Our new (temporary) flat!

So today we moved into our new flat.  It's in the Kings Cross area of sydney. Which after a wee wonder about we discovered was an interesting area.  It's a bit touristy but it is also full of lots of bars, cafes, restaurants and, oh yes, strip clubs.  But our flat is a wee bit away from all that.  The area seems cool and reminds me a little bit of Leith, the up and coming part anyway. 

So the flat is a 2 bedroom and we are in a twin room, yes, I fear I may never get rid of Greig.  In the other room are two girls from Somerset. They seem lovely, however, Greig has just walked into the room with a look of utter despair on his face. Apparently they just asked him where Glasgow was, and if it was in Scotland. They also asked if Scotland was in the Euro, because, and I kid you not, "Wales is in the Euro"? Yes folks. This is what we are living with. It could be a challenging month or two.  That's all we aim to be here for then, fingers crossed, we will be able to afford a place down in Bondi with the awesome jobs I am sure we will both have.  There is also a decent lounge with sofa's and a TV too. So we seem to be sorted, for the time being at least.

So, this is our room, and here is Greig settling in:

And here is my bed. Delightful, I am sure you will agree. Well, it will do for now.

And oh yes, I forgot to mention the bathroom, I mean washer/dryer room, no I mean bathroom, argh, I don't know. It seems to be both. Weird.

It will do for now. I suppose.  I aim for luxury after this.

I have edited this to spell greigs name correctly as he is a big princess.

To Glebe!

So on Sunday we moved from Bondi to Glebe.

We are now in a YHA hostel in an area called Glebe.  It’s more or less in the city centre. So it’s quite good and is a million times better than our hostel in Bondi. It’s like a 5 star hotel compared to it.  This place is fantastic, it has a huge shared kitchen, games room, dining room, laundry room and TV room.  The staff are great, apart from the weird guy who just came into our room and played with our taps and light fittings. However, they were fine, so we are perplexed as to why he came.  


We would like to go and stay in Manly for a bit and get a better scope for it. However, the hostels there are looking slightly booked up next week due to the fact that Mardi gras is on. So we are now looking at shared accommodation. We are about to go see a place in Kings Cross. Fingers crossed.

So on Thursday night we had our first proper drunken night out.  After celebrating getting our flat, we arranged to meet up with Chris and get some dinner and play some pool.  7 hours and many schooners later, chris and greig looked like this: 

This was taken in Scruffy Murphys, an Irish bar in the city centre, where we failed in trying to make our eggheads experience count in the pub quiz. The questions were stupid anyway.

I must mention that Greig decided to have 3 dinners on this night. The fat sod. A $10 steak, a burger and then chilli and garlic chicken, the later of which we all had on our way home. 

A big thanks this week must go to the staff at the Glebe YHA, a great hostel I would recommend to anyone and to Perry's Pizza who fed us twice this week, here is one of there creations.

Pepperoni, ham, onion and mushroom. I would, however, say, never, ever, get their garlic bread, we got it for free on the first night we stayed in the hostel and you could still smell it this morning when we moved out.

A trip to Manly

The main mode of transport here between the north and south side of Sydney which is separated between the harbour, is the ferries.  So on Saturday we got the ferry to Manly.  Which if you look on the map is at the far point of the north side of the harbour.  It is supposed to take about 30 minutes to cross. 

However, our ferry took an hour as it hit another boat, more or less destroying it and sending it’s occupants, 2 young girls, flying into the water.  It was their fault, this ferry is fairly big, like the Arran ferry or something similar.  Their boat was a tiny 2 person boat.  They tried to cut across the front of the ferry but then realised they would not make it and ended up trying to turn out the way, but it was far too late by then.  We were sitting at the front and all we could see was there terrified faces as they disappeared out of sight, and all we heard was a thump and a lot of screaming.  I’m pretty sure their boat was destoyed but I think they were ok, although there was a lot of people running about the place shouting.  

However, the trip did allow for plenty of pretty pictures to be taken.  Here are a few:

And one or two interesting pictures. I have had to edit this to save a bit of dignity:

I think they were slightly drunk, and yes the two girls in the middle are partially naked.  One top half, other bottom half. So there you go.

On the job front.

So not that I want to rush into getting a job but as I mentioned before it is so expensive here that you really need to think about working fairly quickly.  

So last week I had two interviews, not for jobs, one was with a guy who owns a PR agency who has offered to help me out. He’s been great.  And the other was with a recruitment women.  Who was not much help at all! She basically told me that I was wasting my time here and that I should have waited a couple of years before coming over until I had at least 5 years experience.  She said that I had wasted my visa opportunity as you only get one.  So that was a real confidence booster!  However, she did give me some really good advice on my CV so that was good.

Today I met with another recruitment agency and within a couple of hours they had got me an interview tomorrow morning, late wednesday night British time. So we will see how that goes.  

 

Our first 3 nights in Bondi

So we arrived in sydney on the morning of the 10th, and headed straight to our Hostel in Bondi.  The lovely Lamrock Lodge Hostel.

To be honest,  the only good thing about it was that it was literally about 100 yards to the Beach.  The hostel was poor.  We have affectionately named it Barlinnie.  As it really was like a prison. The rooms were like small cells, with hard bunk beds, and a tiny sink in the corner, the windows had bars on them and it was so hot in the room you could have fried an egg in the sink. 

It was run by Russians who didn’t speak much English, we were pretty sure they were the mafia. 

The lodge was just down this street on the right. You can actually see it. It's the taller building just through the trees.


Although it wasn't exactly the best lodge in Sydney.  It was in a grand location and allowed us to get a good scope for Bondi.  One thing we have learned about Bondi is that it is like a live episode of The Hills.  It is full of beautiful people everywhere, who are all obsessed with being, thin, tanned and beautiful. Greig and I don't really fit in too well. However, we have fallen for Bondi, so we may well live there once we settle and get jobs etc.

I think this pic of Bondi Beach shows why we liked it so much.

So after those 3 nights we moved into my friends flat which is also bondi, but is about half way between Bondi Junction and the Beach.   On our first afternoon in the flat we were greeted by this little fella on our balcony:

One thing about Oz though. It is so expensive here.  I’ll use alcohol as an example, so they don’t serve pints, they serve schooners.  Which are about 2 thirds of a pint.  The cheapest one we have found is about about £3, the most expensive about £7.  It’s ridiculous.  Rent is also out of this world.  If you want a furnished flat then it is about $750 a week.  So that works out at about £2000 a month.  Plus you have to pay a months deposit on top of that when you get the flat. Just mental.

Bangkok

Well, it's certainly an interesting place.  And on reflection, one I would recommend.

It is just a completely mental city.  I’m amazed we didn’t get run over, as they clearly have no traffic laws at all!  They just seem to try to hit people.  And the taxi drivers are a bit weird and are obviously on commission from the local brothels.  We got asked by 2 different drivers on our first morning if we ‘wanted to go to the lady market?’ They even showed us menu’s, as in like pictures of the girls we could ‘see’.  We politely turned them both down.   

Apart from that, it’s an amazing place. One I would definitely recommend visiting.  The people are really friendly and the place is so cheap.  An hours taxi ride to the airport cost us £6.  A pint was about £1.20. 

On the 2nd night we went to a restaurant called Vertigo at the top of a hotel.  This is the view we had from the table:

 

 

To Australia!

Right, so for those of you who don't know, I am in australia, Sydney to be precise.  I decided to keep this blog to keep all my family and friends updated with everything Greig and I get up too.

So we booked the trip back in November of last year with Flight centre, through this man:

His name is Duncan. So if anything goes wrong here then it is him you need to blame.

So our plan was to come to Sydney via a 2 night stop over in Bangkok from Glasgow. We are planning to look for jobs in Sydney and earn lots of money so we can buy lots of nice things. That is essentially it.

More to follow.