Spending time looking at the map is important. What’s more important? A good map and some trusty locals. Especially on your official first big day trecking around a city.

But everyone knows you can’t explore without a big breakfast. So we grabbed a $6 breaky at a little place called Tom n Toms, caught a shuttle boat to the sky train station and then, we almost got scammed.

Either we didn’t do enough reading before we came here, or this scam isn’t really shared online much. As we stepped off the busy pier, looking around like confused tourists, a man in a neatly ironed white shirt, polished shoes, black suit pants and a black laptop bag approached us and said, “Skytrain this way,” pointing up towards a set of stairs right in front of us. So he followed us and then began telling us, “I work at the bank, you can trust me.”

So, being the trust worthy Aussies that we are, we asked him how to get to the shopping centre. Then, he just happened to have a spare map in his bag, and without needing to rush off to his job at the bank, he started telling us that we shouldn’t catch a train to the shops because there were university protests in that region, and the police have blocked the roads.

We took his advice, and started walking off towards where he said we should go. Then, I suggested that it could have been a con man, pretending to be a ‘good ol banker’ that just wants us to catch his mates tuk tuk to his family owned business.

Laughing it off, we headed back to the train station and flew across the busy roads below. We then spent the whole day shopping. And I bought one thing.
And now I’m exhausted.

But tomorrow is my 21st birthday, and we have some pretty neat activities planned. So if you haven’t already figured out where I am, tomorrow I promise you that you’ll figure it out.