Travel Guides and Stories

 Sydney is a great place. It was autumn—cool but not cold, warm but never scorching. People in Sydney dress light, like it’s summer, though it’s only a bit over 10°C. Coming from a “not-so-cold-proof” country, I needed a jacket.
The air in Sydney is crystal clear. You can see straight across the entire downtown in one glance; there isn’t even a speck of dirt on the ground. After getting used to Beijing’s hazy skies, air this clean almost feels unreal—and oddly less familiar. What a twisted feeling.
Sydney’s downtown doesn’t really feel like New York—maybe a bit like San Francisco. They’re all seaside cities with that inner-harbor swagger. The harbor is gorgeous, the icons are gorgeous; the Opera House and Harbour Bridge alone could keep you lingering for days. But what I loved most was the coffee everywhere and that laid-back, sun-drenched lifestyle. I’d rather zone out under the sun than rush through a checklist of sights.
Tourist services are well planned: light rail, a sky monorail, double-decker sightseeing buses, ferries, even cruises and speedboats. We took a boat to the zoo, a train to go shopping, strolled through Hyde Park, wandered every street downtown, lay on Manly Beach like the locals watching sun-kissed beauties and hunks, and sipped coffee on Darling Harbour’s boardwalk facing a navy ship.
Prices in Sydney are steep—seriously steep, pricier than in the U.S. Locals say inflation is rampant; prices are soaring, though wages are up too. The exchange rate doesn’t help either—used to be 4-point-something, now 6.9; Aussie dollars feel stronger than U.S. dollars, no wonder nothing feels affordable. Souvenir shopping? No one back home could guess the price. Even the fabled UGGs cost about the same as in Beijing boutiques. We browsed the malls—honestly, nothing looked as pleasing as what we see in Beijing stores.
Traffic management in Sydney isn’t great either. We left for the airport 4 hours early and still spent over 3 hours on the road, arriving barely 30 minutes before departure—a roller-coaster of nerves. We hit three accidents in a row on one motorway. The scary part was how slowly they were handled and how completely traffic was blocked—no hard shoulder at all. I kept thinking: if someone had a heart attack, they’d be done for. One clever touch: after a crash in a tunnel, the signs say “turn on the radio.” Switch it on and every frequency broadcasts which lane has the incident and which side to keep to—pretty advanced. We’d nearly given up hope, but when we reached the airport, three or four passengers were also late, and Air China delayed the door closing. Huge thanks to the friends who called and helped me reach Air China—dinner’s on me next time.
Our aimless days in Sydney were lovely, but endless phone calls kept dragging me back to work, making it hard to truly switch off. Miserable grind—who knows how long this busyness will last, or if it ever ends. If a vacation is going to be squandered like this, I’d rather not take one—or one day, I’ll be ruthless and take a real break.
Photos from Fiji and Sydney are uploaded to the album. I lugged the big camera but, aside from shots of my sister and nephew, rarely felt like pressing the shutter. This was a holiday, not a photo safari—unlike Africa, where not carrying a DSLR feels like a crime against your mood. Still, after sorting, there are plenty of moments worth savoring—and they’re in the album too.

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