Last time I came to Perth, I stayed in a charming little Swedish hotel called "Miss Maud's", which was full of winding corridors, creaky lifts and even had it's own Swedish Coffee Shop and Restaurant. This time, my hotel is a new addition to the city and has been having a few teething troubles. Nevertheless, they seem to exhibit the standard Australian relaxed and friendly attitude towards the situation, and the reception staff have been happy to put anything right the moment it goes wrong. When I pointed out to them casually on the way out the other day that they were showing the wrong movie on the in-house movie channel, they instantly refunded the cost and changed it over immediately. While I was out, I imagine they must've had several complaints from couples all over the hotel who had been happily snuggled up in bed watching a romantic comedy and suddenly found themselves watching the second half of Die Hard 2. The next day they were showing the movies in the wrong order and because the VCR swaps them over on a timer according to the lengths of the films, everything was getting cut off ten minutes from the end. Again, they just refunded everybody. Perfectly good customer service, of course - but if they don't get things right at some point I can see them being bankrupt in no time! The TV stations themselves don't seem to entirely know what they're doing either. According to ABC, every night at 8.00 is supposed to be "Classic British comedy" - tonight, I turned on for an episode of Black Adder and found myself watching a program called Murder Squad, in which Essex Police were looking for a man who was going around casually setting fire to people who passed him in the street. Not quite the same thing. On my second day in the city, I joined the local "tourist tram" service which takes visitors on a two and a half hour tour of the city - a service which appeared to me to be sponsored by the local nightlife as it was mainly the casinos, nightclubs and bars which we trundled past, even to the point where we were offered the chance to get off and walk through the biggest casino in town. Perth is a sprawling city of suburbs and an extensive train system links all the outlying areas to the city center, where the central station is large and modern and reminded me of Liverpool Street in London. The trains are sleek and modern, and a pleasure to travel on compared to the dirty graffiti covered ones back home. They aren't overcrowded, and there are four suburban lines serving all the outer districts. Each line has slow and express services in case you don't want to stop at every station - on each line, there are trains that stop at every station, trains that stop at the first half of the stations and skip the second half, and trains that skip the first half and stop at the second half. This struck me as a very efficient system which seems to get everybody to where they want to go in a reasonable amount of time. The large, shiny information machines located on the platform of every suburban station, however, rather let the system down for me and should probably be renamed "lack of information machines" - no matter which button I pressed, the screen lit up with the helpful statement "No Information Available", so I'm afraid I can't regale you with vast amounts of knowledge about the outer districts of Perth. Instead, in an attempt to at least see some of suburban Perth while I was here, I simply closed my eyes and took a random stab at the map and ended up heading out to the town of Cottesloe which turned out to be a fairly small suburb, the station backing onto a sleepy side street. I spent a couple of hours browsing happily in the shop windows, and had lunch in a café near to the shopping precinct. It was nice to find the small urban side to this vast city, and quite unusual to find it more like the towns back home than the traditional outback village. The nightlife in Perth is every bit as vibrant as you would expect from a big city, and there are no shortage of things to occupy you after the sun has set.
I had been told that most of the decent nightclubs were based in the James Street area, but it quickly become obvious that the whole of the Northbridge area around James came alive at night - but the nightlife here seems to be somewhat different to the nightlife back home. In most parts of the world, nightlife means a handful of darkened clubs playing loud dance music while lines of scantily clad girls and blokes in jeans form outside waiting to be frisked by bouncers who don't appear to have much chance of holding down any job which doesn't involve lifting people from the ground and throwing them several metres. Perth, and in fact Australia in general, seems to have a much more enlightened and relaxed way of enjoying themselves. The entire area around Northbridge is littered with cafes, restaurants, pubs, bars, clubs and coffee shops - the average night out can involve having a meal and coffee, sitting outside a bar chatting with friends, and then wandering up and down the crowded streets for hours checking out several clubs. Clubs are far more diverse than at home, offering anything from Jazz to Dance to music from the 70s - a night out in Perth seems to be much more about hanging out with friends outside a bar and occasionally wandering into a club for a dance than the six hours of sweating on a single dance floor we're used to back home. The fact that everybody is so friendly is also a bonus - especially as being a traveller in a foreign land is usually a pretty good way of meeting people. No sooner had I walked through the door of my first club than I was being chatted up by two stunning Australian girls called, rather exotically, Skye and Monique. They were on a short holiday from a small town a couple of hundred miles away, and had just wandered into the club and started introducing themselves to everyone - although as soon as they found out I was from England they seemed to forget about everyone else and just wanted to buy me drinks and find out if I needed showing around Perth. This also happens in America, and I've never really been able to get my head around it - it seems that just having a British accent makes a person very popular in certain parts of the world, and the fact that we seem to have spent most of the last few hundred years invading and starting wars with everyone in the name of the British Empire seems to have gone mostly un-noticed! Monique and Skye introduced me to just about everyone else in the club and by the time I was too tired to stand up any more, at about five in the morning, I felt as though I'd known everyone for years.

You can read my complete travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

City Center Mustang Bar Freementle Kings Park

Get down to the Cott Hotel in Cottasloe Beach for the best Sunday session in Australia....bare feet, boardies, tops off, sun, jugs of ice cold beer, cool tunes and some very sexy people!

If you're looking for a party atmosphere i'd recommend Bambu backpackers. It's right in the centre of Northbridge where all the good nightlife is, and if you quote the hostel name at many of the surrounding bars you will receive a large bar tab on certain nights of the week. It's also BYO at the hostel itself and there's a good mixture of long and short term residents.

If you want a whole string of coffee shops and art galleries, get on the train and head to Fremantle. Its a hip place to eat and spend an evening.

Get yourself prepared to face literally hundreds of flies flying around you! I don't really know why but this city seems to be the place where flies from all four corners of the world congregate. Haha. Anyway, don't expect much from this western part of Australia as the city basically sleeps come night. Almost all shops close at around 6-7 p.m. There's barely any night life. By the way, I don't think Pinnacle Rocks is worth going because all you do is travel for a few hours in a crammed vehicle only to be disappointed at the sight of gigantic rocks that are not any different from the average rock in the city.

Perth is definitely a fantastci city for foreign sutdents. People are nice and nightlife is quite fantastic.

Northbridge is a great region with good clubs.

In Northbridge you can find a lots of asians restaurants also vegetarian restaurant, Italian Gelateria (ice cream shop) clubs and a lot more. Great night life and during the day once tired to go around you can relax in the park nearby. I loved that area very much.

Sunday session @ cottesloe beach hotel is well woth a visit if your into beach, sunset, girls, drink, beer...check it you