THe Real Chinatown

Like every city Melbourne has a "Chinatown", an area in the city centre where there are a number of Chinese restaurants and , occasionally a couple of Chinese shops selling various types of tat. There is a huge gateway at both ends of the street and the tourist boards tell you that it is a must see.

And then there are the real Chinatowns, the suburbs where many of the residents are Chinese, where even the banks put up dual signage and where you'll find good (and cheap) Chinese food.

Box Hill is one area where you can guarantee that you can have good Yum Cha, buy specialist Chinese ingredients and, yes, quite a lot of the tat as well. And all this with the background babble of Cantonese! I love it, it reminds me of the areas of HK outside the city... except here all the waitresses/ shop staff speak good Aussie as well as Gwangdongwah... which is good for me as my Cantonese is now very rusty (and was only ever good enough for taxis and restaurants!)

I noticed this interesting octagonal turret and was going to blip just it, but the signs caught my eye too and I wanted to include a few of those too. I'm thinking about taking a few shots of the top storeys of buildongs here. There are some lovely shapes and designs, but the ground floors are often just shops, We'll see.