Woke up early and checked out of our sketchy hostel, then walked to the YHA to check availability and use our wifi there (they have global gossip internet). They are full for tonight also, and most other nights in the coming days. So we sat down and spent time researching where to spend the next couple nights. The options were pretty slim, since most hostels in Perth were full tonight. We finally settled on one called the Old Swan Barracks that wasn't too far away (because walking long distances with our heavy backpacks is not ideal) and headed over to the new place after enjoying a kebab for lunch. Because we had arrived before 1 pm, the room was not ready (of course, nothing can go our way in this godforsaken city) so we dropped our bags in the storage room and walked back to the city center. Went right up to the waterfront, which is on the Swan River and walked along the river path for awhile. Today is overcast with a breeze, so the temperature is nice, but certainly not the scorching Perth heat we've heard about. When we got bored of looking at murky water and seagulls, we headed back into the city and put some money in our NAB bank accounts. With some fresh cash, we hit up Woolworth's for some groceries for the next couple days and I think we did a pretty stellar job of incorporating 5 food groups over supper today, 3 meals tomorrow and breakfast and lunch on Friday. Took our food and went back to the hostel and checked in for 2 nights. Had to pay a key deposit, which is annoying after not having to do that at any hostel in NZ... Dropped our stuff in the packed fridges/shelves in the kitchen and checked out our room. 4 beds in this dorm, with no a/c, but a good fan at least. Made the beds and bought some internet time for the desktop computers here. After net browsing awhile, we sat in the room and discussed what the plan for the coming weeks/months here is. Both of us are unimpressed with Perth, so the consensus is to try our luck in Sydney, which has more jobs and more events than what Perth has to offer. First we needed to figure out what to do while in Perth, so we booked 2 nights in a hostel in Scarborough, which is right across from the beach and the Indian Ocean, then one more night at a decent hostel in Perth city center. And to round off our booking spree, we selected the Virgin Blue flight to Sydney on December 6th. So not many days left until we can leave Perth behind. Expensive few days, but we couldn't know unless we came here (plus we had heard some good opinions on Perth, which were evidently a bit misleading) so lesson learned. Oh, and we booked a YHA for Sydney for 3 nights, having learned that things fill up quickly at random times here and not wanting to have the same accomodation struggle as when we got to Perth.
With all that out of the way, it was time for supper at last. We went to start making food, but there were no pots or pans. Went to the front desk and learned we had to leave our room key at the front in order to use a pot to make pasta. Ok, that's dumb but whatever. What about plates, cups, cutlery, etc? $10 deposit. Of course... Paid the money and went back to the kitchen. Went to fire up the stovetop. Didn't work. Tried another one. Also broken. Finally found one that fired up and put our pot of water on it to boil. But we had no lid. Uhhhhh. Went back to the front desk. They had no lids. Grabbed a pan and went back to the kitchen and set it on top of the pot. 20 minutes later we had boiling water, hooray! Put the pasta in and waited another 20-ish minutes for it to cook, then mixed in some sauce and slopped it on our plates. The meal was sufficient. I'll leave it at that. The carrots we had got in a bag for like 98 cents were delicious and the highlight of the meal. We ate out in the patio ara, which looked like a mix of an alley and a prison yard. Charming. Cleaned up our stuff after, but there were no towels to dry the pot, plates, etc. So we put our dish sets in the back of our food shelf (where hopefully they won't disappear) and returned the wet pot to the front desk. Everything here is such a struggle. Only one more day until we can go to a new place at least. Tomorrow we're going to take the train to Fremantle, which is a suburb of Perth I think, and should be near the ocean. We considered going north to the Ningaloo reef or south to Esperance, but decided it would just be more money to see a reef or beach just like the many we saw on the east coast. So the remaining days in Western Australia should be fairly uneventful and inexpensive.
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