Wednesday morning it was time to keep the amusement park express moving and we promptly took our Season’s Pass to one of the Gold Coast’s most well-known parks, Sea World. Being the amusement park superstar that I am, the first thing we did upon our arrival was attempt to see as many of the shows as possible. Within the first few hours, I had managed to drag Leeanna along to the sting ray feeding, the penguin feeding, Happy Feet in 3D, the dolphin show, Pirates Unleashed, and last but certainly not least the Fish Detectives show starring what I can only presume are some of the smartest sea lions in the southern hemisphere. After some gnarly $10 hot dogs, we decided what better time to check out the few rides on offer than with a full stomach. Luckily for my gastrointestinal tract, none of the rides on offer were overly intense and we safely survived the one roller coaster, a flume ride and a small Jet Ski coaster called Jet Rescue that Leeanna loved so much she made me ride it three times! Other than those three, the only other “ride” on offer if you will was the Sky High Skyway which was basically a ski lift ride over the park that was more my speed. The real stars at Sea World though are the animals, and there was definitely no shortage of them. In addition to the ones we saw in the shows, we also tiger sharks, bull sharks, baby dolphins, and Canada’s most beloved export, polar bears (lazy bastards)! There were also some good hands on experiences, as you were allowed to pet giant sting rays and touch things like sea stars and star fish. By the end of the day, it was safe to say that we were both wiped out and had taken enough videos and pictures to make a bus load of Japanese tourists proud! In fact, I was so gassed that I almost didn’t notice when my lasagne almost burnt down our hotel room. Now that would’ve been a story!
November 4th was to be Leeanna’s last full day in Australia, and try as might I could not convince her to come to the water park Wet ‘n Wild with me. Being the 26-year old loser that I am, I decided to head to the water park on my own, as I could not in my conscience let my pass go to waste. Turns out, Leeanna probably made the right decision by not going, as it poured rain the entire time I was there and to be honest, a no-shirt party in the rain by yourself at a water park is just not as cool as it sounds. There was one notable slide at the park that I must mention, the Aqualoop, which reaches speeds of up to 60 kilometres an hour and takes you almost completely upside down. It was the most intense water slide ever. End of discussion. Look it up on YouTube if you don’t believe me. In the end though, I ended up staying less than two hours, as the weather was shit, lots of slides were closed, and many of the ones that were open required multiple riders at the same time (insert Brent feeling sorry for himself). Feeling dejected about my bad day at the water park, I marched my ass back to the resort and proceeded to help Leeanna pack all her shit (and lots of mine that I was forcing her to take), for her flight home the next morning. In honour of our love of the great Australian institute, the Pancake Parlour, we decided it would be fitting to have some flapjacks for Leeanna’s last supper. Naturally I had to order the all-you-can-eat with a beer on the side, and was left feeling like a beached whale afterwards. We capped the night off with a visit to the arcade (I’m not cool, this I know), where we proceeded to play such awesome games as Deal or No Deal, Arcade Basketball, and Guitar Hero. Not exactly the most thrilling last night, but by that point, she had seen it all and done it all! Plus as a bonus, we were able to use our arcade tickets to scoop up some pretty sweet souvenirs including a classy golf ball set! After taking a cab home because I had lost our bus tickets (and later found at home damn it!), we forced ourselves to drink the rest of the alcohol in our fridge, as we would be checking out in the morning, and let’s be real you can’t let that shit go to waste!
Friday morning was a bit of a rough start as I had to get up at 6:00am, not an ideal time to wake up when you were drinking and went to bed after 2:00am. With that in mind, I did manage to see Leeanna off to the airport and wish her safe travels from the comfort of my pyjama pants! So as Leeanna’s journey came to an end, mine was just getting warmed up, as I still had to survive close to two weeks with my younger, harder partying brother, Kiel. After packing up all of my stuff at the hotel I called home and was informed by my mom that Kiel would not be arriving that day as he had intended, as he had not been able to get on a flight out of Vancouver. With that in mind, I took the short bus ride to Brisbane and checked into my eight person room at the hostel (Bunk Brisbane [6.5/10]). Since this whole trip began almost a year earlier, I had not had to stay in large share rooms as I had been travelling with my girlfriend, who thankfully enjoyed privacy. But since my brother wanted to save money, meet people, party, and make an ass of himself in the bars, he had convinced me to stay in larger rooms. It looked like I was off to a bad start on my own; my room was full of a bunch of German dudes who looked like they were living there and had some really rank smelling clothes and stuff spread out everywhere. Since I had a day to kill on my own before my brother showed up, I decided to indulge in my addiction and headed straight downtown for the Treasury Casino. I ended up settling in at a fairly social $2/$4 No-Limit table that had a good assortment of characters. There also happened to be a couple of Ontario boys at the table who I got along with quite well. In a total six degrees of separation moment, the one guy, Sonny, asked me where I was from and when I told him, he proceeded to name drop my sister’s best friend as someone he knew! Next thing I knew, it was the middle of the night and Sonny and I had pounded back a ton of beers and were both somehow up a good amount of money. Next thing I knew, it was almost 5:00am and I had been playing for over fifteen hours straight, without eating or doing anything other than drinking, gambling, and urinating! My last hand of the night saw me get it all in pre-flop with three other players with me holding pocket aces. Naturally, I lost, but for once had been smart enough to pull some money off the table so I wouldn’t go broke. In conclusion, after fifteen hours, I had broken out even, although if you count the beers I bought with my chips I was probably up over $100 (Brent’s version of math). I decided to reward my efforts with a 5:30am drunk-as-a-skunk visit to McDonald’s for some breakfast before returning to my room. As luck would have it, in addition to the terrible smell in my room, there was also an ugly trollish-looking German girl sleeping on the top bunk of my bed, who looked like some kind of ugly Gremlin mutation. She kept staring at my drunken ass like she wanted to kill or eat me (are Gremlins allowed to eat at 6:00am?), and to make matters worse decided to roll around on the top bunk all morning like some kind of Parkinson’s inflicted baboon. God save me.
Shortly after I sauntered in from my gambling and drinking binge, I decided that sleep was going to be impossible. With that in mind, I dragged my ass out bed with less than two hours of shut eye. Kiel was scheduled to be arriving some time that morning, but I had no idea when and was pretty certain he would forget to call me. Taking that in to account, I decided to head out and take my drunk/turning into a hangover body out into the world. I made my way to City Hall where there was supposed to be a walking tour of the city on offer, but after waiting with a few other people for over half an hour, it was clear that the guide was not showing up. Being the go-getter that I am, I decided to organize my own one man walking tour and checked out most of the sights in Brisbane by myself. Feeling confident after a few hours of walking that I had covered most of the bases, I returned to the hostel, when low and behold, Kiel Moreau is standing there in the lobby with a beard that would’ve made Grizzly Adams proud! For most people, this may not seem like much, but as long as I can remember Kiel has always been clean-shaven and/or unable to grow anything but a few pubic looking soul patches on his face. It was clear; he was now truly a man. After setting him up in our room, we went out for some afternoon beers to catch up on life and all that I have missed in his life back home and vice versa. After walking off our afternoon delight, we headed to our hostel’s bar, Birdee Num Num (the one good thing about the hostel), for some more beers and pizza. Shortly thereafter, I am pretty sure we were both slizzored, and the last thing I remember was leaving Kiel on the dance floor dropping some ridiculous moves before I stumbled back to my bunk bed for the second night in a row. I’m pretty sure it was around this time that I had an epiphany... I was going to be in for some rough nights in the coming week.
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