Harbour Town is a famous shopping destination located in Gold Coast — about 1 hour drive from Brisbane. It is a place where you can find factory outlets with many bargain stuffs. I went to Harbour Town few days ago with my friends Jenny and Shrikesh. I wanted to buy a shoe (sneaker) for my trip to New Zealand. Jen and Shrikesh were soo nice that they accompanied me to go around shops after shops.

I don’t usually go shopping in Australia. Although most of the stuffs are made in China, everything is damn expensive. The quality is not that great either. It’s just not worthwhile to buy clothes and shoes here. So I would usually wait until I go back to Jeddah or Jakarta for shopping. The last time I went back home (Jeddah) was in December 2006. I was there for less than 2 weeks. I didn’t have much time to go shopping nor did I remember that my sneaker was almost “dying”. I also didn’t have any plan to go to New Zealand for any time soon. So when I suddenly decided to travel to NZ during winter break (July), I realised that I was soooo unprepared!

That’s why I went all the way to Harbour Town to get some stuff for the trip. Sneaker was the most essential thing to buy. My old sneaker is VERY slippery — it wasn’t like that when I first bought it! I ALMOST fell down for many times already! The last incident occured when I was in Nando’s Restaurant with my IT friends. It was raining and the floor was quite wet. I stepped on that wet floor carefully, but then I lost my balance, tried to grab anything that I could find (chairs, tables, PEOPLE! hehehe), and then… two bottles of Peri-Peri sauce fell from the table!!! Suddenly, all eyes turned toward me! Whoa, so embarassing! hahaha… Thank God I didn’t actually fall down!

So yeah… Knowing that I’ll be walking around the city, parks, forests, etc during the NZ trip, I decided that I had to buy a new comfortable CHEAP shoe. In Australia, the shoe-size system is similar to that in UK. A children shoe is within a range of 1 to 6 and an adult shoe is 6 and beyond. And you know what?? I wear a size 6 shoe!! Hahaha. (Soo embarassing lol). But the good thing is that children shoes are cheaper than adult shoes! So I would rather buy children shoes than adult shoes . And… believe it or not, I ended up buying 2 sneakers hahahaha!! Coz it was unbelievably cheaaaap! And it was even cheaper if I bought 2 pairs of shoes! So I said to myself, “yeah, why not?” Even if I convert the money to Rupiahs, the price is still much cheaper. I was soooo happy LOL. It was my lucky day!

Ah, too bad I didn’t take pictures in Harbour Town. I really forgot! I was too happy hehehe. But then I managed to take some pictures on the train — on my way back to Brisbane. Shrikesh and I had a great time fighting too — as usual . Everytime we started to fight or tease to each other, Jen always said, “I don’t know you, man! Stop it!” He tried to take some candid pictures of me using his mobile phone. And we laughed at my ugly pose hahahha. After few minutes of taking pictures, Shrikesh said, “Enough.. taking pictures.” I then replied, “Finally! THANK YOU!” Then he quickly said, “Now it’s time for recording videos!” LOL.

* Picture: Shrikesh and Jenny on the train.