One Week in Sydney...

G’Day you flaming drognogs, you bloody Galahs etc!

We got to Sydney no trouble and with such an early arrival time we thought it prudent to walk around and get a feel for the surroundings. This of course came with the customary walk around a foreign supermarket to point at things that are slightly different, like this ridiculous confusion:

And to take note how amazingly expensive everything is in Australia ($1 = 65p). So when I saw this item, my mind was completely blown:

Other examples include a small pint of beer called a schooner costing 6-12 Freddos or a cooked breakfast ranging from 10-17 Freddos.

At one point we went for a breakfast run by some lovely Chinese lady and the food came out with no ketchup, well that isn’t a breakfast. So I asked the lady,

“can I have some ketchup please?”

The polite lady nodded a scuttled off to somewhere and reemerged with a straw, plonked it on the table and started to walk off. I was startled but managed to compose myself enough to swivel on my seat and catch her attention.

“sorry I meant, can I have some ketchup please?”

The lady apologised and again scuttled off to return with the much anticipated red elixir. I turned my head to look at some Chinese “artwork” on the wall and turned back to see a pepper grinder placed on the table. At this moment I was faced with a difficult choice; accept the pepper grinder and continue with my rapidly cooling breakfast without the lubricant needed for the morning’s best activity, or risk it for a potentially embarrassing situation. It was just like deal or no deal.

I took the risk, and explained the lady that I would like some “ketchup… you know…. red… tomato sauce.”

“Oooooh” she said, returning with the bottle of the delicious loveliness.

“Sorry about that” she said.

“Not a problem” I replied.

She then pointed at the pepper grinder and stated “I always think that is ketchup”.

I spent the rest of the day wondering who taught her English, and how one would ever get the two confused.

We also walked around Sydney; seeing the famous sights, humorous signs and bald rats:

After that we went back to the room and got hit by jet lag due to not having a Sunday I guess and slept for 16 hours. But after that we were alright and headed over to Manly, a super lush beachy suburb of Sydney to stay with Mark and Michelle and the Babbas.

It was really good to have nice rest point to sleep, shower, eat home cooked lush meals and forget about lumbering around stupid annoying backpacks. We also had an awesome day trip a some fish markets full of Chinese people and fish as well as Bondi Beach, which was raining but still good; and we saw a group of gay deafs doing very flamboyant sign language. Cheers M&M.

Literally a 2 minute walk from the Bilsons was my old mate Ed Hunter the former Head Hunter. So we went out with him in Manly, #Referee. I decided to record the events in a real time note:

The next morning we worked it off with a trip to Palm Beach, which is where they film Home & Away. But seeing as I’ve seen probably 20 mins of Home & Away accumulatively in my life it was a little wasted on me; but you can’t argue with 31 degrees!

The next night it was back to Michelle’s and went out in Manly again with no Ed (because he couldn’t hack it) but unbelievably weirdly I bumped into an old mate, Rohan from Marlow. He lives here now so was literally just a coincidence, bizarre. Unfortunately I only have this terrible picture.

Saturday rolled around and Ed had recovered so we went central Sydney with Ed’s gf, Em. We went out in the area where we arrived and slept for 16 hours, Kings Cross. Famed for its prostitution and drug ridden tramps; these had proven to be very vocal earlier in the week, unlike LA tramps. Nether the less this was a good night out with plenty of shape throwing. We left the club at 3.30 but for some reason no cabs would take us home, so we had to take two buses eventually arrive home at 6am after Ed ate 2 burritos. I don’t do buses.

After more sleeping we eventually left Sydney, great town. Oddly it was cheaper to fly to out next destination (including transfers) than it was to get a bus or train. So another flight we took, off to Byron Bay.

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