We stayed in Hostel 166 which, although out of town, suited our needs as it was quiet and just outside the centre of the city making it only a short busride to the border with Malaysia. Our host, Yang, was really friendly and gave us lots of tips for things to see, eat and do over our 3 days there. On the first day we went to Orchard Road, the biggest and probably most expensive shopping street in the city. Almost every Western big-chain shop you could think of...

Cairns itself did little to impress us, with street after street packed full of tacky gift shops. We didnt have long to spend there though, as we spent a whole day out on the Great Barrier Reef. We took a cruise out to the reef early in the morning, so avoided the heat for a while. The last few days have seen quite stormy weather so we were a bit worried about the sea being rough but it wasnt too bad. It took us 2 hours to reach our first stop off point, duri...

Port Douglas was included as a stop-over in our tour package so we took the opportunity to stay a few nights in this quiet seaside town. I was amazed by how friendly everyone was and really enjoyed the laid back town atmosphere. One night, as you may be able to see from the pictures, Sheona and I went Cane Toad racing at the local pub. Essentially, you had a raffle ticket and if your ticket was called you had to go and 'race' the toad. Sure enough, my number was ...

Our trip up to Cape Tribulation promised to take us away from the well-travelled part of the East Coast to let us experience Australia's oldest rainforest. We had a pretty crappy (can I say that? Sorry Mum, Auntie's etc) bus driver to take us up there. Someone clocked his driving at 150km/h in a town, he nearly crashed twice and he "got some information that I was going to tell you but I've not bothered reading it." Great. We stopped at the Daintree Ri...

We arrived in Airlie Beach exceptionally early at 6am after another long overnight bus journey. As we couldnt check into our hostel we spent the morning having a look around the town, and checking in for our sailing voyage the next day. The town itself didnt really have much to offer, centering around selling sailing trips to the whitsundays and being another boozy location for 18 year old gap year students (we're old waaaaah). As the sea isnt safe for swimmin...