Returning to Bangkok for a five-day layover after four months in Asia is a great experience — we’re so immersed in the culture and rules of engagement here that we’re able to enjoy the town on our terms, rather than cower in fear at the mercy of the touts, hawkers, and scammers.

We dine on street noodles, get massages, and even brave a tailor’s shop to have a suit and a silk dress tailored, with great results.

This time around, my three favorite spots in Bangkok are:

1. The Hotel Atlanta. Mad art deco hotel with zero tolerance for sex tourists, and it’s right in Sukhumvit. Amazing food too, and a pool, all for $25 a night. (It’s well hidden at the end of an alley; the sign out front says, This is the place you are looking for — if you know it. If you don’t, you’ll never find it.)
2. Little Arabia. After a meal of butter chicken, I smoke a shisha, drink a lassi, and watch men walk past in sheik-style desert robes. Amazing.
3. Mahboonkrong. MBK is the mother of all malls, though a big white guy like me has to shop around a lot to find anything that fits. But there are movies, food, clothes, electronics, books, and killer foot rubs. And air con.
    

And then, before we know it, our four months in Asia are finished and we’re on the red-eye to Sydney.

We arrive in Sydney early in the morning, but my backpack doesn’t. After freaking out for a few minutes, we find out that it’s en route but has been delayed by a day. The airport staff are friendly and helpful about the whole thing, and Singapore Airlines chips in a hundred Aussie bucks to allay my discomfort, which is a nice little gesture.

They also throw in a goody bag that includes a tent-sized undershirt (thanks for trying) and a bottle of roll-on “whitening” underarm deodorant. I’ve learned on this trip that a lot of Asians are apparently keen on whitening their skin, so everything from facewash to deodorant contains mystical “whitening” ingredients. I can report that after a month of experimenting with this stuff, the color of my armpits remains exactly the same. Conclusion: more marketing bunk. Or maybe it only works if you’re Asian.

As we step out of the airport, the “cold” air hits us like a punch in the face. It’s actually sunny and 15 degrees or so, but after four months in southeast Asia it feels like we’ve stumbled into a meat locker. We put on nearly all of our clothes and huddle together for warmth until we’re picked up by Jess, our couchsurfing host.

This is our first foray into couchsurfing, and it goes off beautifully. Jess lives in West Pymble and turns out to be cheery, generous, helpful, kind, and tons of fun. She’s in between places and living at her mom’s house, and is kind enough to let us stay in the extra bedroom. We make a few dinners together, go out for Canada Day celebrations at a local pub (Kokanee beer and “beaver hockey”), and generally have such a great time that our three-day couchsurf soon stretches out to a week.

To thank Jess for her amazing hospitality, we take her out whale watching on a local charter. We’ve picked a perfect time for it; the whales are en route to their mating and calving grounds off the Great Barrier Reef, and before long a pod of humpbacks are breeching next to the boat, showing off and impressing us all with their grace, beauty, and sheer size.

Sydney itself feels almost eerily familiar to us. Like our hometown of Vancouver, it’s a coastal city built around a harbour. Both cities have a huge park in the middle. Both have a ton of expensive cafes along the waterfront, some great beaches, and a general vibe of being clean, friendly, and healthy.

Of course, there are differences. For one, the surf in Vancouver rarely goes above three or four inches, while Sydney can get ten-foot breakers in inclement weather, as I discover on one of my first surfing pilgrimages to the mecca of Bondi Beach.

(That’s not me, by the way. I love surfing, but will soil my wetsuit if the swell goes over six feet.)

Fortunately, there are plenty of calm days at Bondi, so I rent a swell chick board at Let’s Go Surfing and paddle out there for a few great sessions (and a few lame ones) over the five weeks we spend in the city.

After the week at Jess’s place, we spend our second week at the Jolly Swagman Hostel, which I can heartily recommend to anyone who wants to try drinking a hundred shots of beer in a hundred minutes. On our first night there, the kids attempt a “centurion,” as it’s known on college campuses everywhere. The highlight of the evening comes when one kid vomits into a glass and then drinks it. Ah, to be young again.

We get a private room at the hostel and actually enjoy ourselves thoroughly. There’s cheap wifi in the hostel and there’s a Woolworth’s nearby — this is a good thing, because we’re so shell-shocked at the prices of everything that we just can’t bring ourselves to eat out. $4.25 for a litre of ginger ale! The mind reels. I begin to resent Sydney for making me sound like a pensioner and obsess over the price of everything.

Another perk at the hostel is a book of 15 free drink coupons valid at pubs around the city; we actually use about ten of these during our stay, so definitely get our money’s worth. My favorite of the pubs we discover is The Old Fitzroy, which is tucked away in a suburban corner of King’s Cross near the railway tracks. It’s got a fireplace, tables made from old barrels, a gorgeous wooden bar, friendly staff, cheap pub fare, and some of the hoppiest, fruitiest, most delicious pale ale I’ve ever tasted. (Little Creatures, if you’re interested.)

One of the only things we don’t like about Sydney is the fact that fast, affordable, flexible Internet access is as easy to find as a leprechaun or a unicorn. Or a leprechaun riding a unicorn. Even rubbing the bronze snout of the fabled Il Porcino downtown brings me no luck.

Apparently the internet arrives in Australia through a pipe the size of a drinking straw, and access to the trickle is guarded by a flock of soulless vultures. Access is free at the library, but they block FTP and mail apps. It’s cheap at the hostel ($4/day), but while doing some consulting work there, I discover at about midnight on delivery night that their upload speeds are horrendous and any FTP connection cuts out every five minutes.

If you want the good stuff in Sydney (or the rest of Australia, as it turns out) you’ll pay through the nose. Most internet cafes don’t have wifi, just a few old PCs, and they tend to charge in increments of 10 or 15 minutes. A Starbucks quotes us $12 an HOUR to use their wifi. Twelve bucks an hour. I could staff a small American cafe for that much.

Tip for web junkies: There’s a free internet cafe for backpackers just down the hill from the big Coke billboard in King’s Cross by the campervan rental places; no wireless access, but good connections on their computers and you can use browser-based FTP. You’re welcome.

Aside from occasional pangs of information starvation, we have a great time in Sydney. Aussie signage tends to be way less euphemistic and more direct than anything you’d find in North America, and gives us no end of little laughs.

They don’t mince words, the Aussies.

We also find the rail system excellent — worlds ahead of Vancouver’s lame Skytrain. Note to Vancouver transit planners: Turnstiles are good. Trip-specific fares (not three massive zones) are good. Double-decker cars are good. Reversible single/double seat combinations are good. Single-deck cars, randomly enforced “honour system” payment, fixed seating, and one-size-fits-all zoning? Not good.

After the hostel, we rent a cozy apartment in Darlinghurst for three weeks and settle in to enjoy the city. We take day trips to Manly and Bondi for surfing and hiking. (The Bondi to Coogee coastal walk is particularly lovely.) We visit Taronga Zoo and see lions, tigers, and even a few red pandas (an enchanting animal I’d never heard of).

We walk in the Royal Botanical Gardens, where I’m enchanted by the total weirdness of some of the wildlife. I fall in love with the Australian white ibis, which has an absurdly long beak, a ridiculously pompous-looking bib of ruffled neck feathers, and the silliest walk I’ve ever seen.

We are also mildly surprised to discover thousands of giant fruit bats (the size of cats!) hanging in the trees near the fernery.

The bats shuffle around restlessly, occasionally fighting or mating or dropping from a branch to flap around and shriek a bit. One evening we are jogging home at dusk and the sky suddenly fills with thousands of the things; the sound of their leathery wings flapping away is somewhat blood-curdling.

One night we dress in our best Bangkok-tailored outfits…

… and go to Don Giovanni at the opera house. It’s a fun, contemporary take on the play, with Don Giovanni making his first appearance wearing sneakers, sweats, gold chains, and sunglasses. The singing is tremendous and the sets are inspired, if occasionally way out there on the weird scale. (In the end, he’s consumed and swept off to hell by what looks like a million-watt digital alarm clock.)

After the show, we go for a drink at the Opera Bar (actually outside the opera house, in the harbour) and discover why we haven’t seen anyone drinking cocktails: they’re $17. I’m not sure exactly what sort of person pays $17 for a drink, but neither of us is that person. We opt for a beer and a glass of wine.

We take to jogging around the Botanical Gardens for some exercise, though our gains in fitness are somewhat hampered by our discovery of, and indulgence in, Harry’s Pies.

This little pie stand is conveniently located at the spot where our running route finishes, and sells wickedly delicious meat pies. The insides are gooey and drool-inducing, and the pastry is chewy and tough enough to contain the messy insides so you can eat it with your hand. The ultimate pie is the Tiger, which is topped off with a heap of mashed potatoes, a scoop of mushy peas, and a ladleful of gravy. Unbelievable.

For my birthday, Lindsie takes me to Minus 5, a downtown bar made entirely of ice. We don gloves and parkas, sit on ice benches, admire the ice sculptures, and drink cocktails (included with cover, so not $17) from glasses made of ice. For the first and probably last time in my life, I take a large bite from my cocktail glass and chew it up.

And then, suddenly, five weeks have gone by and I find myself in the offices of Camperman Australia, inspecting the kitchen equipment in a turtle-top Toyota Hilux van. Next stop: the outback.

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