Friday, December 22, 2006

a very-late report (better late than never, eh?)

Off to Gold Coast, Queensland and then to Sydney afterward, not to mention of packing all of our stuffs to send them off first to Indonesia really made me unable to spare my time to write down something in this blog.

Yes, today is twenty first of December, which means four days (what??) to go for us to fly back to Surabaya. Geez. Cannot explain why I feel a bit reluctant to go back to Indonesia. Well, alright, I can explain to you a bit later on. Now, allow me to give you some brief pictures what I was doing during our holiday in Gold Coast only.

Day 1:

Forecast of the day : warm

We arrived at Coolangatta Airport, Gold Coast about 10 in the morning. We consisted of my, Erwin, his sister and her husband. After messing around about what our transportation would be during our stay there, we were off to our hotel by bus, which turned out to be one and a half hour journey from the airport! After that, bus was always our main transportation (that is the only main transportation to go everywhere, anyway!).

The hotel was nice. We’ve got two bedrooms, two bathrooms, our own kitchen equipped with its tools (except rice cooker, which forced us to cook rice by saucepan), a nice dining room as well as a living room and a balcony to look the view outside.

Sea World became our first choice out of the other two to go to since we only had four hours left before it closed (all theme parks closed at five, how lazy they are, eh?) after we left our luggage in the hotel room.

Please do not imagine Sea World here like Sea World in Jakarta or commonly. We firstly also thought we would be entertained to enter a huge aquarium with thousands fish swimming around you instead of a big outdoor park which has several ridings such as sliding from the water tower to the bottom and let the water splash on you. Mind you, we (me and my sister in law, who is also pregnant at the time) could not ride those things.

Fortunately we were truly entertained by several shows held like The Quest of the Golden Seal, which was starred by four clever and cute seals. They can dance, imitate the way you walk, clap their hands and tease one of female volunteers by kissing her hand and lip. Another show presented the other smart creatures: dolphins. They can jump very high in the air and even the staff can ride on them. Really cute! You can also swim with them as well if you want but another fee will be charged for that.

If you just want to see what is in Sea World, you can have the monorail which will take you around the big park. There were not actually so much things to do there except watching the animal show, playing the ridings (for Erwin and his sister’s husband) and taking some pictures at several interesting spots.

Still, when we got back to the hotel, we felt a bit tired. Our first day was closed by me and my sister-in-law experienced cooking rice by saucepan. That is obviously not an easy thing to do!

Day 2

Forecast of the day : hot

Dream World was where we went off in the second day. Having been refreshed by one night rest, we were prepared to have an adventure in the park.

There were so many interesting and challenging ridings in Dream World, which were obvious for us, pregnant women, not to play on. For many times I complained both to Erwin and my sister-in-law, I did want to play! However, there were two ridings which did not have prohibition signs for pregnant women to ride on and we really enjoyed those two. The first one was like arung jeram (I forgot what is the name) but it was not too dangerous at all. The second one is called Log River (I’m not too sure of the name) and it was like Niagara gara in Dufan but it was not that big. Yet, we still found ourselves definitely wet after having the riding....

Giant Drop is one of the ridings I would really love to play. You are to be taken up till 120 metres above ground and after a few seconds, they will release you down to the ground. Erwin said that is challenging, it is like his butt even did not touch his seat when they released it down. However, it was Tower of Terror Erwin admitted as the most challenging of all. You will ride a kind of car on rail, and the car will take you up almost 90 degrees and it will slide down retreating after reaching the peak in a second. The other challenging riding according to the riders (Erwin and his sister’s husband) was like an extreme roller coaster. Actually, I did challenge them to ride Wipe Out, a kind of machine which will spin you around as though you were a wave. Erwin said he did not want a machine to spin him around and make him sick. He did not ride The Claw too for the same reason. He thought it was too much after having the Giant Drop and the Tower of Terror. However, to end the day, he tried the last riding (once again, I forgot the name of it, a very poor memory I have, eh?). It was like an UFO spinning around faster and faster for a few minutes. You will enter the UFO and when it gets faster, your body will be glued on to its wall but you still can crawl without being worried you will collapse from the wall because it is like the machine taking the gravitation only in the room. Yet, if it is in the fastest spinning, you cannot move your body at all till the machine gets slower and slower and then stops. Erwin went out from the machine, got dizzy and could not walk for the next few minutes.

While we were walking from one spot to the others, we, of course, took some pictures at some interesting areas. There is also an area where Australian animal are breed like dingo, kangaroo, koala, etc. Well, the last riding we (me and my sister-in-law) had was only a small roller coaster only spinning around and when we pressed the button, it could go up. Actually, that kind of riding is for kindergarten children. Not interesting at all.

I just wish I could go there once more when I am not pregnant. I will definitely have all the ridings it has!

Day 3

Forecast of the day: cloudy and a bit windy.

Movie World became our last destination in Gold Coast. Unlike Dream World whose visitors mostly were youngsters, Movie World’s visitors were mostly family groups, which consisted of parents and their kids. There are not too many dangerous ridings like in Dream World. The interesting ridings in here are Lethal Weapon, Superman Escape and Scooby Doo Spooky Coaster. Those three ridings are alike each other: roller coaster with different spinning and story.

The interesting part in Movie World is that you can meet lots of cartoon characters there, such as Batman and Robin, Catwoman, Shrek and Fiona, Marilyn Monroe, Austin Power, Tweety and Sylvester, Scooby Doo and the team, Zorro, Daffy Duck, and so on. You can also find a Harry-Potter shop there with its cauldron, wand, cloak, broomstick, etc.

All in all, at the end of day, we were so much entertained by Police Academic show, mostly because for a half hour, while we were sitting and waiting for the show to begin, one character of Police Academic was standing in front of the stage, pretending to arrange the audience but actually he was doing funny things that made us laugh. It was kind of difficult to explain the funny things he did because if you did not see him by yourself, you could not laugh as loudly as we did.


There is something I learn, however, from this vacation – that sometimes you cannot remove everything you see and experience to a modern thing like digital camera. It can help you but still, there are some moments you can only enjoy and keep it in yourself as a group of sweet memories. The moment we laughed together (e.g.: when the rice we tried to cook on saucepan was not well cooked), the moment we were disappointed (e.g.: when we found out we could not play almost all ridings in the three theme parks), the moment we were pissed off (e.g.: when the only bus to go back to the hotel passed by and we could not catch it even though we were running after and we had to go back by taxi instead of waiting at the bus stop another one hour in a cold night), the moment we tried to take care of everything by ourselves in the hotel and many more. Well, I believe I won’t forget everything we have experienced during these three days.

It was just too wonderful to be forgotten.

Thursday, 21 December 2006
02:16 pm

ps: I have written it long, long time ago but did not have much time to post it down here. Hope it was not too late for me to share my experience during my vacation in Gold Coast.

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