Gold Coast Train Trip – 50c fares for the Win!

We had originally planned to do a bunch of road trips during our holiday but thanks to good ol’ Trump starting an unnecessary war and causing oil prices to skyrocket across the entire world — that idea got scrapped immediately.

Being Extreme penny-pinners financially savvy people, Po and I thought we’d use public transport as much as possible, since one flat rate ride of 50 cents is definitely cheaper than petrol. I mean it’ll probably cost 50cents fuel just for us to drive the train station lol.

Our journey started from Roma Street Station to Helensvale (on the Gold Coast), then from Helensvale we transferred to the light rail to get to Surfers Paradise. I’ve never been on a light rail before, so I was actually pretty excited.

Despite my wife being the expert planner who does pages of excel spreadsheet, she always makes me do the planing for our dates. Which makes no sense, since I have no forward planning skills when it comes to personal life. Preferring to work in spur-of-the-moment spontaneity and chaos (if you can’t already tell by the way I write this blog).
Anyway, this is the “itinerary” I ended up putting together, if you can even call it that…by the end it had completely turned into a list of things to do once we get home.

Like a dog, I’m very food-oriented. So my main priority is food. As long as I get to eat at my chosen restaurant, I’m fine with whatever happens after that. Unfortunately, the Vella Cafe I originally wanted to try is closed on Mondays, so we switched to the restaurant with the extremely long name: ‘USOK Filipino Grill x Noypi Halo Halo’ — a Filipino canteen we had stumbled across in Surfers Paradise. The seating inside is extreeeemely limited and tiny. We’d previously only tried their Filipino shaved ice (Halo Halo), but this time we ordered pork skewers and grilled liempo (salted pork) rice which we both agreed was delicious, even though the rice was on the soggy side (insert photo of lunch)

After eating, my wife suddenly decided she wanted coffee, so we ended up finding this really quirky and very pink café.

Is it Hello Kitty? No — it’s Hello Koala Kiki Koala! The star of the show is a pink koala, the whole café has a very girly vibe, and the shop next door sells merchandise too. The shopkeeper was really nice in explaining the backstory behind the cafe, but unfortunately, I’ve retained very little of what he said. It was designed by a famous artist named Jen(?) about 18 years ago? I think?

With coffee and dessert in hand (and after taking approximately one million photos), we wandered over to the Surfers Paradise Main Beach. Even though it was a weekday, there were still quite a lot of people enjoy the sun, swim and surf.

It was a beautiful day to be out and we sat on the beach watching the ocean, feeling the breeze, hearing the waves crash against the shore, having heart-to-heart talks, drinking coffee, eating dessert and all the delicious crunchy sand that the sea breeze blew into our mouths. (LOL)

The original plan was to wander around Surfers and head home by 3:30pm at the latest, but just after 2pm, my wife suddenly announced she missed our grandpa cat and wanted to cuddle with him and nap together. I was like ‘Huh? but we’ve only been here for like less than 2 hrs’. And she was like ‘Yeah, and I also want a banana’.

I am now seriously starting to suspect that outside of work hours, my wife is actually an extremely spontaneous person. There were glimpses of it here and there, but she disguised it behind the facade of making multi-page travel itineraries in Excel, so it seemed like she was extremely OCD prepared/organised when she is just as chaotic as me. And that is why she makes me plan our outings because then she doesn’t need to pretend she’s organised. I’m onto you, Po!

My wife’s verdict on the Gold Coast train trip: Fun adventure, but the train journey was a bit long and a bit boring, so once was enough. Next time we’ll just drive for the convenience and freedom.

My verdict on the Gold Coast train trip: The food was good! The light rail was really fun, and the round trip for both of us was only two dollars! Although on the way back, sand kept falling out of my clothes and bag the whole time and I found sand behind my ears even a day later lol

Ooo Fun Fact! The light rail has a surfboard storage, which I found both ingenious and hilarious!