Surfer's Paradise, Gold Coast, Australia

A short nap, and the airplane landed in Gold Coast early morning, just after 7. The weather was quite nice, not too warm and not too humid. Already in Thailand I had applied for a permit to stay in Australia for 3 months, so there were no problems getting through immigration. Especially not when the lady there had family living in San Diego and she had been there so many times. "Welcome to Australia, Mr Poulsen", she said, and gave me my paperwork, "You are gonna love the Gold Coast"
Seems like customs in Australia is more strict than the immigration. No foods and nothing that has ever been alive. Most people got sent to special inspection while Mr Poulsen threw his bags in an x-ray machine and was now officially in Australia. Interesting coming out of the arrivals hall and there are not the usual 200 people trying to hijack me for their taxi. In fact there were almost no people, and why would there, it was still early morning.
But this was it, Australia. I had been dreaming of going here for such a long time, now I was here. I can say that with all the countries I have been to the last couple of months, but Australia, that's just different. High expectations, I know, can be dangerous.

I was so hungry, my beloved AirAsia does not serve any food, it has to be bought. There was no breakfast left on their carts when they arrived to me, and I was sitting in the middle of the airplane, so there must have been a lot of hungry people waiting to get just anything.
Got a sandwich and ordered a shuttle up to Surfer's Paradise, $16 away. The ride took something like 30 minutes and I was delivered front door to Surfer's Paradise Backpacker Resort. This was supposed to be some of the best hostels in the area, at least according to the place itself. The room was 8 people room, and was full except for one top bed in a bunk bed, which would obviously be mine. The bed was really noisy so when going up and down the person below would be woken up for sure.

It was an Italian guy who had traveled in Asia as well before coming to Australia and he was really disappointed about the price level here compared to what you got. I have to agree, compared to Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia this place is not going to be a cheap experience. Most people in the hostel were cooking meals themselves in the kitchen, looked like I was the only one going out for food. Even though Surfers Paradise was supposed to be the place on the East Coast where people went to save a little money.
This hostel was clearly catering to young people 20-25 years of age, having Nights Out every and the guys working at the hostel would get some kind of commission depending on how many people they could drag out to the bars and clubs.

The city itself was located at the mouth of a river and was designed rather cool. The river made a couple of sharp bends just before hitting the ocean, those had been used rather cleverly. Imagine the neighborhoods in San Diego build in canyon ridges, instead of having canyon between one road and the next, in Surfers Paradise they would have water. Some places, the entire neighborhood would have water access to every single house. It is a little bit hard to explain, but take a look at the map. Every single house facing the water, would have their own boat ramp and most of the boats I saw out there, were not the inflatable dingy from the local sports shop. They were large motorboats that normal people could not afford. This is what is a little confusing to me, if there are so many rich people here, why would this be the cheaper place to be compared to almost anywhere else on the coast?

There were tall buildings build almost on the water both on the beach and river side, looked like PB and La Jolla on steroids. Now I kind of like the building restrictions in San Diego, I wouldn't like it to look the same.
The main street through the city was newer, clean and very pretty in fact, but at the same time very artificial. Streets had been curved a little left and right, palm trees had been put up and clearly designed to be attractive and leave a good impression on tourists, because this was very touristic place for sure. It even had one of those expensive streets with Louis Vuitton, Prada and all the other expensive need-to-have brands.
I had a pizza at a restaurant there, didn't notice the price when I ordered, turned out it was $25 for lunch - and not even good.

It looked like people didn't do much else at the hostel than sit around in the pool every day or play some volley or basketball on the court yard. The bar didn't open until 17:00 and since they did have a bar, people could not bring their own alcohol to the premises, weird rule. When the bar opened however, only very few people bought anything, $4 for a beer is maybe too much on a backpacker budget?
I had 4 nights in Surfers Paradise and wanted to get out and do something else than just the beach. Found out that the late Steve Irwin's zoo was located not too far from Brisbane, I always wanted to go there for some reason. I found some information on the Internet and went to ask the guys in the hostel how to get up there the easiest way. They didn't really know, but they asked me if I was coming out tonight, haha. I got hold of one of the more mature people who wasn't too familiar with the zoo either, but at least took some time to find out. There was a bus shuttle, Croc Express, which passed by the hostel driving from the Gold Coast through Brisbane and up to the Zoo. Unfortunately they were sold out until the 24th of Dec, which was the day I was leaving Surfer's Paradise. But they had another local zoo that was only 20 minutes away he told me, but that was a lot smaller and I didn't just want to go to any zoo. Is there any other way to get there I asked. Not sure mate, you'd would probably have to take the bus from here, to the train station inland, take the train to Brisbane, change to the train going up North, get on the bus to the zoo. Yeah, you can do that. He estimated the travel time to be between 3-4 hours, the Croc bus was 2.5 hours directly, so I guess he was not far off. The idea of going already started to fade and I decided that I would wait and see what would happen next, didn't really have anything planned yet.
The morning I had to leave, I went to the reception in the morning and asked how long it would take for me to get to the airport in Brisbane. I had a flight at 13:15 and it was around 9:25 now. He looked at the clock, looked at me and told me that unless I caught the bus leaving in just a few minutes down the road, I probably would end up missing my flight. WHAT?
By the time I arrived at the airport there was only 50 minutes until the flight left, so I guess the guy at the hostel was right. Had I not caught that bus, then I would have had to pay for a taxi or rebook my flight, which would have been a problem. But I made it, no worries mate. Next destination, Cairns