Our flight to Sydney went on time at 10am Monday 11th December, we flew for 10hours 30minutes to arrive 4:03pm (5:03pm daylight saving time) Tuesday 12th December in Sydney. We time travelled forward 1 day, so we saw very little of the 11th December.
Sydney Airport was quite, so we collected our duty free single malt scotches and passed through customs with all our Hawaiian purchases intact.
Our hire car was less smooth, as intendant was as friendly as a cut snake. The vehicle was new.
After 30 minutes of dodge-ems in Sydney traffic, we arrived Liv appartments in Haymarket CBD edge. After priemum five star accomodation at the Surfrider in Hawaii, Liv appartments are a updated 2 bedroom apartment built probably in the 1960s. 1 hour after arrival our toilet started leaking across the bathroom floor. The apartment is clean, just old and little tired.
The outcome is we are being moved to another appartment tomorrow.
We then walking the Haymarket China Town, sourced some tea and returned to our current appartment.
After a long day we called it a night relatively early. To our dear friends and family following the blog, we can say that is nice to be back in Australia, even if it is dodgy Sydney.
We did enjoy our Hawaiian holiday but were often challenged by the tipping system and level of expense compared to even Sydney. For example, our meal tonight in China Town cost us $20Au while a similar meal in Hawaii would be that plus half again in USD. Ok, you expect that in a tourist destination until you add the exchange rate 70cents to 1USD, tipping rate of 15-20%, and state taxes, and actual cost is much higher. The investors and business owners must be making a killing because the average Hawaiian employee generally works for a below minimum wage plus tips. Taxes generally impact that wage greatly. So really tips are the real source of income. A few locals indicated that they worked two jobs to substain a living. We saw goodly number of beggars on the streets at night.
A Summary, beautiful place with very friendly locals but don’t go there unless you have factored in the American financial system in your budget. Lucky for us, we were aware.
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