Long Weekend In Perth

As an apology for grounding the entire fleet and consequently screwing up people's travel plans last year, Qantas gifted all passengers who were affected a free return flight anywhere within Australia (and even out to Auckland). In my opinion they should have given us a free flight to the place we had originally booked to travel to - which in my case had been New York! But I guess something is better than nothing. And although I vowed never to fly Qantas again, Mr Ng and I decided we might as well take advantage of the Monday bank holiday in NSW and  use my free flight to check out Perth.
I honestly have never had the urge to visit Perth, mainly because it takes 5 hours to get there and in only another 2 hours or so you could be in Asia. And even though we managed to see everything I had wanted to see within half of our first day there and were bored out of our minds for the rest of the long weekend, I'm glad we went. Mostly because we now know what it's really like and so never have to go back haha..But perhaps I'm being too harsh. It is a very picturesque, laid-back city. There's just not much to do there!

I have to admit it took us a LONG time to decide on where to stay with the majority of hotels being quite old but still charging ridiculously high prices. I considered the Parmelia Hilton but was not willing to pay $40 for valet parking on top of the $350+ a night price, and Mr Ng was not willing to pay $500 for the Crown Metropol (in his words: "I'm not paying that much for Perth"). I researched serviced apartments both in and around the city but all the reviews on TripAdvisor just didn't make them sound appealing. I was close to booking the Hyatt Regency until I read that the hotel was noisy and I really, really hate being able to hear other people/random noises from inside a hotel room. So in the end we went with Crowne Plaza, mainly because it was decently priced at ~$200 a night including breakfast, the parking situation is good (it's free at night on the road just in front of the hotel, otherwise it's a slightly more bearable $27 a day for valet) and Mr Ng is a Priority Club member. From the photos on TripAdvisor we weren't expecting too much but much to our relief our room was quiet, clean and had a great view:

Now on to the rest of the trip. We'd both been told that Perth has many good Malaysian restaurants so we basically went there with the aim of trying as many as we could. On the first night, it was Hawker's Cuisine in Northbridge which we discovered was in none other than Perth's Chinatown:

Funny how no matter what city you're in, it always looks as though restaurants in Chinatown disobey fire and safety regulations lol.

The highlight of this place is definitely the fact that they open til late because the food here was pretty bad, so much so that I didn't even take any pictures of it. Or maybe we should have stuck to the 'western' dishes and not the hawker ones.

The next day was much better, this time at a place known as the Spencer Village Food Hall in Thornlie. I had read that this was not the cleanest of places but we were fine:

 

my chicken rice from the Straits Cuisine stall

Mr Ng's chicken laksa from the Penang Cuisine stall 

We decided to take a break from Malaysian and try the most highly rated rated Perth restaurant on TripAdvisor Nine Fine Food - a relatively small Japanese fusion restaurant in Highgate. The place was fully booked for the night and no wonder, it was great value at $63 for 4 courses:

Mr Ng's sashimi

my seafood soup

beef tataki for me (unfortunately no flash as my battery was dying)

kinoco caviar pasta for Mr Ng 

my 'oceans' special

Mr Ng's duck

green tea brulee and tiramisu for dessert

I have a feeling it may only be rated #1 because it's BYO but nevertheless it was a highly enjoyable meal.
The next day we headed to the Station Street Markets in Subiaco where we gave Hawkers Delight a try. It was OK, although not as mind-blowing as it looks:

After that we were forced to go back to the city after discovering that NO suburban shopping centres open in Perth on a Sunday.
One good discovery that we did make later that day though was a cafe chain called Dome which seemed to be everywhere. I forgot to take pictures but we popped in for an afternoon snack and the food here was good! It's kind of like The Coffee Club but with more variety. Wonder why they haven't opened any in Sydney?

It was then on to dinner, this time at a place called Tak Chee House also in Northbridge:

finally good chicken rice!

Unfortunately the assam laksa was already sold out by the time we got there so we had to get a kam heong fried udon noodle special (oops, no picture again) but Mr Ng proclaimed it to also be quite tasty.

On our final morning we went to Garden City, what is supposed to be one of the bigger shopping centres in Perth but I don't think we were there even 30 minutes before Mr Ng said he wanted to leave because he said the place was so old it was making him feel sad. So we again headed to Subiaco where I managed to pick up this cute little top and skirt from a Perth-based brand called Flannel:

So happy to walk away with something from this trip, and at 70% off too yay :) 

Apparently they have one store on Military Road in Mosman which I'd love to check out, they had some really beautiful pieces. 

We attempted to go to the Burswood Entertainment Complex on our way to the airport after our attempt to visit the night before failed due to being unable to find a parking spot, but once again there was no parking (they really have to do something about the lack of parking before the place become Crown Perth) and so it was straight off to the airport.

Sorry Perth but 3 nights with you was more than long enough. SO glad to be back in Sydney!