Week Eight - Good'ay Australia, that Rainbow in the waterfall, catch up's with old friends and St Kilda, Melbourne.

We finally arrived in Sydney after an exaggerated flight from Bali. After passing through customs we sat at the exit of the airport and wondered what the hell to do next. After all we wasn't in Asia anymore and it was evident there wasn't going to be any locals jump out at us and show us the sights or advise us of where to go or where to stay. With backpacks in tow as usual, we caught the airport train to King Cross which we had found online as a popular hostel spot. It was utterly bizarre! It was so normal, it felt like we had transported to a different time, a different era. Everyone was rushing to work, pushing by on the escalators as squeezing onto the train. I wasn't ready for it. At all. When changing trains we spotted a familiar face on the platform Alicia ran over to us and gave us a big hug. Alicia was a girl we had met on our second night travelling in Ho Chi Minh, we hadn't arranged to meet her and we had even forgotten she lived in Sydney. What a surprise. We had a catch up and repeated how it was so strange to bump into her but how lovely is was to see her and tried to tell her our tales from the past two months. We waved and said goodbye once she was at her stop.
We arrived in Kings Cross and climbed up the stairs of the station to the streets of Sydney. We were clueless, lost infact. We went into a place called Peterpans which we thought was a hostel, it's turned out to be a travel agents specialising in helping backpackers book all sorts of things and so they rang around different hostels for us, forever expressing how with it being close to Christmas we may not be able to find anything (nobody had warned us that we would need to pre-book hostels in normal Australia). Lucky for us they found us a room for $29 a night in a four bed bed at Kanga Hostel. We were given the directions and set to find our new home, on the way there we managed to work out that a weeks worth of accommodation in Aus was almost as much as what we had paid in total for 6 weeks in Asia. Ouch!
We arrived at Kanga (after wondering back in forth on the same street for half an hour) and checked in. Our room had an amazing view of the city, The Opera house and the harbour bridge. We were tired from all flying and change so decided to get our heads down so we were fresh for later as we had arranged to meet Charlotte, a friend of Alex's who now lives in Sydney. We woke up and decided to have a wonder around our hostel, we found the common room which was full of a group of Italians who were cooking up an absolute storm. They were lovely and friendly and chatted away to us. We arranged a time for Charlotte to pick us up and started to get ready, something else that felt completely alien to us. We hadn't been bothered to get dolled up since we started travelling, Asia is way to relaxed for that. We were set for a night at the Harbour and a meal so we had to make any effort. I wore my high waisted black jeans with my gypsy top and some little white chunky heels I had purposely brought with me for Australia.
Charlotte picked us up in her work car (a brand new mini) and we whizzed off into the city. We drove around and had the run down of various different things as we drove passed. Charlotte was a grand tour guide. We parked up and headed to the Harbour. It was busy and beautiful and the Opera house and the Harbour bridge lit up in the evening sky. We wondered around and took all the obvious touristy pictures. After discussing where to eat and us not really knowing the area Charlotte ironically suggested a Thai restaurant called Bangkok Bites which was in a suburb of Sydney called Bondi. Alex and I found it highly amusing that we had just left Asia and decided to go to a Thai restaurant. We drove to Bondi which was about 20 minutes north of the city. Bondi was very cosmopolitan and was riddled with English. We ordered from the vast menu and surprisingly the food was on our table in no time (the restaurant was absolutely rammed with customers)! The food was ridiculously nice and we couldn't finish it for the life of us and so had it all boxed up to take home. Charlotte dropped us back at our hostel and it was finally time for bed. Night Sydney.
The following day we had a little lie in ready for the tiring day ahead, Charlotte picked us up for the day and we headed to Bondi Beach. The weather was a scorcher! We laid on the beach all day and caught our first proper bit of sun in Australia. That afternoon we planned to head out to Newtown. We left the beach and headed home to get changed for our night out. We headed to Charlottes for pre-drinks and headed to Newtown. We based ourselves in an indie bar with a live band playing. We danced away to Artic Monkeys and Ed Sheeran and drank tequila, whiskey and coke. We fell into bed with no recollection of time.
That morning we had a lie in and I insisted we went shopping. There had been a terrible wardrobe malfunction when we had passed from Asia to Australia. I panicked and brought normal home clothes and shoes! As if I had the space OR MONEY! We stayed out shopping at Bondi Junction until the evening and decided on an early night so we sat in the kitchen and began chatting to an Italian guy called Matty. He was drunk and sang typical loves songs to me. I was in stitches!
We was up early as we were heading to the Blue Mountains with Charlotte, her friend Leighton (also a Notts lad) and another friend of Charlotte from New Zealand. We left early afternoon once the wether had cleared up. Charlotte was driving us and we arrived within a couple of hours. The Blue Mountain trail was broke down to several timed treks - we didn't to take the 3 hour one. Was it worth it? Oh absolutely. It was beautiful, mountains and waterfalls repeatedly. Our last part of the trek was a walk through the waterfall, we were soaked but couldn't believe of eyes when a rainbow appeared in the waterfall as we was looking from the side. We was set for another early night yet met a French guy called Robin who we coached and advised on his love life until 2am.
It was our last day in Sydney and we met up with my fried from home, Amy, who was doing a year out there. The got a picnic and ate in the the park and sunbathed. Amy was about to move house so we offered our help, we cleared out the old place and helped her unload it all to the new. It was nice to see her and have a slice of home. We were later dropped off at the bus station for an overnight bus journey to Melbourne.
The bus journey was a crap as all the others, Asia roads had its bumps and Australian road had 50,000 stops. The bus pulled into the station in Melbourne city centre and we jumped straight into a tram and headed for St Kilda, a beachy suburb. We arrived at about half 8 and went to check into our hostel, St Kilda beach house. The first impressions were terrible, we were knackered and told we weren't aloud to check into our room until 2pm. We dumped our luggage and set up camp in the tv room like hobos. I was pissed off to say the least. That b****y-to-big-for-her-own -boots-manager and me are not going to be getting along. We finally checked into our room, we got showered and changed and headed to have a wonder around St Kilda. We checked out the local area which was full of boutique shops, bars and restaurants. It was very cosmopolitan. We had heard about a wild penguin spot and so headed to the beach. The wild penguins lived on the beach in a set of rocks. We strolled along and listened to the noises of the penguins hiding in the rocks. Just as we was leaving a tiny penguin popped his head and then his fat fluffy body out of the rocks and just sat there fluffy himself up. I adored him for quite a while and headed back, we were heading to the comedy night at the hostel. It was ok, sometimes awkward and we headed into bed shortly after.
We woke up for a day on push bikes with our roomies and their friends around St.Kilda. You can rent the bikes or attempt to rip it off my just continuingly taking the bike back before the free time runs out. We managed just the first stint and decided we were too hot and too tight to want to go on a proper bike ride (it actually worked out way too expensive)! We sunbathed of the park and planned a night out and so we headed back, put on our glad rags and headed to a bar called 29th Apartment. The bar had some cheap offers on and so u indulged in a few Whiskey and Cokes. We had also arranged to meet up with a couple of Irish guys who we had had an absolutely crack with back in Hoi An, randomly we also bumped into our Doctor roomie from Hoi an too. Our group was set and so we excessively drank and un-willingly danced to cheesy nineties songs (my ideal of a nightmare - jazz mouth, jazz hands). The last thing I remember was sat chatting absolute s*** to Alex in our hostel doorway. Bed.
We were shortly due to start travelling down the east coast with Alex's friend Daisy and her friend Charlotte. They had already had a quote and so was in a rush to book it. We went next door to get our own quote and we met the craziest cat! Her name was Marny and she was obviously barmy, she was buzzing from life and promised us she would look after us. Massively hungover she gave us free ice pols and free wifi! We ended up spending all day with her chatting about random things and stopping anyone else getting any kind of quote. That night we were meeting Karl, a guy Alex went to Uni with. We went for some food, we had amazing chicken nibbles in all sorts of different sauces. We planned on an early night to coincide with Karl's early morning the next day. It different work out. We drank wine at our hostel, parties at Base ladies night and headed to Revolver and didn't finish till 7am. Karl naturally had to ring in sick! Revolver was my kind of place! Dark and grimey, purely dancing, nothing posy and sick deep house music that everyone was raving low too. I didn't stop dancing all night.
The following day we hardly did anything. Woke up late. Went to the city. Lasted 1 hour. Booked our East Coast trip with barmy Marny. Slept. Got drunk at the hostel's roof top party. Ate McDonalds (the steak wraps and roast potato wedges by the way)! And went to bed. A very simple, quick but enjoyable day. Sometimes it's nice to just have an easy one.
It was our last day in Melbourne. I had a mass morning catch up on FaceTime to Sam who was still in Asia. It was nice to see his floppy face. We collected our itinerary from Marny and got all excited about our East Coast trip. We headed for a treat and headed out for the evening for food and drinks. We ate at a placed called Abbey Road, which ironically was coated in London's Abbey Road memorabilia. They also had a great live duo on that we often sang like loons with. Dinner was perfect and washed down nicely with a Cider. We headed back and I couldn't sleep. I managed to nod off at 2:30am which gave me just a couple of hours for our early flight to Cairns in the morning.