Fuad loves to travel! A lot! Carrying a Bangladeshi passport means he needs a prior visa for visiting most of the countries. He got detained in many borders because of his nationality but; he didn’t give up - he set his foot to 44 countries. He believes, if he could travel the world despite all the odds, you can, too. Fuad is a Computer Engineer by profession, and author of a travelogue in Bangla. He currently lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
A direct Cairns to Sydney flight takes about 3 hours, covering roughly 1,980km, and Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all fly it nonstop. From early October to early April, Sydney is an hour ahead of Cairns because New South Wales has daylight saving and Queensland doesn’t: my 3:45pm Virgin Australia flight in January landed at 7:45pm Sydney time after 3...
The Red Arrow Track is a short, steep walking loop up Mount Whitfield in Cairns, reached from Collins Avenue beside the Cairns Botanic Gardens. The circuit is about 1.3 to 1.5km and takes around an hour. Its lookout overlooks Cairns Airport and its runway, so you can watch planes take off with Trinity Bay behind them. It’s free, and the 50-cent route 131 bus...
Cape Tribulation is the one place on this whole Australia trip, Sydney to Tasmania to Melbourne to Cairns and back, where two World Heritage sites meet: the Daintree, widely considered the world’s oldest rainforest at somewhere between 135 and 180 million years old depending on the estimate, running straight down to the edge of the Great Barrier Reef. If...
Yes, you can swim at Palm Cove Beach. Swim between the red and yellow flags while the lifeguards are on duty, and inside the stinger net when it is in, roughly November to May. The net reduces the risk from dangerous jellyfish but does not remove it, so wear a full-body stinger suit in season, and remember this is crocodile country. Palm Cove is about 25km north of...
Twenty-eight nights, every flight and every day I actually spent, across a country I'd tell anyone to give real time to.
Cairns city centre, the CBD, is a compact grid between Cairns Central shopping centre and the Esplanade that you can cross on foot in about 15 minutes. Its heart is the Esplanade: a waterfront boardwalk over tidal mudflat, not a beach, with the free Esplanade Lagoon for swimming, the Cairns Night Markets open every evening, and the Reef Fleet Terminal where the reef...
A direct Melbourne to Cairns flight takes about 3 hours 20 minutes, covering roughly 2,310km, and Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all fly it nonstop. From early October to early April, Cairns is an hour behind Melbourne because Victoria has daylight saving and Queensland doesn’t, so you gain an hour on the way: my 4:25pm Jetstar flight in January landed at...
Ubud’s budget scene is unusually good for what it costs. Pools, free breakfast, and daily yoga are standard rather than a luxury add-on, and the difference between a big social hostel and a quiet family homestay is really a difference in what kind of trip you want, not in comfort or cleanliness. This guide covers both ends properly: proper social hostels with...
Ubud has thousands of places to stay, from ten-dollar homestays to resorts that open with a walk across a suspended bridge. Rather than one long undifferentiated list, these picks are sorted by what each hotel actually does best, so you can jump straight to the category that matches your trip. This guide focuses on the 32 strongest picks across every style and...
Where to stay in Ubud comes down to one real question: how much walking are you willing to trade for how much jungle? Ubud isn’t a single town so much as a scatter of villages that grew into each other. Central Ubud gets you Jalan Raya’s markets, temples and traffic all within a few minutes’ walk. Ten minutes further out, in either direction, the...