Cairns: Final Destination of Oz

Our final stop in Australia was Cairns which is a cool town with a huge manmade lagoon overlooking the ocean. We spent the first night exploring the town and the night market before going for dinner in the Woolshed, a backpacker bar that quickly became our local for the 5 days in Cairns. We spent the following day lounging by the lagoon in the sun - after all of the rain we had in Airlie Beach, it was good to be back in the sunshine!

On our second night we were booked onto the infamous Cairns pub crawl. There were about 100 backpackers taking part and we were driven around Cairns in the party bus - an open top double decker kitted out with disco lights and a huge sound system! We stopped in 5 clubs that featured table top dancing, drunken party games, a live band and masses of free pizza!

The next day we treated our hangovers with a picnic and more laying around by the lagoon. That evening we had an all you can eat chinese buffet and had an early night to prepare us for our early start the next morning for a Great Barrier Reef sailing and snorkelling trip.

The trip started out a bit cloudy, but the sun soon came back out and after about an hour of sailing we got into our wet suits, flippers and snorkels and went for a swim with the fish! The water was a bit murkier than our snorkelling trip in the Whitsundays, but the coral reef was still amazing, and we were soon surrounded by a school of huge fish when the captain started throwing shrimp into the water to attract them!

After an hour or so of snorkelling, we stopped off at Green Island, where there was a stunning beach surrounding a tropical rainforest. We then sailed back to Cairns and headed back to the Woolshed for a Chilli and a beer.

We spent the next couple of days between the lagoon and the Woolshed and on the the morning of our 6th day we jumped on a flight to Brisbane, waved goodbye to Australia, and caught our flight to New Zealand.

Whitsundays Sailing Adventure!

We arrived at Airley Beach, the stop off before our Whitsundays sailing trip, and checked into a nice hostel where each dorm was in it's own self contained building surrounding an outdoor pool and hot tub. Unfortunately it was raining constantly, so we couldn't put them to good use!

The next morning we went to find our boat. It was a catameran called 'wings', complete with a hot tub!! The weather was stilll looking pretty grey when we got on the boat, and it only got worse when we were out on the open sea! It started getting pretty rocky as we headed to our first snorkel/diving site, and Amy, Gareth and Steven were all starting to feel pretty seasick! It was still cold and raining when we got to the site, so we decided not to bother with the snorkelling, although Marc decided to go for a dive!

After that we had an amazing buffet dinner, and finished off the night with a box of goon, getting to know the other passengers!

The next morning we woke up to a lot nicer weather, and the boat headed to Whitehaven Beach, where the sand is almost 100% sillica, which means it's absolutely beautiful white sand! The sun was out by that point so we had a play around on the beach and then in the water, where Marc and Steven saw a baby shark! We headed back to the boat for lunch, and got to our next snorkel site. We all went for a snorkel and saw lots of amazing coral and fish. We saw clownfish (aka Nemos) and got to swim alongside a big turtle!!

That evening we moored in a bay which was well known for having dolphins in it. The captain put on some blue lights at the back of the boat which apparently attract squid and fish, which the dolphins then come to eat! We were all drinking out at the back of the boat, and sure enough, two or three dolphins appeared and started playing in the lights! They were coming so close to us we could have stroked them!

The next day there was one more early morning snorkel, before we headed back to shore. The weather got really bad as soon as we started walking back to the hostel, and it rained pretty much constantly until we left Airley Beach, three days later! So we spent most of our time in the hostel, although we did venture out for a night out with the people we met on Wings before we all went our separate ways.

The Town of 1770

After arriving into Hervey Bay at midnight, we awoke in the morning to wish Marc a happy 25th birthday! To celebrate, we made a breakfast of croissants and bacon sarnies!

Hervey Bay was only a quick stop over, so after spending the morning on the beach, we hopped onto our next coach to the Town of 1770, named for being the landing place of Captain Cook when he first arrived in Australia in the year 1770.

We spent five days in 1770, the longest time we've spent any place on our whole trip.  It was a small town, with just a few shops and restaurants and the beach five minutes walk from our hostel, so we spent most of the time relaxing on the beach.

On our first night in town, as it was Marc's birthday, we went out for dinner.  In an attempt to relive the culinary delights of Asia, we opted for the local Thai restaurant, which didn't disappoint! It was a 'bring your own booze' restaurant, so we added a distinctly Aussie traveller feel to the occasion by sharing a box of goon!

On our third day in 1770, Steven, Gareth and Marc decided to go for a surf lesson.  We were picked up from the hostel by our instructor; a crazy conspiracy theorist, but a really nice guy and a good surf teacher!  Surfing was so much fun and a lot easier than we expected and we managed to catch some good waves!  On the way home the instructor treated us to a song that he had written about the woman who had her baby eaten by dingoes as well as telling us about his experiences with aliens. Very entertaining.

The evenings were spent drinking goon and one night we met a couple of fellow Brits and went for a drunken stroll on the beach.

Look out for the drop bears

Noosa

After watching several episodes of Breaking Bad we arrived in Noosa and crashed at the hostel. The next day we decided to go and check what tours were available for Fraser Island, and ended up spending $1,200! But for that we got 3 tours, a pub crawl and accommodation for the rest of the east coast sorted, so not too bad.

Our bank accounts were empty so we were desperate to do something that was free, so we headed to the local national park, which was really pretty.

Fraser Island

We booked ourselves onto a 4x4 bus tour called Cool Dingo’s, which would take us around Fraser Island for 2 days and also give us a bed to sleep in. You can camp on the island which lots of people do, but it was fully booked up and we didn’t want to get eaten by dingoes in the night. The dingoes look a bit like normal dogs, but have been known to eat babies and a man’s finger before, so can be quite dangerous!

We met our group at Lake Mackenzie on the island, and were led by a guide who looked exactly like John Lock off Lost. After swimming in the lake we jumped on the bus and went for a trek around the forest, where we stopped at a creek which had the clearest and probably purest water that we've ever seen. The sand in the river bed was made up of 98% silica, which sounds boring but it is pretty cool as it absorbs sound so you can’t actually hear the water running. Weird! We were also warned about drop bears, a type of bear that hangs in trees and attacks people by jumping out of trees and biting their necks. Stupidly we lapped it up and thought that they were real, only to realise later on that the killer koalas are a made-up aussie joke.

Lake McKenzie

Coincidentally the weekend that we were there was Easter, which sucked because the Aussies have weird alcohol laws on Good Friday where nowhere is allowed to sell or serve alcohol (nothing ‘good’ about that!). Luckily we were pre-warned so stocked up on some lovely Goon beforehand, but not everyone knew about it so didn’t bring their own. Luckily the bar on the island did stay open (shh) and we played drinking games with some Germans who taught us the very worst swear words in German.

We had an early start the next day so dragged our bodies onto the bus, only for it to break down in the rain! Luckily someone drove a replacement over to us. We headed from the middle of the island out to the coast and we hammered it along the beach, dodging the waves to our next stop: Eli Creek. We floated down the water and Marc decided to take his ‘waterproof’ camera in, only for it to break and the screen to stop working for the next few days, so he had to just guess what he was taking photos of.

Minutes before Marc's camera broke

After snapping some pictures from our next stop, Indian Head, we raced over to the Champagne pools; given the name as the waves crash over the rocks the foam fills the pools which were pretty awesome fun. We also stopped off to see some shipwreck on the beach too!

Day two ended and we were supposed to get the ferry back to the mainland but the boat left without us, with the next one not due to leave until 11pm. Luckily, the people organising it were really apologetic and made up for it by giving us free pitchers of beer to help pass the time! Yaaay!

Byron Bay and Nimbin: Hippies and jelly wrestling

We took an overnight Greyhound bus heading North up the East coast to Byron Bay, where we then caught another bus to Nimbin- a hippie village in the middle of nowhere which would be home for us for the next two days.

Nimbin seems like it has been frozen in time from the 60's, with a bus load of tourists arriving once a day to wander around a handful of local shops and sample some of their delicacies. Nimbin is renown for it's pro-cannabis, peaceful, anti-establishment approach to life. Once a year they stage a 'Mardi Grass' rally to air their views and celebrate weed. The drug is still very much illegal in Oz and every now and then the state cops turn up with sniffer dogs and clip some locals, which is what happened on our first evening there!
We stayed in an awesome YHA hostel which had cool hammocks and a nice pool. The only downside was that it was a 1km hike up a hill from the village! But it kept us fit going back and forth for supplies though, particularly as there was a great little place that did Thai pasties. We ate so many in the two days whilst we were there that the guy gave us discount and freebies for being good customers!

After our two days stay we left Nimbin and headed back to the coast for Byron Bay. We had planned on only staying there for one night, but within hours of being there we cancelled our next hostel and bus and booked ourselves another nights stay!
Byron Bay is a cool little surfer town with plenty of sand and waves. It's a good party place although the authorities have clamped down on drinking laws and nowhere can sell doubles, shots or goon!!! Pffft.

We used our extra night wisely and played drinking games with some Swedish and German guys in our room before heading to the hostel bar to watch women wrestling in jelly! Despite the fact that the winner would get a tasty $200, Amy wouldn't enter.

Sydney

Our flight landed into Sydney at about 9am, and Amy's uncle, Rob,  

picked us up from the airport and took us back to his house where we  

would be staying for a few days. On the way back he took us to a  

viewpoint to see the opera house and Harbour bridge, and the view was  

absolutely amazing! After drawing us some maps and explaining the bus  

routes, Rob left for work and we went to explore the city for the  

afternoon! After a macdonalds for lunch we headed to the opera house  

for a few pictures, and explored the town centre. When we got back to  

the house that evening Rob and Vicki cooked us a lush BBQ and the  

kids, Zoe and Jade entertained us! 

 The next day, we took the bus to Taronga zoo, where we took the sky  

safari (a cable car over the zoo), saw kangaroos, koalas and lots of  

snakes! We also went to a spider talk, which was supposed to help Amy  

with her arachnaphobia, but might have just made it worse, especially  

when a huntsman spider, which looks just like a tarantula was handed  

round in a jar!

That evening, we went to Balmoral with Rob, Vicki and the kids, which  

is a lovely beach near their house, and we all had fish and chips as  

the sun set, and took the girls to play in a park overlooking the harbour!

The next day, we moved to a hostel near all the nightlife, and we  

spent the afternoon exploring the area, ending up in a posh bar  

overlooking the opera house, and bought a very expensive beer each!  

After that we decided we should start saving our money, so we bought  

our first box of goon for our night out... 10 dollars for a 4.5 litre  

box of wine (apparently made with fish eggs and milk)... Needless to  

say it was horrible, but as the night wore on it became more  

drinkable! We went to a bar in Kings Cross, luckily it was really near  

our hostel as we got refused entry as we were wearing thongs (flip  

flops) so we went back for a quick change into trainers and we were  

off! The nights events are pretty hazy due to the box of goon we drank  

but from what we remember it was a pretty good night! Luckily we  

weren't too hungover the next day, as we had our mammoth bus ride to  

Byron Bay!

Chiang Mai

We took a five minute boat ride across the Mekong River from Laos to Chiang Khong in Northern Thailand. The border crossing was a breeze for us, while there were hoards of travellers in huge queues waiting to cross the border in the other direction. We jumped straight onto our bus headed for Chiang Mai.

Our first task was to find a Thai meal and a bottle of Chang - we missed Thai food while travelling in the rest of Asia, so it was definitely good to be back in Thailand! Our entertainment for the rest of the night was Thai Boxing. We paid a bit extra for VIP front row seats and placed our bets. There were 5 matches in all, including a comedy interval match where there were 10 blindfolded contenders, all fighting it out at the same time!

After the fighting was over the arena bars stayed open til late, so we had a few more Changs and played some pool, before Steven and Marc jumped into the ring for a Thai boxing match of their own. Both came away a bit bruised!

We spent the next day exploring the city with it's plethora of Buddhist temples.The whole city centre was surrounded by a moat and ancient city walls, so it was a really picturesque place to stay.

In the evening, Gareth and Amy went for a plush three course meal, whilst Steven and Marc  played drunken connect four at an Irish bar, before going back to the Thai boxing bar to booze it up with the bar staff from the night before.

The following day, we met a fellow Cardiffian who we strolled around the city with for the afternoon. In the evening we decided to book ourselves into a Thai cookery class where we learned to cook Pad Thai, Panang curry, Massaman curry and Tom Yum soup. The only downside with learning to cook so many dishes was that we then had to eat all four! We spent the rest of the evening walking around Chiang Mai's huge night market and buying souvenirs.

The next night was our final night in Chiang Mai, so we decided to book ourselves a night in one of the fancier hotels in the city and went for an amazing fish dinner in the restaurant opposite:

After dinner we went for a few drinks at a rooftop bar in the city center. When the bar closed at midnight we were left standing outside with an American bloke trying to decide where the remainder of the night should take us. We ended up returning to the Thai boxing bar, where the staff were so happy to see us again that they gave us free shots of  LaoLao and "Sandy's Special" which was a shot of Sangsom mixed with sodawater that you slam on the table for an exploding effect. Shortly after, we realised that the American guy who'd been tagging along was actually batshit crazy, so we hastily escaped his company.

As in Vietnam, clubs in Chiang Mai have a curfew, so the next place we headed for was a place (we heard on the grapevine) that flouts the laws of the curfew! Unfortunately  as we approached the bar, we saw flashing blue and red lights, followed by the barman shouting "run!", so we made a speedy exit, admitted defeat, and headed back to the hotel for the night.

We spent our final day in Chiang Mai lounging by the pool before catching the long overnight coach back to Bangkok for our last two days in South East Asia. In Bangkok we visited the world's largest outdoor market where we bought lots of nice new clothes, and then went out for one last night out on Kaoh San Road. At midnight we watched the Six Nations live final from a bar with an eccentric woman from Llanelli, which made the Wales win even more enjoyable!

The next day we said our goodbyes to Asia and boarded our flight heading Down Under!