Melbourne, Trip Back Home

In February our travels took us back to a very familiar place - Melbourne. Home.
We booked this trip for a number of reasons: To see family and friends for the first time in almost two years. The trip was timed to coincide with a 60th birthday party, Chinese New Year - our first time as a married couple (we would be handing out the red packets instead of being the recipient); and the need for Olie to renew his UK work visa.
It was also an opportunity to see sunshine at the start of the year. London was experiencing single digit temperatures. Whereas Melbourne had a streak of multiple days over 30+ degrees.


Long flight to Australia
Flying from London to Melbourne takes almost 24 hours of elapsed time including a two hour stopover at Singapore. Whilst we were excited about the trip, we were also slightly anxious about recovering from jetlag associated with the long-haul flight. Luckily, the journey was comfortable enough with Singapore Airline's fleet of A380s providing more than sufficient seat room in comparison to the cattle class of Easyjet. Another perk of flying non-budget was the ability to select meals from a range of different dietary types. Olie had previously worked out during a work trip that if he pre-orders the Hindu option, he has the benefit of receiving his meal 20 minutes earlier than the standard trolley service.

Arriving in Melbourne
We left Heathrow on Sunday night, flew into Singapore by Monday evening where we ate some soggy dumplings from the food court. We also changed out of our winter wear before the next leg of our flight where we arrived in Melbourne on Tuesday morning. Luckily, we had managed to sleep a bit on the flight, so when we were picked up by Mei's parents, we were able to make it through the rest of the day and enjoy a home cooked meal with both sets of parents at night.

Whilst this trip did not involve seeing any tourist attractions; it did involve a lot of eating the foods we had missed the most - yum cha, decent coffee and mum's home cooking. We also needed to catch up with lots of friends and hear their news - the stories that cannot be simply said via a Facebook news-feed. In addition, we did work out (rather frustratingly) how to the public transport Myki card and drove a car for the first time since we had left Australia in 2011.

Federation square and a flat white

Grilled ox tongue
 from our favourite Japanese restaurant in Melbourne

Key Travel Mistake
As experienced as we are with travelling, we still make rookie mistakes. On this occasion we had forgotten to check in advance whether our UK phone handsets were unlocked. Locked phones are unable to accept local SIM cards and when we called our UK provider to check, we found that there is an SLA of 7 working days. As a result we had to handsets from family members in order to accommodate our need for constant email/Facebook access so we could keep our social diaries in check.

Day 2 - Catch ups begin
By Day 2 of our return to Melbourne life, we visited Mei's nephews and niece, before a catch up with friends at Doncaster Pancake Palour. This restaurant/diner was the venue of choice during many points of our late teens and early twenties - friendship discussions, relationship issues, catch ups, farewells. And over that time, neither the food or the coffee ever changed.

The next day we ate a meal of yum cha at the Tai Pan restaurant in East Doncaster, before heading into the city to visit Mei's grandmother. After that catch-up, we headed to the other side of the city to the Langham hotel for a 60th birthday family celebration with Olie's side of the family.

George, Alana, Freddy

Olie's parents and siblings

Amazing seafood at the Langham

More Eating and Drinking

With so much food eaten in such a short period of time, we felt worried about our waistlines but that didn't result in any preventative action. We caught up with friends at the bar/pub 3 Degrees and then made the first of many trips to PappaRich for Malaysian food delights. The next day, Mei caught up with the girls - May and Jen for a bottle of bubbly over lunch while Olie headed down to the beach for a BBQ with family. Sunday didn't offer any chance of recovery from the onslaught of food, as it was Chinese New Year's Day and the extended family came over for a visit and the eating continued from lunch until dinner. 

Cocktail hour

Catching up at Ondergronds

Mei's last week

With all of the week filled with lunch and dinner catch ups, there wasn't a lot of time spent outdoors and soaking up the sun's rays. Lunch with former colleagues was often followed by coffee sessions and dinner parties in the suburbs. We spent Valentine's Day with family (since we spend enough time with each other) eating dumplings and prawn noodles. Who needs a day of romance when there is good food.

The last weekend flew past with a catch up with the girls - Anna and Carol; a trip to a cafe dedicated to salmon with Mei's mum and aunt. Olie caught up with his friends for a belated 'stag do' night in town where 'wives and girlfriends' were specifically excluded.

Brunch at Chadstone

The Tassal Salmon Shop, Kew

Goodbye Melbourne
But as soon as we had settled into a relaxing state of mind and as our pasty skins started to glow a darker shade of golden tan; it was all coming to an end too soon. Mei was soon back to packing (Tim Tams, A1 curry sauce, Lucas papaya lip balm) for her solo flight back to London. 

And then it was Tuesday - Mei's departure day. The lonely walk through the gates at Tullamarine, waving goodbye to the parents and Olie without any certainty of when he would be returning to London.

Cafe Vue coffee, Tullamarine

Olie returns to the UK

To their credit the off-shored version of the UK Border Agency in Manila does work faithfully to SLAs and both passport and visa arrived faster than expected. This put Olie's night-time work hours (he was working remotely according to a London timezone) to an end. This also cut short his surfing holiday as he was straight on a plane and back home to London just 10 days later.

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