India Consulate and Chinatown, Sydney

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Well now, today was an eventful day! We woke up at 7:30am so that we could get downtown for 9am to pay a visit to the India Consulate located in downtown Sydney. The bus ride wasnt too long but when we finally arrived, there were already about 100 people waiting, lame. For some reason, the consulate is ONLY open from 9:30am - 12:30pm, so I can't say we were too surprised about the number of people. We decided to just grab our numbers and leave.
We had brunch in a cafe on Blight St. then paid a visit to a corner store for snacks and stamps. When we returned, they said they were now serving number 97... we were 98 and 99, lucky! We finally got to the front with passports and forms at hand, everything was in order, we got our receipt, they told us that in order to process the visas, they needed to keep our passports... sketchy (or "etch" as they say here) but we had to do it to get the visa. We then left, feeling relieved that it was all done when we realized that we had a flight to catch in 5 days, and the India consulate had our passports for the next 8 days, we had a small freak out. We had to go back upstairs, get our passports back, photocopy them at the corner store, and bring back the passports... the lady at the desk was very frustrated with us. Apparently, for domestic flights, you dont need a passport (becca and graham just told us that), oh well, we got our photocopies.
It was about 12:30pm when we had finally figured it all out and left.
We decided that we might as well chill downtown for awhile since we had nothing better to do, so we went to chinatown! gotta love chinatown. Funny enough, Evan managed to pick out (randomly) the ONE chinese man in a huge crowd of Australians, and when we asked him where to find chinatown, he seemed to be pretty offended, but was cool when he found out we were Canadian and actually wanted to go to chinatown.
Chinatown is mainly focused in this one huge market, Market City, creative. It is massive! Great bargains everywhere you look, they even have places to get massages! Evan tried to haggle the massage lady down a few bucks and she got really really mad, so we didnt get massages. Evan did buy a shirt and shades, and I also bought some shades and a hoodie.
Outside of the market, we met this poor homeless Asian man who was dressed up and hoola-hooping, I got caught in a conversation with him, though i hadnt the slightest clue what he was saying. Evan managed to film it, check it out.
We then stopped for lunch at a chinese restaurant and had some great Wonton soup that was only 4 dollars, and Evan finally got his massage... from an electronic machine, haha Evan was in pain.
On the way back to the bus station to head home, we noticed numerous stores that read "Adult Bookstore", we were so confused as to why there were be so many adult bookstores so we checked one out. THEY ARE NOT BOOKSTORES, just take our word for it.
We finally arrived home at 4:30pm after a long and eventful and wonderful day.
Peace and love till next time,
Ev and Hoags

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Photos

Poor old war veteran
dressed up and hoola-hooping for money to open a church

Evan and the shades lady!
buy one for 10 dollar get one free!

Market City
the huge chinatown market

Chris and his illin hoodie
15 bucks

Evan getting his electro massage
the machine costs $250, we didnt want one

Restaurant where we had lunch
4 dollar soup

Evan and his new hat
...nike?

Waiting for the L90
chillin

Comments

[Jennifer Wells]

adult book stores
Hey guys. Lousy weather here, heading into the Grey Cup. (Go Bombers.) Just wanted to say that your expression of suprise about those adult bookstores was so hilarious. (And utterly unbelievable.) Love you lots One of the Mothers

[One Dad]

You'll wear anything
Nice hoodie Chris. Didn't they have matching pants?? Also nice to hear you went to the bookstore to find something to read. And your Mom says you don't read enough. Ha!

[tim]

hoodie
Chris, i DIG those threads