Hostel 89 Cairns

Hey all Well we are in Oz now at last! Had a good flight from Singapore although I got a little annoyed when the person in front of me reclined his chair and mine would not work but I managed to dose for a couple of hours woo hoo. Helen and Gemma unfortunatly got none and when I informed them on how I couldn't recline my chair the whole nite Helen reached over and done it for me, they laughed their heads off! I was not amused lol So we flew into Brisbane and stayed with Gemma's friends Tanya ...

So we ditched Melb and took the 3 hour flight up to Cairns. In the taxi on the way to the first hostel (more on that in a min) I could not believe I was still in the same country. From going from a city with a pretty beach to a place thats so humid & streets lined with palm tree's.. I swear i thought I was on a tropical island. Its so surreal. We arrived @ Hostel 89- or the 'gas chamber' as I like to call it. Gross. The room itself was spot-less but smaller than Ed the Ducks broom cupbaor...

Alright, so since our Airport encounter, life has definitely been a bit more chilled. But in no way chilled enough. Over the days we've been sorting out a host of things, like: Tax numbers, visa labels, swimming shorts, etc. Although these are all relatively easy tasks to complete, when you're backpacking, anything that demands any form of organizing beyond your next meal or pint can become a major endeavor. So by spreading them out over the days we managed to get all of them done now, the mo...

SB: Our final Greyhound journey wasn't so bad - a 10 hour journey overnight from Airlie to Cairns and we did manage to get a bit of sleep. Gutted we missed out on the night in Airlie, but meant we had an extra day in Cairns. Really good first impressions of Cairns (suppose the sunshine helped) and as it was their quiet season the accommodation was so cheap and we ended up with a whole block to ourselves with free evening meals thrown in. First morning there we booked ourselves onto an intro d...

After lengthily heated discussions and a few strops later, we booked our flights to Cairns on 08.05.07 and flew out on 09.05.07. Melbourne is a lovely city, it's relatively clean and there are some lovely bars and restaurants but it's too cosmopolitan and cold!! Personally I want the beach bum experience from Oz. The original plan was to come to Melbourne, work through the winter and then head over to the East coast for the beach, sun and surf but to be honest, now I am shortening my adventur...

Touchdown Cairns, Australia! It may have been 8am, Aussie time, an unspeakable hour of the morning in Malaysian time, but *how* excited was I to be here! Outside the airport, the weather was impossibly perfect; blue sky, bright sun, and none of the sticky Asian humidity. After the most stringent of immigration checks (being sniffed at by dogs and all sorts), I rang round loads of hostels from the airport and they were all fully booking which was a bit worrying! Eventually I got through to one...