Bondi: What's the Fuss About?

Bondi Beach is Sydney's best known beach, the beach where the beach volleyball competition in the 2000 Sydney Olympics was held, and therefore a mecca for backpackers in Sydney. I wasn't terribly excited about staying in Bondi--I wanted to stay in neighboring Coogee, said to be more laid back and less aggravatingly touristy, but my mother vetoed that idea, wanting me to be close to our study abroad orientation, based in Bondi.

I wasn't particularly a fan of Bondi at all, especially after visiting Manly Beach and seeing what a real beach should be like. The beach itself is a beautiful, couple-kilometer long crescent around a little inlet that is protected by shark nets. However, especially during the summer, it is nearly impossible to get a spot on the beach as it is so packed, especially with, for some reason, British backpackers that use the place as their haven.

Campbell Parade, the main road along Bondi Beach, is disgustingly built up and touristy. There are plenty of stores selling cheap-looking souvenirs for ridiculously marked-up prices, although you will find a few reasonable ones if you look hard enough. Pretty much every type of food you could ever want is in the stretch from the Swiss Grand to a couple blocks south of the hotel; although this was useful, the area tended to be packed and a bit strewn with food litter. I much preferred walking up some of the streets intersecting Campbell Pde, like Hall Street, which had a few nice little cafes that were much less frenetic than the beach area itself.

Overall, I thought the place lived up to its reputation of being a great place to go if you're a backpacker looking for a good place to get plastered. The ability of commercialization to ruin a perfectly good beach really struck me, just as it did later on when I visited the Gold Coast, near Brisbane. Sydney offers a range of other options that are infinitely better than Bondi--there are at least 3 beaches within a 5km coastal walk from Bondi (Tamarama, Bronte, and Coogee), and I personally enjoyed the much less spoiled Manly Beach.

Quick Tips:

I think tips have been covered in the previous section, but I'll reiterate: unless you really want to visit Bondi Beach for the sole reason that it is Bondi Beach, there are much better choices in Sydney. Bondi Beach itself seemed to offer everything at a marked up price--the food, the souvenirs, and the accommodation. Before my orientation began and I got a free stay in the Swiss Grand, I had to stay in Bondi, a neighboring suburb that is a fair walk uphill from the beach, because I couldn't find any cheap enough rooms at Bondi Beach itself.

I was here in February, but I've heard that if you want to stay around Christmas time that its absolutely, insanely packed. While I advise that you book early anyways regardless of when you are here, since it's such a popular destination, booking early around Christmas time, or any time in the Australian school holidays (roughly November through February), is an absolute must.

Also, slip, slop, and slap--slip on a T-shirt, slop on some sunscreen, and slap on a hat, because the Australian sun will scorch you otherwise!

Best Way To Get Around:

Getting to Bondi from Sydney Airport, I found, was rather expensive--there were no shuttles that I could find operating to Bondi, and the taxi cost me at least A. I could have taken the train in from the airport, and then taken it out to Bondi Junction, but at Bondi Junction I would have had to catch the 380 bus, correctly located the stop I needed to get off at, and then lug my 55kgs of luggage to the hostel, so I felt that the taxi was worth it.

To get to Bondi Beach from Sydney itself, you can either take the train to Bondi Junction and then change to the bus, or simply catch the 380 bus from anywhere in town, starting at Circular Quay (which is between the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge).

At Bondi Beach itself, there was no reason to use anything besides my own two legs to get around, unless I was going back to my hostel, which was far enough to justify paying the .50 to ride the bus. Most everything in Bondi Beach is centered around Campbell Parade, the main street along the beach which is only a couple kilometers long at most, with a few pubs and cafes scattered along the side streets. Most people simply cluster along the Parade or on the beach itself.

Since my mother was convinced that the minute I got to Australia, I was going to be thrown off the Harbour Bridge by a mysterious backpacker killer (and my mom normally is a reasonable person), I had to find a place close to the orientation I was to attend in Bondi that had single bedrooms. Any accommodation that had the name "Bondi Beach" attached to it had sky-high prices for anything other than dorm rooms, but I finally found a reasonably priced place within walking distance of Bondi Beach in Sinclair's Bondi.

The building itself left me feeling more safe than in most hostels; there was actually a locked gate outside that was either opened with a key or by buzzing the owners of the place, so it was pretty difficult to get in if you didn't have a key yourself. The owner was pretty nice, and let me pay after checking in since I didn't have enough cash on me. She also helped me take my massive 25kg suitcase upstairs, albeit, while laughing at me for having so much luggage (I was going to be in the country for 5 months!).

I stayed at Sinclair's for 3 nights, at about A$45 a night. One irritating thing was that I could only pay cash, so I had to find an ATM before I could pay. My room was actually a double, since it had bunk beds in it; I only had to pay the single rate, however, and I was the only person in the room all three nights. The room was very clean and came with its own sheets and a towel, which was very useful since mine had gone slightly mildewy in NZ. While the room was not very large at all--the beds took up a good portion of the room, and there was just enough room for a refrigerator (useful for all the noodles I was buying takeout) and a table. My suitcases ended up behind the door and beside the bed, which made maneuvering interesting.

There were a couple showers and a couple toilets on my floor, all of which were well kept. I didn't see much of a large congregating area inside, since the "lobby" area was really just a hallway. There were areas outside, including a little patio, that I didn't really use, but it seemed that many other people in the hostel did. There was a phone in the lobby area, but it couldn't call any of the numbers I had on my phone card, even the local Sydney ones. Luckily, there was a phone booth where Bennett St met the main road into Bondi, so it wasn't too much of an issue. There was also a computer, but it seemed to be constantly in use. Again, luckily, there were plenty of cheap internet cafes at Bondi Beach, so it wasn't an issue.

Overall, this was a good place to stay, as long as you don't mind the slightly longer walk to Bondi.

My study abroad orientation was based at the Swiss Grand, which is why I got the chance to stay at this 4 star hotel rather than a hostel. This hotel is perfectly situated towards the north end of Campbell Parade. The beach is just a walk across the street, and anything you should want to do in Bondi Beach is within a very short walking distance. If you'd like to get out of Bondi and see the rest of Sydney, the 380 bus operates along Campbell Parade—just cross the street and wait for a bus!The Swiss Grand was definitely much more "grand" than my recent accommodations. There was a huge lobby area, in which there were normally plenty of people milling about for wedding receptions and such. When I was not staying there, the front desk was still very helpful in helping me find my friends that were; they were also pretty efficient in getting our group all organized and into rooms, especially considering that there were around 90 of us! I'm not sure if they offer this for other people or just for our orientation group, but we had very convenient storage, where we checked our massive bags at the bellhop and got them back when we left, so we didn't have to continually move them around.Our room was a nice little suite that reminded me somewhat of the Embassy Suites that I have stayed in. The front room had a TV and a fold-out sofa, and the back room had two twin size beds. The bathroom was big enough for all the makeup that one of my roommates had stashed on the counter. My only problem with the bathroom was the floor—the bathmats weren't very substantial and I nearly fell over a couple of times. As for the beds, I was told that the actual beds were very comfortable. My bed, the sofa, was actually not as comfortable as some of the hostel beds I'd slept in, surprisingly. I found it rather tough, and it made my back ache after a few nights on it.We also got to make use of the many facilities the Swiss Grand had to offer, including the pool and patio area on the roof. This area offered a wonderful view of the entire beach and all of Bondi itself. The pool was rather nice to use after hanging out at the beach because it was slightly more relaxing not having to fight the waves all the time!Since this orientation was part of my study abroad package, we weren't told how much the rooms actually cost, but the rates that we found said the cheapest room in the hotel was a solid $350 a night! I was impressed with the Swiss Grand, and it could be my backpacker/student sensibilities, but I would have had to have been much more impressed to ever fork that much out for a room, especially when I slept better in a hostel.

Hungry Jack's confused me when I first saw it. I saw its sign from far away, and assumed it said Burger King, since it had red lettering between two buns. As I got closer to its location on Campbell Parade, I noticed that the name was wrong, yet when I peeked inside, I saw that the menu had Whoppers on it. This had to be either extreme plagiarism or a change of name for some unknown reason--Burger King had been Burger King in New Zealand.

I found out later that the reason Burger King is Hungry Jack's in Australia is because when the chain first attempted to expand to Australia in the 1970s, there was already a burger joint in Perth that had trademarked the name. Therefore, the man that owned the Australian Burger King franchises named the restaurants after himself instead, and they became Hungry Jack's. You do find a Burger King every now and then, since the Perth man's trademark has since lapsed, but I seemed to only see BKs in random places in Sydney and airports.

I decided to eat at the Bondi Beach Hungry Jack's one night, partly to test out whether it tasted the same as Burger King and partly because I was feeling rather cheap. The restaurant wasn't exactly the cleanest of places, and my table didn't look like it had been wiped down in quite some time (yet, it was better than many of the tables I had passed by). The burger had a bit of a strange taste that Burger King burgers certainly didn't have, but I attributed it to them being different restaurants.

Needless to say, the strange taste must not have been from a difference in the restaurants. I started feeling extremely poorly soon after my meal and had to call it quits for the night, which is obviously no fun when you are on vacation and want to take it all in. This experience put me off Hungry Jack's for nearly the rest of my stay in Australia. When I finally took the chance on eating there again, in Brisbane, my burger was fine. I'm not sure if it was just a fluke, but I would still recommend choosing a different dinner option to Hungry Jack's if you are on Bondi Beach.

Noodle King, located a couple blocks south of the Swiss Grand Bondi Beach on Campbell Parade, was definitely my favorite restaurant in the Bondi area--so much so that in the span of a week, I ate there at least three times!

There were so many different things that I liked about this restaurant. It was a compact little place, squeezed into the corner of the shopping and food centres that lined Campbell Parade, and probably only fit about 20 people into it. So, while there still was a buzz inside, it was much calmer than many places along the Parade. The restaurant itself was extremely clean and I was always very happy to sit anywhere in the place because all the tables were free of the typical goo you find on fast food tables.

While the staff did not seem to speak exceptional English, they were able to take orders with no problems and were in general very sweet and polite. The menu itself was great; it offered a whole range of Asian foods, including fish cakes, soups, curries, Thai salads, stir-fry, fried rice, and noodles. There were also plenty of vegetarian options for my friend that accompanied me on many trips to the King. All of these options were reasonably cheap, mostly between A$8 and A$12.

I was particularly a fan of their noodles, and this was pretty much all I ordered. The best thing about their noodles was the complete freedom you had over what you wanted; you could choose any combination of meat (beef, chicken, duck, and pork), vegetables, and noodles (Singapore, hokkien, and mi goreng) you wanted. For all this, the most I ever remember paying for one noodle dinner was around A$9. Once you mixed-and-matched, the chef cooked your meal fresh as you waited. Sometimes the wait was a bit longer, depending on how busy the place was (and it tended to have most of its seats filled at any given time), but it was worth the wait when you were handed a steaming, freshly cooked pile of noodles.

I think it goes without saying that the noodles were great, since I continued visiting Noodle King throughout my visit to Bondi. It may not have been the most authentic Asian restaurant I ate at during my stay in Australia, nor the classiest, but it is definitely worth stopping in and grabbing a bowl of noodles, even if it is to go!