To the Land of OZ

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Getting to Australia proved to be more tiring than I had imagined, and involved a lot of waiting around. The reason was that in my wisdom I had decided to get to Singapore from Bangkok by train for my flight. The journey involved : -

Three seperate trains each of around 12 hours
Two stop-overs in train stations of 12 and 10 hours
The crossing of three borders.
After this the 8 hour flight was nothing, in fact it was the least stressfull time I had had in the past three days.
Initially it was strange to be back in a 'western' country, as obviously there was a completely different feel to the city of Sydney than there was to any of the cities I had visited in Asia - and it took me a few days to get used to it. Eventually, after having overcome my tiredness and the novelty of buying incredibly cheap wine that destroys your stomach lining - I took this to mean the 'lingering hint of citrus' from its description that had initially sold it to me - I managed to see the city.
Sydney has a number of world famous landmarks, namely the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. The bridge was impressive, and gave great views of the city from the river, overlooking the Opera House. From beneath it was a stunning show of how industrial architecture can actually hold in itself a beauty that is practical also. The Opera House was stunning - from a distance. The closer you seemed to get to it , it seemed less impressive. Rather than the shells of the building being joined, they jut out from a utilitarian style concrete bunker. I thought that the lack of awe I experienced was just me, yet I later found that everyone had expected more. In the run up to Christmas I had expected the city to be decorated, however very little was, and the city seemed surprisingly quiet. This however may have been due to the high racial diversity of the city and the fact that Australia is an incredibly secular country. Compared to home, Christmas was just not an important event.
The hostel I stayed in had a nice atmosphere, although over the Christmas period deteriorated, namely because the cleaning stopped. The area it was in, Glebe, although close to the city, had the feeling of a town rather than a city, which made it a nice place to stay. The trouble was, it was all too easy to find yourself caught in a cycle of drinking and sleeping, rarely leaving the hostel except for a brief forray into the world of the bottle shop down the road. It was dubbed the 'vortex' by one traveller, who had previously stayed there 10 weeks, and on this trip was 'getting out' while he still could. The achievement of escaping it was a major one, even heading to the shops became a mission for the day!

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