Trips to Sydney and Canberra

We finally made our way to two other cities in Australia - Sydney and Canberra - over the Melbourne Cup weekend. The trip to Canberra was a necessity. Both Alex and Joanne had to renew their Malaysian passports and this can only be done in person at the Malaysian High Commission in Canberra. Quite troublesome if you live outside Canberra!

And since we were headed for Canberra, we thought we should include Sydney on our traveling itinerary as well. After all, it's only about 2 and a half hours drive from Canberra to Sydney (or so we were told).

So Alex booked the return flight to Canberra - which was generously paid for by his boss Colin (great Aussie bloke) - for the whole family. Once we reached Canberra, we rented a car and drove straight to Sydney. It was a short flight from Melbourne to Canberra, taking only about 50 minutes, kind of like KL-Penang flight time. But driving from Canberra to Sydney was another thing.

But I was rather excited since this was my first long drive from one city to another. The kids, of course, kept asking "are we there yet?" Thankfully one of them slept for a while. But I enjoyed the drive. The scenery was a little different. There were lots of ranches and farms so you could see horses, cattle and sheep. And guess what? There were people selling mangoes by the roadside too! And you thought you only see that on the highways in Malaysia.

Alex was tempted to speed as the car we rented was a Holden Commodore, a powerful car. But everyone stuck to the speed limit on the road. So he had little choice but to be a bit more obedient behind the wheels.

The journey took longer than 3 hours. It was nearly 6pm when we reached our hotel in Sydney. The Four Point Sheraton is just a short walk from Darling Harbor and after checking in and putting our stuff in the room, we went for a walk. There was an open concert at the harbour so it was packed with people. The kids found a nice playground nearby and we spent some time there.

As we were walking back the hotel, the sky suddenly lit up. We looked up and lo and behold! There was a nice firework display and we were about 100m from where the fireworks were launched! Awesome. The sky just went wild with an array of colours and patterns. And it was deafening too. It lasted a good ten minutes! We called it a night after having our dinner and all squeezed into the king size bed.

The next day we did the what all tourists did. We went to Chinatown and had breakfast there and wander around the harbour. Then we checked out and went to see the Sydney Opera House and view the Sydney Harbour Bridge. We took a few shots as proof we'd been there and then went to Bondi Beach. Highly overrated. That's all I can say about the beach. But the kids had fun in the sun and sand. Joanne got her shoes wet and had to be barefoot from then till we reached Canberra later that evening.

After Bondi Beach, we set out for the long journey back to Canberra. We made a wrong turn along the way and wasted half an hour before getting back onto the high way. We reached the capital city at almost 7pm.

It is such a stark contrast from Sydney. Syndey is crowded with bending and narrow roads while Canberra is quiet with very wide roads. I doubt there is much excitement in Canberra. But we were not on a real holiday. We were there because we needed to. So no complaints there.

The next morning, we headed for the Malaysian High Commission early. We were No 5 but it took a while to get things done. If you were hungry, you could buy nasi lemak sold at the counter inside the office! So weird. Once we got the passports, we started doing the tourist thing again. Our first stop was the War Memorial Museum. Interesting if you love history but a complete bore and waste of time if you don't even know what World War 1 and World War 2 were. I enjoyed the field trip.

We also went to the Telstra Tower where you could view the whole city 360 degress and the Botanical Garden. The towere was okay but the botanical garden was boring. No bright beautiful flowers to look at. Just lots of boring looking plants! We went to the city after that but all the shops were closed by then. So we let the kids play in a playground for a while before driving back to the airport to board our flight back to Melbourne.

Nothing interesting happened from then on. We reached Melbourne around 9pm and got home around 11pm. The kids both fell asleep in the car. And I had piles of dirty laundry to do the next day.

That was our latest holiday update. Not too exciting but better than nothing.