We had a great time in Perth, Western Australia for vacation! The climate weather was good with clear blue skies. With eight days seven nights worth of holiday vacation, it was a relaxing getaway from all the hustle and bustle of daily grind.

Perth is located on the south-western area of Australia. It has a Mediterranean climate with warm to hot summers and cool and wet winters. Well that’s what the guide books said, but my cousin Catherine and friends would say otherwise. The summer was really hot, while the winter was pretty cold and they ran up quite bill for using electricity to run their heaters during the winter season. As for our vacation trip, it was at the end of August, just the end of Winter with average temperature of 18°C for the day and 8°C during the night.

With a population of 1.5 million in Perth, that makes it less than the 2 million population of Kuala Lumpur. There was not much traffic jams, and in the early mornings, Perth was like a ghost town with hardly anybody around.

Catherine has planned out our itinerary and all we needed to do was to follow her schedule as best as we can for our holiday. So this trip, I didn’t have to study and plan like crazy like our last trip to Melbourne, Australia.

The transportation of Perth was not as sophisticated as Melbourne, and besides, our accommodation was located far away in the The Vines, Swan Valley region somewhere north-east of Perth and about 50 minutes drive from Perth. So we had to rent a car to move around. This would be our first self-drive vacation holiday. Lena has always wanted to do a self-drive getaway, but we didn’t do it for Melbourne because it was not advisable according to the guide book as their road traffic was rather confusing due to the Melbourne Trams system getting in the way. Besides, the Melbourne public transport was very efficient though we had to walk quite a lot that time. As for Perth, we would be driving as the location of our accommodation and sights that we need to go were located quite a distance.

Because there was no way I could drive and read map at the same time, and Lena and her sister, Lindy were lousy map readers, I was the designated navigator. We could have rented a GPS map but that cost extra, besides I was very confident to read the map and we could save some money for this trip. The car rental provided us with a new car which they just got it. It was a Ford car but I couldn’t remember the model, except that it was really new model. The Ford was quite new in the market so much that I saw a guy snapping photo of it while it was parked in the streets!

There was no need to adjust our watches as Western Australia has the same time zone as Singapore and Malaysia. Though time difference can increase by one hour to account for daylight saving from October to March the following year. Though we didn’t have to adjust our watches, we still needed to accustom ourselves to the sunrise/sunset times. Perth is a little east of Malaysia in longitude distance thus their sunset/sunrise time is around 6 o’clock in the mornings and evenings. Somewhat different from Malaysia and Singapore which is around 7 o’clock.

Arriving at the Perth airport, we went through the usual immigration routine. Entering Australia, a visa was required for Malaysians. The visa was just a piece of paper with the details which we had to print ourselves and staple to the passport. A far cry from the sophisticated sticker of China or a big visa seal/chop of Japan. It looks kinda sloppy but to each country has its own system. Australia is pretty strict when it comes to bringing in foodstuffs. And they are very, very strict when it comes to plants, seeds, and souvenirs made from wood especially if it came from Bali, Indonesia. No chilli sauce? No problem for me. But the Seow family just couldn’t live without chilli sauce when it comes to having a meal. So Lena purposely brought along a bottle of chilli sauce just for this vacation! Chilli sauce was not readily available in Australia and Lena learned from her first trip to New Zealand that most western and Australasian countries did not provide chilli sauce and usually you have to bring along or buy from the restaurant shop if available. There is no problem getting through customs as long as the bottle was not open.

We made our way to the arrival hall and were greeted by Catherine and her friend, Zen. We went straight to Thrifty Car Rental as Catherine has checked which car rental gave the best car rental rate. After we have made the necessary paperwork, we were on the way off for our visit to Perth city!

Related pages:

• Perth Western Australia
• Our Perth vacation itinerary guide
• Driving around Perth Australia
• Our accommodation at The Vines Apartment in Swan Valley Perth Australia
• Frementle port town, Western Australia
• Swan Valley food and wine trail guide
• Swan Valley: Oggies Ice-Cream
• Swan Valley: Black Swan Winery and Cafe
• Swan Valley: Caversham Wildlife Park

There should be more! Perhaps I will finish my travel destination holiday tour itinerary next time or perhaps I’ll never get around to do it. The above will just have to do!