Vol 10 - There's more to Cairns than the beach

Well well well what a time I’m having. I’m afraid this is a long one so go get yourself a coffee first.

The trip from Townsville was a fairly short one so I had time to check things out along the way. Apparently they had a bit of wind up here, or a cyclone if you want to be technical. I vaguely remember seeing something about it on the yahoo news items. I’d forgotten what they’d called it until I saw this van. So they are sending a message to a natural phenomenon saying we’re not intimidated by you, even though you took my roof and destroyed my bananas.

I guess it’s wrong to make light of the situation though. It’s destroyed people’s lives. You just know it’s serious when poor old Ronald has to fix up his sign. But that was Innisfail. It’s largely unaffected here in Cairns.

Just past Innisfail is the Josephine falls. I have it on good authority that they did a lifesavers ad there. Surprisingly there was no mention of it at the falls. Maybe they think there’s a whole lot more to life than lifesaver commercials.

I finally got to Cairns Monday and after all that driving I was keen to not do much for a while. So I went to check out the beach. Unfortunately the “beach” in Cairns looks like this.
Luckily it’s not so much about the beach here as I will now explain in the next few paragraphs.

I’m staying at Gilligans. Presumably a reference to the ever popular Gilligans Island, I wonder if I can pass at the Professor. It’s the best backpackers I’ve ever stayed in. It’s more like a resort than a backpackers. Though not many resorts are full of 20 year old Swedish girls. I chatted to the guys in my dorm. 4 of them were young German lads and one was a young English twat. It’s hard not to form a bad first impression when he has a 2 metre English flag hung up in the doorway, wears an English football strip and has a mohawk.

I was keen to have a quiet one since it was Monday. But the Germans offered me some of their 4 litre cask of Fruity Lexia. So I went out with the Germans and met up with some Swedes. One of the Swedes had a very strange accent. He looked Arabic but was born in Sweden. It took me a while to realise he was doing Borat (from Ali G) impressions. He was a funny guy, but a little offensive. He told his English roommate she was a minger. She took it surprisingly well. We were out until about 3am.

I got up quite late Tuesday and hung out by the pool. An Englishman wearing a football Strip started chatting to me. This immediately raised a red flag. Because;

1. He was wearing a English football Strip

2. We were surrounded by hot Swedish girls in bikinis, but he was chatting to ME

But he was closer to my age (29) so I thought I’d give him a fair go. I invited him up to the Swedes (or Eurotrash as he referred to them) room for a drink. Unfortunately he got more and more drunk, more and more offensive and more and more full of shit. He spilled his drink, sleazed on to a 19 year old English girl by licking her ear. This despite the fact that he told me he had an Australian girlfriend in Sydney where he’s living. Of course in the eyes of the Swedes I was guilty by association. I’ve had to make it clear that he’s just some guy I met at the pool and I’m sorry I brought him up here. I’ve now spent the last 3 days trying to avoid the guy.

But the night got better, the Swedes and I went out, and one guy brought along his girlfriend. She’d worked in a stripclub before as a drink waiter, but had been trained as a pole dancer. Luckily she was only too keen to practise this pole dancing on every no parking sign from Gilligans to the Irish pub. So to recap I spent a night out on the town with a hot young Swedish pole dancer. Yes there is more to Cairns than the beach. Oh and here’s a picture.

Wednesday night my friend and old housemate Andrew Middleweek and a few of his friends dropped by. I was picking them up from the airport at 10:25pm so I had to kill some time. The night market had traditional Chinese massage for only $20. I should sue them for false advertising. Not only was there no happy ending the guy giving the massage was Korean. I then went and watched Ice Age 2 at the cinema.

Andrew came to Cairns on his way to Bourketown where, a few months earlier his mates 4WD had to be abandoned due to flooding. I still haven’t heard if they managed to get it out. One of his friends knew a local police woman. She showed us some places on the town. She seemed quite nice and I thought she was attractive so of course I made fun of her. I think the first thing I asked was if she could get any drugs. Then when she went into a shop to buy cigarettes, I said “I thought you were getting a donut”. Yes I’ve still got it. She took us to the Irish pub which had Coyote girls dancing on the bar. I thought this was great until I got to the other major club in town and found out I’d missed the wet t-shirt competition. The guys had to go to bed early (about 2am) as they had a 8am flight. So I hooked up with the English twat from my dorm. Turns out he’s not a bad guy just a bit young, and northern. It’s really not his fault.

Thursday it was pouring rain. I managed to get my ass up to the gym. All this drinking is taking its toll I need to get some exercise. I was on the treadmill for half an hour. That’s the most exercise I’ve done in 6 months. I also planned to not drink but Andrew and his mates couldn’t get alcohol on their plane, so 6 cans and a bottle of red were left for me at the airport. Also they had gogo dancers in the bar downstairs. The Mohawk guy and I have another guy dossing in our dorm. He doesn’t have enough money to pay the $27 a night. So he’s in here until just before the cleaners come, then he folds up the sheets and sneaks into the TV room. He’s a bit of a metro sexual pretty boy and had a set of hair straighteners. I said I wonder what I would look like with straight hair. So they roped a friend of theirs Hannah Banana in to do the job.

Later on we get downstairs to watch the gogo dancers and it turns out Hannah is a professional gogo dancer herself, and better than the girls on the podiams. So to recap, I got my hair straightened by a sexy young gogo dancer. There’s really is more to Cairns than just the beach.