Did I mention warm? I stepped out of our air-con room and into 32 degree heat! It was 8:30am!
Anyway, after our night of shenanigans and quite little sleep, all of us merry men were very hungry. So we packed our bags and headed out in search of adventure... well, food actually. After breakfast, we decided that we should run a muck and at least a fraction of what Darwin had to offer. We, much later, discovered that it didn't offer much.
In our complementary copy of the Darwin tourist map, we had the old War War II Storage Tunnels marked. We headed off there as our 1st tourist stop, which was meant to pass by a myriad of other smaller attractions on the way. We had severely overestimated the scale of the map, as the entire "tourist attraction" spots of Darwin were contained in a space that was not even 2 sq. km. The infamous look-outs looked out onto a scene that was exactly the same as 10m away from said look-out, or from any point along that stretch of road!
After nearing out destination of the tunnels, we realised that it had taken us longer than expected to get there, even though we were sure the distance wasn't that great. Karswell pointed out that during our journey of say 600m max, we had probably stopped no less than 3 times for water. The temperature was ridiculous! No wonder they crammed everything into such a small space - there's not enough water for tourists to wander any further than that area! (Well, actually it's just that there are no water fountains outside the city block and hence if you ventured out - u'd probably die. Now that I think about it, explains all the carrions on the outskirts of the city.)
Anyway, the WWII tunnels were, well...exactly what they claimed to be - some underground tunnels on the side of a hill. As much fun as it was walking through giant piping, I don't think I'll be going back there. At least it was much cooler in there. Our constant thirst was quietened.
They even had park benches in there!
Afterwards, we ran along to the water, only to discover that there was a variety of "DO NOT ENTER WATER" and "Crocodiles like tourists" signs nearby. So we went to a pier to look out at the beautiful blue ocean and relatively nice beach (relative to Melbourne) as this was as close as we were getting to it without the risk of serious bodily injury. At pier, we found a strange video display/museum thingy - we only entered as the booth was filled with air-con comfort.
It turned out to be the plan for a huge resort/apartment block/convention centre complex as proposed by the local government. The video played, showing us an artist's impression of the place which, btw- did look quite nice. It was even going to have a protected wave pool beach. All of us looked at it and had the feeling that there was something distinctly wrong with the picture. Karswell then pointed out that the "artist" must've not been from Darwin - there were too many people outdoors in his depictions.
Oh - and that was the other thing about Darwin - even near the shopping centres, etc - there was hardly anyone around!
Post lunch, we ran off to the movies to escape the heat. Ended up watching "No country for old men", which was ...interesting (but in a good way). It's the Coen bros gone hard-core art-house. Worth a watch.
Basically, our day kinda ended there. The heat, combined with the constant need for water made us air-con junkies: One hit just wasn't enough. We wandered through the "city" (I just can't bring myself to not use quotation marks) and ran from one air-con store to another. Though "ran" is a bit of a misnomer, it was more of a very slow saunter.
And here is a random park bench...
By the end of the day, we returned to aforementioned hostel, only to discover that there was a nice, cosy and (more importantly) air-conditioned bar, right next to the office! We lounged there and talked crap and finalised our packing.
Really I do! (No insecurity here... no sir)
Soon Karswel, Jimbo and I were on the bus to the airport, soon to depart to Singapore. All was well.
Except that Karswel had left his phone at the said bar! We get to the airport when the usual self-patting-down thing happens. "Where's my phone?" is heard over and over again in the air. He rings his phone and luckily someone picks it up on the otherside and thankfully, that someone is nice enough not to be a thief. The phone gets handed over to a bus driver who is also driving to the airport and 20mins later, there is a very happy Karswel with a phone in his hand.
And this time, all was really well and we left for Singapore (from now on, to be called S'pore)
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