By the time Tony co-founded Lonely Planet Publications in 1973, he already had the travel bug. And ever since, travel and discovery have been at the heart of his life and career.
Melbourne has a new subway line – the Metro Tunnel – running through five new stations and currently having a soft opening, before the schedule launches full tilt on 1 February 2026. The new Parkville Station will probably be the most useful new station, since it’s at the University of Melbourne which badly needed a handy Metro station.
▲ The Town Hall Station
The two new central city stations might look slightly redundant since the Town Hall Station is only a couple of hundred metres from Flinders St Station and the State Library Station is right beside the Melbourne Central Station. In fact you might find it easier to enter the State Library Station from Melbourne Central rather than from its own entrance. The Metro Tunnel line, however, runs in a different direction than the other lines through Flinders St and Melbourne Central.
Unfortunately to use the new line you still need the horrible old Myki Card. Transport Victoria have announced that they are introducing ‘tap and go’ technology to Melbourne. Tomorrow? No, they are testing it in 2026 and at some point in the future you’ll actually be able to use it. But didn’t they start testing it in 2023 at some stations? Well yes they did, but clearly three years of testing wasn’t enough, there’s more testing to be rolled out in 2026
◄ My hated Myki Card
Hasn’t anybody asked them about this before? Well yes, for one person I asked Transport Victoria why we couldn’t use contactless cards in Melbourne when London introduced the technology in 2014. So that’s 10 years ago.
And I did get an answer, ‘we’re working on it and hope to introduce it soon.’ Which in Melbourne seems to be in 10 years time. So for over 10 years I’ve been able to use my Australian ANZ credit card to pay for public transport in London, England. But not in Melbourne, Australia. Absurd isn’t it?
Once upon a time Melbourne was a regular ‘most liveable city in the world’ title holder. How could you be a ‘most liveable city’ and at the same time operate the world’s most-visitor-unfriendly-travel-card? I suggested that in 2013 and 13 years later my opinion hasn’t changed. Never mind, the new Metro Tunnel Line reportedly took lots of lessons from London’s very popular Elizabeth Line. In London I often use the Elizabeth Line even if it means travelling a bit further because it’s so fast and convenient. Perhaps Melbourne can also learn from London how to get rid of the Myki Card.
▲ The Elizabeth Line at Bond St.in London
Since it opened in 2022 the Elizabeth Line quickly became the busiest railway line in the UK although technically it’s not part of the London Underground network. It runs out to Heathrow Airport – but so does the Piccadilly Line – and even further to Reading. It’s popular and has won architectural awards as well as being so busy. Check my August 2024 posting about riding the London Tube.
My cheapest night so far (US$4 at the Chhaya Hotel) and I sleep like a baby. Battambang is early to bed (everything shuts down by 10pm) and early to rise (passing cars are beeping at 6.30am). Soka, a cheerful and unfailingly polite moto (motorcycle taxi) rider, tak...
My alarm's set for 5.30am in order to get to Cambodia before dark. It's pissing down with rain (and this is the dry season and in a drought) as I ride the Skytrain, Bangok's elevated 'subway' system, to the bus terminal. An hour out of Bangkok I'm regretting my backpa...
What a comfortable train! Apart from the odd wake-up at the odd stop I sleep right through, waking just in time for a lousy breakfast. We pass through more villages and small towns, some with remarkably neat railway stations, before rolling into Bangkok slightly ahead...
I start the day with a morning stroll of Georgetown's remarkably unchanged streets. I've been coming here since 1974 and much of it has not altered at all. Penang Island has become a centre for computer equipment manufacturing, but that hasn't altered the shophouses o...
A morning stroll over to the Petronas Towers, for a while the highest building in the world. Who knows, it still may be. But you can only go up to the connecting bridge a third of the way up, and for that you have to get a ticket and come back hours later. So instead ...
'You'll really see the Singapore-Malaysia contrast if you take the train,' I was told. 'Everything in Singapore is constantly being rebuilt and improved but the old train station is totally unchanged, it's probably even more run down than when you last saw it.' 'Yo...
Something's wrong when Singapore goes 15 minutes without something new popping up. The MRT, Singapore's state-of-the-art underground system, now runs all the way out to Changi Airport. It whisks me in to the city to my room at the new (but not quite so new) riverside ...
I'm on my way to a travel conference in Macau. I could just fly there, but where's the adventure in that? I've decided to don my backpack and travel overland from Singapore to Macau, and then head on to Shanghai after the conference. This trip will be not too fast,...
In February 2005 we made a short circuit of the Gulf State of Oman, starting and finishing in Dubai in the neighbouring United Arab Emirates. We brought a writer from the New Yorker along for the ride. This is our last day, heading back to the UAE: . About 100 km ...
From the dirt poor little village of Al Khateem we'd descended into Wadi Ghul and followed a trail inside the canyon wall. The wadi has been described as Oman's 'Grand Canyon' and the 1000-metre drop, sometimes little more than an arm-span from the edge of our trail, ...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013