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with anna
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A.nna
 anna // singaporean. my dream is to some day live in a countryside and have a lot of dogs. reach me on
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Tuesday, July 1, 2014
8 Days in Sydney, Australia Previously I decided to post on my experience Skydiving in Sydney before I actually write on my other days in Sydney because I quote, "Without the skydive experience, this trip would have been nothing but a summer getaway." and I meant it. In all honesty, Sydney is a lovely city with friendly people around. You bump into someone on the road, they'll say sweet things like after you which I promise you'll never get in Singapore. Or if you're pushing a trolley saying excuse me in the supermarket, people actually apologize for blocking your way. I've never been to Australia, and Sydney was my first city in that wild country. It was a great experience, just not one of my favourite cities. Any other ways, here are some of the things I checked from my itinerary which may help you if you're travelling to Sydney :) 
Sydney Opera House
About: Sydney Opera House is a thriving hub of art, culture and history. It's one of the world's most distinctive buildings, attracting millions of visitors from all over the world.
Review: I didn't actually step in Sydney Opera House, there wasn't any good musical or rather, any musical or show I knew how to appreciate happening when I was there. Hence, I gave that I miss. But, if you're in Sydney and looking for a cheaper musical with good theatre system, check out Capitol Theatre. The Lion King was featured when we were there, we did not choose to give it a miss, but rather they were fully booked the whole week. They have 1200 seats available, and yet fully booked for all timing and days, hence if you're catching a musical there, BOOK IN ADVANCE!
Blue Mountain Day Tour
Blue Mountain Day Tour
We took a one-day Blue Mountain Tour with One Stop Adventures. Basically we trekked for 2.5 hours up and down Blue Mountain. I fell when we were about to reach the bottom, :( so I had to slowly climb my way up. It was a great view and we were really lucky because the tour started early and we managed to catch the clouds covering the rainforest - picture one.
After trekking, we had lunch which was provided in the tour. It was one of the hearty-iest meal I had in Sydney. I just have to show you..
 
Now you may continue drooling. It had ham, tomato, lots of corn beef and cheese with some leafy greens. And the bread, omg, the bread, crispy and soft at the same time. LOVE IT. And we were given brownies and apple too. What a healthy and hearty meal.. After which, we proceeded to Echo Point where we started trekking again - down to The Three Sisters and thank god we didn't have to climb up (background: I sprained my leg when I fell. I didn't want to continue trekking but Ben, our tour guide, told us that we will be taking the World's Steepest Railway back up, and... I cannot miss it for a leg!)
The Three Sisters
4 hours of blood and sweat to this
Honestly I do not buy the story of The Three Sisters. With all due respect for Australia's most visited by tourist location, but first and foremost, the story our tour guide told us was entirely different from Wikipedia. I didn't buy the story from Wikipedia any ways. Secondly, how can someone turn another person into a rock? Scientifically, it didn't make any sense that a Bogeyman-alike human was chasing after 7 daughters of a magician. And the magician saw and used his wand to turn his 7 daughters into rock which 4 collapsed after years past, and hence The Three Sisters. Put that aside, the scenery and view was fantastic though, and the steepest railway was really cool though, 52 degree! It was never in my bucket list but I can safely say I took the World's Steepest Railway!
Sydney Harbour Bridge
Nothing fantastic about the bridge, but you can climb the bridge though. It may cost you around AUD200, but I thought it wasn't worth it so I didn't went up. But, believe me, Sydney Harbour Bridge is prettier than London Bridge!
 
If you love seafood, or sashimi - you've to read the next two paragraph very carefully.
YOU HAVE TO GO TO SYDNEY FISH MARKET.
I mean it. We went to the fish market the second day we were there, and went back for more the last day before we headed back. They have the freshest seafood. And it's ridiculously cheap. 1 kilogram of sashimi cost you around AUD49. It sounds ridiculous, but the platter of sashimi I had was AUD11. Look at how many zillion pieces are there!! We had to go for the second platter. (The last day we went for 3 platter immediately, and we had sashimi coma; not kidding)
God bless you, fisherman.
As for the oysters, half a dozen cost around AUD7 and they've more which I didn't manage to try and was not a big fan of either - scallops, king prawn, lobster etc. Tip: Go on a week day, you can get seats around on a week day. We went on a weekend and we were sitting on the grass patch which we were very insecure about because the sea gulls seems to be eyeing our sashimi.
Background Info: Sydney Fish Market is the largest market of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere and the third largest seafood market in terms of variety in the world. Approximately 2,800 crates (around 50 tonnes) of the freshest possible seafood is auctioned each day through the computerised Dutch auction system to approximately 150 buyers.
 
North Head, Sydney National Park
Oh, this was a good day. We were tricked by Skydive Australia again. But we didn't let that ruin our day so we head off to Manly Beach. We took a ferry from Town Hall to Manly Beach and hired a bicycle for AUD46 a day to cycle around. From the ferry terminal to Sydney National Park, you'll need to cycle for around 20 minutes but our dear GPS gave us the wrong direction, we ended up cycling for 3 hours plus, 4 hours back and forth in total to North Head. It was still worth it, the view for breathtaking. I still remember the very moment we reach the top of the hill, I was panting from the tedious exercise, but when I saw the scenery, it literally took my breathe away.
We sat there for a good half an hour before we decided to ride back to town. It was great day, I built some real calves' muscle and my legs were hard like metal the next day. (The next day was the day we trekked for 4 hours..... It was no longer physically tiring, but very mentally challenging.)
Sydney Chinatown at Haymarket
I realized a lot of countries I've been to always have Chinatown. And that's where you find Chinese food, and Chinese of course. We love one particular store, 朱妈妈台湾小吃 Zhu Mama Taiwanese Food, they have very good soya milk with you tiao.
150-year-old Sydney Town Hall
Forgotten Songs
Rum Hospital
Yes, you get Free Walking Tour in Sydney too. They cover a range of places like Darling Harbour, Rum Hospital, Queen Victoria Building, Forgotten Songs, Sydney Town Hall, Sydney's CBD within 4 hours and end at Sydney Harbour Bridge. My favourite was Forgotten Song. The place commemorates the songs of fifty birds once heard in central Sydney before they were gradually forced out of the city. It was really artsy and pretty!
Background Info: I'm not sure exactly which country or state provides Free Walking Tour but I've been to London's and Sydney's. Basically the tour is free. You merely tip your guide according to their service. It's works pretty well if you're going on a budget trip because you don't burn a hole in your pocket with tour, and you pay whatever you're comfortable with. AND, you get better service because they live on tips only.
I didn't really enjoy the tour because I learnt that Sydney (I'm not sure about the whole of Australia) doesn't have much history and originality. The phrase that was most repeated was "They copied ***, they copied ***, they copied ***" Everything is copied. They've a huge clock copying Big Ben, they've a huge sculpture and hospital copying the Irish. Sighhh.
Hence I quote again, "Without the skydive experience, this trip would have been nothing but a summer getaway." And I quote again, "It was a great experience, just not one of my favourite city."
A few tips if you're travelling to Sydney:
Labels: australia, opera house, singapore, sydney, things to do in sydney, tips, travel, travel blog, travel tips, travels, tripadvisor, walking tour, what to do in sydney Monday, June 23, 2014
Sydney Skydivers - 14000ft Tandem Dive I thought this deserves an individual post.. A respect for the particular sport I fell in love with, SKYDIVING. Honestly, it has been on my bucket list for the longest time. I wanted to skydive when I was in Europe 2 years back but it was quite expensive, well it was in euros and pounds so my budget didn't allow me to fulfill that one dream I'm both afraid and needed to do. I just came back from Sydney yesterday, and in all honesty, the city was lovely and filled with friendly people, but it's not my favourite. Without the skydive experience, this trip would have been nothing but a summer getaway. In this post, I'm specially highlighting the experience of skydiving, and which skydive company in Sydney which I DO NOT RECOMMEND. And I shall start with which company to not go for, let's just end this post with positivity so let's save the best for last. Initially I booked my skydive with Skydive Australia, they've great deals for skydiving and a legit website. I booked it for a Tuesday and chose to get picked up at Holiday Inn at 550am. So what happened was on Tuesday, I left the apartment around 5am and because it was before-sunrise-early, we needed to grab a cab which cost us AUD40 to get to Holiday Inn. FYI, their office opens at 7am which means from 550am to 7am, I have no one I can contact for my skydive. Nonetheless, I trusted them and waiting till 7am. No one came to pick us up! So we called their office, and to our surprise, there was air turbulence which means our skydive was cancelled. And FYI, we weren't notified and on average, Sydney's mall and shops open around 10am. Which also means we had to loiter around for 3 hours because it doesn't make sense for us to return to our apartment and rest because their shops also close around 4pm. It's okay. I understand and forgive them for Tuesday. But we told the lady over the phone, her name is Sharon, clearly that we would like to reschedule to Wednesday, and should there be any cancellations, do notify us as we have Aus' contact number. Let's cut the story short.. Wednesday, same shit. We woke up at 330am and took a cab to Holiday Inn, waited till 7am to call their office to find out again why we weren't picked up. To our surprise, their pilot was sick. I can totally understand if your pilot is sick and understand that a huge company like yourself has only ONE PILOT. Fine, it's okay. But my question is, why weren't we informed? Sharon claimed she texted us, but to be honest, I'm certain she took down the wrong number (we didn't gave her the wrong number, she had ID caller that displayed our contact), that's why we didn't receive any text (I'm certain too we can receive text because we could receive the cab booking details via text). Service recovery I received: No apologies, and Sharon insisted to refund us. Probably because I questioned her what any human being would said being awake since 330am, and she couldn't provide a valid answer. Why would I want a refund when I spent AUD80 on cab for two days? Yup, even if you refund me my skydive package amount, I still wasted AUD80. She emailed me awhile after with what I call the template service recovery email which ended with we hope you'd skydive with us in the near future. The first thing that came into my mind, which I stated in my reply to my dear Sharon, if you are not even able to pass on a notification to a client, how am I supposed to trust you with my life? So moral of the story is, DO NOT skydive with Skydive Australia. I mean it because I was so thankful I chose Sydney Skydivers. I understood from my Blue Mountain tour guide, Ben, that Sydney Skydivers are very popular in Australia, which I totally agree after my first tandem dive with them. They've experienced and great instructors to boost your experience. Now this is the exciting part - the whole skydive experience... We were picked up on time to head off to Picton Road. It was a huge land I supposed owned by Sydney Skydivers. There were around 10 people in the mini bus which kinda calm me down too because before a near-death-experience, to know 9 others trust this company, everything should be fine. Haha! Upon reaching, we had to submit our indemnity form which you agree that you wouldn't blame the company should anything happens to you. It wasn't as scary to submit the form, because you still have the chance to run out of the field back home. They announce shortly after that I was attached to Coby, which I highly recommend as your tandem instructor. Not only is he experienced (according to him, he had skydived more than 6000 times), he's good at calming you down by singing and the jokes. It did helped, because you still see the professionalism in him.  After getting changed, we were walked to the aircraft. That is one moment that happened so fast. It was a short 30m walk, but you secretly wished it took 3 hours to reach. Up the aircraft, I was the last few the board, which means I am the first few to jump! To be exact, I was the 3rd. For the aircraft to reach the height of 14000ft above ground, by the way it's above clouds, it takes around 5 minutes. All I could think and feel was, damn! The last 5 minutes of my life and I haven't yet tell the people I love how much they mean to me. There was a signal light that blinked when it hits 3 minutes, and then 1 minute.. Coby started to clip on his harness to mine. I kept asking him to check again because most accidents happen because the diver slips out of the harness and not that the parachute does not open. (Source: Google) And when the 1 minute signal light lit up, tadaaaa, all that you've been dreading - the door opening for you to start jumping. That 1 minute HONESTLY felt like 2 seconds, I'm not kidding. Once Coby pushed me and himself out of the plane, it was a good one minute of free fall. I never thought free fall was that impact-less. Well, free fall sounds very scary because free means no limit and fall means fallllll. Trust me, it wasn't scary at all. And from the time I jumped out of the plane, that one second, yes I felt like this is it, my life is over. But right after that freaking second, is the best time of my life. I cannot find a word closer to fly to describe free fall. You feel nothing but the wind, the cloud and of course your instructor behind you. And it's true. Human have no perception of height after a few thousand feet high. It's true. You don't even know how high you are, and no one can tell you how fast you're travelling at. According to average stats, you're travelling around 200km/hr. BUT YOU CAN'T EVEN FEEL IT. All I knew and was running through my mind was I'm fucking flying, I'm a bird, I'm a plane! I was secretly hoping that free-fall could have lasted a while more after he pulls for the parachute. It was a whole different kind of fun after the parachute opens. Coby removed my goggles and allowed me to gear the parachute. I was spinning and turning in the sky, probably 7000ft high. One thought which I recall came into my mind when I was gearing though, if I fall now I'll still die. Lol! But death thoughts wouldn't leave your mind, I'm just saying it was death-worthy. Not exactly per se, but it was out of this world. Once I landed on the ground, I turned to Coby and said I want to do it again. And I meant it. He was just laughing it off. I didn't skydive the second time of course, I figured out I might as well skydive in a different country or state to have a whole different view. But from now on, skydiving would be in my travel itinerary. Not for Thailand or Malaysia, but probably the next few eastern or western destination. Lastly, not to forget.. Labels: australia, gopro, review, skydive, skydiving, sydney, sydney skydivers, tandem dive |
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xx
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