Hey everyone. Happy Valentine’s for the other day. Hope you were either spoiled rotten or at least did the spoiling. I’m sure you’re all desperate to hear what Soph got this year from me. Commonly referred to as the 21st century Romeo.

Well she got nothing.

Yep, nothing at all. No I didn’t forget. I don’t need a single day in the year to tell Soph how much I love her. She has 365 of them. We just couldn’t afford to get each other anything.
Awww. Anyway it’s pancake day next week and we all know that’s a far more important date in the calender. (“Ooo is it? I didn’t know that”).

Right, so. The bus. The 14 hour bus journey from Sydney to Byron Bay. We’d heard about Byron Bay lots back home and along our journey so far. People love the place it seems. Many had expressed a desire to live there due it’s super laid back culture and beautiful scenery. So although the bus journey was long, it should, in theory, be worth it.

Thankfully the buses are pretty high spec out here. Some have TV sets and WiFi and toilets with toilet paper. Ours did not have these things. What it did have however was air con. Which unfortunately turns the entire bus into a moving choc ice. Even if you turn the fans off it’s still freezing. And if the bus has to go round a corner, some unlucky passengers are going to get covered in what I can only suspect to be liquid nitrogen dripping from the vents. One bonus though, the driver was nice. I mean I can’t remember him saying or doing anything really nice. He just wasn’t a moaning old goat like the last one we had. Which was nice.

When we finally arrived in Byron we were greeted by the staff from our hostel ready to drive us from the bus stop. This was very helpful as we had only been able to get a room in the hostel furthest from town. The Arts Factory Lodge. In fact this place is a little famous. It’s where the Inbetweeners stayed in the sequel movie when they visited Byron. Neither Soph or I had seen it, but I’d heard about this claim to fame and thought it must therefore surely be a good please to stay a couple of nights.

Although it was nice of the bus to drop us at the reception desk at 9am, we couldn’t check in until 2pm. So to pass the time we chilled out in the, well I guess, the chill out area. I sat writing a blog while watching the bags, the girls lounged by the pool trying to catch up with me in terms of tanning. That’s right. I have a tan. I’m being mistaken for Greek now. Even Turkish from an angle. Anyway my olive skin and good looks are besides the point right now. Maybe later.

By the time 2pm rolled around we were all desperate to just get into our room and chuck our stuff down. We spoke to the lad on the desk, fluttered our eyelashes and managed to get an upgraded room. I suppose the room was more like a tent than a usual room. It had two bunk beds in but one of the bottom bunks was a double, so Soph and I could sleep in the same bed together since our first night in Melbourne. We could probably sleep together in the singles, but as I said before, Soph is super sensitive to the cold and I have to take a layer off every time someone in a 5 mile radius sparks up a fag. So unfortunately for Soph, snuggling in this heat is not enjoyable for me. We all have to make sacrifices to be with the ones we love. That’s hers. One of many I’m sure.

Behind the room was a private balcony overlooking a large pond covered in moss. It looked like a perfectly cut putting green until a family of ducks starting moving across it. It was a really nice setting. The only downside was the increased number of mosquitoes roaming about. What is the point in a mosquito? Really. They are helping nobody. They have no friends.

Hitting the town we aimed for the beach. The hostel has a free shuttle bus to and from the town every half hour or so. But Byron is so small that even though it’s far away in comparison to others, it’s still only a 10 minute stroll away. Within these ten minutes however, the Sun disappeared and was replaced with a sudden down pour. We took this opportunity to head back to the high street and grab some lunch. We also decided perhaps it would be best to start looking into booking our trips to Fraser Island and the Whitsunday Islands. These two have been on our list, as they are on every backpackers list, since day 1. So with only a couple of weeks left in Aus, we really had to start looking.

We asked in a couple of places before the girls were sweet talked into a particular one called Happy Travel, or something like that. I waited outside chatting away to someone else who worked there before I was spat at by a passing homeless guy who was rather peeved at the number of foreign visitors to his lovely town. I ran in and joined the girls to see what they’d been sweet talked into next.

Due to Australia’s ridiculous prices, we are running dangerously low on funds. So although our dream was to do both islands, it was pretty apparent we would have to pick one and sacrifice another. Courtney is an experienced sales woman and Soph is no fool when it comes to the tricks of the trade. So I would have been happy with whatever their decision was. None of us really had a budget in mind, but we knew what we had in our accounts and how far we could stretch. So when the sales guy said a figure a little cheaper than expected for both excursions, we went for it. Perhaps we could do both. I gave him my card, tapped in my pin, and smiled at the girls….

…Card Declined: Insufficient Funds.

This was not good. Least enough embarrassing. I quickly jumped on a computer and checked my account. I had over £700 less than I thought we had. It was a nightmare. Devastating. We just couldn’t do it. We could barely do one of them. It was a pretty horrible moment of realisation. We had been so careful with money until Australia when we simply can’t afford to live. We haven’t been out drinking every night or munching on lobster for lunch. It’s just so darn expensive out here for foreigners. We booked the Fraser Island trip and left all smiles. Although barely below the surface we were all deflated with disappointment.

Suddenly emotions changed again as Courtney squeals with glee. We turn to see she is hugging someone. We all react differently to the feeling of disappointment, but we were pretty sure Courtney’s usual reaction isn’t to grab hold of the nearest stranger. She must know someone. And she did. It was her housemate Chris from her time at Chichester University. What a small world. Oh, and it just so happened to be his last night in Aus tomorrow. He’d lived in Byron for a while working for Happy Travel but was being posted to a spot in New Zealand starting next week. He invited us all out for his leaving do before we went our separate ways. Crazy when those things happen.

The next day was a beauty. We went down the beach, jumped in the sea and rode the waves back to shore. We had a jellyfish floating past us but that didn’t put us off. We were pretty sure it was dead anyway. It was great fun jumping on the waves. Soph was a little more apprehensive and stood in the shallow water. This soon proved to be an extremely good idea, for when we looked back at the very waves we’d been jumping in, we saw something. Something long. Something grey. Something deadly. Now I don’t want to scare anyone. It probably wasn’t. But my goodness it sure did look like a shark. I’d love to think it was maybe Sharkey or George. Those detectives under sea. But it could quite easily have been Jaws. Or just a big fish. Or nothing. Let’s go with nothing.

That night we were going out. The girls dressed up. I changed my t-shirt. We’re we’d ready to go. The bar of choice was Cheeky Monkeys. Perhaps sounding a little more like a kids playgroup than a bar we were slightly surprised when we were all ID’d to get in. Surely the age to get in a place called Cheeky Monkeys can’t be any higher than 4. Inside they even had face painting on offer free of charge. They also had cheap drinks and food we could afford, so we were well up for giving it a try.

We all got our face painted as we waited for our dinner to arrive. I don’t mind having a bit of paint on the face. I’d seen a few others with some really cool effects being done and thought, still rather reluctantly I must say, that I may as well join the girls. May be it was the tone I used when I took my seat in front of the face painter. Maybe it was the look in my eyes. Whatever it was, the lady thought it best to paint my face using the brightest colour pink she could find and a flower shaped stencil. On top of this she added some glitter to round off a piece of art our old friend Jamie the brake dancer from our Melbourne to Sydney bus would be proud of.

For the rest of the night I felt like I was either going to get hit or hit on by at least one of the long haired guys in the bar. I was struggling to work out which I’d rather. Apart from this constant fear it was actually a very good night. Soph and I had a couple of drinks but decided our budget would prefer us to stay reasonably sober. Courtney had no such problem topping up her glass with cheap champagne for the rest of the night. We danced away on the tables until the very last song and the lights came on. You always forget how unnecessarily long the song ‘Hey Jude’ is when you’re sober. There was still time for a big cheer for Courtney’s old mate Chris as everyone left for the night. We may even catch up with him again in New Zealand.

The next day we pretty much laid out in the Sun all day. Courtney did have to pick up an ankle support though. On our walk back to the hostel from the bar the night before, she had tripped over thin air and sprained her ankle. Thin air does seem to get in the way ever so often after an increased level of alcohol. It didn’t seem to affect her ability to make a racket though. Even after hurting herself she went for the Guiness World Record for the most amount of people woken up in one go by screaming about how much fun she’d just had. Bless her. Look out for her in the 2016 edition this Christmas.

The day after we were on the move again. This time for the aptly named Gold Coast. An ear filled with golden sand beaches for as far as the eye can see. Our particular stop was called Surfers Paradise. It was only round the corner in Australian terms. About two and a held hours up the road. But this bus was a very special bus. It also acted as a time machine. For when we arrived in Surfers Paradise, we’d gone and regained ourselves an hour. So we are now 10 hours ahead of the UK rather than 11. Perhaps this will be easier for the girls to get their heads around. It was only last week they realised the UK is behind us….

We dropped our stuff in our room and headed down the town to see what was going on. We spent an hour or so on the beach before looking around for a place to grab some cheap lunch. It was here we realised it was in fact Valentine’s Day the very next day. So as a treat we thought we’d go to the cinema to watch something really cool. Something action packed. Something we’d all been waiting for….

….50 Shades of Grey…pfft.

I could think of many films I’d rather see, ‘The Life and Times of Drying Paint’ would be one, but there was a lot of intrigue about this film so we thought we’d go see it. Plus there were bound to be scenes of a sexual nature involved, and I’m always down for that. The girls had read the book so were of course hoping for an exact match from the film. I won’t spoil it for those that haven’t seen it yet. Just bare in mind American Sniper is also on at the moment. That’s all I’m saying.

Our time in Surfers Paradise was very short. We’d only have two nights here before moving on our journey upwards towards Rainbow Beach and ultimately Fraser Island. So on our next morning when a new room mate arrived we weren’t too bothered about how nice or un-nice he might be as we’d only have to spend one night with him. He turned out to be a middle aged man who was currently in the process of going bankrupt. We felt quite sorry for him actually. Well I did. The girls thought he was going to nick all our stuff and sniff his way through their underwear while we were out. If the poor guy is going bankrupt he should at least be still allowed some pleasure in life. I left my used boxers out for him. Bless.

The day was again spent on the beach. We do a lot of that to be honest. But why not. Rather awesomely it happened to be the Australian Sand Sculpting Championships that weekend. These guys and gals are so talented, it really was great to see. Here our some examples of what we’d seen. They were all Disney themed.

We found a nice little place for dinner where we grabbed ourselves a steak and a beer for very little money, before returning to our room to pack again. As we got back we saw all the lights to our room were off. Soph stuck the key in the door and slowly opened it. What came out was a gas bomb more powerful than anything the Americans have dropped on the Japanese. It was enough to force Shrek to faint. Our bankrupt friend must have been trying to win a little money by entering the local baked beans eating contest because the room stank of fart. It was disgusting stuff. But it was only one night. We’d get through it.

The next day we were again on a bus. This time to a place called Noosa. But that’s for next time.

Thanks for following x