I only spent 4 nights in Singapore but thoroughly enjoyed the city. It was a stark contrast to Indonesia and the taxi from the airport to the city traveled much faster than any car in Indonesia and on infinitely superior roads. It was the night of the FA Cup final and unfortunately I missed the first half due to a late landing. The problem was that the landing gear wouldn't come down, quite a serious problem. I caught the second half and it was probably a good thing that I wasn't able to watch the whole match as drinks prices [View Full Entry]

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I am still very behind in writing this so it may be relatively brief. I had decided that as I was both flying into and out of Bali I could either visit places to the east or west of Bali, not both. I chose to the west as this gave me the chance to go to Komodo to see the world's largest lizards. First stop was inevitably Kuta. Kuta is an Australian enclave where you can get all your regular footy matches, go surfing and drink VB; in short it's not authentic Bali. That said it is a lot of [View Full Entry]

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I visited the Hidden Valley in Kununara but never did find it (very well hidden). At the hostel, the night manager Peter had noticed that things were going missing from the kitchen, he was going to stay up all night and get photographic evidence to be presented to the boss, quite involved I thought, but also very dedicated; his suspicions were correct. After that it was onto Darwin. Darwin is a vit of a frontier city but was a lot more civilised than I thought it would be. I had booked a tour to Litchfield NP the day after my [View Full Entry]

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So after Kalgoorlie it was back to Fremantle to organise getting up the west coast. I managed to sort out a lift with an Australian, Michael, who had been staying in Perth but was now making his way back home to Darwin in his campervan. Bumped into the couple of guys from Esperance and a couple of Israeli guys on motorcycles who I met in Albany, while I was in Fremantle There was to be lots of fishing involved as Michael is a keen angler, I was happy to give it a go. There was a lot of faffing around [View Full Entry]

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The bus from Airlie to Townsville left pretty early and I thought my breakfast had cost me getting to the bus stop in time, but luckily the shuttle came back for me and in the end I had loads of hanging around time. There were planty of the usual suspects at the bus stop that I had met over the last few weeks. The bus arrived in Townsville in the afternoon and I waved a hurried goodbye to Ellie who I had travelling with for the last few weeks to immediately jump on the ferry over to Magnetic Island. On the [View Full Entry]

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The Whitsunday sailing trip is one of the must-do things on the east caost along with going to Fraser Island and Byron Bay. There was a bit of hanging around in Rockhampton to wait for the bus and eventually we were off. Fortunately I had been directed to the correct bus stop by a young English couple. Although I thought the correct bus stop was the one I eventually went to, I would have disregarded this as the ticket stated that the bus would depart from the stop on the other side of the river. I suppose I should trust my [View Full Entry]

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After the Fraser Island trip I caught the bus to Rockhampton (locally known as Rocky, in keeping with the shortening of just about every word by the Australians: eg bottle-o = bottleshop) which is the beef capital of Australia. So mission number 1 was to get a decent steak. I stayed at the Ascot Hotel which has a backpackers above the pub and is known as having the best steak in Rocky. They bring the steak out of the kitchen sizzling on a very hot slab of rock, you then cook it to your liking. It was absolutely deliceous and I [View Full Entry]

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Fraser Island is one of the must do things on the East Coast so I had to do it. We went for the regular backpacker thing where they put you in a group of ten or less and out you in a big 4x4 with all your food, booze and equipment and send you off round the island. We all met up in the morning and had a couple of videos about safety on the island and other important stuff like that most people slept through. Then we went down to the shed and packed up the 4x4s with tents cooking [View Full Entry]

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In Brisbane I had met up with Ellie who had left an internet message on some website or another. So we had met up and had booked our Fraser Island and Whitsunday sailing; as an added bonus the travel agent had given us a free canoe safari in the Noosa everglades. So we got picked up, met the rest of the group, got kitted up and stocked up on booze and food. We got taken across the lake and got instructions on the canoes and then we were off. We had a group of 12 so there were six canoes between [View Full Entry]

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I caught a local bus to Coolangatta at the start of the Gold Coast. The Gold Coast towns have now been amalgamted into Gold Coast City and there is a definate stratagy that the council is employing. There is huge development all the way up the coast from the NSW/Queensland border at Coolangatta through Surfer's Paradise and up to Brisbane. I thought that now I had arrived at the glitzy Gold Coast I should get a tan. Unfortunatley I really hurt myself and I was out of action for a while. So I spent a lot of time inside wathcing the [View Full Entry]

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