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July 22, 2011

Australia (day 1 and 2): The travel has begun.

After a good practice on my presentation, we left the lab sometimes in the afternoon to go home and get ready for the trip. We were supposed to meet at the gate at the airport to fly to LA. Our flight didn’t leave until 6h50 and unlike other trip which I always plan myself at the airport right before the plane leave, this time I got to the airport early. The flight to LA is short and sweet as always.
The flight traffic in LA is crazy, we didn’t fly out of terminal 5 like usually, we flew out of terminal 3 with V Australia, somehow the seat assignment got so screwed up so I ended up sitting in row 38 (still an aisle which my favorites). I felt to sleep right before the plane departed, and woke up 8 hours later, finished watching a movie I started before falling to sleep and felt to sleep again while watching a second. I had good 12 hours of sleep.
We got into Sydney airport 6h30am in the morning. Sydney airport was crazy crowded since the plane from LA to Melbourne deferred landing to Sydney because some fogging situation. Custom was easy but baggage claims was very confusing. We transferred our bags to Virgin Australia and then on the bus to go to Domestic terminal.
We didn’t plan the trip so well and we thought the customs could take longer than that so the next plane didn’t leave until 2pm. We spent half of the day in the airport, where we got some currency exchange for Tim and Teresa, got some SIM Card for me to call my best friend in Melbourne.
1st impression of Australia that everything is more expensive than in America, I eat some noodles for breakfast and some tempura udon for lunch (which I paid about 15.50 and 12 Aud respectively). I like to eat some noodles soup when I’m a long journey because It helps me recovery fast.
We finally boarded around 2h15pm and for the whole time Tim blamed himself for not planning the trip so well. We got to Cairns around 6pm. The whole area is like Mexico, Florida, and California combination. 1st impression would be ppl here drove on the right side so the bus driver has to correct us that we should get on the van from the left but not on the right. Since we got to Cairns a little bit later during the day, so we missed out the beautiful drive from Cairns to Port Douglas, but I can tell that the place is beautiful. The bus driver was from New Zealand who retired at his 40. Now, he set up the bus driving business from Cairns to Port Douglas and only work for the peak season which is like now. My impression of him is he talks too much (seriously, if I complain that he talks too much, he definitely is talking too much)
We got to our resort a little bit after 8pm. After getting our room, we deadly tired after 2 days of traveling from the States to Port Douglas. Our eyes can’t be opened so we took a little shower and went straight to bed. They give us a really nice apartment (suite) with Tim and Teresa on the big room and I’m on a shared bed room with some other. The suite has burner, stove, and microwave and dish washer. That was a pretty good deal for just 60$/day. The suite is at the back of the resort where I can sit at the balcony and look to the forest.

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