This will be my first blog in English. I have been travelling for almost a month right now and I have already met many great persons. Since some of them might be interested in my travel stories, but can't speak the rare language Dutch, it's time to share my stories with them too.

The trip from Singapore to Australia took almost a complete day. My flight was from Singapore to Brisbane, however I heard that many travellers were not that positive about Brisbane. Thereby, I decided to skip Brisbane and go to Surfers Paradise immediately. Well not actually immediately, because I had to wait for the Greyhound bus twice. So it took like 7 hours for a bustrip of approximately one and a half hour to Surfers'.

In the bus I met a very well prepared German, he already worked in Australia for 4 months and he had a coolbox with rice and chicken in a Tupperware box. Welcome to Australia.... The time of meals of chicken and rice for 40-60 Thai baht (1-1.50 euro) is definitely over. Here you are lucky if you can get a meal for 15 AUD(11.50 euro). So, it is time to cook for yourself.. Probably not my best expertise. Ah well, at least I can make very tasteful eggs with bread.

The first night in surfers' was the night of the big backpackers night out. This meant that we went out with backpackers from 7 different hostels to three different clubs in Surfers'. You had to wear long trousers and a nice shirt and you had to bring your passport everywhere. Actually, I missed Thailand already... Now I had to cook, I had to wear long trousers and it would take a fortune to get a bit tipsy. The music was far too loud and thus it was impossible to communicate with each other. So surfers was not really my cup of tea. However I slept in the dormitory with 2 guys from Guernsey, Jack and Chris and we decided to book a dormitory in Byron Bay together. Also 2 friends of them, Max and Lawrence, booked the same hostel. The next days I would spend my time together with them in Byron.

When we arrived in Byron we were searching for the hostel 'Cape Byron'. However, there were 2 Cape Byron's in town and of course we were brought to the wrong one, which was 15 minutes out of town. The 'courtesy' bus didn't have the courtesy to bring us back to town and thus we had to search for our hostel with our heavy backpacks. I was the map-reader and since I brought them to the hostel in one time they gave the flattering nickname 'Bear Grylls'. Apparently, Bear Grylls is a British adventurer and explorer, who catches fish with bare hands. The days after I was never called Martin again, it was Bear from now on.

Byron is totally different from Surfers' and I really like Byron much better. There are surfers and backpackers everywhere and you can just go out on your flip-flops and in your sleeveless shirts, just as in Thailand. Luckily enough I will spend 5 days in total here. We did some bodyboarding and we went to the Byron Bay lighthouse. The views from here are amazing! We also went out and the vibe was far better in Byron than in Surfers'. Both evenings we roasted our meat on the BBQ at the pool, life can't get much better than this.

Because the alcohol is so expensive in here, the backpackers have to search for creative ways to get tipsy. The way to go is to buy 'goon'. Everybody says that it is the worst wine ever, however, you can buy 4 litres for only 11 AUD. Actually, I kind of like it. So instead of Hakuna Matata we have another lifestyle over here in Australia, namely ...

Hagoona Matata!