Hello everybody. I hope that you are well. My name is Christian and welcome to my channel, Backpacking Bananas. About six months ago, I moved to Australia on my second year working holiday visa and I've been based in Sydney now for about four or five months and I just love it so much. Right now, it's not even a sunny day, but I'm sitting outside in Hide Park in the CBD on my little lunch break and I just feel so content here. Like I said, right now I'm on my second working holiday visa. I'm hoping to do my third working holiday visa and eventually hopefully move on to a partner visa which will eventually lead on to permanent residency because I find Australia categorically better to live in than the UK. I've always never quite

understood when I learn about the Aussies who come to the UK and do working holiday visas and stay there for a long time. I'm like why? Why would you do that? And actually, their number one reason is going to be number one on my list of things that I do actually miss about the UK whilst I'm in Australia, and that is the cheap flights around Europe. Oh my god, in the UK we don't know how good we have it. The fact that you can pop to Spain, to France, to Tenneref, to Germany for like30 return with Ryan Air or with EasyJet or with Whizzer. Not only is it cheap to travel there, but it's also just relatively close by. it takes you less than 2 hours to fly to so many places in Europe.

Whereas in Australia, you're looking at like at least a 5h hour flight just to leave the country. Unless you go to New Zealand, which is still 3 hours away, you're looking at a longhaul flight every single time. And they're also generally just not very cheap as well. You're always going to be paying in the hundreds of dollars. And it makes you understand why those Australians who are on working holiday visas in the UK always just seem to be going on a weekend trip to somewhere in Europe every single weekend. They're just absolutely making the most of it for something that they were never able to do when they were back in their home country. Now, something that I would

miss about the UK quite dearly is UK TV. UK reality TV to be specific. I am obsessed with This Morning, Strictly Come Dancing, Love Island in the Summer when that's on. However, thanks to Surf Shark, who are the kind sponsors of today's video, I don't have to miss my favorite UK TV shows, uh, because if you don't know, Surf Shark is a VPN, which stands for virtual private network. And what a VPN allows you to do is change the virtual location of your device to pretty much anywhere in the world. Which means normally when you are trying to watch ITVX or BBC i Player, when you are in Australia, it will stop you. It will not let you do it because you have to be in the UK to stream those shows.

However, when I switch my Surf Shark to the UK with the click of a button, suddenly all of these streaming services are available to me. Not only that, but Surf Shark also has a bunch of other benefits. For example, it can turn your public Wi-Fi connection into a private one. Why is that important? When you are connected to an open Wi-Fi network, like in an airport, in a cafe, in a hotel, and there's no password, your device is at risk of being hacked via that connection. I know. But when you switch your Surf Shark on, it acts like a virtual shield on your connection immediately so that none of those evil hackers can get in. Now, Surf Shark is one of the only VPN which gives you access on an unlimited number of your

devices with just the one account. So, I can use this on my phone, my laptop. My iPad is actually the one that I usually am watching all of my TV shows on. And you guys can get four extra months of Surf Shark when you use my code backpacking or you can head straight to surfshock.com/backpacking. And I will leave the link for that in the description as well. I miss being able to run at any time of the day. So, the Australian summer is a lot longer than the English summer, which I am so grateful for. However, for the most part, even on an overcast day like this, it's pretty hot and I do not want to go running in the middle of the day because I will just be sweating far too much. So, if I do want to go for a run,

realistically, it has to be before 8:00 a.m. in the morning. if I've missed that window or if I need to catch up on sleep, then I need to be doing it like after 6:00 p.m. in the evening and it gets darker quicker here, which is not always ideal because then you're running in the dark. So, there is one benefit about the UK weather. Even in the summer, it is normally always cool enough to go for a run at any time of the day and I don't have to factor in those specific time slots into my schedule. I miss Percy Pigs. In fact, I just miss M&S food in general. And I know what you're going to say, Christianne. They now stock Percy pigs in Australia, which is true. In Cooh's supermarkets, they have a British section and you can get your Percy Pig

fix, but maybe I should make a whole video on this. They're not the same. I know people say that they're the same, but as a self-proclaimed Percy Pig expert and fanatic, they are not the same. There's small differences which an untrained person would not look on to, but I can tell that in Australia they're just like slightly more marshmallowy. I feel like I want to go more in depth into this into the mystery of the Australian Percy pigs in another video. But the bottom line is I miss British Percy Pigs. I miss the NHS. Of course I do. I know that the NHS is not perfect and it certainly has its flaws. But not once in the UK have I ever had to worry about being able to afford going to the doctor. In Australia, we do have this

thing called Medicare, but it's a bit more complex. There's a few more layers to it. You have to find a bulk billing doctor, and that's not always easy to find. I actually haven't yet had a free doctor's appointment in Australia. I needed to have some strong allergy meds prescribed because my hay fever just goes off the charts here. And I had to pay $80 to have the steroids prescribed. And that's just the reality. So, I miss the NHS. I miss UK grocery prices. It kind of frustrates me when I hear people in the UK complaining about how high grocery prices are. And I do agree in the sense that grocery prices are always too high and we should always be able to afford food to keep us alive, you know.

However, if only those people knew just how much groceries cost in other countries, they might not be complaining so much. My favorite supermarket in the UK has always been Sainsbury's. However, in the last few years that I was living in the UK, I was shopping in little and the amount of money that I would say I was able to do my entire week shop for myself which was high protein, lots of meat, lots of vegetables, like when I was trying to fuel myself really well and really healthily. I was spending on average about £30 a week, which I think for the same products and diet would be really hard to achieve here in Australia for that same price. impossible to achieve in five. There's a girl I follow on Tik Tok actually and

she does a series where she feeds her family of four for a fiverr and she will always spend only a fiverr and she'll do it in different supermarkets in the UK as well and she always achieves it and she cooks all kinds of meals as well and I just think that's so impressive. I miss walking into a clothes store and not being bothered by the employee. As a British person, when I go clothes shopping, I don't like to speak to anyone. I didn't realize that was going to be a thing that I would miss until I arrived in Australia. Every single clothing store or retail store that you go into, you are almost bombarded with staff being like, "Hello, how are you going?" And you know, they're always

super nice and friendly, but like they are quite overwhelming. And as a British person, I just want to shop in peace. And that's not really possible in Australia. In fact, I was shopping in Bondi just yesterday and I walked in and I was not bombarded by anyone. And I was like, "Wow, this is amazing." And so, you know, I was browsing around the store and after a minute or two, this lady comes up to me and she goes, "Oh my god, I am so sorry. I was so busy with emails and things that I just didn't introduce myself." And I was like, "That's okay. I wasn't expecting you to. You really don't need to. Like, I am just browsing." Anyway, you never really deal with that in the UK. At the

most, you get to deal with some very sassy and uninterested Zara employees. And I wouldn't have it any other way. I miss really good pub food and cozy pub culture. Walking into somewhere quite dimly lit, often a little bit chaotic, and getting yourself a solid bangers and mash or a roast dinner or a really hearty shepherd's pie. You can get those things in Australia, but I just don't think they do them quite as well, and they're also not as easy to come by. I think when winter hits in Australia is when I'll be trying to seek these places out a little bit more. I miss meal deals. Sainsbury's meal deal, Tesco meal deal, M&S meal deal. M&S has been mentioned twice. I really do miss it.

Even a Boots meal deal. It's just such good value. And you can't get proper value deals like that in any of the Australian supermarkets. And actually, a Boots meal deal is a real hack when you're in a UK airport because obviously usually the prices for food are quite inflated. But if you need to feed and water yourself before your flight and you don't want to spend an arm and a leg, go to Boots and get a Boots Mill deal. Now, these ones I'm not currently missing, but I know that I am going to miss them at some point, and that is a proper autumn, cold, crisp mornings, crunchy leaves, beautiful orange and red scenes. I know that we will see a little bit of autumn in Australia, but I feel

like it's just not going to hit the same as autumn in the UK. And also Christmas, of course. I do love Christmas in Australia. It is a lot of fun, but it's different. It's not the same. In fact, it's not even comparable to a UK Christmas. That's so different. You don't really ever get that proper cozy festive Christmy feeling that you get in the months leading up to Christmas in the UK. Even though people put around Christmas trees here and decorations, they play Christmas music. They literally play like Let It Snow, Let It Snow, and like all of these winter themed Christmas songs here. and it just it doesn't feel quite right. So, of course, I miss Christmas in the UK. I miss historical towns that are left,

right, and center in the UK. This is something that I didn't realize that I was going to miss until I was gone. It just hits a lot harder visiting the UK now and walking on these cobblestone streets and passing by all of these historical buildings because when you're in Australia, and I don't even really think about it, but most of the things around me are max 50 to 100 years old. When I was most recently in the UK, I visited my friend Adam in Manchester and he took me to his favorite view in the city. And it wasn't because it was super scenic in any way. It was because you had three layers of history right in front of you. In the very foreground, you're standing in front of a medieval

rock wall which is probably almost 2,000 years old. The next layer back, you've got the train tracks representing the industrial revolution from, let's say, a hundred years ago. And then a layer back after that, you see all the high-rise skyscrapers representing the modern world, the 21st century. And when I was standing there and Adam was talking me through that, I was like, that's pretty [__] cool. You can see things like this all over the UK. I also miss the public transport network in the UK. It's so easy by train to get to all of these amazing historical cities and towns. It's fast to get there. Everything's also in close proximity. Even if I wanted to go to the other side of the

country, it's either going to be a 8-hour drive, a 4-hour train journey, or a 45minute flight, which in the grand scheme of things to go to the other side of the country really isn't that much because if I wanted to go to the other side of the country to see my sister in Australia, that's a 5hour flight. However, what I do not miss about the public transport in the UK, because don't get me wrong, those train prices, I think that they are completely diabolical because of course the network is good, but if they want people to take the trains more and not take their own cars, they're going to need to lower the price because it's always cheaper to drive somewhere. And that just makes no

sense to me personally. Whereas, on the other hand, the Australian public transport network is much less extensive. It's much harder to get to different regions in Australia. And even within the city, the public transport network isn't half as good as it is in London, for example. However, it's affordable here. It's cheap, in fact, and so it's an actual incentive to ride the public transport here as opposed to taking your car. And last, but by no means least, of course, I miss my friends and family in the UK. I miss being close to them. I miss even being on the same time zone as them. And I know that this is something that's going to be even more difficult for me when I start having a family out here, just not being close to my support network, you

know. And that is it. Those are all the things that I can think of right now that I miss about the UK since moving to Australia. Let me know if there's any of you guys from the UK who have moved to Australia. if there's anything else that you miss from the UK. Let me know if you would be interested in seeing a video of things that I absolutely do not miss from the UK since being in Australia because I certainly have a list of those things as well because like I said, I am so grateful to be here in Australia. I love it so much. I don't see myself moving back to the UK anytime soon. Thank you guys so much for watching and I will see you in the next video.

Bye-bye.