last thoughts about Australia

Having left Australia, I wanted to mention a few final things that we noticed during our two weeks there...

Tipping is not the custom. In fact, it's discouraged. Many times I felt really strange leaving a restaurant or a hotel room or a taxi without tipping, but as far as I could tell, no one else ever left a tip either. We did end up leaving a small tip at Tetsuya's, but we had had extremely good service there.

All the outlets in all the hotels that we stayed at had on/off switches. I guess it's to save electricity? At first I thought it was inconvenient but I soon got used to it.

All the toilets (in the hotels, restaurants, airports, beaches, and other public places) had half and full flush buttons, even in the outback. Generally speaking I was pleasantly surprised by the level of environmental concern in Australia.

Several of our hotels offered "luggage collection service" where you tell the front desk what time you want the bell desk to pick up your luggage on the check-out day, and then you can just leave. The luggage will magically show up in the lobby at the later time that you specify. Did I mention there's no tipping?

All of our hotels provided stamps, and charged them to our bill. So simple, yet so useful.

Many restaurants charged for small things such as sauces (tomato sauce, tartar sauce, cocktail sauce) and bread. I was actually kind of happy about this, despite having to figure out beforehand how much sauce I would need for one order of fries. Lots of times when I get fast food in the US they just give you a big handful of sauce and it either sits in your fridge for forever, or you end up wasting it.

When you get your bill in a restaurant, most of the time there will be a business card or two tucked in there. I like to collect business cards because I'm forgetful (about where I've been), so this was great for me; it prevented me from having to make the effort to get one myself.

It seems like they're all good things, so I'll mention one bad (or at least neutral) one. There is this horribly confusing traffic rule in Melbourne called the "hook turn":


Basically, at major intersections, in order to turn right, you have to pull into the far left lane, go into the intersection, and then stop. You wait until the light changes, and then you complete your turn. I'm not sure what the rationale is, but more than once while riding in a cab or bus I had a "WTF is he DOING??" type of moment. (When trying to picture this, remember that Australians drive on the other side of the road.)