Surfers Paradise - now this town is purely for fun! Great night life, but very strict on dress code for men - no thongs/flip flops, any arm, neck or face tattoos, must be covered! + all men must be wearing long smart trousers. Woman can wear anything!! If you’ve got all that, then your sailing. I went to several nightclubs when I was there - BEER GARDEN (crawling in cockroaches in the smoking area - BE AWARE - + inside reminded me just of a English social club. Cheap tho. BOUTIQUE - over priced, rubbish music and one of the smaller clubs. VANITY - was my club, I loved this club! Mixture of music, relatively big and ok prices for drinks. Now SIN CITY, I never actually went in, I was going too but they wanted $20 just for entry & they were dead rude the staff…not today!
I’d highly recommend getting a bar crawl ticket tho, that’s what I did (there’s tons of promoters out in the street selling you bar crawls and stuff, compare & purchase the one for you!) I paid $80 for a steak dinner & free drink at Melbas (nothing special, but included grub, so had to eat it and make the most of it lol) then free entry and free drink to Beer Garden, Vanity & Boutique. + when you get to each club, they hand out pizza to you as you go in. BONUS. + ladies got free unlimited champagne in Boutique. Also there’s a load of drinking games involved along the way. Great way to socialise.
Anyway, on our cloudy day we done the 7D cinema, which was good, we purchased the 3 film combo for $30. Fun and kills half an hour. We also rented electric mopeds, $25 for a hour, SO MUCH FUN! I hit 40mph on them. Defiantly worth it, especially if you want to explore Surfers.
I stayed in Islander Backpackers, in a 4 dorm, it was ok, could have done with a good clean & bleach and a lick of paint, but hey ho. Probably the worst hostel I’ve stayed in yet, but still wasn’t awful. It did the job. Location wise - it’s perfect, 2 mins away from the coach station and very central with a lot of things around it. Would recommend for a short stay, nothing longer than 2 days.
In general tho, I loved Surfers Paradise!!! On my travels previously before arriving at Surfers, tons of people said to me “I’m skipping it, it’s rubbish, there’s nothing there” - I didn’t find this. I mean it’s a very young persons place. I wouldn’t really recommend it for families. The way I saw it was like a American Dubai, but dated like Selsey (in Portsmouth, UK) the beach is incredible tho! 3km.
Defiantly check out the beach market...I think it's on 3pm-8pm, I loved it! Loads of nicky nack bits and foodie bits. Go to SURFERS if your down for fun. 2 nights, 3 days is more than enough!
