Coff’s Harbour, Australia.
We are getting ready to leave Coff’s Harbour to head about 2 hours North to the small town of Ballina. We tried to find a place to stay in Byron Bay, but we could find NOTHING after calling 20 hotels/hostels/campgrounds! Apparently ever Australian and his Greek brother is on vacation right now. By the way, what is the shortest book in the world? “The Australian Book of Etiquette and Social Graces”
Coff’s Harbour is a very laid back resort town full of vacationing Australians. The town is full of small, mom-and-pop motels, where families stay for a few weeks. While we were reasonable lucky in finding a nice place to stay (there are no nice places that are also cheap, though), the food situation here is deplorable. While I don’t mind spending good money for a nice place, I deeply resent spending good money for crap food. The second best meal here in 4 days has been Domino’s Pizza!
We went to a Thai restaurant called River Kwai that was probably the worst meal I’ve had on this trip. We should have known from the sign–dirty. Anyway, it all started when the surly (angry) waitress came to take our order. Cheryl ordered first, her appetizer (which they inexplicably call here an “entree”) and then her meal. The lady got very upset because we were going to be ordering “out of order” and could we please order “entrees first, then mains”. Oh, OK, whatever. I’m sorry I din’t realize we were in the army now.
Appetizers arrived first, Curry Puffs, straight from a box in the freezer to the oven to the plate. And they weren’t even frozen apps. Then arrived our meals: My Penang curry and Cheryl’s Massaman curry had the same sauce. Although they were 2 totally different orders with different ingredients, they had the same sauce and ingredients. The only difference was that Cheryl’s had one small piece of potato. The people at the table next to us find a giant dead cockroach floating in their curry. After that we both lost our appetite, and enjoyed a lovely dessert of toast and box wine.
Incidently, they have a lovely selection of box wines in Australia. Not just crap Franzia, but really good ones. What a luxury it is to walk up to the fridge and press the red button to enjoy a delicious box wine! BOX WINE DREAMS!