A strange place, Surfers Paradise the main resort in the strip of towns that make up the gold coast, is full of skyscrapers stretching along the seafront. It is like no place we have so far visited on our journey up the east coast. The feeling is that most probably you will either love it or hate it here. If you like to party it is the place to be, or if you like to surf your also in for a good time (the name should give you a clue here) Or if you have a lot of money im sure you would have fun at one of the multitude of theme parks, sea world, wet & wild, warner brothers movie land or any of the others whose names escape me. The problem for us being on backpacker budgets is the parks are ridicoulusly expensive in comparison to UK prices (as are most things in Australia, but I won't start to rant until we get on to the hostel we stayed in! However saying all this I quite enjoyed Surfers Paradise wandering amongst the high rise buildings, amongst the shops and the beach was glorious. The weather on the whole was good and I had alot of fun splashing around in the waves.

We also had a great time on the Friday evening when we were kindly invited to Franki's cousin Shelagh who has a home with her family in Nerang (a town not far from Surfers) for a BBQ and a few drinks, the best food we'll have for some time!

So on to our accomodation, The Sleeping Inn. I'll start on the positives, we were only here for 2 nights also the all you can eat domino's pizza for $6 went down a treat. There was also a luggage room and free pick up from bus transit centre. Here the pleasentries end though, so far we have stayed in about 10 or so hostels and this was by far the worst. The bedrooms which were for 4 people were about 8 foot by 8 foot no exaggeration, most dogs have larger kennels. The two bunk beds which incidentally didn't have ladders to get onto the top bunk, or protective bars to stop you falling the six foot to the floor should you decide to move in your sleep were almost touching. The bathroom was a health hazard and looked as if it had not been cleaned since the fall of the Berlin wall. The utensils in the kitcken consisted of one spoon, a pan, one bowl and three plastic champagne flutes and this was sharde between the 12 people in the block. The swimming pool looked like a cess pit, the entire wall down the side of the stairs from upstairs to the front door moved if touched and basically the entire place was just dirty. (students and prisoners enjoy much cleaner conditions, though backpackers just seem to put up with it) I could go on but im boring even myself so I won't bother.

So thats that. Enjoyed Surfers Paradise the place but not the accomodation.

Franki here, would just like to add a few bits Jimmy missed! That we got picked up from the bus by a limo to the hostel (granted the most beat up limo ever!), the strange second picture is the logo for the hostel!! (sums up the place really!) and Surfers is also home to the worlds second largest residential building Q1 which we visited but couldn't afford to go up!!