Townsville

From Mission Beach we drove down to Townsville, where we spent a night in a Bournemouth-esque chintzy bed and breakfast called Coral Lodge. We spent a day in Townsville where we strolled along the esplanade and visited the excellent Reef HQ aquarium. In the evening we caught the Ferry over to Magnetic Island and checked into the XBase flashpacker hostel, which I will write more about in my next post.

Mission Beach

Mission Beach was a welcome change from Cairns. Its a far more relaxed place, and the Absolute Backpackers hostel that we checked into was excellent. They actively encouraged travellers to bring in their own booze, and the large communal kitchen and eating area made it easy to make new friends. On our first day in Mission Beach we went white-water rafting on the grade 4 rapids of the Tully River. Here Gaz learnt the hard way that Tara doesn’t react well in a crisis. On one of the first major rapids of the day, David (one of our fellow rafters) lost his grip on the raft and tumbled out of the boat taking Gaz with him. Whilst Gaz attempted to scramble back onto the raft, Tara looked on in panic but didn’t feel the urge to help him into the boat. It was left to the instructor to scramble across the raft and pull Gaz to safety. It was a great day nonetheless though and we’d thoroughly recommend it to anyone. On our second day in Mission beach we decided to throw ourselves out of an aeroplane from 14,000ft with an Australian attached to our backs. Fortunately both of our Australians had remembered to attach parachutes to their own backs so we were in safe hands. Tara took all of this in her stride as she’d done this before, but Gaz was terrified to begin with. For Gaz the 20 minute ascent to 14,000ft is what Alex Ferguson would probably describe as “squeaky-bum time”. The 60 seconds of freefall was nothing short of amazing though, and quite possibly the best single experience of our trip so far. Two-days later the adrenalin is still pumping round our bodies.

Cairns

It was in Cairns that we first realized that the East Coast of Australia is preferred habitat of the 18-year-old British school-leaver. We both felt ancient in Cairns. The majority of these travellers are dragging wheelie bags behind them, which contain untold luxuries such as Jimmy Choo shoes and GHDs. This wasn’t quite what we’d expected to see on our travels. Cairns had little to offer to us, as the Lagoon was closed for refurbishment and the bars reminded us of 18-30 holidays in Spain with condom inflating games being played by the younglings. The highlight of Cairns for us was Kuranda, which is a town up in the rainforest above Cairns. We caught a cable car up to the town, and took the scenic train back down to Cairns. Whilst up in Kuranda, Gaz had a short digeredoo lesson and splashed out on an expensive piece of hollow tree. We were glad to be collecting a rental car on our third day in Cairns so that we could start making our way down the coast. The Nissan granny car that we were given wasn’t exactly what we’d been hoping for, but we've grown to love her and we named her Kitty on our journey down to Mission Beach.

Uluru

The following day we joined a two-day tour of Uluru (Ayer’s Rock) and King’s Canyon. When we first boarded our bus we were disappointed to see that our tour group comprised of a retired Italian-Australian couple, a non-English speaking Korean student and a cake-loving Brazilian doctor. We were not expecting much fun. Thankfully it turned out that the Italian-Australian couple, Mario and Lynne, where unintentionally hilarious and kept us well entertained. Lynne was suffering from some mild form of tourettes and barely 15 minutes would pass on the bus without her shouting “DINGO!” or “SPECTACLE!” at the top of her voice. Mario was in control of the volume of his voice but was outspoken in a different way. His comments to us about the Aborigines are probably best not repeated on this blog, but kept us amused over dinner. Our two-day tour was expensive but we felt it was money well spent. On the first day we walked the rim of King’s Canyon, and our guide Siobhan taught us a lot about Aboriginal culture (much to Mario’s derision). We stayed the night at Mt Ebeneezer cattle station, before rejoining the bus for our tour of Uluru. Scotty and Tic where our guides for the second day, and were a comedy double-act that kept us well entertained. Aborigines consider Uluru to be a sacred site and prefer that visitors don’t climb the rock, however climbing is not prohibited, so Gaz took up the opportunity to scale the rock. It was much harder than he’d expected though, and out of the six people that started the climb from our bus only Gaz and the Korean made it to the top. We spent that night in the overpriced Ayer’s Rock resort (Old Pioneer’s hotel), before catching our flight to Cairns the next morning.

Darwin & Alice Springs

Due to a calendar malfunction, well, our inability read a calendar anyway, we managed to delay our entry into Australia by 1-day. As a result, we missed out on spending 24-hours in Perth, and instead we were forced to spend the night of Gaz’s birthday on the floor of Darwin airport whilst we awaited our connecting flight to Alice Springs. Gaz wasn’t too disappointed by this as it meant that he could spend the lion’s share of his birthday on the beach in Bali. Not a bad place to turn 28, I think you’ll all agree.
After a brief interrogation at the hands of Australian immigration, the next thing that greeted us in Australia was a baggage claim hall over-spilling with American Navy personnel. It was with great pleasure that we knocked over a handful of the smaller American sailors whilst swinging our backpacks onto our shoulders (we were careful not to upset any of the bigger animals). Gaz hadn’t had so much fun since he took out a pushy Chinaman in Hangzhou train station. After a few hours sleep on the floor of Darwin airport, we boarded a plane to Alice Springs and en route we were treated to the most spectacular show as the sun rose over the deserts of Australia. We spent our first morning in Alice Springs catching up on the sleep we’d missed whilst travelling, and then set out to take in the sites of Alice Springs. We were concerned that we’d only budgeted one afternoon to see Alice Springs, but this was more than enough time to see all that the town has to offer. The highlight (for Tara anyway) was a visit to the Flying Doctors museum. One of the things that was most apparent to us in Alice Springs was the friction that existed between the European Australians and the Aborigines. The Australian government only recently apologized for the way that Aborigines have been treated in the past. The government's current policy seems to be to give money to the Aborigines, but rather than improving things this appears to just be generating a lot of alcoholic Aborigines.

Bali

For the past two months we've been on the move every three days, so we were delighted to be checking into our hotel in Bali for a lengthy seven days. Bali as an island has everything you could ever want (or at least anything Gaz could ever want anyway). The island has a varied mixture of landscapes from stunning beaches through green rice fields up to lofty volcanoes. We spent our first two days lying on the beach and learning to surf. Our balinese surf instructors had the patience of saints, which was fortunate because they really needed it in order to teach us how to surf. Fortunately their perseverance paid off though and by the second day Gaz was managing to stand-up and ride some waves. Luckily Tara had thrown in the towel by this point so we even have some photos to prove it.

We spent our third day on the island underwater, as we tried our hands once again at Scuba diving. We are starting to think that we're not destined to be regular divers because we had another disappointing dive. Bali is renowned for its usually calm seas and and thirty-metre visibility underwater, but this was not the experience that we were treated too. The ocean was so choppy that our boat captain couldn't even make it to the dive site, so instead we had to go a dive site nearer shore. Here we were treated to claustrophobic five-metre visibility, but fortunately our dive master had brought some bread down with us to feed the fish and we were soon surrounded by swarms of tropical fish. It was a great experience to have the fish eat out of our hands though we're not convinced that this constitutes the unobtrusive diving that was encouraged during our PADI course in Thailand.

On the fourth day we hired a scooter and set off to explore the southern tip of Bali. Within 30 minutes of setting off, we had our first (and thankfully only) brush with Indonesian corruption. We were flagged down by a police officer and asked to show our license. When Gaz showed his UK driving license we were told that its not valid in Bali and that we required an International driving license. We were then told that we'd need to come to a law court tomorrow to sort it out, but for a 150,000 Rupiah bribe the officer was willing to let us off. We'd read about this in the Lonely Planet, so we weren't entirely surprised but it was frustrating nonetheless. So we paid our bribe to the fat police officer and set off again unsure as to how many times we'd have to pay such a bribe. Thankfully this was the only time that we were pulled over, but it took the shine off of what was otherwise a really fun day. We rode down to the Monkey temple in Uluwatu, where we ambushed by monkeys looking for peanuts, before heading north to Dreamlands beach. Dreamlands beach is a surfer's paradise with an amazing break, but was far beyond our surfing skills so we stuck to admiring it from the beach.

On our penultimate day we hired a car & driver and went on a tour of the island to see some of the culture that Bali had to offer. We started off our day with a Balinese dance show (which was essentially an Indonesian panto), we then went to some local craft factories (Silver, Batik, and Wood-carving) before heading up the mountain for views of the volcano (which we couldn't actually see because we were shrouded in fog). On our way back from the volcano we stopped at a coffee plantation, and the rice terraces before finally making our way down to the Monkey Forest in Ubud (where we were once again ambushed by over-friendly monkeys).

Bali is without doubt Gaz's favourite destination so far. The island has so much to offer from mountain hiking through surfing. The beaches are the most stunning that I've ever seen, and the local people are really friendly. Furthermore accommodation and food are excellent value especially near Kuta beach, although prices seemed to get higher as you move inland. I'd love to go back. The only things the island needs to get rid of are the corrupt policemen, and the hawkers that put on irritating Australian accents when they're trying to sell you something.

Singapore

Having spent a few weeks in the more rural parts of South-East Asia, we were quite looking forward to the hustle and bustle of Singapore. Prior to arrival, all we knew of Singapore was that its illegal to chew gum, and that Singaporeans love air-conditioning. We arrived to discover that virtually everything is illegal in Singapore. The whole city is covered with signs telling people what they can't do. We were deeply disappointed to discover that the transportation of durians on the Singaporean Metro system is illegal, but Tara was quite relieved to rid herself of the two that she'd smuggled in from Thailand as they were taking up quite a lot of space in her backpack. We only had two days in Singapore, but we managed to squeeze in quite a few sites. We started off with wander around the colonial district of Singapore, taking in their new Arts Theatre, the Singapore Cricket Club and their old parliament building. From there we wandered up through Fort Canning which sits upon a hill in the middle of the city, and over to Orchard Road to indulge in some retail therapy. In the afternoon we caught the cable car over to Sentosa Island, which is a Singapore's equivalent of Blackpool (a slightly tacky pleasure resort) and also the southern most tip of continental Asia (a dubious claim as it is connected to mainland Asia via two bridges). Singapore has a beautiful colonial feel to it, which we indulged in by sipping Singapore Slings and Gin & Tonics in one of the many Raffles hotel bars. After that we made our way down to the waterfront which is home to one of the livelier parts of town for dinner and drinks.


The public transport system in Singapore is excellent. Its quick, clean and really easy to navigate. So through a combination of trains and buses, we made our way to Changi Prison on east side of Singapore Island on our second morning and visited the war museum that is based there. We then went for a brief stroll around Little India (unsurprisingly this is the Indian quarter of Singapore), before heading out to the airport to catch our flight to Bali. We both really enjoyed Singapore, but it is perhaps a little too sterile. Everything is illegal, and the punishments for breaking any of the laws are extremely harsh. Furthermore, after two days we were beginning to show early signs of frostbite from the arctic air-conditioning so we were glad to be moving onto the beach paradise of Bali.