We’ve spent the past couple of days slowly making our way round more of the interesting places that Melbourne has to offer.

Instead of getting the tram, we decided to enjoy the good weather and walk the 12km round trip to St Kilda yesterday, which is a suburb south of Melbourne and hosts the closest beach.  We found it a little disappointing, it actually reminded me of Blackpool (which is not a good thing), even having the same kind of architecture.  It does however boast a great view of the Melbourne skyline in the distance, as well as a street of decent restaurants, shops etc, most of which were outside of our budget. We had a wander round, had fish and chips on the beach, walked to Luna Park – a theme park which happened to be closed (typical Australia, a theme park which only opened two days a week) then headed back.

Melbourne city centre is looking all Christmassy, however there is something about Christmas decorations being up when it is warm and sunny that just doesn’t look right.  Last night we managed to stumble upon a nice display; every night they project a Christmas theme onto the town hall, which gives a nod to some of the various nationalities of emigrants to Melbourne, in particular the Greeks and the Chinese. Strangely no British section to the show though…?! (picture below).

Couple of things left to do here; we are going to a comedy show at a pub tonight, and tomorrow we are planning to go to a bar located in one of the high-rise buildings to get a good view over the city, followed by a visit to the casino.

Other than that we are all set to leave on Thursday night; our flight arrives in Kuala Lumpur early on Friday morning, then we plan to get a train straight to Ipoh (north of KL) where we will spend three nights before heading to the tea plantations of the Cameron Highlands.

All being well my next update will be from the city of Ipoh in Malaysia!

St Kilda beach

City from St Kilda

Closed theme park

Town Hall