Off to Cairns!
Happy St. Patty’s day!
So I woke up this morning, did the class thing, and did my final errands before heading to the airport. While wandering around, buying film, and getting my daily Kebab (I’ve lost count now), I try taking a picture of a street artist only to find that I have indeed broken my digital camera.
A moment of silence for my fallen camera.
I compensate by buying more film for my underwater camera. With a week left, it should hold out. I did some math, and after 6800 pictures, and factoring the cost of the camera at $300, that’s $.05 a picture. I’m doing pretty well.
So anyway, the gameplan is to go to Cairns, get a little scuba diving in, some fishing, and possibly tool around on some ATVs to wrap up the weekend. With a majority of the people from our trip going on this little side trip, it should be pretty interesting.
Now, you might be asking yourself, “how do you pronounce ‘Cairns’”? I still ask that question. The Aussies say “Cans”, which would give the word not one but two silent letters. Aussies have a funny habit of moving around ‘r’s, adding them to some words and removing them from others. The most blatant example of this is when a Aussie says “No”. It comes out as “Nor!”, especially when they get agitated. Other examples:
• English: “Hello” – Aussie: “Hellor”
• “Melbourne” – “Melbon”
I get my stuff packed up, and head to the airport by myself. Since I buggered up my ticket that was booked with everyone else originally, I booked a different one through the local budget airline, JetStar. Brisbane has a train, akin to MARTA, that runs to the airport every few minutes. It’s pretty expensive - $11 a trip, but is cheaper than a cab I suppose.
Because I’m used to catching flights out of Atlanta, I get to the airport way too early. After getting through security (and having my umbrella examined and my pocket screwdriver confiscated), I kill some time by eating some shitty Aussie pizza (I have yet to find good pizza or hamburgers in this hemisphere) and devouring a Dan Brown novel.
A word about Jetstar airlines. This is by far the most cheaply run airline I’ve ever seen. They only fly low-end Boeing or Airbus planes. There are no assigned seats. Boarding is done by first-come-first serve. The gate doesn’t have a jetway—you have to walk on the tarmac to get into the plane. I was surprised that the pilot wasn’t outside throwing baggage onto the plane.
On board the plane, every seemed more or less like a normal airplane, except the stewardesses were charging for everything, even soft drinks! Disappointed (but not mad, you can’t ask much when you fly the Greyhound of the skies), I passed out and slept for most of the flight.
To Jetstar’s credit, however, they did have the most gorgeous stewardresses I’ve ever seen on an airplane.
The hostel that we picked out was nice enough to pick us up from the airport. After some confusion from 30 of us checking in at once, we get settled in and try to sleep for the night. Seeing as it was St. Patricks day, this proved to be more difficult than anticipated. Normally, I would have participated in the festivities, but after being up since 7AM and having our scuba trip departing early the following morning, I didn’t want to go out.
Being it was a hostel, I got put in a room with 5 other random people, who randomly turned out to be extremely drunk most of the night and coming in and out of the room at all hours of the night. They were never in there long enough for me to wake up to yell at them, but they sucked at life. At least the room has air conditioning – Cairns is quite humid and warm.
Long day tomorrow.
--P
So I woke up this morning, did the class thing, and did my final errands before heading to the airport. While wandering around, buying film, and getting my daily Kebab (I’ve lost count now), I try taking a picture of a street artist only to find that I have indeed broken my digital camera.
A moment of silence for my fallen camera.
I compensate by buying more film for my underwater camera. With a week left, it should hold out. I did some math, and after 6800 pictures, and factoring the cost of the camera at $300, that’s $.05 a picture. I’m doing pretty well.
So anyway, the gameplan is to go to Cairns, get a little scuba diving in, some fishing, and possibly tool around on some ATVs to wrap up the weekend. With a majority of the people from our trip going on this little side trip, it should be pretty interesting.
Now, you might be asking yourself, “how do you pronounce ‘Cairns’”? I still ask that question. The Aussies say “Cans”, which would give the word not one but two silent letters. Aussies have a funny habit of moving around ‘r’s, adding them to some words and removing them from others. The most blatant example of this is when a Aussie says “No”. It comes out as “Nor!”, especially when they get agitated. Other examples:
• English: “Hello” – Aussie: “Hellor”
• “Melbourne” – “Melbon”
I get my stuff packed up, and head to the airport by myself. Since I buggered up my ticket that was booked with everyone else originally, I booked a different one through the local budget airline, JetStar. Brisbane has a train, akin to MARTA, that runs to the airport every few minutes. It’s pretty expensive - $11 a trip, but is cheaper than a cab I suppose.
Because I’m used to catching flights out of Atlanta, I get to the airport way too early. After getting through security (and having my umbrella examined and my pocket screwdriver confiscated), I kill some time by eating some shitty Aussie pizza (I have yet to find good pizza or hamburgers in this hemisphere) and devouring a Dan Brown novel.
A word about Jetstar airlines. This is by far the most cheaply run airline I’ve ever seen. They only fly low-end Boeing or Airbus planes. There are no assigned seats. Boarding is done by first-come-first serve. The gate doesn’t have a jetway—you have to walk on the tarmac to get into the plane. I was surprised that the pilot wasn’t outside throwing baggage onto the plane.
On board the plane, every seemed more or less like a normal airplane, except the stewardesses were charging for everything, even soft drinks! Disappointed (but not mad, you can’t ask much when you fly the Greyhound of the skies), I passed out and slept for most of the flight.
To Jetstar’s credit, however, they did have the most gorgeous stewardresses I’ve ever seen on an airplane.
The hostel that we picked out was nice enough to pick us up from the airport. After some confusion from 30 of us checking in at once, we get settled in and try to sleep for the night. Seeing as it was St. Patricks day, this proved to be more difficult than anticipated. Normally, I would have participated in the festivities, but after being up since 7AM and having our scuba trip departing early the following morning, I didn’t want to go out.
Being it was a hostel, I got put in a room with 5 other random people, who randomly turned out to be extremely drunk most of the night and coming in and out of the room at all hours of the night. They were never in there long enough for me to wake up to yell at them, but they sucked at life. At least the room has air conditioning – Cairns is quite humid and warm.
Long day tomorrow.
--P
posted by Paul at
4:13 AM
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