A week in Cairns (part II / V)

A week in Cairns (part II / V)

Asylum

After getting off the plane at Cairns airport we headed off to our hostel in a shuttle bus.  Olivia had booked us a 5 night stay in a hostel called Asylum, other than the name and some good reviews about the atmosphere we knew very little about the hostel.

It was interesting stopping off outside each hostel and thinking “is this one Asylum?”  After stopping outside some very comfortable looking hostels the shuttle bus pulled up outside a tired looking white building with a big sign outside that read “Asylum”.

The Asylum

We left the shuttle bus and were both immediately greeted by a friendly guy behind the reception who came round and gave both of us a big hug.  

After checking in we headed to our room which was very basic but clean.  It had all the basic facilities including a ceiling fan that had some dodgy electrics.  The fan was operated using a dial on the wall which had numbers 1 to 5 to set the speed (1 being lowest etc) however the dial was broken and turning the dial to any number resulted in the fan spinning at a dangerously fast speed.

Our cell

The fan of doom

Cairns

After unpacking our stuff and playing around with the psychotic ceiling fan we left the hostel to have a wonder around Cairns.  It quickly became apparent that Cairns wasn’t a particularly special place.  We had imagined a sunny beach town with golden sandy beaches, clear waters and friendly people walking around with surfboards under their arms.  In reality Cairns is a rather dull and sleepy little town.  The roads were wide and empty and the whole place was quite barren.  There was a water front however there was no beach.  The water along the front was dark and looked very uninviting.

Not what I had imagined

The waterfront, complete with some ugly artwork

We did actually find a beach later on in the week,
but this sign kept us away

Another disappointment we had was when we went into a scuba diving shop to find out more about the Great Barrier Reef.  Our initial plan was just to hire some gear and swim to the reef ourselves from one of Cairns nonexistent beaches.  However we found out that the reef was at least a 2 hour boat journey away from the coast and the only way to see the reef was by expensive excursion trips.

Of course we weren’t going to let this small set back stop us from seeing the reef.  The next day we did some research and with help from the great staff at the hostel we had some reasonably priced trips booked.  We had booked 2 full day excursions to the reef and one full day tour of the landscape that surrounded Cairns. 

Strangers are just friends you haven’t met

We might have got some things wrong about Cairns, but one thing we seemed to get right was the hostel we booked.   The hostel had received an award for its atmosphere and we could see why.  Right from our first night we made friends quickly.  It helped having Olivia around as she is more outgoing than me and was very good at breaking the ice with other guests in the hostel and making friends (I did make some friends on my own as well).

There was a wide variety of nationalities staying at the hostel, but everyone was friendly and like minded.  Goon pong was a very popular past time in the hostel and pretty much everybody was involved either directly or as a spectator.

Goon Pong is the same as Beer Pong, only instead of beer we used cheap wine which in Australia is known as goon.  Using cheap wine for this game instead of beer meant losing a game would result in a rather nasty hangover the next morning.

Goon pong, notice the championship table on a sheet of paper in the top left
and the medals for the 2 winners in the centre of the table

Some guy taking an important shot,
 they later lost the match  because his partner got too drunk to play

Reputation

One thing I began to notice whilst lounging around comfortably in one of the hammocks in the front garden of the hostel was any locals who walked past the hostel would look in at us with a disapproving look.

 I later learnt that the hostel had a reputation for being a party hotspot and the guests staying at the hostel were often drunk and disorderly in the town centre at night (and maybe sometimes during the day).  I even heard that the hostel was the subject of a damning local TV report regarding the drunken behaviour of its guests.  However after the TV report was aired the number of guests staying at the hostel increased.

The frown from the locals did not bother me.  When I travel somewhere I usually try and integrate myself with the locals and their culture as much as possible, but I was on holiday and I had left my cares behind.  I felt like I had already been marked out as an “inmate” of the asylum by the locals and I liked it.  After all I was on holiday and I was looking forward to the trips we had book for the week and the goon filled nights out that gave the hostel its reputation.