A Week in vivid Sydney – Part 1

The first visit to any place leaves an indelible mark in your memory, especially when it’s with your family. It becomes fodder for nostalgia in the future and a point in time to check in your rear-view mirror and see how far you have travelled. First visits are also interesting in how we form opinions about a place. If we can revisit and get a different perspective, it’ll be interesting to note a change of opinion.

Last week, my family and I travelled to Sydney on vacation, and although I had made up my mind not to write anything during the holiday (I left my laptop back at home), every evening, I found myself itching to jot down a few words. I did type a few lines on my phone, but they were not enough. I process my experiences through words and feel compelled to write. So, this is about Sydney, as I saw it. Moreover, unless I get this out of my system, I won’t be able to get back to my first draft.

This post is my personal experience of Sydney, so feel free to skip reading if you do not like diary entries. But you may find a sample (if not the best) itinerary for your next Sydney visit. That’s my best promo line for this blog post.

Sydney entered our travel list when we began exploring cities with well-established universities and employment opportunities. As a family, we watched a fair amount of travel vlogs to determine which places we wanted to visit and which we didn’t.
However, the final plan was based on our collective and individual interests.

Pre-visit jitters

It didn’t take us long to realise that visiting Sydney is preceded by the big event of flying into Australia, a country with such strict laws about what you bring into their country, that we started second-guessing every item in our suitcase. Are winter jackets allowed or not?

Indeed, preparations involved packing winter-wear because Australia, being in the southern hemisphere, celebrates its winter while we in Singapore enjoy our summer vacations.

But this is a heads-up for anyone visiting Australia for the first time: please make it a point to visit the Australian government websites to check which items you can carry in your luggage without being fined. If you are carrying any food items, it is better to declare. Once declared, the biosecurity team will scan the food items and ask you to discard them or proceed as they deem fit. However, I suggest avoiding all declaration headaches and food items if you are traveling on a short vacation. Instead, install Uber Eats and order your favourite dishes and meals from the numerous restaurants in and around the city (if you have diet restrictions).

The Drabness of Air Travel

I was expecting a somber US-airport-style security check process (Trevor Noah once joked that U.S. airports look like concentration camps with passengers walking barefoot in a single line). But I was pleasantly surprised to find that the officials actually smiled at you. And not in the patronising or condescending way that border security teams bless you with their ‘You don’t have to worry, but remember you are a foreigner entering our country’ cheeriness.

The staff were genuinely happy to do their jobs and possibly to see us. Their smiles reached their eyes. You can’t fake those.

The immigration process went smoothly with a smiling officer who didn’t want to intimidate whatsoever. Model behaviour, I would say. Then came the surprise when we were asked to stand in the biosecurity check line. This was after we collected our luggage. So, remember, folks, putting restricted items into your check-in luggage would not help either.

And the next surprise generated a range of emotions in the three of us. My heart melted to see the wagging tail eagerly sniffing out the suitcases while the youngest in our family was not too keen to be anywhere near it. A biosecurity team member politely asked my daughter if she was comfortable with dogs. She wasn’t, and they asked her to stand by until the dog finished sniffing out any items from our luggage that we shouldn’t have packed.

The dog didn’t find anything unusual with us, but if he had lingered around me a little longer, he would have realised how my heart was yearning to hug him. And it was not just him. There were several other dogs on duty. All of them waited for a single command from their human officer. I was tempted to enquire if I could get a job as a dog handler, but I didn’t want to exploit the genuine niceness with which the officers went about their jobs. It would be a weird start to a vacation to learn that people are not as cool if we disturb them at their workplace. I gave one last pining look to the four-legged officers in their cages before we rolled our trolleys out of the security check area.

As we pushed towards the exit, we felt cold air blasting from somewhere—just like the air conditioner blast from inside a mall in Singapore when we walked past. We looked all around for a heavy air-conditioning unit. It took us a few minutes to realise that it was not the air conditioner but the air outside.

Folks, don’t get me wrong. It was not my first cold winter experience, but the day before, I visited a nearby temple in Singapore at eight in the morning and returned wishing I had never stepped out. My spiritual experience was marred by the humidity and the unpleasant feeling of being drenched in sweat.

So, having a blast of aircon-cold air blowing at me from outside the airport was a pleasant shock. It was a cool twelve degrees when we landed.

Once we got used to the cold winter air made cooler by the rain, we settled in our taxi to admire the views.

We had to first acknowledge that Indian travellers need not feel alone in Australia. The taxi driver was from Hyderabad, and before we could ask his name, he told us about the best biriyani outlet in Sydney. He also pointed out that he figured out we were South Indians. I expected subtlety there, but people have their ways of displaying their familiarity with diversity.

On the way, he also explained to us how driving in Australia was not easy because rules are expected to be strictly followed, and penalty points are awarded for breaking them. If a certain number of penalty points are crossed, the driver has to reapply for the license. And, of course, for all the special tips that he offered, he asked us for a tip. Now, that’s what one calls an entrepreneurial spark at daybreak. He created an appropriate build-up by complaining about how long he had to wait at the airport for a ride and how much longer it would take him to get another one after he dropped us off. Fair enough, I suppose.

After a shower at the Air BnB and a light breakfast of bread and jam, bought from the nearby convenience store that called itself a supermarket, we set out for our first day in Sydney, suitably covered in layers and sheltered under umbrellas.

P.S. We arrived on the last day of Vivid Sydney, an annual festival of light, music, and ideas. We were told that there would be outdoor installations and beautiful displays, but we were just not ready to plunge into a crowd on our first day, so we skipped it. However, I liked the moniker for Sydney, and hence, the title of my blog post.

You can read part 2 of this travel series here.