After a night celebrating our success in the Magnums table quiz we were back on the ferry to Townsville and shortly after that on a bus back to Cairns. The journey back up was fine and we were soon back in the hostel. Pat and some of the other regulars from our previous visits decided to give us a proper send off. First though we treated ourselves to that very Australian delicacy - Kangaroo steaks from Woolworths. They were delicious if we do say so ourselves. After a few drinks on the fire escape, we headed to the local Irish Pub [View Full Entry]

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We decided as our time was limited we would only get one trip south from Cairns before having to fly to Brisbane. As we had heard nothing but good things about Magnetic Island we decided to head there. The jumping off point for Magnetic Island is the (Originally named) city of Townsville which is about 350km south of Cairns. A half day trip on a greyhound bus got us there but as it was dusk when we got there so we saw very little of the city. We did notice that there seemed to be a ridiculous number of Irish pubs [View Full Entry]

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Well we had one night in Cairns when we got back. This is perhaps the shortest blog entry of the entire trip so far but we felt the night deserved a mention. After getting back to the hostel we met up witth Pat and the crew at the hostel again and decided what better way to celebrate our homecoming (We had been away 4 nights) than a night out. Nights out in the hostel generally involve the beer garden or fire escape as it's known in layman terms before heading to Gilligans (No change there then). We had arranged to meet [View Full Entry]

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We were on the bus at 8am to take us to Cape Tribulation. Cape Tribulation is a large area of rainforest in the Daintree National Park, famous for it's mangrove forests which run right down to the beaches in the area. Our talkative bus driver entertained us (Some of the time) as we drove by endless sugar cane fields before taking a "Crocodile Tour" on the Daintree River. While we did manage to see one very small crocodile it wasn't quite up to Steve Irwin standards. After the boat trip we did a very rushed boardwalk walk through a small [View Full Entry]

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We were up nice an early to hop on our little bus to Port Douglas. We had a really scenic drive up the coast on the short trip to Port Douglas with commentary the whole way (Something that happens on pretty much every bus in OZ) from our driver. We checked into our hostel which had a beautiful pool (7 and a half months and the first hostel we had seen with a pool). After a bite to eat we explored the picturesque town which while small has a really nice atmosphere about it. After that we cooked ourselves up some [View Full Entry]

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We were up early in Medan and after saying our sad goodbyes to Una, we were back at the craziness that is Medan International Airport. After more negotiations over bag weights (Despite a major repack the previous night) with Air Asia; more excess baggage charges were handed over and we soon arrived back in Kuala Lumpar. From there we made straight for the city centre and after a bite to eat we caught a bus to Singapore. After arriving at what we thought was the Singapore Border we hopped off and took our luggage only to figure out we were simply [View Full Entry]

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We were up early to make our way out to the airport. However, our flight was delayed, so Una decided to tell us a few horror stories about Indonesian Airlines to pass the time. The flight itself went grand and we were met by Indra our driver (Very posh) for the day. Our first stop (as seems the way with Una regardless of where you are in the world) was a coffee shop. It's run by Una's friends in Banda, Rosa and Didi. We also met their tiny little new born daughter Michelle who was chilling in her own ingenious hammock [View Full Entry]

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We decided to catch a bus to Kuala Lumpar and were up early to make our way to one of the bus depots. The bus was an amazing contrast to the rust buckets we had been rattling around the rest of Asia in and the journey which is relatively short (About 5 hours) flew by. Just as we hopped off the bus in downtown KL the heavens opened and we had to run for cover (These Asian rain storms are not to be messed with). We grabbed a train to the very stylish monorail (The Simpsons Monorail tune became the theme [View Full Entry]

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After wandering the huge shopping centre that is Bangkok airport we were on the plane (Fire exit seats - Oh Yeah!) and faster than you can watch four episodes of friends we were in Singapore. A quick subway into town and we were in our hostel - Goodbye to the pains of Asia. After checking in we were upgraded to a twin room (Yes upgrades happen in hostels too). To celebrate we did what we generally do - Headed for an Indian. Luckily we were staying pretty much on the fringes of Little India. As it was Chinese New Year Holidays [View Full Entry]

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After a painless 5 hour bus journey we arrived in Hue. Once again we stayed at the hotel that we were dropped at (Not very hardcore backpacker we know but cuts down on the pain of finding somewhere else at that time in the morning). After emptying our bags and giving them all our laundry to do, we wandered over to the Indian next door for lunch. We then decided to do some sightseeing, but proceeded to walk for a good half hour before realising that we were heading in the wrong direction and leaving the city. We eventually located the [View Full Entry]

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