It's a pretty long post and I'm not sure if I should do a TL;DR?
Hi, I'm Vietnamese and live in Hanoi, currently HS student. I just went on a trip to Australia for the whole of July to stay at my relatives in Adelaide with a few days in Sydney. Now that I am back, I just feel... weird?
Adelaide was beautiful. Temps are about 13-15c at day and can drop to 4-5c at night, but it feels pleasant inside with all the insulation and heating. Plus the air is dry. Hanoi winters are brutal and houses basically have no insulation. In Adl the weather motivates me to go outside and just relax.
Early-till-mid July there were still autumn leaves everywhere even though it was peak winter.
Some days was cloudy but I guess I was lucky to had lots of sunny days. I was able to explore the beaches (Noarlunga was scenic), the hills (I decided not to go to a city vantage points because I heard it's windy up there). It's a city with good access to nature overall.
The sunsets were breathtaking. Especially on my flight home (if anyone was in Adl on June 30 and managed to capture that sunset, could you share it to me? It may just be the best sunset I've ever seen in my life.)
Sydney was quite a short trip, so I only managed to see the Harbour, Bondi, and the Hyde Park area. What stands out to me the most was how the metro from the airport to city is more expensive than Uber / cab if travelling in group. It's hotter than Adl though, almost T-shirt weather for me.
Overall, I would love to live there one day. I always see Aussies complaining about living costs and stuff, but house prices (even in Sydney) are marginally more expensive than Hanoi/Saigon, probably cheaper taking into account purchase power given how you guys earn 5-6 times what we makes. A floor cleaner here would have a better life than office worker in VN.
Now I'm back in Hanoi, scorching hot and just an hour ago our house area turned into a canal. Climate change... I'm having developing-tropical-countries-problems. It rains and the sound insulation is nasty inside. If not the rain noise then motorcycles riding by - I miss the birds and the occasional grasscutter sound. The air is humid and feels hard to breathe somehow, among with the vacation blues and the feeling when school starts next week. Lots of mixed feelings.
When I finish this I am sitting in a traffic jam to have dinner. I hope one day I can live in a beautiful, calm house in a suburb somewhere in Aus or Northern Europe maybe.
Thanks for spending time to read this,