#aussieadventure: Brisbane
Oh, and it was crazy sunny and warm outside today. Since most places were closed and it was too warm outside to explore the city, we decided to just kick back and relax at the pool and hot-tub at the hostel and boy, was it good. I’ve been coughing the past few days but I think the warm water kind of opened up my lungs or something because I could breathe easier and I wasn’t coughing too much anymore.
We also met a few other travellers at the hot-tub. There was this guy who’s staying in Australia for about a year to work and do a little bit of travelling. He told us a few interesting stories about his travels – like how he ran out of money at Mexico and had to hitch rides and sleep at shady places where he was once surrounded by a pack of stray dogs that he managed to chase away by making “bear noises” and throwing coconuts and driftwood at them.
He even pretended to be part of a film crew so that he could help himself to a nice buffet spread at a beach that he walked past. He also shared about his friend who made $600 in 3 days selling shots in Panama – the alcohol was bought in Costa Rica for like $2 a bottle.
Such interesting stories just made me want to travel the world even more – hopefully without the wild dogs and lack of money.
The next day, we checked out of The Bunk since we only paid to stay for a night. Good thing backpacker hostels have storage areas; we left our bags in the lockers and off we went to meet Hamdi at West End. Hamdi was my classmate back in TPJC and it's been years since I last saw him so I was really looking forward to meeting him.
Hamdi brought us to this market place. It reminds me a little bit of pasar malams (night markets) and the Thieve's Market back at home. The place definitely had more character than the city side in Brisbane. People sold food, art, clothes and all sorts of interesting knick-knacks.
We had Gozlemes for lunch. I guess you can call it a Turkish version of a Murtabak. It was deceptively small. I say that because when I saw it, I was thinking, "That's not a lot." I've been eating a lot in Australia so I thought that the Gozlemes wouldn't really fill me up.
Once I started eating it though, I realised that it really fills you up. After the Gozlemes, we had some Dutch pancakes for dessert and boy, were they good. If it wasn't for my cough, I probably would've had more food at the markets.
Since it was still pretty early and we had quite a lot of time to kill, Hamdi brought us to his campus. University of Queensland (UQ) is pretty big - similar to the size of NTU, I would say. I thought that Bond University was cool since they had their own bar/club, but UQ pretty much has a whole shopping centre on campus. Their lake was also a lot bigger and nicer, with ducks so big that they freaked Jamie out a little. It's just a little out of the way though, we had to take a ferry from West End to get to UQ. Yes, a ferry. Ferries are a form of public transport in Brisbane - how cool is that?
Since Jamie had to catch a flight to Perth in a few hours, we left Hamdi and took a ferry back to the city area so we could grab her bags. After seeing her off, I googled for "Free things to do in Brisbane" since Amos and I weren't heading to the airport until much later. Google told me that the Museum of Brisbane was open to the public for free, so of course we had to go there.
The museum was pretty cool. It covered the history of Brisbane and we finally learned the story behind the "Story Bridge". We first saw the bridge when Jamie pointed it out to us while we were looking for food yesterday. She didn't know the story behind the bridge, and neither did Hamdi. Turns out, the story is that it was the first bridge built that used Australian-made materials, so it's like the epitome of the term "Made in Australia".
After the museum, we checked out a mall that resembles Orchard Ion and chilled for a while. We finally made our way to the airport in the evening, where I had to repack my bag because it exceeded the weight limit by 3.5kg; probably because I'm bringing McLovin' along. I had to throw some stuff away so that my bag would meet both the size and weight requirements for carry-on luggages.
Once we were done, we settled down at some couches in the Brisbane International Airport. We were 12 hours early for our flight. That's probably the earliest I've been for anything in my life.
Surprisingly, spending the night at the airpot was really comfortable. I can now say that I've slept in an airport, and I'll be doing that a few more times during this trip. Mmm, exciting stuff.
Edit: It turned out that nobody checked our bags when we got on the plane. All of my things that I threw away and the things that I made Amos throw away to get his bag down to 10kg could've been saved. Oh well, at least our bags are lighter and a little easier to carry now. Off to Cairns we go!
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