So it seems like I've arrived in Sydney at the dawn of a new Asian century.

And it certainly feels like it on first impression – I was driven to the hotel by a taxi driver from India, I am staying at the Shangri-La Hotel, a Hong Kong-based and big-on-China brand and for dinner, I had Thai chicken larb "salad".

It wasn't half bad.

On my first visit to Australia, decades ago, I arrived in Perth on a Sunday evening – and couldn't find food anywhere. There was no room service at the internationally-branded hotel, and nothing was open.

And as you know, deprive an Asian of her food and you don't have a happy customer.

So Australia is certainly a very different place now vs then. How different will it be by 2025?

Well, if Julia Gillard's Asia white paper, revealed yesterday, comes true, it will a country where all kids can speak an Asian language, where companies have top executives steeped in Asian experience and where tourists from Asia will come by the millions and spread out all over the country, away from the cities into the regions.

Already, half of the six million visitors to Australia come from China and Asia and more resources are being pumped into these markets to increase inbound tourism which is being challenged by the high Australian dollar.

My taxi driver told me that his business is suffering – "not many tourists these days".

It's hard – it's an expensive place these days for visitors. A plate of "fried rice" in a hotel costs A$34, that's almost S$40 and RM100. The Chinese would say that's like eating gold-gilded rice.

Full story:

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