Arrival in Byron Bay

Saturday, November 8th

I think when I woke up at 9:20am I was still drunk.  But the shower sobered me up and I was all fresh to pack.  Wall-e is extremely heavy now, I don't know what to do with him.  I took out all my heavy small stuff into my hand luggage to make wall-e exactly 15kgs, the weight restriction on most budget flights.  While we waited to leave the house, we ate some cheese spinach pastry and watched another episode of summer heights high.  We are loving all these aussie shows.  At 11am, Natasha drove us to the airport.  The ride was a quick 20mins, and when Natasha pulled into the airport parking garage to drop us off, it was a bit annoying.  We couldn't find the exit sign to get out.  The garage was either very confusing or we were all still a bit out there.  We eventually got to our terminal and had to say farewell to Natasha until Cairns.  It's sad to leave Natasha since she's such a good friend.  She made our stay in Melbourne very memorable by being a fabulous host.  It will be fun to see her in Cairns and Sydney again.

Steph and I checked in first since Bernice's flight was not for another 2 hours.  To my surprise the weight restriction on luggage was 20kgs on jetstar!  So guess what I did, I stuffed up wall-e with all my heavy stuff in my hand luggage.  Wall-e was officially 17.6kgs when we weighed him.  Steph and I went through security before Bernice and got some food before our flight.  The jetstar flight was a bit annoying.  There must of been 15 kids of all ages on the flight and all decided to see who could scream/cry the loudest.  We were not happy campers, but I am glad I got to catch up on some of my reading.

Fyi - jetstar and virgin blue are the budget airlines of australia. You can usually find specials on their websites.

We waited for Bernice at the airport for 2 hours while munching on nachos and reading obama news.  It was actually pretty relaxing since we sat in a bar outside so it sort of felt like we were in a park, especially with the lovely kids surrounding us screaming.  When Bernice arrived, we hopped on the van we booked for AUD30pp to Byron Bay.  The ride was a really quick one hour.  Right when I was getting ready to listen to my music we arrived at our mainstreet backpackers hostel.  Hostels in Australia are more expensive than Asia.  It's costing us AUD28 ($19) a night and we are in a large 16 mixed bed dorm room.  Mainstreet backpackers is truly a backpacker place.  Tons of people everywhere, some even permanent residents.  Too bad we were not in the mood to meet people.

We were all pretty tired from the previous night, so will stayed pretty low-key.  We went to the supermarket to pick up some breakfast and lunch for the next day, and then went to a kebab place for dinner.  Afterwards we just showered and prepped for the following morning.  I almost showered in the men's bathroom by accident.  But thank goodness I left something and saw a man walk in.  It would of been very embarrassing.

Steph rested in her bed, while bernice and I hung out in the living room area of the hostel.  Random people started talking to us.  Most memorable (good or bad is debatable) is a Japanese dude that is working and surfing here and a stoned/hammered aussie from Brisbane chatting us up.  We were a bit tired to be entertaining, so eventually we just called it quits and went to bed.