Tips and TLDRs; Six months in Sydney
I spent six months in Sydney doing a work rotation! Having the mindset of actually living at a destination was so different from the travelling mindset. I was more focused on the whom-I-met rather than the where-I-visited.
Because I am lazy and this blog is mainly for my own records lel.
The neighborhoods of Sydney:
Sydney is similar to San Francisco in that there are micro cities within the large city that have rather clear boundaries and characteristics. Pyrmont is a village vibe area that bleeds out to a casino and wharf front hang out spot by the eastern piers.
Barangaroo is the business district that bleeds into Town Hall, the shopping area with high rises.
Surry Hills is the now trendy place to live — sort of like the Mission for San Francisco and Brooklyn for New York. Its next door neighbor Darlinghurst — again, like the Castro for San Francisco — is the fun LGBTQ center of Sydney. A bit farther out from the CBD are neighborhoods with better housing markets or better views. Forest Lodge and Glebe are located out west only a bit with their own shopping centers that easily replace that of CBD and have more actual houses with much more affordable room deals. A trek down south takes you to Newtown which is so bohemian I can’t handle and love at the same time. They have boutique furniture shops, used book shops, overpriced vintage clothing shops, vegan restaurants where you pay what you can, and you feel like you have to love everyone else.
I lived in Haymarket, which is very much in the CBD. It has the Sydney Chinatown. It has a lot of eateries, Paddy’s market, and Darling Square which is a lovely spot to gather.
Haymarket is plenty Asian but the real Asia is in the Western suburbs of Parramatta, Strathfield, and Burwood. When you get off the train station, you’re like woah. Is this Queens? Perhaps Hong Kong?
Definitely a hike east of CBD gets you to Bondi where you get to wake up to the sound and wind from the ocean and can be on the turquoise blue waters in a few minutes. A lot of foreigners live here though, and many locals think it has become too busy to enjoy as home.
Those locals head over to the other Sydney beach town — Manly, which is across the bridge from CBD. Manly is a chilled out version of Bondi and Newtown — you have plenty of adorable health food stores and on the weekends there’s a market that sells handmade goods and healing crystals.
Life in Sydney + Australia:
Meeting new people in Sydney:
Meeting new people is hard in any new city and country. But until now I’ve often had the benefit of being in cities with a lot of my college friends or was in college, which is a good gateway to finding other friends or at least keeping myself from being lonely. Alas, I knew not a single soul in Sydney except that one guy I met in Hong Kong years ago whose name I don’t remember. So like I said, not a single soul. So I went to some language meetups, since they seemed to be the main medium for foreigners connecting — whether they really needed language help or not. I made a lot of friends through work — thankfully I got lucky and one person on my team was an Australian who had moved to Sydney recently. Through him we both extended our friend groups. My roommate I took dance classes (at and outside of work) and I met one of my closest friends there! Besides there, I made a few friends through a martial arts extra audition and at a multi-day surf camp. So Sydney is no different than anywhere else. Find friends at work, roommates, classes, and other random events you attend and then expand from there! The point is you have to just try and be really outgoing. I am able to just flip into that outgoing version of myself when need be, but as an introvert it was exhausting during the first month to establish a good friend network.
Tips for living in Sydney:
Banking: There are a few major banks that run the country: Commonwealth Bank of Australia (comms), Westpac Banking Corporation (Westpac), Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ), and National Australia Bank (National). If you visit a Commonwealth bank, they will allow you to open a checking account with no minimum deposit for a year for no fees! If you will get direct deposited, it seems like Comms has the best technology and footprint for convenience. Venmo isn’t a thing here and no one really uses the Aussie version — instead people DIRECT DEPOSIT EACH OTHER. I thought this was a little crazy — sometimes the account is linked to your phone number, but sometimes it isn’t so people just message each other bank account details and they TYPE IT IN. Me, being the foreigner that I am, always deposited a dollar to confirm it was the right person and proceeded with the rest. This seems super inconvenient to me, but everyone else was already used to this process and didn’t seem to mind too much.
Shopping: Australia has a lot of everything that America has.. But there will be some shops you really notice missing from your daily wardrobe runs. And while I feel like metropolitan America has been converted to run a lot on online shopping, Sydney hasn’t. A lot of people still walk to shops to buy things instead of turning to Amazon, since Amazon has not yet established its consumer disease yet (oh how I missed it).
Shipping: similarly and consequently, shipping is extremely slow. I guess there isn’t a huge demand for speedy shipping due to the lax-ness of the culture in this country — so I was forced into this huge throwback of ordering something online and checking every other day to see how far it had made it since the last time I checked. I had been spoiled by American companies offering quick 2-day shipping all around the country.
Grocery shopping: Cole’s or Woolies. That’s the two options! Coles tends to be a bit bigger from my sample selection and Woolies has better fresh produce maybe?? But a very small difference.
An Aussie experience is to go to Bunnings (Aussie Home Depot) and buy a sausage sizzle! They only take cash!
Alcohol: Like some New England states, Sydney has strict laws on alcohol purchasing. Alcohol sales only happen in liquor shops which close early, but often they are located near a Coles or Woolies and outside the city they even have drive-through windows!
Sydney has alcohol related laws for alcohol serving establishments — the lockout laws set a limit of 3AM last calls at bars, no entries after 1:30AM, and one drink order per person limit at the bar. Due to a bunch of these, people often say Sydney doesn’t have a great nightlife compared to other cities like Melbourne.
Restaurants + Food: Sydney is a mecca for Asian food — particularly the southeast asian food is strong here. There’s a crazy long list of restaurants but I’ll list a few here:
Jo Jiak and Mamak are famous for malasian
Yasaka, Gumshara, Gogyo for ramen
Kao Kao, Born ga for korean food
Chin Chin, Marrickville Pork Rolls for good general Asian
Bourke Street Bakery, Grounds of Alexandria for worthy tourist traps
The Fish Market was a meh for me but a good way to get cheap(er) and fresh fish!
Boon cafe, Gelato Blue for my personal favorites
Soda Factory, Darlo bar, Side bar for fun places to hang out
Transportation: A decent number of people head out to the city for beaches or hiking in the area with their cars. But people who live in the CBD area usually don’t have cars since parking is annoying to find or expensive. Subways aren’t a thing here so many people use the train and bus system which is very well done. There are trains and light rails, and the light rail opened up in early 2020 and broke down on the first day, yay! It is also incredibly slow. The method of payment for buses is the Oyster card, but it’s the same to use any tap enabled card or Apple Pay or Google Pay (no oyster discount). The train to and from the airport has a huge tax (~$18 AUD) so if you have another person, consider uber. I found Uber rides in Sydney to be generally slower and worse navigational quality than my experience in America, but sometimes still the best way!
Misc. Tips:
Phones — no one really talked about phone carriers, so picking any that come up seems to be fine. I used Telstra! I was only here for six months so I picked up a prepaid plan from Cole’s.
Laser treatment is really cheap here! $20–30 a session?
Halloween isn’t a thing here! Thanksgiving isn’t either! But I celebrated because I felt like I had to, as a token American. You will start to find Halloween things being sold in some stores, but Thanksgiving ingredients are really hard to come by.
Things to do in Sydney!
Touristy things:
Top things on the tourist lists like Sydney Opera House, the Botanical Gardens, Watson’s bay, definitely worth a visit but not a place I’d feel the need to visit repeatedly. I’ve driven over the Sydney Harbour Bridge but never did the walk or the viewpoint. The walk is really expensive and long. I’ve heard mixed reviews on it. You can head to Pyrmont park and get a speed boat tour around the harbour instead for cheaper and more fun!
Head over to Haymarket to visit Paddy’s Market to haggle for some souvenirs. The botanical garden, along with other parks around the city, will sometimes host outdoor festivals, so check concretejungle for events in the area. I went to one music festival in the Botanical Gardens and to a New Year’s Eve party in Victoria Park!
Non touristy things:
It’s just like any other big old city. But people don’t really wear heels here — even at clubs so don’t feel the need to pack a bunch of those.
People hang out in parks or harbours nearby. Darling Harbour always seems to have some event or festival going on during the weekends. On Friday nights, the harbour hosts a fireworks show.
There is a very serene and nice Chinese garden to peruse for just $7, here too.
The beaches are super easy to get to — both on the weekends and weekdays. Even better for Sundays when public transportation is capped at 2.80 for the whole day! Take the ferry or a bus to Manly/Bondi (surf, snorkel, scuba, brunch). Snorkel and surf equipment are very easy to rent, and you can scuba at the harbor or in Manly beach.
Bondi to Bronte coastal walk is very nice but it can be cold! Sydney isn’t always so warm. Icebergs Pool or Bronte Baths are very instagrammable.
Things to do on the weekends!
- Take a trip to Melbourne — you can snag cheap plane tickets for around $100
- Take the train to pet koalas and kangaroos at Featherdale wildlife park (the best one)
- Take the train to the Blue mountains for hiking, climbing, or canyoneering
- Take the train to New Castle for a quick escape out of town
- Drive to Port Stephens for the sand dunes
- Drive to Palm beach for that double crescent insta shot
I went to all these beaches to surf with two Australians and they did not empathize with my shock at how beautiful the water was. The photos don’t do it justice but it is gorgeous and turquoise and perfect.
Drive to Wollongong or Bendalong for great beginner surfing and plenty of wild roaming kangaroos.
I went here for Christmas with Australian Surf Tours for a 4 day surf camp and had a blast even though we got stuck there for an additional night due to the fire related road closures. It is as ratchet as one would expect this to be — it’s more about foreigners hanging out and getting drunk as much as it is about surfing.
Drive to Culburra / Jervis bay for gorgeous white pristine beaches and more wild roaming kangaroos. They say Jervis bay has the whitest sands in Australia but that is a lie. Still lovely though!
There is a plenty of other places to visit for a longer weekend that I didn’t visit, like Sydney Hunter Valley Wine Country, Mermaid pools, and probably more idk. Six months was too short!
