The coach journey was a very annoying journey as there was 2 drunk french guys who had been drinking goon since 8am that morning and made ALOT of noise on the bus. So much so that the driver was very tempted to drive off without them, when after dropping someone off, they both hopped off for a cigarette?! - not a scheduled stop.
Unfortunately it turned out that they were getting off in Brisbane as well AND staying in Base with us... NOOO
As we got to Base we pleaded with the rather crazy guy behind the desk to a) put us in a room not too high up (the ancient looking lift was out of order) and also please not to put the drunken french guys in our room.
After getting to our room, which was really clean and nice, with some friendly but on the quiet side roomies, we had a bit of a look around Brisbane which seemed to consist of mostly shops, bars and restaurants. It's quite a lovely place really though, very clean and easy to mooch around. We eventually headed over to Brisbane Square, which is where the Casino and Library meet. For some reason the square houses a few large metal balls... not sure why.
The interesting thing about Brisbane is that the Buses have underground lanes?! - yeh so instead of an underground train it's all buses and they come out and under the city. You can see the bus lane in this picture, going under Brisbane Square.
We then went over the bridge to get to the Southbank area, which has an 'eye' much like the London Eye, but much smaller. There is also the lagoon, a manmade beach, which actually seemed quite dirty. There's a lovely walkway which is framed by pretty flowers, which skirts around Southbank. It was at this point that my camera decided to jam. - It happened with my last camera - most likely a grain of sand got into the lense and that meant it couldn't focus properly. The same thing had happened to Sarah who I was living with originally and it was the sand from Whitehaven beach, as it is so fine.
I took it to a camera shop, but was not shocked to learn that the manufacturer would not fix it just replace the lens... which would be $300 !? - so the price of a new camera. I asked "well can I clean the lens myself?", he replied that it's pretty much 'cactus' so I may as well.
We stopped off at a hardware store to get a tiny tiny tiny screwdriver to take the camera apart.
On getting back to the hostel I did the following things to my camera.
*took it apart
*wiped it
*blew on it
*tapped it
*put it back together
*poked at it
*dropped it
*bit it to try to to force it.
None of these things worked at all, so in defeat I lightly head butted the camera. Curiousity took over and I just had to turn it on one last time and as if by magic, it was as good as ever!
In the evening, Marine met up with us as she was also in Brisbane. We had heard that the 'Down Under' Bar, which was underneath BASE hostel was good - so me and Marine went down to check it out. It was really small, with alot of drunken people and drunken fat men gyrating against poles. - we left quickly.
We decided to have a big night out the following night and go to 'Fortitude Valley', which is where all the main clubs and bars are and about 30 minutes walk away.
SATURDAY 22ND AUGUST
Sarah & I both needed to buy cards, mine was a fathers day car, as fathers day is on a different day in Australia; and Sarah needed to buy her stepdad a birthday card. We had a bit of a walk round and pretty much walked the same route as we did the day before, as Sarah had forgotten her camera that day.
We then came back and did all our washing and then got ready for a night out with Marine and this Irish guy called Alan who was being our guide for the night.
We went out firstly to this chinese restaurant, which had by far the best chinese food I've had in Australia.
I had some sort of spicy beef dish with noodles. We then went to this decidedly shady irish pub, full of drunk middle aged irish people. - We left there pretty quick! Then we got in a taxi to go Fortitude Valley, which wasn't very far away.
First of all we went to a bar called RG, but Alan realised he had left his ID at home and wouldn't be allowed in without it, so we waited in the bar for him to nip home for it. Not much going on there so we tried another one,
which I can't remember the name of, but it was a very fun place, with FAR too many people in there and not enough air conditioning. Got chatting with a group of friends, one in particular called Ben. They said the best place to go is the 'Wickham'. They were right and we had a fantastic night out there... til around 3ish?
SUNDAY 23RD AUGUST - TUESDAY 25TH AUGUST
The next Oz Experience coach left pretty late at about 2pm so we just hung around on the internet in BASE until the coach arrived. We were disgusted to see that those drunk idiot frenchmen were getting the same coach; although they were actually pretty quiet this time.
At the start of the journey, the driver, Keyno, asked us all to write on the window the time we thought we'd arrive in Surfers Paradise. I won! and I got a lollipop for my prize!
We were dropped off at a central bus station and upon asking at the accomodation desk, we were told that we'd be picked up by a limo!? - WHAT?! This was true, but it was a very old one, with a very 'distressed' looking, (or moth-eaten) interior.
We were taken to our hostel... which was basically a stoner house. - or so it seemed. Full of drunk gypsy irish and canadian surfers. The weather had also gotten REALLY hot.. apparently the hottest heat wave in August so the whole time at Surfers Paradise, it was around 35... and quite sticky... so not very pleasant.
Because of this, for the next few days we did little more than stroll around the shops, sit on the beach, watch DVDs and Australian Idol which was on every evening for the semi finals - knocking down from 24 to 12.
Sleeping was difficult, as it was SO hot at night and the irish people seemed to think it was perfectly fine to sit right outside my open window and shout at the tops of their voices at 4am!?
We made friends with 2 girls from Newcastle and I went out drinking with them one evening.
My impression of Surfers Paradise, was like an overgrown council estate with a beach, it really was pretty skanky and full of how shall we say 'undesirables'. They do have the 2nd highest building in Australia though.
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