Tropical Winter, Sat, 05 Aug 2017 | written by Simon
Simon with Charlie, Dee, Eva at a City in Australia, Australia & Oceania

They were waiting on the other side! We did eventually come out of the mammoth queue – turned out that Dee, who was landing half an hour later but has a UK passport which can be used in the automatic gates, was out way before us.

We checked in to our massive apartment on the 11th floor (nice views!) and went out for some food. I was falling asleep over my crab claw in a really good Chinese place Charlie recommended, observing Dee who was saying words while moving hands quite vigorously, and then they said I should probably go to bed.

This morning Charlie and Dee abandoned their plan to go for a run and we went to get some breakfast. After that we took off to meet with Charlie’s extended family at a city farm. A really lovely place, and a really lovely family, so we had a lovely, lovely time. Watching hens, eating cake… I even had coffee, and caffeine plus sugar is an excellent way to deal with jetlag. Also to skip around and talk very fast. One of Charlie’s aunts recommended an excellent way to travel: go somewhere out of town by car without any plan. Then on every crossing take left and see where you get to. I will need to test it!

Now, about the weather. As expected, August in here is not much different from August in Scotland. Well, ok, not exactly. The day is shorter and it’s not that wet.

Ok, ok, it is colder when the sun is behind clouds. But not that much. Maybe it’s like September in Scotland. Anyway, I sort of knew that that’s what it’s going to be, but it’s different when you’re here, with the place just rubbing it in your face.

Anyway, after the farm we went to see fire – the Crown Casino has an hourly show where several small towers in front of it (and right next to the river bank) shoot massive fireballs into the sky. Pretty cool. I had lots of energy and was skipping about a bit on the way there and after, playing tic tac toe with the pavement.

We went for a dinner in the casino and checked out the place itself. There is a shopping and dining part to it, and a hotel, and a spa, and the whole thing looks like someone took the ten most blinged out rappers and turned them into a building. Over dinner I mentioned that I’ve never actually been to a casino, so they decided that we need to go into the gaming floor. I found it pretty much exactly as boring as I thought I would.

After that Charlie took us to an arcade part of the thing, which was marginally more interesting. Eva observed that the place essentially serves as a gambling school for kids, which made it even less appealing. Also, very noisy, sensation overload.

We walked back and I used the fact that the hotel had a pool and a small sauna, and spent the rest of the evening there. Only one person was there for a part of the time, so I pretty much had the place all to myself – neat!