Bad moon rising

Friday, 31/08/2012 - 77 A.D. 

I slept in `til ten past nine this morning. Apparently Tim’s alarm went off and I mumbled something along the lines of, “I haven’t had my fill.” So he left me to it and I have no memory of it. I think that boy’s getting worried about me.

We got up to find that the power was out in all of the building. It had been that way since quarter to nine and the receptionist said that it’s never happened in the six months she’s been there. This didn’t affect the cornflakes but the kettle was only lukewarm, and consequently so was the coffee. Oh well, I suppose it’s good practice for Asia! 

Today was supposed to be a day of just chilling and getting organised for what was to come. The bites on my legs have turned deep red and gigantic. I left the building with dual protection of factor 30 suncream and jungle formula insect repellent – let’s hope the two don’t work against each other!

It was time to welcome back our old nemesis…

Hang on a sec, not that one...I meant this one...

Yes, there was to be lots more fun and games with the folks at Greyhound! But not so, according to Geoff, who was the chap behind the counter. Apparently Greyhound Australia is a fantastic company that does exactly what it says on the tin. Geoff knew what we were talking about when we mentioned the American firm – “Oh yeah, I did Texas to Louisiana with them!” Texas to Louisiana? Puh! We did NYC to LA via Hicksville and the rest! If I was to write a book on the trials and tribulations of travelling by bus in the US, Geoff could maybe contribute a paragraph. Still, he was a top bloke and he got us a good deal on a ticket from Cairns to Melbourne – we can make as many stops as we like along the east coast, but our route can’t go back on itself. And at least this time we book our seats online before travelling, unlike the dangerously unreliable first-come-first-served system we’d been used to.

After going back to Reef for lunch, I phoned lost property at Sydney airport to discover my iPod had not been handed in. This got me down because I’d put the whole thing to the back of my mind to try and enjoy the last couple of days – you can kid yourself into thinking that by the time you get around to phoning them some kind soul will have found it and logged it in the system. Not so, and though I’ve mentally adjusted to this most tragic of losses, it brought back some negative emotions. It’s not helped by the fact there are no second hand electrical stores selling refurbished mp3 players in Cairns. I even went down the pawnbrokers to see if they had owt! There was a machete on the shelf for 45 bucks...

And by gum it was hot in the middle of the afternoon! Back at the Greyhound booking office, Geoff had said that on a typical winters day in Cairns its about 24 degrees, and the last time it was below 20 degrees was about 75 million years ago when the last big meteor crashed into the Earth. I think the man doth exaggerate, but it was still hot. I walked past the Lagoon which is where people go to sunbathe, though I wisely kept my lens focused firmly on the palm trees so as not to look like a seedy little Grayboy (the nickname for the area is “Pervert’s Paradise”!)  

I came back to the room to find Tim lying on the bed looking very disinterested as two guys in nothing but shorts pointed glue guns at the wall behind him. He said (once they’d left and I’d stopped laughing) that they simply knocked on the door and asked if they could come in and fill up some of the cracks. There’s quite a lot of guests here who put in a few hours working around the place to get their accommodation for free (accommodation in this case means cramped dormitory). This is definitely the type of hostel where you come and simply "exist" for a while. Short stays are probably not that common. Maybe that’s just the way backpacking’s generally done in Oz. Either way, it’s our third and final day here and I’m looking forward to a change…just can’t help thinking that the next place we check into will be exactly like this one!

I spent a lot of the late afternoon waiting for the shower. Whatever bloke was in there took flippin` ages and I was wanting to do some hand washing after he’d finished, as well as take a shower. It’s times like this that you try not to ask yourself what they were doing in there, given that Tim reported seeing two used condoms in the same bathroom’s bin this morning. By the time I’d done my hand washing, the sun had moved beyond the balcony at the rear of the building so it was time to play the ever-popular game of decorate-the-window-with-socks-and-undies.  

Tonight was Eddie’s Full Moon Party that he’d organised (“Let’s Party Thailand Style!!!”) which he’d insisted we should go to the first time we met him (when he was drunk). He’d been extremely quiet last night, sitting on the couch and barely saying a word (when he was sober), so I wondered if it was still on. It was, and you had to wear something white and bring glowsticks and paint. When Tim learned they were going to throw the paint at each other (why???) we decided against attending. The only white clothes we have are White Shirt and White T-shirt and if the cool kids think we’re going to go through another bleaching operation they’ve got another thing coming!

[Note the random pair of discarded flip-flops in the background - it's just sooo Cairns!]

Dinner at Gilligans was chilli…again! In the queue for our grub we got talking to a lad from Darlington called Anthony who was staying at the hostel located above the bar (hadn’t known there was one until now). Anthony had just come from Singapore (our next destination), so it was good to get the lowdown from him, especially his story about sharing a hostel room with 26 other people – that has to be a record and puts our fear of sharing a room with more than two people to shame! During this discussion, we didn’t realise that we’d inadvertently sat down at a table with reserved seating for people who’d been on some kind of diving expedition. As bar staff came round with free beer for anyone who’d done the dive, we were more than happy to pretend we’d been underwater that day to claim our free jug of ale. What was most funny was when some other people sat down next to us and asked us if we’d been on the one day dive, rather than the three day dive like them (because they hadn’t seen us before). Tim put his bullsh*tting to the test so much that he had me believing that I had actually been swimming with the fishes today!  

[Everybody loves jugs!]

The free beer didn’t last long (it never does) and we returned to Reef to see how the hardcore people were doing. The Full Moon Party was in full swing…sort of. It seemed just the same as every other night – dance music, drink, drongos – only this time beneath a full moon. It’s the type of thing I would have lapped up at university, but not now, not after a bit of a crappy day. There'll be no howling at the moon tonight from me...I've had my fill. For now.