My room is quite loud, unfortunately, since it overlooks the outside common area and abuts the stairwell. All concrete construction just serves to echo and amplify noises. None of this would be particularly troublesome (well, except for the bathroom, ick.) if the 10 pm quiet hours were even remotely enforced. Such as it is, I don’t generally fall asleep until 1 am or 2 am, and my body still wakes at 4:30-5:00. I don’t have a lot to accomplish, so it’s not that big of a deal. It’d be nice to get more hours of uninterrupted sleep, though.
I’m moving at the end of the week to a better room, in a different location. “Where?” you ask? To be determined. I’m reasonably confident it’ll be in Cairns until about the 9th/10th at this point. I found several other places that would be acceptable closer to the middle of town that will still be within my price range. I’m convinced now that unless pressured, I’m going to be in private rooms with baths from now on. When my kids visit me somewhere, though, they might be in a hostel. It’s their cohort after all.
Some quick hits:
- Turning on a switch here means pushing it down, not flipping it up. Also, many of them have a small light, or brightly colored dot on the switch to indicate that it is on. This is especially prevalent on switched outlets, of which I think they all are.
- Even when the massage place has signage all over it stating “No Happy Endings! Don’t Ask!”, they still offer. (I politely declined, if you’re pruriently curious.)
- Nothing dries. Maybe it’s my room, specifically, but a damp shirt is still damp two days later.
- I haven’t yet seen a croc. I have seen ‘roos, though, so yay!
- The trails are as gnarly as they are in Panama. I do more walking than running when on the less traveled ones.
- I’ve switched from the $5 AUD jugs of lager to cider.
- A 6” Subway veggie sammich with avocado is $6 AUD ($4.25 USD). I don’t think that’s too bad, but I haven’t a clue what a similar would cost in the USA.
- Birds here are kind of fun, and using the Merlin iPhone app makes identification easy – especially when I get a photo, since it does the ID directly from it.
- The price shown is the price you pay; all taxes and gratuities are included. The USA could learn from this.
And to finish, some photos of trails, trees, and birds.