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australia gold coast & brisbane - 19 to 27 october
Monday, 19 November 2012
off we go for another holiday in australia gold coast! this trip was a pre-planned since early march this year.. i managed to persuade darling to try on the new flight airline - scoot! i knew it should be pretty good because although its a budget airline but the parent company was our local SIA, so as the aircraft! no major blunder except the usual slight delay of boarding, which i reckon even international brands these days faced such problems.
its a totally free and easy trip in gold coast (gc), and a day of city tour to brisbane sunshine coast. with this, we bought the "freedom pass" from the local shuttle bus service, which allows us to have unlimited trips everyday (this is super essential because bus is the most favourable transport in gc, and being there for the first time and unfamiliar with the bus lines, the freedom pass is our savior!)
accomodation. surf parde resort. although the name had the word "resort" but in fact, its actually an apartment. for the first time, we decided to go easy on our pockets (the savings was too huge to resist! 768bucks for 7 night), and so, we planned our stay at an apartment instead of the normal hotel. basically, it is like a house with full appliances for use, and so spacious just for the two of us. i juz love the jazzuzi bathtub that come with it! and the fact that they did arranged for a beach view that we requested eariler on via email.
now me and darling finally know why gc had this famous place call "surfer paradise"! the beaches here are totally awesome, beautiful with many multiple big waves! sands are so fine, so soft to step on! for this trip, we went to the surfer paradise beach, broadbeach at cg, and went to the kings beach, mooloolaba beach at sunshine coast. sadly, we dont have enough time to cover all the beaches in cg, but in fact, they are juz one long stretch of beaches, so i believed they are pretty similar. and due to the change of weather (supposely summer, but the wind direction had changed and blow towards brisbane, so its super windy and cold at times), we decided to stay mostly in building instead of exposing ourselves outside.
the next big thing in gc was the various theme parks. we went to the so-call three worlds, mainly the warner bros movie world, dream world, sea world and not forgetting the wet and wild water theme park (we went in to take photos only!) i believed that we had took pictures with most of the mascots in the theme parks, but we didnt try any ride at all. our gut really get smaller when age catches up. some few highlightes or personal accomplishments for this trip was i finally hugged a koala bear (childhood dream created when i did a project on koala bear when i was young) whose backside is really smelly that i washed my hands at least ten times and i took a picture with tweety bird and her buddies mascots. not sure why, but i had always like tweety bird when i was young! darling even bought me a tweety soft toy!
since i had touched on the theme park, let me talk about the fright night halloween theme park too, even though we went on the last night we stayed in auzzie. in fact, fright night took place at movie world too, juz that they have many walking zombies and famous movie killers (eg. leatherface in chain-saw, jason voorhees in Friday the 13th) for this halloween party. juz like the day-time parks, we passed the rides too, and taking pictures with the mascots was the only reason we were there! surprisely, the crowd was insanely more for this fright night compared to the daytime.
australian outback spectacular show. actually, i will only give a 6.5 to 7/10, the perfomances was great and majestic with good timing sync presentation among the entire team and horses. however the entrance to the show was really late, although they have this pre-entertainment which is some cowboy singing stage performance, but its pretty dragging and being ang-moh, they will alright with buying a drink and mingle with their friends, but for the two of us, its a long waiting process especially we dont drink. oh yah, the food was already pre-planned so we cant choose what we wanna eat, and we cant decide on the way how the steak was cooked, but luckily i think the steak was near to well-done.
talking about food, actually we had quite a good mixture of cuisine in our days there. we had chinese food, japanese food, korean food for dinner for a couple of times, especially because we spent our lunch (western fast food) in the theme parks most of the times. but their breakfast meal was awesome, darling simply fall in love with bacon strips, and we had english breakfast for a couple of days too. we actually tried cooking some simple dishes back at our apartment for dinner during the last night.
day trip to brisbane sunshine coast was a total disappointment. we spent most of the time travelling in the coach bus. initally, we thought there is this famous big pineapple in sunshine coast, but in fact, it had closed down 3-4years ago as the owner did not pay up his taxes. in the end, we went to ettamogah pub (said to be inspired by a comic strip), the kings beach and the underwater world. and the rest is history.
shopping was totally not our cup of tea in australia. we cant really relate to the brands that is available, except those sports brands like quicksliver, billabong, cotton-on but they are not any cheaper than in singapore. we went to their outlet mall - harbour town where darling helped her sis to buy a pair of ugg boots and we managed to get a couple of polo/shirts from ralph lauren. anyway, we kinda of enjoyed hanging out at their hyper-big supermarkets (woolworth, k mart, coles) coz they got alot of diff titbits that cannot be found in local. we simply love their bacon flavor potato chips!
the last attraction that we went in gc was the skypoint observation deck situated on level 77 of Q1 resort. its is the tallest building in cg where you can see the entire beach very clearly and also aussie's only beachside observation deck. for the adventure ones, they have this real thrilling skypoint climb which brings you walking up and around the top of the outside tower, which we obviously didnt try doing so! anyway its indeed a great view from the top, and we think its pretty worth making this into our itnerary!
last but not least, because the shops at aussie closed really early (5.30pm aussie time, 3.30 sin time), we decided to try our luck at the only casino available, jupiter! under bad influence of me, darling learnt two new games in the casino, mainly the keno and roulette game! she actually fall in love with the roulette game, and having great fun despite we still lost some money in the end, but its the fun that counts.
nutshell, the pace of lifestyle in aussie is really slow and relaxed, and they are actually pretty friendly people (not sure is it because we are tourists). in fact, its so relaxed that i fully adapted to the time difference and required some time to adjust back the 2hours difference only. like i told darling, i guess cg is only good for a one-time visit (because the theme parks will remain the same), and i think the next place to visit in aussie will be melbourne or sydney!Labels: apartment, australia, first-time, gold coast, halloween, holiday, shopping
xoxo,
dear |
17:27
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