expired

Then I came back to Vietnam and I haven’t yet returned to Australia

But this country is part of our list for the 2nd round-the-world tour, we will perhaps go there in 2019/2020.

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