Turbulence and Turning 26

For the first time since the start of the trip the tremendous trio were split up. Amy was shunted over to the other side of the plane to celebrate her coming of age alone, as well as leaving Lissie and Maz to deal with the worst turbulence yet. Apart from that, the flight as a whole was fairly uneventful and just as pleasant as the first one. Once Lissie became accustomed to being referred to as Ms.Crackton she was again left to enjoy her 'bean curd desert' while Maz and Amy happily tucked into flan with a side helping of Tim Tam chocolate. Mistake Liz. She has learnt her lesson now.

Nine and a half hours later we were in Sydney airport, sweating and slowly realising that we now had no idea what we were going to do next. The plan had never got this far before.

First on the list was a shower followed by a birthday celebration.

After the longest journey to the wrong hostel which included an hour stop over at a petrol station, we finally made it to a clean 4 bed, cockroach free room at the lovely Sydney Central YHA.

At the time this felt very basic with not much opulence, on reflection it is the best hostel we have stayed in in Sydney. Positively luxurious.

Where would you go after spending three days in Hong King and having just arrived in Sydney... Chinatown of course. We wondered around until falling upon Darling Harbour/Cockle Bay where we went to Duke's bar and had wine and wedges. The best wedges in the world! Or maybe that is compared to four days of Chinese food? Either way we finally started to relax and get into the holiday spirit.

Amy's birthday celebrations were off to a good start...

We had our first Australian BBQ, which basically involved two Kangaroo burgers and a vegi burger for Lissie. The BBQ Boy took a liking to us and this manifested itself in extra lettuce in our burgers. This was followed by Maz having a little food fit on the balcony as she covered herself and everyone around her in lettuce and tomatoes. We sampled the local brew, Toohey's Beer and we were left a little disenchanted by its pants flavour. So there we were... on a Sydney roof top covered in burger 'garnish', full of tasteless beer and entertained by two little Chinese boys swimming round and round and round a pool.

This was definitely the time to move on. So we went next door to 'Scubar' to watch the famous Crab Races. While Lissie went up and down the lift five times to Level 8 of the hostel to find her ID, Amy and Maz were pleasantly surprised by the cheap snakebite so we bought two jugs and settled in to watch the race. There were 19 hermit crabs, all numbered with tipex, in a bowl. Once everyone had put their name next to their crab of choice they were set free to roam the stage. The first crab to reach the end of the stage won. We didn't fancy crabs on our first night (That's what she said!) but we watched from the sidelines and Maz did get involved in picking them all up again at the end to put them safely back in their bowl.

During the next hour the bar got much busier but we finally managed to befriend some of the BUNAC-ers and we were starting to have a good night. Amy was blissfully unaware of the tray of drinks balanced precariously over her head carrying two pints and six shots which later felt like 6 buckets of alcohol as they all came crashing down on her head. Needless to say that put a bit of a dampener on the evening (budum cha!) Amy made a hasty exit back home, while Liz and Maz were left with a full jug of snakebite. Lissie offered to check on Amy while Maz selflessly offered to finish off the snakebite with the other BUNAC-ers. Which she did with aplomb.

40minutes later we were all reunited once again for girlie chats while we tucked ourselves away for our first night in Sydney.