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After a good night of sleep, I saw a message from Jerry that the cleaning lady would come in at 10:00, so I woke up Mo to get ready. We let the cleaning lady in and left for the nearby park to see what we would do today.

Jerry had send a link with markets around Sydney and one of them on ‘the Rock’ was advised. So we decided to find out how the ferry works and see if we could find this market.

The ferry works very convenient, you beep in with your payment card and once you get off you beep again. We sailed to the other side of the bay, got nice views of the bridge and the opera house. The third stop was also the endpoint: Circular Quay. This seems to be the heard of all public transport. And a nice surprise, the fare was 1 AUD, (around 55 cents). We quickly found ‘the Rock‘, the old town of Sydney where the city started around 200 years. It is now a vibrant part of town with a nice mix of nicely renovated old – and new buildings.

But as much as we walked around there was no market to be found.
After a drink and a meal we came by place what had a sign that the market was closed until early January, while on a website it was specifically said that between xmas and New Years the market was open. Let’s see if we will have another opportunity later.

We also wanted to get a local sim card, so we would have an internet connection once we would leave Sydney. We where advised to get a Telstra sim, as their network has the best coverage, especially in the more remote areas. This seemed a bit more challenging. In the first store the employee was not very helpful, the clerk in the second store was more helpful. He pointed us to George street at the beginning of the CBD (Central Business District), which borders the Rock on the south side.

There we first found a shop with nice hats. I fitted several, including hat from crocodile – and kangaroo leather, but opted for a normal leather hat that can be folded. Soon after we found a shop which had Telstra sims and an helpful lady explaining to get online and find the package we required.

We wondered around George street and found the largest Lego store in the world, which we off course checked out. The we took the tram back to Circular Quay, where we caught the ferry back home. Mo cooked a nice meal, while I activated the SIM card. A little bit of chilling and we got to bed around 22:00. We seem to adapt to the current time zone.

After we left the airport Jerry asked if we wanted to go to our apartment or if we want to do a bit of a sight seeing tour. As the morning was young we figured a tour would be a good start.

Jerry seems to be an encyclopedia of interesting information on Sydney. With every turn he had another story, from personal; places he had lived, to favorite place and the place where (then) princes Margrethe of Denmark had stayed. Some beautiful and some ugly architecture. Recommendations for museums to visit and more.

After a quick view of the Opera house and driving under the bridge and through CBD we drove the the apartment of one of his friends on Balmain-East where we would stay the first 3 nights in town.
He had already said it had an amazing view, but it truly was. From the table I am writing these first blog-posts you can see the famous bridge.

After he left we could finally take a shower about 40 hours after leaving our home in Tallinn. We relaxed a bit, discussed what to do this afternoon and decided to skip tin invitation to see the famous Hobart Yacht races that where held today.

In stead we had a little walk around the neighborhood to check out the supermarket and get some food. After we had a meal, around 16:00 local time, I could not stay awake any longer and went to bed. At 22:00 I woke up and was fully awake. I decided to try to fix the last issues I had with the map integrations on this website. At 04:00 I went back to bed and slept till 08:00. Mo had been up at the times I was asleep, so she slept a bit longer. Let’s see what the day will bring.

Getting through security in Bangkok went pretty easy, after that it was a bit of a walk to the gate. We got a bottle of water and a local beer. Then suddenly the gate opened and there as an extra check. It turned out we could not take liquids, so we had to leave the water and I had to finish my beer quicker then expected.

Half an hour later we could board. This time it was an Airbus A330. We where at row 59, where the setup was 2-4-2. We had the right two seats of the middle chairs.

I started a movie and already half way paused it to go to sleep. A few hours later I finished the movie. Then I napped a bit again.
Because of the destination there where also some interesting documentaries about Australia and Aboriginals. Yurlu Country, was very impressive. It was released in October and I can highly recommend to watch it when you can.

And like that we already landed in Sydney. It was pretty busy as the airport is very close to the city, so there are restriction in arrival time, making the morning very busy. The security was fully automated. But your passport in a scanner, a picture is taken and printed. At the next gate your face is scanned again and it opens. Interesting and scary technology for an IT guy.

Once we got our luggage, we entered a long line for the security. As we prepared well, and got lucky not to be picked for a luggage check, we where in the arrival hall. Jerry who was going to pick us up had told us to wait in the arrival hall until he would arrive, so we could meet at the 15 minute kiss and ride. We met Jerry last summer in Tallinn and it was great seeing him again. He picked us up in his convertible car, so little truck space an Mo’s suitcase had to be on one of the back seats.

Before we went through security we changed to more local weather dress. Security was a bit chaotic, but did not take to long. After about 20 minutes we had a stamp in our passports and we where ready to find the train to the city.

When we found the train station it was a bit of a search on how to pay the fair with a card. But in the end it turned out you just have to find the gate where a person was standing who would check if a payment terminal said ‘beep’.

The boarding goes Japanese style organized. Everybody was standing in line. They waited for everybody to get of the train, then waited for some stewards with whistles to check if everybody was off-boarded and then with some hand signs and whistling people where urged to board the train.

Half an hour later we arrive at the end point of the train, we got off and where greeted with a blanked of warm air. We decided to walk to what seemed to be a park on the map to see what we would do. This was a bit of a disillusion, as park was being reconstructed. On the other side of the street was also a big green area, but when we say barriers and a lot of police is was clear we could not enter there. It turned out to be the residence of the royal family.

A police officer told us we could not enter. We asked if we could use some chairs in the shade to find out where we could go next. That was no problem and a minute later another police officer came from inside with two bottles of cold water. Very thoughtful and appreciated.

We walked around looking for some smaller streets and ended up in a coffee place with air-conditioning to relax a bit. There we figured it might be nice to get a massage, I checked the map and there where plenty of places around. I went to check if they would accept card payments. The first one didn’t, the second one did, and the next 4 did not, so I returned to pick up Mo to go to the second one, when I saw another place next to it, which even had signs on the door about accepting card payments, and since the place looked nicer, we went there. We opted for a 5 in 1 massage; feet, neck, shoulders, head and hands.

After washing my feet, where the lady was impressed by the amount of dirt that came from my feet after 12000 steps around town, I was put in a very comfortable chair and she started massaging my feet. Even though it was pretty hurtful at the start I dosed off for a good 20 minutes. Mo, who was sitting in the chair next to me told I even snored a bit.
After an hour we felt amazing and energized we went to look for an restaurant to eat something before we would go back to the airport.

The food on the menu with pictures all looked wonderful and since it was not very clear how big the portions where, we ended up ordering a lot of thing as we where pretty hungry.
I was an amazing meal and we managed to finish almost everything including the very spicy soup the waiter had warned us about.

Our layover in Helsinki was just a few hours, so time to calmly walk to the other side of the airport, to through customs and get to the gate. Close to the gate was a restaurant where we had drink an we shared a salmon salad.

Meanwhile I tried to fix some last things on the website, which did not work very well, so I guess that will have to wait until the weekend when we are in Australia to be fixed.

Once the boarding call came, we walked to the gate, where an Airbus A350 was waiting for us. Our section had a 3-3-3 setup and my seat was exactly in the middle. The seat entertainment had plenty of options to keep us busy during the flight.

I started with the latest Mission Impossible as it does not take a lot of thinking and is almost 3 hours long. It was pretty terrible, but killed time effectively. One annoyance in the seat entertainment was that you are force fed 2 minutes of commercials before the movie starts. I guess my ticket wasn’t expensive enough as it was.

The second movie I watched was The Naked Gun, of course not as good as the originals, but entertaining enough on a flight.

After the movies I was able to sleep a bit, although I did not sleep as good as I remember from earlier flights. Still got some rest.

We arrived 20 minutes ahead of schedule at 5:45 in Bangkok, where it was already pretty warm. It seems BKK airport wanted to surprise international guests with a christmas song, but is was literally A christmas song, they had Jingle Bell on repeat. It is an annoying song to start with, but on the 15-20 minute walk to the security check it got old very quick and I put my headphones on so I could listen to some nice music.

Finally the day has come where we will start our trip.
I was up before the alarm, Mo seemed to need the alarm more.
Coffee, tea, last packing of the hand luggage, ordering a Bolt en off we where.