Mai & Jon's Round the world Adventure

When we got off the greyhound there was a mini bus waiting to take us to our hostel, we stayed in a place called the Woolshed, I would highly recommend it, it’s not the most happening or busiest hostel but it is really clean, full of character and good value for money. The couple that own it have a huge beautiful house at the back so it keeps the more personal feel to it. The only downside to this was that they would very often put a sign on the reception door which said if you needed them go round and call for them outside their house. Not only did this make you feel about 10 again calling for your friend to come and play, they didn’t always here you! But overall it was great they advised us on two great trips and gave us and upgrade on our room. The hostel is 5 minute walk to the seafront where all the shops and restaurants are. Harvey Bay itself is very quite and there wasn’t too much going on, especially not compared to Airlie where we had just come from.

One of the trips we booked was a whale watching trip, and it was amazing. It was a half day trip they picked us up from our hostel and took us out on this lovely boat, we sailed for a good hour and a half before we were far enough out and we saw our first whale. The boat is allowed to get up to 100 meters away from the whales but it’s up to the whales if they come any closer and lucky for us they did. One swam right under our boat and another breached right by our boat that it rocked for a good 5 minutes. We were also lucky enough to see a pod, there were two mothers with their calves with two chaperones, they stayed by our boat for around half and hour and put on an amazing show for us. We saw a mother whale feedings it calve through its tail and heard the first whale song of the season, it really was such a great day, would recommend this to anyone.

Our other trip was our trip to Fraser Island, a lot of people do it self drive but neither of us drives so we went on a guided tour which with our guide Karl it was a real experience. Fraser Island used to have two companies that did all the organised tours on the island, but one of them got too old and sold it to the other guy so now there is only one company that has the complete monopoly so the prices have gone up and up, but it is truly worth a trip. We went with the package called Fraser explore just because it suited us better, the company pick you up from your hostel and about a million others so be ready to sit on the bus for about an hour before getting on the ferry. The Ferry left from river heads (which itself is a very pretty little village) and took around 50 minutes to get across to Kingfisher bay, from there we got on to a massive 4x4 coach which looked like it was taking us to the moon rather then over a tropical island. This was followed by our first introduction to Karl. Karl is such a great guide and if you go on this trip if you can request him, he will make your trip with his odd facts and self made poems. Our first stop was to be Lake Mackenzie, which is a perched dune lake with sparkling blue water surrounded by the softest white sand ever!

On our way here we got stuck in a traffic jam as a self drive got himself bogged so we only ended up having 45 minutes at the lake itself, but the water was so cold we just paddled our feet and Mai spent the rest of the time soaking up the sun while Jon took the important photos. Then we moved on to central station which was a former logging camp but is now a wildlife service ranger centre, it has several beautiful walking tracks which let you explore the forest, Karl took us on one of the paths and showed us different uses for all the plants and trees and also showed us some deadly spider holes! Eeeeeeek. After this hair raising experience we headed to our resort of Eurong for lunch, which was well worth it as it was buffet eat as much as you want!!!! To us that is as good as free and any traveller likes/loves the word free so we went to town. 6 plates later we got back on the moon bus and went to our last stop of the day Lake Wabby which is a barrage lake enclosed by sand dunes on one side and eucalypt forest on the other. To the lake itself we had to park the bus on the beach and walk up hill for 45 minutes which was much harder then Mai had expected(especially in flip flops)! It was well worth the short (not) walk as you got amazing views from on top of the sand dune, the lake wasn’t as clear as Lake Mackenzie but it was clear enough to see the huge catfish in it!

We swan here for around Hour and a half so it really made up for the short amount of time we had at Lake Mackenzie. When we were at Lake Wabby we met two really nice couple that were on our tour, Bell and James, and Holly and Ricky they are both travelling the other way to us but it was still really great to meet them. When we got to our hotel/hostel it turned out that we were sharing a 4 bed dorm with Holly and Ricky so we had a good chance to get to them a bit better. At dinner the four of us met up with Bell and James and after that we all accompanied Karl to the bar, which was as dead as dodo, but it soon warmed up when we got there and had a few drinks. Jon managed to befriend the islands police man (there are only 2 on the whole island), he was the most drunk out of all of us which was very funny as he couldn’t find his way home at the end of the night!
The next day we had to get up early and have our buffet (free) breakfast and back on the bus for 7.45am, we set off down Seventy-five mile beach in our moon bus watching the vast ocean passing, the beach is home to both bird of prey and sea birds but most importantly (for tourist) dingoes and at the same time is a beach highway and has a speed limit of 80km. The sea is just as deadly or even more so as it is home to many sharks, sting rays and mantor rays which like the strong undertow which allows them to hang around in the large pools in the shore line which are filled with fish. There only threat is that this makes very good fishing and is extremely popular on Fraser Island and many people come for holidays to do so.

Karl parked the bus up by Eli creek so we could have a swim, the creek flows down on to the Seventy-five mile beach at the rate of 4.2 million litres of water every hour so has a steady pace which allowed us to lay down on our fronts and float down the creek, we had to go on our stomachs as the creeks surface is fairly uneven so you have to zigzag across finding the deeper parts to let you float. It was Really good fun, but it was a little bit ruined for us as when we turned on the camera to take some pictures it would work, so we became camera less for the rest of our trip. Once we had finished at the creek it was back on the bus for a quick stop at the Maheno shipwreck, the tide was too far in for us to get the best of it but it was still cool no the less. Back on the bus and up to the champagne pools, these were really great, it is a collection of rocks that have cut off two circular sections and as the sea water fills them with the natural tide pattern, during in high tide the waves crash over the top of the rocks and form lots of bubbles which look like bubbles over flowing in a glass of champagne. They were really good fun and we got to swim here for nearly 2 hours. After this we had a spot of lunch on the beach before climbing to the top of Indian head to spot so sea life, we hit jackpot and saw, dolphins, whales, mantor rays and much to Mai’s delight another sea turtle. After this we all happily retired back on the bus for a 2 hour drive back to the ferry. On our way back we saw a shark on the beach where someone had caught it when fishing accidentally. When we got off to look at the shark we noticed the police man in his car, we couldn’t actually believe he made it to work! At about 5pm we got back on the ferry and headed home, everyone was knackered, we had done so much in two days, and they were two full days so well worth the money you really got a lot for your money and once again we had Karl and he was worth the money alone. If you get to go, go to Fraser Island it is so much fun and really beautiful.

Arriving in Airlie beach was like a breath of fresh air after Townsville, there were people and lots of them! We got off the bus and headed down to the hostels, we hadn’t booked one, but it didn’t matter as all of the hostels are along the one main road and all of them are pretty much the same. We stayed at a place called Magnums, we had heard loads of bad things about it but we thought we would give it ago, and again we were pretty lucky we got a nice cheap double with shared bathroom for $54, our room was at the back of one of the blocks so was nice and quite, most of the partying happens at the front so a fair distance from the accommodation. We had a cup of tea and a chill out before heading out to explore. Airlie Beach is one main road with a fair few shops, hostels, bars and restaurants; it is a real holiday place. We walked up and down the main street and then went down on the bay and cool pool that is on the front. We just chilled out by the pool for the rest of the day as there isn’t really a beach at Airlie Beach (figure that one out)!!!!
The next day Mai was determined to increase her tan, and reach her full tanning potential as she keeps telling poor Jon, so we spent the day at the pool, We were both pleased with this as Jon the water baby played in the pool perfecting his handstands and Mai baked herself in the sun! This is a word of warning for people heading to Airlie for lunch we had a subway, it was the worst subway ever the bread was stale and the sauce we think was off, save your money!
On our third day we did pretty much the same chilled by the pool perfecting those handstands and that tan once more! Most people go and sail the Whitsunday’s when they go to Airlie beach, but we decided not to as we wanted to go to Fraser island more, and we have done a fair bit of sailing on our trip so far. Mai also is a little fed up of getting sea sick, she really doesn’t have very good sea legs, or any at all it would seem! That night though we went for a lovely meal, which we got a brilliant deal $38 a starter, a main dish each and a bottle of wine, the food was lovely and the staff were the nicest. So feeling rather full and sun kissed we had a good early night to prepare us for more the same tomorrow.
That’s right folks the next day we went to the pool, but just for the morning the rest of the day we sat on the bay and read our books and planned our next stop Harvey Bay. In the evening we got on what was to be our longest bus drive on the greyhound yet, it takes 13 hours to get down to Harvey Bay. The Journey itself was ok and we both slept more then we thought we would (I think we managed to get about 5 hours each), we were also able to get 2 seats each so we could spread out a little more, we finally arrived in Harvey bay at about 10.30am feeling pretty tired.

The bus we caught left Cairns at 12.45am so got in to Townsville at 5.30am!!!!! I do not recommend this bus time at all, it may save you a nights accommodation but it will coast you a day on catching up on your sleep. We pulled in to the bus terminal at 5.30am and waited there till 6.30 am when it opened to buy a cup of tae and sit in the warm for another hour before attempting to find our hostel. This took all of 5 minutes so we waited for another hour outside the hostel till it opened at 8am. We stayed at a place called reef lodge which was great and full of friendly people, it was fairly cheap we got a double room with shared bathroom for $54. We had to wait till 10 till we could get in to our room but we slept on the huge swing chairs while we waited, but as soon as we got in to our room we crashed till around 1pm. Then we got and went to the aquarium called Reef HQ, it wasn’t massive but it has a massive tank with a living coral reef which houses loads of different species of fish and other sea creatures. Mai was so happy as she got to sea her first sea turtle!!!!! We went to several of the talks which were really interesting; we even had our own personal tour (that’s because we were the only ones that went along for it). When we had finished exploring under the sea we headed for the supermarket (Woolworths) which turned out to be the most happening place in Townsville! We walked along the main high street and I kid you not we were the only people there, besides the odd tumble weed rolling by. So that night we just chilled at our hostel because there were other people there at least!
The next day we were up bright and early and caught the ferry over to Magnetic Island, the ferry only took 20 minutes and when we got off the ferry the buses were right outside, it was a public bus but Magnetic Island is mainly just all tourists so they are well set up. 10 minutes later we jumped off the bus right outside hostel. We stayed at a place Koala Bungalow Bay, you could camp or stay in a dorm/chalet, it had a cool pool and a really great little nature reserve. Once we had dropped off our bags we went for a little wonder around up to the beach which was really picturesque it was a small bay with a couple cafes/restaurants. We chilled out reading our books on the grassed area at the top of the beach before heading back for a swim in our pool. We have come to the conclusion that as lovely as the sea is there are far too many things in the sea here that want to kill you, so when ever possible swim in a pool! We walked back up to the beach to watch the sunset which was beautiful and a perfect way to finish the day off. On our second day we went to the beach in the morning and in the afternoon we went to the sanctuary at our resort. We were only there for 2 hours but it was so much fun, we got to hold big cockatoos, baby crocodiles, a python and koala. When we were there they were filming for national geographic so we also got on TV result!!!! That night we saw our first possum, it was cute it had big bright eyes though was remerging through a bin bag! We had a few drinks in the bar before heading off to bed. The next day we got up and headed back to Townsville (only because we messed up the bus times) we had a nice chilled out day but really did pretty much nothing!!!! The next day we managed to catch the bus down to Airlie beach.

We had to leave our little bargin apartment in Phuket at around 6am as getting to the airport takes about an hour. Well so they say! This is not so at 6am with no traffic so we were 40 minutes early which wasn’t so nice when we could have had an extra 40 minutes sleep! The time passed fairly quickly with a nap and a cup of tea and the flight itself was short and sweet. At Singapore end hopped on the skytrain from one terminal to another to join the main skytrain rail in to the city. It was easy to do as it was just like riding the underground, but a million times cleaner and with really great views. We got off at our stop little India to be faced with the hardest part of all, which exit to take! That’s right folks it had 7 different exits, So we started at exits A, B and C as Mai thought that road Mackenzie sounded familiar, It paid off it was the exit we needed (thank god). So after taking the correct exit there it was G4 Station the hostel we were staying at right in front of us. The hostel itself was great we had our own room but shared bathroom which was no problem at all. The room was small but very clean and it was all we needed. We decided to go for a wonder around to see a bit of Singapore in the very little time we had, so the obviously place to start was little India itself. It was crazy it was literally like walking through an Indian town, there were loads of restaurants and stalls selling the most amazing spices (the smell was amazing, in a good way), the roads were decorated in traditional Indian style decoration, blaring Bollywood music and to make it completely authentic the driving was nuts! This was not what we had expected to find in Singapore but made it all the more enjoyable. After dodging the traffic in little India we headed in the opposite direction towards the skyscrapers, not really having a set destination we just wondered around for a couple of hours just taking in some of Singapore as we know it. That night we went to a tiny little restaurant as we wanted to try some Malaysian food, we couldn’t tell you what it was called as it was written in Malaysian. It was a fun experience as we were the only foreign people in there and there was a bit of a language barrier, but the food we got was great and over all a really positive experience.
The next day we went to the Singapore zoo, it is known to be one of the best in the world, and that it is. We left at 10am on the zoo shuttle bus that picked us up from our hotel and we got there by 10.30am as it is a fair distance out of the city centre. The weather was perfect for us and meant that we got to see all the animals without any trouble. As we went in the middle of the week there wasn’t too many other people there (would defiantly recommend going in the week if you can), well it defiantly wasn’t crowded so you could see everything and take really good pictures without having people you don’t know in them. The zoo itself has a unique layout, Most of the animals are kept in open enclosures, besides the dangerous animals that still have the glass between you and them. We spent the whole day wondering around having monkeys swinging above our heads and lizards dashing out in front of us across the pathways. We had such a great time, defiantly one of our favourite days so far. We got a taxi back to the hotel where we had a quick shower and jumped on to another bus to the airport heading for Australia. Singapore airport was a bit of a strange place really but pretty cool at the same time, there are departure lounges going off in every direction and the only two things on the upper level was the first class lounge and burger king (not in the same area though).
The flight was ok we asked for a window seat and were seated by the emergency exit, which meant we got no window but were given the responsibility that if anything happened in an emergency we would assist the crew with opening the emergency exit and getting down the life raft!!!! Not much responsibility, we won’t be asking for another window seat anytime soon! It was fine and the plane itself was pretty flashy and it did mean we had noodles of leg room (every cloud an all), The flight stopped off at Darwin before heading on to Cairns this made the journey a bit drawn out but there wasn’t much we could do, we finally arrived in cairns at about 8am. We jumped on to our free shuttle bus that took us to our hostel. We stayed at Caravella’s we loved it from the word go, they gave us an upgrade so we had a room with an ensuite. We had to wait about half an hour before we could go in to our room, but as soon as we did we just crashed for the next 4 hours. After our well deserved nap we headed out in to cairns for a look around and to do a spot of food shopping (self catering starts here). Although we are now self catering that at the moment is only strictly true for breakfast and lunch as we get a free meal voucher for a pub called the woolshed every night we stay at Caravella’s. So that night we went for our free dinner at the woolshed, which to be honest wasn’t the best but it was free none the less! The best part of this though was the glass of wine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We had our first glass of wine in 31/2 months, it tasted so good even though it only cost $4! So after dinner and 2 glasses of wine we headed back for a good night sleep ready for a day of exploring the next day.

The next day we decided to have a good walk round and organise some trips. We headed down the beautiful waterfront/espionage while the sun shone so brightly and we admired the beautiful scenery the views of the surrounding hills and harbour really set it off. We were really impressed by the public bbq’s, they are all along the front and they are free to use anytime of day. They are really cool because it really brought people out, there were groups of backpackers using them as well as, families and teenagers, it gives cairns a real sociable feel. We spent a good few hours weaving between all the streets of cairns town centre finding a small little shopping mall much to Mai’s delight. When Jon could take shop hopping no more we headed back to Caravella’s to book our greyhound tickets and some trips. We went and spoke to Gloria (an absolute legend) the main receptionist, she was described as your personal granny in one description of Caravella’s, she is on the older side of the staff there but she is without a doubt the most quick witted. So after 3 hours with Gloria we had book our Greyhound tickets, a day trip snorkelling to the Great Barrier Reef and a 2 day 1 night trip to cape tribulation, that women can sell! That night we headed back to the woolshed to have a $10 meal deal, which included a meal, a desert and a drink we were so impressed. There are so many lovely restaurants in cairns and you could eat out cheaply (not as cheap as the woolshed) as all the restaurants do nightly deals mainly between 5-7pm. With very full bellies and rosie faces we headed home, doing not much seems to be tiring.
Mai promised Jon that today she wouldn’t drag him around any more shops so we headed to the amazing public swimming pool on the espionage, it is set right by the water and is basically a cool urban lagoon, and just to add to its greatness, it is free! We found a nice spot with plenty of shade for Jon and lots of sun for Mai and settled down for the day, it was so lovely and relaxing just reading our book and having a picnic while we soaked up the sun. I bet you cant guess where we went for dinner??????? Got it in one we went to the woolshed for some more cheap steak, but headed back fairly early to get ready for our reef trip the next day.

We had to get up and leave very early as the boat left at 8am, so we were at the harbour and on the boat by 7.30am. They did serve tea and coffee on the boat to soften the early morning blow. We went with a company called passions it was a big boat and there were about 50 passengers so if your looking for personal touches this wouldn’t be the one for you. We didn’t mind too much about this, there was a guy called Sven and a girl called Elaine from our hostel on the trip so we had a fun time chilling out with them on the boat. The weather once again was amazing so we had really good conditions for snorkelling, we sailed for around an hour before we reached our point, when we got there we piled off the boat for a good hour and a half of snorkelling. It was amazing, we saw some huge fish and some really brightly coloured fish and coral, they said that we should see a sea turtle as this site was home to 4 of them, Mai was so excited as this what she wanted to see the most, but unfortunately we weren’t so lucky to see one.once everyone were back on the boat we had a lovely buffet lunch before sailing on for another 20 minutes to our next stop. The next stop was a smaller reef but this was good as there was more to see in a smaller area, this was even better then the first stop, we didn’t see a turtle but it didn’t take anything away from the fact we were swimming on the Great Barrier Reef. We got back around 5pm so we had a full day off swimming and sea air, so we were knackered.

Again up early for our 2 day trip to Cape Tribulation This was a smaller group then the day before, there was only 15 of us, but our driver/tour guide was a funny skinny small man that told us the most random facts and had a catch phrase of “sit back, relax, too easy”. So as you can imagine it was a very funny trip. We drove up to a beautiful Gorge where we got to walk through foes walk ways and spot tree lizards, then we jumped back on the bus and went to a small animal sanctuary where we saw our first kangaroo, in fact we saw 3 of them 2 males and one female. It turns out that male kangaroo’s have amazing trick of being able to retract their testicles when in danger and pull them right out which they very kindly showed us! We also saw a huge salt water crocodile, cassowary bird and lots of spiders and snakes. After a spot of lunch we headed of to the daintree national park, we went over on a small ferry and drove through some beautiful rainforest before stopping to have a short walk, when we were walking we saw a wild cassowary, which can be very dangerous so we had to be careful and stay well back, but it is very rare to see one as close as we did, so we were very lucky. After our walk we headed to our accommodation for the night, we stayed a place called PK’s, it was ok nothing special but it was only a very short walk from the most wonderful beach we have ever seen, it was horseshoe shaped bay which stretched for miles with the softest sand, it was heaven as we spent the rest of the day chilling out here. The next day we weren’t being picked up till 1.30pm so we set off to walk along the beach and through a walk way to Cape Tribulation itself, it again was a beautiful beach with a mountain landscape backdrop, you can’t swim here as it has salt water crocodiles in the water along with deadly jelly fish so we took some pictures and read our books. When we got picked up in the afternoon it was by a different guide who was twice as crazy as the first guide, we stopped and tried some daintree ice cream which to be honest wasn’t that great but we tried it none the less. After that we drove back down to the ferry but rather then just getting the ferry as before we went on a crocodile spotting cruise, we got to see 3 wild crocodiles in the end and had a cool Italian guide who was really good at spotting the crocs thank god because they were really really well hidden. After that we drove back to town where we had a sneaky shower headed to the woolshed for our final dinner and a few drinks before catching our first greyhound bus down to Townsville.

We got up bright and early to get the ferry across to Laos. The whole border crossing was very stressful with people ripping you off at every stage as you don’t really have any choice but to go with them. We got across to Laos and got our visas where once again they tried to rip you off before getting a tuk tuk down to the slow boat dock as we wanted to book it ourselves rather than go through a tour and pay the hefty commission. We got to the dock and found where we had to buy our tickets and got them for loads less than if we had booked through a tour. We then ate a sandwich at a bar before boarding the slow boat. We got on fairly early and bagged ourselves some good seats. The boat soon filled up. Theres meant to be about 80 people on the boat but they crammed on nearer 130 all with massive backpacks so it was very cramped. Mai and I managed to get some plastic seats and decided to sit at the back rather that on the wooden benches and so we were relatively comfortable.

The boat lived up to its name and was very slow but the scenery was amazing. We got talking to a really cool Ozzie dad and his daughter and that helped pass the time. 6 hours later we arrived in Pak Beng which is a little Island stop off point. Jon waited for the bags whilst Mai went and found a guesthouse as there were 150 people all wanting a room in a tiny Island and she landed us a bargain. We got a really nice room for about 6dollars and dumped our stuff and went to get something to eat. We had a lovely meal overlooking the river and a few beers before heading back to our room as Laos has a curfew and everyone has to be in their room by 11.30pm. At 11pm all the lights in the whole Island went off and we pretty much went to sleep as it was pitch black and there was nothing else to do.

The next morning we got some sandwiches again (Laos was a French colony and so have a massive French bread sandwich thing going on) and got back onto the boat. This time we were on it for 9 hours and it was pretty hard going as they had crammed 130 people onto an even smaller boat. We pretty much read, tried to sleep and played the DS for the nine hours until we eventually landed in Luang Prabang!