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Year View| Summary| Highlights| Month View| Tuesday 30 January 2001 (Day View)

Fri 26 Jan | Sat 27 Jan | Sun 28 Jan | Mon 29 Jan |   Tue 30 Jan   Wed 31 Jan | Thu 1 Feb | Wed 7 Feb | Thu 8 Feb |

30.01.2001 – Tuesday 30 January – Darwin – Cairns

6am

• I leave Darwin after an hour and five minutes. Nearly everyone got off at Darwin, goodness knows why, so the plane is nearly empty. The take off is very steep – literally a 45° climb, which is pretty cool, I guess because the plane is empty. We cruise along at 3700 feet, doing 850 kilometres an hour. The few passengers on the plane, and me, can sit wherever we want and talk to the hostesses – it’s nice.

8:53am

• After eight hours and thirteen minutes, including Darwin, I’m back in Cairns. The nice little sniffer dogs come and sniff us all, and Australian Immigration are their usual embarrassingly horrible selves – not letting the people in front of me into the country because they hadn’t booked a hotel to stay at. How are you supposed to have a hotel to stay in when you haven’t got into the country to find one yet? We’ve the worst immigration, bar Israel, that there is – so travellers tell me. On the positive side, despite all the big things saying that under no circumstances could I bring leather horses, elephants or camels into the country, the guy at quarantine said he’d let me – even though I showed him them.

• I caught the bus into Cairns. It’s weird being back. It’s hot too. The first thing that strikes me is how fat, ugly and unhealthy everyone is. There are all these girls with pimples, blotches, overweight and shocking dress sense walking around. Indian women are, generally speaking, beautiful, with well-formed figures and don’t seem to suffer from acne, blotches, pink bike pants and such, and Indian men are always very neat, fit, and mostly wear suits.

• Silas comes and picks me up, and I head out to his place. He goes back to work and I go online on his computer and catch up with my friends from chat.

• The holiday is over, and it has been, without a doubt, the best time of my life. All my stress, worry and anxiety, of which I had a lot, simply ceased to exist while I was in India. Despite what everyone said, I did not get sick, I was not appalled by the poverty, and I only got pick pocketed once. The food, as soon as I got away from the tourist places and ate what the Indians ate, was consistently the best I’ve ever had and far above anything I’ve had in Australia, apart from some of Mum’s cooking, and very cheap. The whole place is remarkably cheap. I had a three and a half month overseas holiday for less than $3000 Australian, including all my airfares and travel insurance.