A GIRL IN THE SUN & NEW HOSTEL FRIENDS (OH... AND GOON)

Myself in the sun in Prague. Photo by Britt Lapthorne 2008. 

I am writing this on a sundrenched balcony in heart of the tropical city of Cairns. I have escaped the ever-getting-colder month of May in Sydney to visit friends, drink wine, eat and get some sun.

Already, I feel I have burnt myself a little, gosh darn it New South Welshman white skin!

I lived here for around 5 years and absolutely loved my time here. It all came about to live here when I came here on holidays in 2002. I had come back from the USA 6 months prior and was getting itchy feet as the travel bug had bitten me and I needed to travel to somewhere, anywhere! Cairns seemed like a far enough away place that I had never been too. The pull of the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest was great. As an Aussie, you really should visit these places just once! Just like Uluru you MUST get to experience our broad wide land and I am fortunate enough now to have visited all of the above many many times. On my first visit I dragged my 2 best girlfriends from high school along and our first stop in Cairns was the YHA Hostel near the shopping centre.

Cairns is Backpacker central!

My little European backpack verses Britt's one. Photo by Tara Reynolds. 

If you have been here before you will know what I mean. Put together your top 5 "must see" places in Australia (let's face it, it's a bloody long way to come and expensive too. You have to limit your options also because of the distance in between them) and it would look a little like this (in no particular order...).

• Sydney, Opera House & Harbour Bridge
• Uluru & Kata Tjuta
• The Great Barrier Reef & Daintree Rainforest
• Melbourne
• Byron Bay

Byron Bay could have well been the Gold Coast and I even felt like saying New Zealand but that's obviously not in Australia so it doesn't count. Most Packers get a bombed out van and make the drive up or down the East Coast of Australia to see it all cheaply and live on 2 minute noodles and drink goon (box wine if you don't already know what it is). They stop in Cairns and usually get a job in hospitality for a few months to fund more travel. Some join group tours and I was fortunate enough in my life to be a tour leader and show these packers the time of their life.

Which ever way you do it, if you are an Australian or not, make sure you get the the sites on my Top 5. If you travel alone, stay in a hostel and there are many here in Cairns of a similar standard and centrally located. You will meet other travellers in the hostel kitchen cooking up their 2 minute noodles and drinking goon before hitting one of the many pubs and bars here in Cairns. There are even pub crawls you can go on, but you'll find it easy to stumble around from pub to bar to pub on your own and with your new hostel friends.

Which leads me to bring this up... you are new and fresh into the city. Everyone walks around in their bathers and lay around the Cairns Lagoon all day long. It feels like an eternal Holiday, it feels safe and relaxing. My advice is this.... Britt didn't know anyone on the night she went missing from the Club Fuego in Dobrovnik. She was drinking goon with her new friends at the hostel and they all went out the the club together but no one had her back, no one noticed her gone as everyone was having a good time and having drinks on their holiday of a lifetime.

Even though your new hostel friends aren't your life long friends from school, they are just like you. They have similar interests, they have come to the same holiday destination as you and want to have fun as you do also. Please, for the love of god... keep an eye out for your new friends. "Who is that random local putting his paws all over her?". "Why is she just wandering off with that guy? Who is he?". Ask these questions to yourself and hopefully your new hostel friends will do the same for you. Remember, you will feel relaxed, at home on the piss but that doesn't mean you are safe. Britt felt safe but clearly wasn't, she became a target.

This happens all over the world and also here in Cairns. It's all about being smart and looking out for each other. I have dodged the bullet many times and had a very bad habit of just leaving a club and going home when I was done for the night. I wouldn't even tell my friends, I would just do a "smoke bomb" and disappear. BAD FORM TARA! PLEASE TELL YOUR FRIENDS NEW OR OLD WHEN YOU LEAVE THE CLUB/BAR AND WALK HOME WITH SOMEONE!!!

If this helps at least one person to not get in to trouble... I am a happy lady. Your new hostel friends may become life long friends anyway, someone you dearly love and care for (and borrow their couch to crash on in another country when you travel!) so you clearly wouldn't abandoned a good friend on a night out, you clearly would want to make sure they remain safe. It's all about having fun whilst travelling, safe fun.

Oh and one more piece of advice... goon gives you horrible hangovers.

#travelsafewithyourmates

TO TRAVEL.... US AUSSIES ARE LUCKY WE CAN #travelsafewithyourmates

A Photo from my diary.  A photo by Tara Reynolds

I turned on the television to the 6 o'clock news this evening and it was grim, again. The headline was the devastating earthquake in Nepal with thousands homeless, many travellers and Nepalese missing, buildings that stood for hundreds of years destroyed, thousands killed and being pulled from the rubble all day long while the dead count increases, the funeral pyres burn... base camp at Everest was engulfed by an avalanche killing many people, including one Australian... mother nature unleashes her fury once again, unpredictably.

The next item on the news was about the execution of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran on Nusakambangan Island and followed by that was news about the clean up after Sydney's East Coast Low and Hail storms from the last week and the prediction of major storm later this week.

The news doesn't often seem good!

So I am going to share a nice story from my diary, a happy time I shared with Britt Lapthorne travelling overseas in Europe at the beginning of our time together. The news may be bleak right now as we speak but the world out there is still beautiful!

We had arrived in Warsaw. It was a lovely train ride from Prague and we managed to keep a private train compartment all to ourselves. This was not easy mind you! At a few major cities we had to pretend to be asleep and lay across both sides of the compartment with a magazine or something over our faces so when new passengers walked past our door and peered through the glass... they didn't bother coming in as we looked passed out. It was pure genius! We continued our method on many a train train ride, it kept us safe, it kept us together.... just us :)

On a train in Europe. Photo by Tara Reynolds.

Warsaw actually shocked us a little, it wasn't glamorous. It was a very basic concrete jungle. We later understood why after visiting the sites (Warsaw was pretty much flattened in world war two, many buildings were built by the government quickly and cheaply to get people housed as soon as possible). We left the train station and travelled on foot to our hostel, which we found very easily thanks to our Lonely Planet guide book, don't leave home without it! (Well, now it's all on line but it was a brick of a book just under 10 years ago but invaluable at the time).

We already noticed a comical side in their advertisement billboards and shop fronts. One shop was using a lady with massive boobs that Britt and I could only describe as "Stiflers mom" from the movie American Pie. The lady in the huge image on the side of a building made us double over (with our heavy backpacks) in laughter. We walked past her on route to our hostel, and again when we left Warsaw after a few days heading back to the train station. It was hilarious, she even seemed to be holding a stripper pole!

Photo from lostinrelocation.com

We found Stiflers mom! Photo by Britt Lapthorne

Our hostel was awesome, so much better than the one in Prague. It was clean, had 2 TV rooms and a nice communal area to cook, eat and socialise in. On our first night, when the closing ceremony for the Olympics in Beijing was on, we decided to cook up a storm so once we have checked in to our 6 bed dorm, we headed back out to the local store to buy supplies. Britt and myself decided on only sleeping in a 4 bed or 6 bed dorm and only for women. We had parted ways with our male friends in Prague and decided this was the safest and most comfortable way to travel. It also was cheaper than going for a twin room. Handy tip my ladies!

The local store was frustrating for me as they didn't have much fresh produce. I like to cook so this was annoying to me and we encountered this problem a lot in Eastern Europe. We are so blessed in Australia for fresh produce! Britt was going to be happy with whatever but I insisted we could cook something simple, cheap and easy, but also fresh and healthy and this continued throughout our time together.

We were able to buy a capsicum, an onion and garlic. We obtained some pasta, canned tomatoes, tomato paste from the store and raided the free hostel box (travellers leave their unwanted cooking goods behind when they fly) so we scored olive oil, salt, sugar, random herbs and some sherry to add to the mix. Everyone around us was green with envy! One guy was cooking just a potato for dinner... that's it! Someone else was cooking pot noodles. Everyone commented on how great our food smelt and they were drooling from the mouth. Britt and myself felt pretty proud of our pasta... we did very well for packers.

Two British ladies also admired our creation. We ended up sitting with them and eating our tasty meal and discussing travel plans. We learned they didn't have a Lonely Planet guide... Nooooooooo!

We decided to head out the next day together and see the sites. We also saw them again down the track at another city and we all became close travel friends.

I have remained in touch with those ladies who we spent some amazing times with Britt and myself whilst overseas. I am still in touch with them today.

With all the sadness in the news, which always will remain... there is happiness and there is beauty. These times with Britt only brings me smiles. Keep your travel friends close and #travelsafewithyourmates