Queensland Day 1

---

Woke up at 4:45am to catch the flight at 6:25am to Cairns. I don’t mind sacrificing some sleep for cheaper air ticket :P

The domestic airport was obviously a lot more busy than two weeks ago when we went to Tasmania as the summer holiday starts for school kids.

We did not realize there is 1hour time difference between Sydney and Cairns and that the flight was actually 3 hours instead of 2. Anyway, so we arrived at Cairns at 8:35am local time. A local guide, Queenie, whom we used to arrange some of the tour bookings came to pick us up from the airport, and she gave us a brief city tour around Cairns.

The city of Cairns mainly consists of 6 streets, full of souvenir stores and restaurants. Queenie said Cairns has the size of Hong Kong but only a population of 130,000. Largely dependent on the hospitality industry, the weather here is warm all year round, with a winter of around 25 degrees and dry weather, just like summer in Vancouver!! However, being in the tropical region, summer in Cairns is hot and humid. Again, our first day here was rainy and cloudy. Not a pleasant start, but hopefully will turn better soon. The rain season is not supposed to start until end of December with February being the worse. Queenie said Cairns was developed by Japanese back in long time ago, so Japanese has a long history and strong influence here, Japanese is sort of like an unofficial second language here. This explains why a lot of the tours and travel articles related to Cairns can be found in Japanese, but not any other languages - just like Hawaii!

Anyway, enough of the history. The hotel that we stayed in is called Sebel, located in the heart of Cairns, near Esplanade Street, the main street along the coast. It is a convenient location, and the quality was good considering the price we paid. Carlos made the booking via hotelclub.com, a booking website in Chinese. I had some doubts about the legitimacy of the website, but the rate was a lot better than the other agents. Anyway, after a little trouble, we finally checked in.

Queenie dropped us off at Cairns Central, which is claimed to be the largest shopping centres in Cairns. Well, duh, there are hardly any shopping centres here!! I gave up on shopping in Aus, but we still went to check it out and had a breakfast. Not to our surprise, there was hardly anything there that’s worth mentioning about.

We spent the rest of the day walking around the city, checking out the stores. We went to the Esplanade Lagoon, a salt water lagoon for people to swim in without the risk of being eaten up by sharks. Just like any other parts of Australia, wild lives are abundant here - mud crabs, birds and BATS. It was amazing to see all these bats hanging on the trees just in front of me. Bats are common here because they love mangoes (not blood!).

After an afternoon nap and a short swim, we headed out for dinner. We tried a Ramen place recommended by Queenie. Apparently, by the articles and pictures posted on its windows, this place is quite popular here. We miss ramen, haven’t had it since we left Vancouver, so we went in with a high expectation. The soup was hot and flavourable, but the noodle was anything but Japanese ramen, and the portion was SO small. Failed.

After dinner, we continued to explore the Cairn city night life at the night market and also along the Esplanade street. Our first day ended with a delicious macadamia gelato.

---

Photos

Outside of Rusty's market
This market opens only on the weekend. Famous for fresh and cheap fruits.