We started off in Sydney. Sydney was a really peaceful, friendly, and outrageously expensive city; visiting from Hong Kong was a huge adjustment. You were lucky [...]]]> Happy 2010! Alan and I spent this past Christmas and New Year down under. A great vacation, but the trip highlight was definitely the time we spent offshore and underwater.

We started off in Sydney. Sydney was a really peaceful, friendly, and outrageously expensive city; visiting from Hong Kong was a huge adjustment. You were lucky if you saw one person walk past you on the street every 10 minutes. Being a port city, it shared a lot of similarities with Halifax, so with the exception of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House, it was charming but nothing new. We spent the first couple days sightseeing before heading off the Cairns.

Cairns was a small, super tourist friendly town. As food goes, anything you wanted you could find there, and the seafood was excellent. The main downtown area was focused around the esplanade—a huge outdoor pool located right on the waterfront. Due to the venomous jellies in the water during the summer months, people can’t swim in the ocean, and this is the alternative. While in Cairns, we took a great daytrip to Mossman’s Gorge, the Daintree Rainforest, and most importantly, Cape Tribulation, where reef meets rainforest. We had a crazy Kiwi for a guide who took us on a quick rainforest hike and made me lick a green ant’s ass. It tasted like lemons, in case you were wondering and you can get a day’s worth of vitamin C by eating them. We spent a couple days in Cairns before starting our dive trip.

Our dive trip started on Christmas Day. Over 4.5 days, we visited Cod Hole, the Coral Sea and Osprey reef, and then went back up to the ribbon reefs. We had the opportunity to see a potato cod feed, a shark feed, and then numerous other fish during out fun dives. We didn’t take any photos, but some of our fellow divers were very generous with theirs!

When we returned to Cairns, there was enough time for a quick trip to Kuranda (a small village in the rainforest) before we flew off too Sydney for New Years. We arrived in Sydney at 8pm, and surprisingly arrived downtown in time to see the 9pm fireworks. Luckily, many families left after that, so we easily moved up to a better vantage point where we could see the Darling Harbour and Circular Quay (Sydney Harbour Bridge, Opera House) fireworks. It was an amazing display that lasted over 20 minutes. After that, the party began. Bars had people spilling out into the streets dancing and hammered. Definitely a great place to celebrate New Years! Because it is absolutely impossible to get a hostel (or any accommodation) in Sydney on NYE, we spent the night walking the streets watching the crazy drunken antics. Then we took and early bus to Bondi Beach to spend New Years Day.

After that, it was on to Melbourne. The only reason we went there was to catch out flight back to Hong Kong, and frankly, it was rather boring, so half a day was enough!

We also visited quite a few zoos throughout Australia, with Toronga being the best by far. You can see all the photos from trip HERE. Alan also created a compilation video of our trip below which runs just over 8 minutes so it’s an easy watch and it includes some great footage from the New Year’s Eve fireworks (be sure to click HD on). Our next trip will be Vietnam/Cambodia in February!

Australia 2009 – 2010 from Alan Tek on Vimeo.