First day - Cairns

--

Cairns location

At last! I made it! I thought I would never get here...it´s been the longest flight ever!
The first flight for 12 hours was actually quite nice, I was lucky enough to have flown on one of the new flashy Airbus A380. It was 2 weeks old! it even smelled new!

It had all the typical gadgets to choose the film you want to watch, serie, documentary, etc... you can pause it, you have your personal tv set and the best of all is that I didn't have anyone to my right and left which gave me quite a little bit of extra room.:-)

Due to past experiences, now it becomes almost customary to steal/borrow the blanket from the plane and take it with me on my trip...you wouldn´t believe the amount of uses you can give it and best of all, before you come back you throw it away so it doesn´t take any precious space in your suitcase. If you grow attached to your crapy blanket fear not, because You are going to get a new one on the way back anyway.

The main use and the reason why I always take it is because many times you don't know where you are going to end up sleeping. The sheets they have given you (if they give you any) may not be clean enough for you, or any nightmare you can think of when it comes to sleep on a pair of clean sheets. With the blanket you can always put it on top of everything and sleep on top of it as a last resort...which is something I must admit I´ve had to endure in the past. It´s better be safe than sorry...

Once we got to Singapore, the nice part of the trip was over and the hardship started, after waiting for a couple of hours we got into a smaller plane A320 I think, which was full, it had no entretainment system whatsoever and run some kind of discriminatory scheme with some passengers. I got a blanket, a meal and a drink, the couple on my left got nothing, not sure what kind of tickets they had but the only thing they didn´t do was to spit in their faces every time they passed by...
They were second class tourist class if that exists!

I am not sure how long it took this leg of the trip maybe 4 hours maybe 6 it felt like 12 though...after that it came the best part, we got off, went around the airport so much that I went too far, got my passport stamped by customs and then I had to ask them to get me back in again! which they did...then we sat in a waiting room for 2 hours and joined THE SAME PLANE we had left a couple of hours later... it must be some kind of modern scheme to take tourist to visit all the local airports...anyway two and a half hours later and we landed in Cairns...at last! and with all the time zones we crossed, it was 10 am I didn't sleep more than 3-4 discontinued hours in the previous 24 so I could do with a shower and a good bed...but not...to avoid the jet lag I decided to stay up until night and hopefully tomorrow I´ll feel a little bit better than today.

The hotel looks really nice from the outside

Cairns Serpent Backpackers Hotel

The hotel it´s very nice from the outside but the room inside looks like a jail cell. Don't take me wrong, it´s functional and it has all it needs but it´s being build in such a way that it truly resembles a jail cell.
The hotel offers Wifi and cyber cafe services from 4 AU$ an hour. It also offers a free shuttle to centre town and the airport.

Cell A2

On the positive side, I´ve had the chance to go to town and visit it.
Cairns seems to be the paradise for all the adrenaline seekers in the world because most of the travel agencies have all sorts of ads for banging jumping, skydiving, white water rafting, cable diving, etc... I even have one ad in my room to go skydiving from 14000 feet 250 AU$!!

The climate is tropical, like it is in Thailand and Cambodia for example...so 15 minutes at the airport waiting for the pick up truck garanteed me a completely wet t-shirt from top to bottom.

And apart from a nice promenade, it has a *very* public swimming pool and every shop under the sky so whatevery thing you forgot to bring this is your chance to find it and buy it.

I'm planning on spending some more time in town tomorrow and perhaps book one of those adrenaline seeker excursions. ;-)

--