Round The World in 42 Days!: Days 13-16: a pleasant blur

After our initial few days of glorious weather in Sydney things reverted back to the usual winter weather here: cold, gloomy, and windy. While this didn’t cause us any pause in our adventures, it did cut down on the number of beautiful pictures that we would otherwise have been able to take. Who wants to look at pictures of a gloomy sky? “Ain’t nobody got time for that!”

IMAX General Admission Rates

So on Thursday we went to the world’s largest IMAX theater (at Darling Harbor -- one of the "Seven Wonders of the IMAX world") and watched The Dark Knight Rises. We knew that we were getting old because the experience was as nauseating as it was exciting. The screen is so big that they warn you at the beginning that if you develop vertigo, it’s wise to close your eyes and put your head down. I knew I was old when I wound up following this advice several times during the show. It also scored as being the most expensive movie that we’ve ever seen. Normal matinee tickets are AUD $31 EACH (that about US$35 each) and since nobody would ever believe that unless we had proof, a picture is attached.

Lunch with Auggie, Andy, Jason, & Tyler

The movie was fun and certainly worth the experience. We then spent the next several days having dinner with friends, watching the Olympics, catching up on all of our favorite shows via Slingbox (if you don’t have one, stop reading now and RUN, don’t walk, out to get one!), hit a few clubs and just relaxed. By our last day in Sydney the weather had returned to unnaturally warm and sunny so we spent it exploring all of the downtown shops (and spending way too much money. Stuff is expensive here!)

Then, on the morning of day 16 we had to say goodbye to Sydney. We loaded up the luggage (which had grown by about 10 pounds but is still well under our travel allowance!)

Goodbye Sydney! Until next time!

We flew China EASTERN airlines from Sydney to Shanghai and were very impressed! The service, food, seating and overall ambience was significantly better than China SOUTHERN. Shanghai (where we happily only had to spend a few hours) was probably a really nice airport in the 1980s but hasn’t seen much updating since then. Happily, liquor tasted the same in the 1980s, so we just had a few cocktails and were right back on the next plane to Bangkok. This one was a bit older and was essentially deserted.. which was good because Eric’s seat controls didn’t work and sitting bolt upright for 5 hours didn’t sound like much fun. All went well and by 2 AM we arrived in Bangkok where we were met by our incredible host Chatchai and delivered back to the beautiful apartment that he loaned us for the week.

Now it’s morning #1 in Bangkok. It’s hot (90+) and a little gloomy, but we’re going to go out and start adventuring. We’ll be going to Hua Hin (a beach town like Phuket but only a few hours by car from Bangkok) tomorrow so today will probably just be a little low key shopping…