Family Trip To Sydney

It has been a while since I updated this blog of mine. I have been busy with my work, especially with the summon cases & the review of my junior colleagues’ work that was so tedious that I nearly cannot bring myself to enjoy my holiday, knowing that the deadline for filing the corporate tax is about 3 months away.

This trip to Sydney was a real eye opener for me, as it was a real showcase of the good and bad of Sydney. It was coincident that when I was there, my admired football team, Manchester United was there too. I had the honour of watching them in training at Alianz Stadium, which was a 15 minutes bus ride from my hotel.

I had the chance to see Sydney Harbour, Sydney Harbour Bridge, Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney Opera House, Circular Quay, Darling Harbour, Madamme Tussads, Sydney Tower Eye, Wildlife Safari Park, Bondi Beach, Sydney Olympic Park, Paddy Market & their Underwater World.

I would like to thank my fellow volunteer friend, Jane & my KTV Group chairman for sharing with me their itineraries, otherwise this free and easy trip would not have been possible.

Some pointers that I took back with me during this trip :-

• The people in Sydney are generally friendly and show more concern towards the disabled. I was allowed to jump queue when I was clearing the customs when I was on the way back in Singapore
• Their public transport, especially the trains were very impressive. The trains have quiet carriages, where u have to keep conversation to a minimum & handphones are to be put into silent mode when you are in the carriage.

 

• Their slow and laid back lifestyle are perhaps the reason why custom clearance at the Sydney Airport is so slow. I took 1.5 hours to clear the customs when I reached Sydney and 2 hours when I got out of Sydney. It nearly caused the passenger behind me to nearly miss his flight.
• Their cab fare is pretty expensive, starting at A$5.30 and jumping at A$0.05 per second. The fortunate thing was that I was warned prior to boarding the cab to the airport.
• The transport network is pretty well connected, as a result, we did not even need to engage a day tour for our trip. The only setback was we did not manage to tour Blue Mountain as hoped as it was too far from our hotel.