Weekend in Gold Coast and Brisbane, Australia

One of the challenges when my friends and I were planning to travel abroad is the limitation of available annual leaves. Of course we don't want all our annual leaves are spent to those trips, do we? As a result, we shortened it to a trip over a weekend. So, our recent (which was also a brief one) trip was to Gold Coast, or the locals call it as Goldie or The Coast. Yes, they love to shorten things up as short as possible, like breakfast, they call it as brekky!

The journey took 8 hours on the airplane, after series of dozzing off and waking ups-boring!Touching down the land of Colonggata Airport, we were welcomed by chilled air at 20°c, despite the sunny day that we could hardly spot any trace of cloud at bright blue sky. 

Gold Coast is well known by its theme parks, such as Movie World, Dream World, Sea World and many more World that you can simply pick any of them to feel the different experiences offered by each theme park. And for our trip, we opted Sea World! *Ka-ching!*

Surfers Paradise is the heart of Gold Coast where major shopping buildings (except  for Harbour Town  factory outlet stores) are situated in this area. And we couldn`t be more excited  as soon as we learnt that  Seaworld is the nearest theme park to Surfers Paradise! Bingo!

 SeaWorld, Gold Coast

If you ever dreamed of  watching sealifes in flesh which you normally see them in National Geographic or NatGeo Wild, this is the right place indeed. I was skeptical initially upon stepping into Penguin Encounter- an  Aquaria-like building because all we could see was typical fishes.

Only when we walked further and saw the penguins, this is what had happened. Excuse us for the jakunness. Hahaha. I was at the back of the camera to wipe my wet bag which was accidently spilled  with Coke. And it soaked partial of my passport, and our vouchers throughout the trip.Darn!

 Heyyy...that penguin look at  me!

Every theme park has its own theme rides. And Sea World has no exception. It just that the rides offered here are  not as extreme as the rides in the other theme parks.

This Viking`s Revenge Flume Ride seems  harmless to the riders, but when we experienced it ourselves, it felt like a suicidal.  When it reached the highest point and slided down at almost 90 degrees, it was even horrifying!I screamed like reaching the end of my life. hahahah.

After that, we took a high speed Jet Rescue ride. When we talk about high speed ride, it is equivalent with high  speed of heart beat while we were on the ride.

I was already drained with too much horrified feeling that the idea of riding this Sea Viper Rollercoaster was not really intriguing anymore. hihihi.

We didn't want to get wet too much, thus preferred to be the shooter from the Castleway Bay. And it was more fun to make the boys on the ship soaked by me. What a cheeky game.Hihihi.

 

the lifes :some of them wander freely arond the park

Fish and Chip:  the heaviest set of meal

Everytime I return home from travelling, my little sisters will run to me and asked  me for new shirts. Even though I have pledged myself that I will not do any shopping during this trip, it would never work.Those Ts were too cute to resist, honestly.

The night activity was a jungle treking to watch glow worm which was guided by local aboriginal, Amali and a torch light given by the tour agent. How on earth  a worm can glow? Trust me, we watched it with our naked eyes, and the sight was really breath taking. Unfortunately, my camera is not powerful enough to capture the glow worm, thus the images remain in this head only. Huhuhu...

Brisbane

The next day we went to Brisbane city. Something new I learnt about pronouncing the city name is that Brisbane is pronounced as in Brisburn. When communicating with local, I pronounced  Brisbane as in lane with the local, and they were having  hard time to understand of what I was saying. Apparently I prounounced it slightly incorrect.*blush*

 

  waiting for the arrival of river cruise

We were brought touring around the Brisbane city before we were dropped of at pick up point to ride a river cruise.

If we have Eye on Malaysia, they also have Wheel of Brisbane. Except for the fact that I never been on Eye on Malaysia. *sigh*.

Afterwards, we had free and easy time to explore Brisbane city on our own-foot.

 snapping the scene

We decided to spend the remaining night hours at Gold Coast mingling around Surfers Paradise. It was  a happening night life at Surfers Paradise where various street performances were taking place  and attracting many audiences . We took the chance to snap some pictures along the shopping lots, and yes- did some more shoppings. =p.

It was early in the morning that we have to pack up to leave. Off we left Gold Coast, a brief and yet exciting experiences over a weekend!