The official first day of my vacation was quite chill. I purposely didn’t plan a lot to give myself room to adjust to the time difference and the change in weather. I packed so many layers on this trip thinking I would be needing it for my time in New Zealand and Hong Kong, when in fact it was averaging 25°C every day. What I really could have used was a pair of shorts!

After waking up and getting refreshed, we went downstairs for breakfast in the hotel lobby. Then we went to grab our stuff and wait for our ride into town. I’m very lucky to have relatives in Sydney and we were staying with one of my uncles in Canley Vale, which is a suburb of Sydney around 30km west of the central business district. There’s a huge Vietnamese population living there, so it was common seeing signs in a mix of Vietnamese, Chinese and Thai on the streets. 

We got picked up and it took about an hour to make it to my uncle’s house. After dropping off our luggage, we went back out for Vietnamese pho. Later that afternoon we went to the nursing home to visit my great aunt and spent a couple hours with her. I had a bit of time afterwards to wander off on my own, so I went back out to the main streets and browsed through the shops. It was so hot that day I first grabbed a pandan soy bubble tea, then picked up a sugarcane juice on the way back. The strangest thing was going inside a Woolworths Supermarket and seeing an entire aisle devoted to Christmas goods when it was 30°C outside. 

For dinner that evening we stayed in for a home-cooked meal. I was struggling with a bit of jet lag in the afternoon, so keeping my schedule light made it easier to adjust. Overall it was a great start to our first full day in Sydney!