Chinese newyear in Sydney

Hi, today is the Chinese Newyear celebration here in Sydney. We are now entering the year of the rat and because of that there was a parade through town. It is organised by the Chinese community, but it seemed that a large part of the population came to watch. The parade had carts with all kinds of animals, dragons, marching bands and a lot of dressed up Chinese people.

After watching the parade we went for lunch in the park and then went see the Chinese garden. This was a very feng shui like thing with nice ponds and waterfalls in it. The garden was larger then I expected and had a lot of tourists in it.

To finallize my sightseeing I went for a walk along the harbour bridge. This is the largest bridge in Sydney and was quite impressive and nicely built. From it I had my first view of the famous Sydney Opera House, which was about time as I've already been here for three days.

Tomorrow the introduction at UTS will start. I hope that it wont last to long, because I would like to go to the beach.

Sydney, the second day.

Aloha! Today the second day. I slept really well tonight, when I woke up it was already past noon. After breakfast I went to running and found out that it was raining, and raining good. My first plan was to go to the beach today, but because of the rain I decided not to.

Instead I tried to find the UTS rowing club today. When I got to the train station the train were not running so I walked. It is quite some distance to the rowing club, about 10km, but the walk was good. From my hostel you go thought the city centre, past the university and then you follow Parramatta road. This is a long road all the way through town from east to west. It has a strange combination of buildings on it: houses, stores, factories and collapsing things. At some point I had to take a right towards the bay. That road took my through a living neighbourhood with small houses that all had verandas and nice well kept gardens. At the end of that there was the bay and the rowing club.

Oddly enough there was nobody rowing at the club when I arrived. On top of the club was a some sort of bar where I went to take a look. Inside I found many middle aged men drinking large quantities of beer. As this was not what I was expecting I decided to ask the lady behind the bar. She told me that the rowers were not in at the moment, and told me maybe to come back on Monday. So, more on that some other time.

a Picture special! from Ahmenabad

Just because there have been so few pictures: especially for you: a Picture special! I hope to create a flickr album for my photos soon, so stay tuned.

But for now, may I present to you:

Squirrels!




And, the best picture we took with us on it:


Made in Ahmenabad, India.

Comments!

Hey, I just found out that you can leave me comments. It is nice to read someting from the Netherlands. Thanks for those of you who did, sorry that I did not find out earlier. This makes the whole blogging very 2 dimensional. Nice.

For people who like to chat: the time difference between here and the Netherlands it quite big. Now its almost 20.00hrs here, and almost 10.00hrs in the Netherlands. That's 10hrs difference. So if you would like to talk: your best chances are between 10.00 and 12.00 (Dutch time).

First day in Sydney

Hi, as you might have read in the header, today was my first day in Sydney. The weather was better than yesterday: no rain, but clouds and in the end of the afternoon there was some sun. It is not cold though, about 22 degrees Celsius.

I am staying in a hostel here: the Palms hostel, which is quite okay. It's located in near Kings Cross and has a lot of trees around it. I am sleeping in a room with 9 other people and all of them seem nice. This morning I woke up because the manager came to clean out the bedbugs (did not know we had any, but the girl sleeping below was covered in bites) and now everything smells a bit weird. Good riddance to them.

After that was done went to take a look at the city. I took the train to the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), which is housed in a array of not so nice concrete buildings. It is located next to Central Station, which is very convenient. When I found my faculty it seemed that they were redecorating because there were no students present, just a pile of dust and some construction workers. I had hoped for a little more than that.

Next I took a walk through the city. I started in China town and moved on towards the center of town. Sydney is rather big, with a lot of high-rise buildings. It is also surprisingly steep. While walking around you keep going up and keep going down, and vice versa. I visited an department store that had exits to the street divided over three different floors.

I really did not feel like taking photos today, so I only took 1 and it is not so good. But you will have to do with it for now, so here it is:



Bye!

Sydney!

Hi! I just arrived safely in Sydney. The flight with Quantas was very pleasant. The weather here is bad: rain and a lot of wind. I just looked up the adress of my hostel on this here free internet booth, as I forget to bring it along. Now I will attempt to find it! See you later...

Back in Bombay

Hello to all my readers! I am now back in Mumbai and have found a place with internet acces. Yesterday evening I arrived by plane from Delhi. Tommorow night I will be going on to Australia, from where I hope to maintain my blog a little better.

We had a short trip through India, which was very pleasant, although I only managed to visit a few places: Amhnebad, Jodhpur and Delhi. Distances between are very big, so I flew back from Delhi, the other option was a 29hr train ride.

As you might have read before, Ahmnebad was great. From there we took another night train to visit Jodhpur: the blue city. Jodhpur is reletively small (600.000) and it's main feature is a very nice and very big palace/castle on top of the hill. In the castle we took the audiotour, which was suprisingly good, although we looked ridiculous. Pictures will follow. Due to the fact that we had a very nice hotel which served cold beers on the rooftop terrace our trip was delayed for a few days.

In Delhi we visited the red fort, which was a bit of a disappointment, although it was extremly huge. It was not near as nice a the thing in Jodhpur. The disappointment did not stop there, because all in all we did not like Delhi much. The people seemed less friendly then anywhere else we had been and the whole place was dirty a smoggy. In the evening we went to see a Bollywood movie "Sunday" with 3 very friendly girls from Austria, whom we had met on the train. The movie was very good: nice songs and dancing with colourfull shots of Delhi. All in all very nice to look at, eventhough we could not understand a word that was said. It was also very nice to have some other people to talk about things here in India.

While I am now leaving - to my regret, it would be very nice to see more of India -, Thijs and Remy are still on holiday. They are now in Chandigrath to enjoy the architecture and will probably go on to Shimla in the mountains.

Next time from Australia, bye!