roganjosh

I had so much fun in Bellingen that I’m now a year older than I was! I spent my birthday wandering around a rainforest, which was a novel celebration, and the rest of the time just swinging around in a hammock or floating down Bellingen river on an inner tube. It was nice to get out of the city for a bit, and see some countryside - and there was plenty of it on the 8 hour trip north!

Took the overnight train back down to Sydney and I’ve been betraying my backpacker credentials by staying in a posh hotel on Coogee beach. The beach is lovely - much smaller then Bondi and much more laid back. Nice to get up in the morning, shuffle down to the sea and go for a swim in the rock pool before breakfast. The beach side living has got to be the reason so many people love living in Sydney - I think they built the harbour bridge and the opera house just to keep the tourists off the coast.

Speaking of the opera house I went to a performance of Verdi’s “A Masked Ball”, mainly just so I could get a good look around inside. Of course you can do that if you just go on a tour of the building, but I figure if they went to the trouble of building an opera house then it must be worth seeing some opera inside it! Trouble is, opera is, well… silly! People throwing their arms around and melodramatically glowering at each other while tra-la-la-ing their hearts out. This opera seemed particularly daft, with a plot against the King, a fortune teller, the King’s best friend’s wife trying to find a herb that will make her forget her love for the King. It all ended with some stabbing though, which was VERY DRAMATIC, and the music was good. Being inside the opera house is pretty cool too, sat up high looking down you get the feeling that you’re inside a shell. Why the people sat next to me felt the need to send text messages during the performance is beyond me though! These seats weren’t cheap!!

So that’s pretty much that for Australia - I’m heading for the airport this afternoon, then a flight to Bangkok, a night in an airport hotel, and another flight in the morning to Chiang Mai! I really should pay more attention when I’m booking these things.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 5:58 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.