The memory that most sticks in my mind from Australia is arriving at the airport, realising that I had just whizzed through three continents in a couple of months, then getting the soil in my boots checked for foreign invaders. It was a bit of a shock to go from super-cheap Asian prices to costs that felt pretty similar to back home. In some ways, it was like going back home: my friend commented that the city looked just like Bristol, though given that she'd just been through the Middle East and Asia, her impressions of home may have got a little warped.Strangely enough, I had my first ever pie in Australia, despite having lived in the UK for over two decades by that point. Better late than never. In readiness for South America, it also inspired a strange bit of Spanish instruction from my girlfriend (I can't remember if I requested this particular phrase, or if she suggested it). Hence why I found myself wandering around Sydney repeating 'quiero tener un pollo con una barbaridad dentro de mis nalgas por favor' over and over to myself in a loud voice with lots of emotional fist shaking to aid enunciation. I'm sure its a phrase that will come in really useful, as it allegedly (Google Translate disagrees) means 'I would like to have a chicken with an enormous thing inside my buttocks please'. No doubt I'll be saying it all the time...
We were only in Australia for three days, so there wasn't a lot of time to see the place. That meant that we went for the famous sights, with lots of posing in front of the Sydney Opera House, umpteen pictures of the bridge, and a ferry tour around the harbour. The only trip we did was a train journey over to the Blue Mountains, on a double decker train (something I've not seen before). Very cold, but suitably pretty. I should probably go back at some point, although the fact that it seems most of the wildlife can kill me isn't hugely tempting. The far tamer fauna of our next stop, New Zealand, was rather more appealing.
< Laos ::: New Zealand >
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