It's day 13 of my ODYSSEy and I'm at the perth airport waiting to board the flight to Hong kong on my way to bangkok (city stop #3). I finally have good internet so it's time to write and post my adventure in and around perth.


As I mentioned in my last post, I arrived at my hotel in Perth and crashed at about 0400 in the morning. That was certainly a long day. But, after bout 6 hours of sleep I was up to explore Perth. I selected my hotel because it was the closest to the airport and, at least on the map, it looked like it was about a 5 minute walk to a local train station. Because of these two factors, I decided to spend my 4 nights at the Scanno Marracoonda Airport Hotel or days 10, 11, and 12 of my RTW trip.


The "Hotel" was one of the most interesting places that I've ever stayed at. It was far from your typical hotel. It consisted or several buildings with one or two rooms that were more like individual huts than you'd see at a duplex. But the AC worked well, and as I was about to learn, having AC was very, very, very important. I'll just say it - I went from the deep-freeze/refrigerator of Tokyo to the burning inferno of Australia. The temperature highs were 101 degrees Fahrenheit and the government had issued an extreme heat advisory. Sunrise was around 0600 am and sunset at about 0700 pm so it was a long day of sun with brutal temps. Walking to the train station (which was more like 15 mins) was out of the question. After a long time not using the service, Uber came to the rescue.


I took the train into Perth on Friday (day 10) and walked around as much as I could due to the heat. I made it down to Elizabeth Quay, the major tourist spot. In general, Perth is a clean, "pretty" city but seems very generic to me - nothing particularly exciting or spectacular to photograph. In fact, as soon as you get away from the CBD into the surrounding suburbs, all the houses and landscape is similar. The area is essentially a dessert with a lot of sand and red rock. I suppose Perth is best known for its beaches and outdoor activities, but Homie don't do out doors when it's 101 degrees for most of the day,


What I thought about the whole day were the stark contrasts between Japan and Eastern Australia ( I guess to be fair, I should just say Perth). In Japan the people were small, petit, quiet, and very polite whereas in Perth, the people were very tall or very wide, very loud, and swear like sailors on a 40 day cruise. Almost everyone was covered in tattoos. As the Aussie that I met in Kuala Lumpur said, why are you going there, it's just an old mining town. These comments are ment in no way to disparage the city or people of Perth, I'm just sharing my observations. I enjoyed my time there and I'm glad that Perth was part of this journey.


That's all for now, stayed tuned to my next blog when I discuss my trip to Fremantle Australia.


Until next time, be safe, be kind and peace out mates.