IN A LAND DOWNUNDER
As we no longer had a checked bag, we were quickly into Australia. They don't stamp US Passport holders into the country anymore, lame! Our first stop, as mentioned was a brief interview with local news about the virus situation in Asia.
Our driver was late, so post-interview we stood around for a bit before linking up with him and heading to the Shangri-La.
I’d been to Australia twice in 2012, with the second stop being late Dec. ’12 into early Jan. ’13, but I hadn’t been back since. This would be my gfs first trip to Australia. The entire pivot down under would be far too brief. The main reason for swinging through Oceania was to get from Asia to S.America which was a focus continent for this trip. While this all sounded reasonable in the planning phase, when it was time to actually venture there, it seemed to be quite a shame that the stop was so abbreviated.
On my Oz first stop in Feb. ’12, we’d booked the Park Hyatt, which was in the process of being renovated. As luck would have it, the PH notified us perhaps two weeks before arrival that they would NOT be opening as expected, refunded our $ and offered us 80,000 Hyatt points for our trouble. I got good use out of those points.
During our two swings through Sydney in early '12, we stayed at the Shangri-La which I had fond memories of, and the Four Seasons, which is without a doubt *THE* worst Four Seasons property in the world.
On the return trip to Oz in late '12 for NYE, my friends and I had again stayed at the Shangri-La, and I again had fond memories. So, when planning this trip, upon learning that the PH was sold out for our dates, I booked the Shangri-La, expecting to have a good experience.
Either my memory was faulty or the Shangri-La has gone WAY downhill. We were dropped off to an overstuffed lobby and waited a good 20 minutes to get to the desk. Despite it being around 1-2pm, we were told our room was not ready.
We’d booked a Horizon Club room with harbor view. We were told we could wait in the Horizon Lounge until the room was ready.
After ~45 minutes, the room was ready, and they upgraded us to a harbor view suite. That was nice, in theory. The room itself was pretty worn. The aircon didn’t work great, there were stains, the furniture was frayed but I suppose that’s as good as it gets at the Shangri-La. At least the view of the Harbor Bridge and Opera House was great. It was only one night, we'd manage.
It was a beautiful day, so we hoped in an uber and took off for Bondi. The cab dropped us near Icebergs and we walked down to the beach and spent some time in the sun.
Eventually, we decided to get lunch and I led my gf over towards where North Bondi Italian used to be, as I’ve had several good meals there. Unfortunately, it no longer exists. We popped into a place in the building that used to house it, and had a mediocre lunch with a nice view.
Next, we went to Watson’s Bay. From there we took a ferry back to Circular Quay. It was my first time heading back downtown from the beach via ferry and the views are spectacular, highly recommended. Once back on dry land, we had a look at the Opera House, walked around The Rocks, then a bit of the CBD on the way back to the Shangri-La.
From my previous visits and general travel, I have a bunch of friends in Sydney, but we had to leave very early for Ayers Rock the following morning. My friends kept trying to goad me into agreeing to “just one drink” promising not to keep us out too late, but I know them better than that. We had no choice but to ghost their texts and retire for the evening.
With the lovely weather in Sydney, the beaches and the promise of fun nights out, it seemed particularly stupid that we’d only budgeted the one night for transit between Hong Kong and Ayers Rock, but it was too late to cry over spilled milk. Next time we go down under we’ll have to make it a longer trip.
Before rounding the night out with trash television and room service, I hit the gym and was quite disappointed. I remembered the gym at the Shangri-La being much bigger and more filled with equipment. Perhaps the years have not been kind to my memory.
The most crushing blow regarding the Shangri-La was breakfast. My memory was that this hotel had one of *THE* best breakfast spreads anywhere. This recollection was echoed by my parents and the friends I’d been in Sydney with back in 2012. I don’t know if we’re all delusional or the Shangri-La has made serious changes in the last 8 years, but the breakfast room seemed much smaller and the buffet offerings were frankly lousy. I didn’t even bother eating. One coffee, then back in the car and off to SYD to get on to the next stop. Sorry Sydney, we’ll be back soon…I hope.
Next Flight Up:
VA 1627
SYD-AYQ
Boeing 737-800
VH-YFW
Seat 2A
BUSINESS
1/28/20
Flight #12 of 2020
SYD’s domestic terminal was fairly crowded, but the line for VA business check-in was short, as was security. VA have an enormous lounge, and it was pretty damn crowded. After a lot of searching we found two seats and posted up until boarding.
The flight to AYQ was very empty. We were 6/8 in biz and it looked like perhaps 20-30 people in total were in the back. I can’t imagine this route is profitable, maybe they get Government subsidies to operate it? There were some truly awful elderly people in seats 1F/D. They were dressed to the 9’s, which I respected as they had decent style, but once we took off the problems started.
They berated one of the FA’s because she told them they couldn’t “self-upgrade” their son to business. Their rationale was (according to them), they had TRIED to pay for an upgrade at check-in, but were told they couldn’t, so since they’d tried and a seat was open he should be allowed to move up to biz for free. Obviously the FA disagreed with this logic.
From there they had other members of their group who were in coach constantly coming up to biz to stand in the aisle and chat. Most amusing, the woman, who I would guess was in her 70’s, started a full on selfie photoshoot once some champagne was served. I guess some people never grow out of the birdbrain mentality, I hope her IG got lots of likes!
The flight was short, and VA seats are perfectly comfortable. An attempt at serving a meal was made. My meal didn’t match the menu description and portions of my gfs meal never arrived. The FAs were very focused on chatting in the galley and not so interested in doing their jobs, but I just wanted to nod off and didn’t really care.
On the way into the tiny strip at AYQ, I could see THE ROCK out of my window, and it was a nice vantage point to have. It was going to be a hectic day once the wheels hit the tarmac.
131 IS A HORRIBLE HOTEL
In planning this, research indicated 131 Longitude was the best choice in Ayers Rock. They unfortunately had a two-night minimum and were unwilling to budge on this. We only wanted to stay for one night.
In the end, we buckled and agreed to pay for two nights and only stay for one.
Then my parents got ill in Hong Kong, and were unable to make it to Ayers Rock, we explained the situation to 131 and asked if it might be possible to get a refund for one of the rooms IF they were able to resell the room, so they would still get theirs, and we could be released from paying for an empty room due to changed circumstances. They refused to even consider this.
Most galling, with the standard two night stay, you get the “Field of Light” experience, which is an outdoor art installation included. The hotel wants you to do this excursion on night two of your two-night stay. As we were only staying for one night, while paying for two, we wanted to do the excursion on night one. The hotel said NO. If we wanted to do it night one instead of night two, it would be $100/person. To be clear, their position was if we did it night two, it would be free, if we instead did the same thing night one, they would charge us. Again, having no choice, we agreed. When my parents plans changed, we asked for them to AT LEAST refund the $200 for their excursion since they wouldn’t be going on it. The hotel said no…actually it's a four-person minimum for this excursion, so no money back even if only two people go. What complete goddamn jerks. On top of this, the hotel sucked. The room were OK, but the food was awful and all of the staff seemed incompetent at best, more on that later. The moral of the story is F*&k that hotel, their unjustified pricing, and their complete indifference to being at all human. We get that you’re the only game in town and you can gouge, that doesn’t mean you HAVE to gouge and be complete jerks. Sure maybe a lot of people only come once, so you don’t care about repeat business. I know I certainly won’t be back, and I will also make sure no one I know ever goes to this dump. I’d rather sleep in a tent in a parking lot than ever give another cent to 131 Longitude.
The hotel insisted we have lunch (awful), then showed us to our room. I noted at check-in that they were trying to only give us one of the rooms, because, I suspect they were still trying to resell the other room. Since they were being petty, I decided to be petty as well and told them we wanted the keys to both rooms. They eventually brought the key to the second room, but it was clear they had not been prepared for that. If they were going to charge us for both rooms and not give us the possibility of a refund if they resold the second room, I was not about to let them attempt it, especially after the absurd BS regarding the Field of Light excursion. I still don’t understand how it’s free if you do it the second night, but $400 if you want to do it night one instead…just so, so ticky-tack.
After dropping our bags in the decent room, we went back to the main building. The room itself is OK, lacks a bathtub (horrible!), and has views of Uluru. This is their selling point and their best (perhaps only good?) feature.
Back at the main house we were introduced to our guide. We told the guide and the manager what we wanted to see, and they tried to convince us to see less, presumably because they’re lazy. Our guide kept pushing for us to cancel anything the following morning and sleep in, I imagine because he wanted to sleep in. Very professional guys!
In the end they agreed to the program we wanted. We started with a drive to Kata Tjuta, which we saw from a distance.
From there we went to Uluru. The rock is impressive. We’d read a bit about the fly problem before arriving, and the lounge attendant at SYD said something like “good luck with the flies!” when she saw AYQ on our boarding pass, but we were in no way prepared for the full scope of the infestation.
When visiting Uluru it’s essential that you were a net over your head. Even with the net, there are dozens of flies buzzing around your head and landing on the net at all times. I don’t know how this would go without the net, but it’s thoroughly unpleasant.
With mesh bags on our heads, we set off for our entirely mediocre walking tour of Uluru with our “guide.” I’m not sure if this guy even read the Wikipedia entry on Uluru, he certainly provided less information than wiki.
He showed us some cave paintings, and his answer to pretty much every question was “we don’t really know, the Anangu people are very secretive.” Great, so if you don’t actually know anything, then you’re guiding us why?
Our lazy guide eventually told us to walk down a path, see stuff ourselves then come back and meet him and we’d get the car. A+ work from this guy!
Because the indigenous people consider the rock sacred, you can no longer climb it, as of (I think) Oct. 2019. Really all you can still do it walk around, and listen to some clown tell you about how mysterious it is and how we don’t actually know anything.
It seems the indigenous people don’t really know anything either. They know “their” part of the story, because it seems the people in each geographic area know only a piece of the story, and in order to get the entire mythology, one needs to travel all over the region and earn the right to learn each part of the story. No one does this anymore and nothing is written down, so pretty much no one knows what’s going on. A very sensible system! Our guide certainly had no idea what was going on, but at least he was filled with reverence for the local people, if they wouldn’t tell him their secrets, they must be very wise.
Thankfully, the rock is visually impressive, because the intel or lack thereof from our hipster guide was worthless.
Around sunset, we drove to a nice viewpoint and waited. The guide suggested champagne. As we were wearing fly nets that were covered in flies, I asked him how he expected that to work. I said something like “if you pour a glass, won’t it be filled with flies instantly?” He agreed that would indeed be the case, and shelved the bubbly.
The sunset was beautiful. The only thing left on the agenda was the ripoff Field of Light. This Bruce Munro art installation was supposed to be temporary, but has proven so popular that it’s been extended indefinitely. It’s essentially 50,000 lights in a field. It sounded really cool. In person, it was meh.
Our guide was in a hurry to finish his day and not wake up early the next morning, so he rushed us to the Field of Light before the sun had fully set, told us to walk in, follow the path and it would take about 20 minutes and he’d meet us after. Sure…kick back and chill buddy. Not like we would want a guide to guide us, you do you.
The Field of Light was much cooler in pictures and in theory than in practice. Up close it doesn’t look that impressive. When we met our lazy jerk guide at the end, I asked about climbing up the hill to see the Field from an overlook point. He told me “nah, it’s not a good view from there,” clearly a lie. I said I was going to climb up anyway and have a look. At this point he told me we couldn’t go up there, because we didn’t have the right sort of ticket. You charged us $400 to walk through a goddamn field with some lights stuck in the ground for 20 minutes and our tickets don’t entitle us to climb a hill where there’s a horde of package tourists getting off a bus? I find that hard to believe. He wouldn’t budge, so we laughed it off, got in the car and went back to 131. At this point we were totally done with this place and told him not to bother with the hike at dawn. I tipped him $0 and felt great about it.
Dinner tasted terrible. It went directly in the trash, I had a couple of drinks to improve my mood and then we turned in, eager to wake up, get out of Ayers Rock and never return.
I woke up to see sunrise, my gf said she didn't care to see it and continued to sleep. It wasn't as nice as sunset.
Upon check-in we’d worried that one full day and one night wouldn’t be enough time, and thought it might have been better to stay the full two. By the time we turned in night one, we felt one day was entirely too long and it would’ve been better to fly in early, see the rock and get out right away…if one needs to see the rock at all. The night would have been of more use in Sydney or pretty much anywhere else.
Final word: If you MUST go to Ayers Rock, stay for as short a period as you can, and under no circumstances stay at 131 Longitude. I don’t enjoy feeling like I’m being ripped off, and that feeling permeated every interaction with the staff at 131 from before arrival through check-out. Garbage hotel, garbage staff, nice views of the rock. Not worth a return trip. Don't forget your fly net!