» Gold Coast was great. It was about an hour away from Brisbane by train and bus. JinHan, Soon Loong, Kiang, Umeng, and I were extremely tired but Su Cheen and Su Min seemed energetic. We did not have enough sleep and we ended up sleeping on the train.
Racism is one of the main social problems in Australia. Some of my friends were victims of such social ill. Umeng and I were sitting next a young white boy. We were speaking in Cantonese but then suddenly the kid started saying, “yes, yes, what’s your name? Where are you from?” and his friend sitting infront of us started laughing. Umeng was pissed and screw him “shut up!” The boy was shocked and he kept quiet. We were suspecting that the boy thinks that we don’t understand or speak English. We plotted revenge. As soon as the boy gets out from his seat for his stop, Umeng said, “See you later guys!” the boy replied, in a surprised and embarrassed tone said “You can speak English???” Everyone on the bus started laughing.
First stop was a shopping centre. We had lunch before heading to Surfer’s Paradise by bus. In the beginning, we had no idea where the hell is the bus stop. We wandered around until we saw few benches in front of a 7-11. I sat down and asked a Japanese girl for directions to the bus stop. She replied, “oh this is the bus stop!” We started chatting. Her name is Noriko. She’s from Kokaido and 24 years old this year. Extremely fair with huge eyes, friendly and pretty but has really yellow tainted teeth. She can speak English (most Japanese cant) but she has a limited vocabulary (she doesn’t know what’s an architect). I asked her why are there so many Japanese around Brisbane and Gold Coast. She answered “because there are many Japanese shops and Japanese here!”
Umeng joined our conversation and we started chatting more. But soon Umeng and I ran out of things to say. However, this friendly Japanese girl kept on talking and asking us questions. She even led us the way to Surfer’s Paradise. We asked for her email so that we could keep in touch. She replied, “oh I don’t have email!”
We separated with a simple bye-bye.
Surfer’s Paradise was filled with people picnicking, sunbathing and taking photographs. We took off our shoes when we walked on the beach. Unexpectedly, the sand was cold despite the bright sunny day. The beach is clean but there is still rubbish around. The seagulls happily feast on left over food.
We weren’t properly dressed for the beach. Most of us were clad in jeans and even brought our sweaters along. Hence we didn’t spend much time on the beach. We took loads of pictures before heading to some of the shops around.
8 Hens in Gold Coasts!
God of Gambler – Hen??
Kiang feeding seagulls
Surfer’s Paradise’s Town
Sunset!
There was this entertainment centre that has shooting games that uses a real gun (but it was too expensive) and even a make-your-own-mtv (but it was damn lame). Soon, we were bored of that place and we headed back to the beach. We took couple of pictures again, ate sushi at “Sushi train” for dinner and then headed to Hen’s house. His place is just few minutes from Bond University (his uni). I took a picture of it before we left for Brisbane.
– 11:30PM
» We had a yamcha session in La Dolce Vista (café), Milton. My friends call it Bangsar because it has similarity as our Bangsar in Kuala Lumpur. But this “Bangsar” doesn’t have much pubs and cafes as they do back in Malaysia’s Bangsar. It’s just a row of single story shops. However, there’s a small radio tower which looks like the Eiffel tower within the shops. They call it Brisbane’s Paris. According to my friends, Dolce Vista serves really good ice mocha. They put gelati and chocolate syrup topped with chocolate powder and whip cream on it. yummy! We started talking about ghost stories. Him was telling us about his experience in his old apartment when he first stayed in Brisbane. His stuff sometimes gets missing or sometimes something that doesn’t belong to him appears suddenly. We then started talking about Ouija games. Him, Kiang and Soon Loong were telling us their experiences. They held a pen together on a piece of paper and kept thinking about summoning the ghost. Soon the pen started moving. They asked about some stuff and even asked about what’s the winning lottery number (sadly, the ghost answered he doesn’t know) and what’s the ghost’s race (he’s a Malay). And for the ghost to leave, all the do is just tell the ghost that they’re done. *phew* scary!
I’m going to Gold Coast tomorrow morning!
– 1:33AM