Family tour Part 8: Honey World and Brisbane CBD

On our second day in Queensland, we went to Honey World, also situated in Gold Coast. This World is unlike the rest of the other Worlds like Movie World and Sea World - there is no roller coaster ride. The only exciting thing about this Honey World is the tour on how honey is processed, beginning from the very basic information - the queen bee and her workers.

At Honey World with my honey. Hehe. :P

Hardworking bees in their hive

The bee tour guide told us some amazing interesting information about bees, like how they relies on the scent and memory to go back to its hive (he even experimented to us by covering an image on the door of the hive box and the bees did not know which was their home even though they could smell it 100 metres way back because if they went in the wrong hive, the guard bees of the hive would kill them just in case they spy on them).

Smoking the bee hive

He even said that when someone smokes the hive, the first instinct a bee does is to go back to its hive (not fly out from its home) to gather all their honey which I guess is their important documents. Hehe. :P

..which is why you can see thousands of bees still on the hive (picture below):

The hive that is coated with wax that contains honey - it weighs approximately 3 kg! That was insanely heavy for honey!

Scraping off the wax to get the honey

We also had free honey tasting before purchasing the honey off from the shelves. (That night, Chin Fei grilled honey-coated chicken. Hmm, yum! :P)

Tasting honey

After our honey experience, we drove back to Brisbane to visit its city centre. It was my third time visiting this place in my 4 years stay in Melbourne (the second time being just a month ago for my science conference, read this, this and this) so I was confident bringing my family around without having to look at the map. Hehe. :P :) Visiting this place brought back old memories of the trip I had with the Honours cohort; oh what fun it was! :)

Chinatown #1

Chinatown #2

Like Melbourne, there were many street entertainments in Brisbane, something very rare in Malaysia.

A street artist painting with spray cans

To enjoy touring Brisbane city is to walk around aimlessly and along the way bump into a beautiful place that we can stop to take picture. And well, that was what we did. :) We did not have to walk far because every place along the way was beautiful. Yes, my parents like Brisbane city the most out of the three cities we went to, Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney.

South Brisbane park #1

South Brisbane park #2

South Brisbane park #3

ANZAC war memorial

Brisbane square #1

Brisbane Square #2

In front of the Treasury Casino at Brisbane Square

Treasury casino

At a bridge, crossing the Brisbane river with the Ferris wheel behind

Along the southbank

We also went to the man-made beach, located right in the heart of the city, which I suppose is one of Brisbane's major attraction too.

While my parents were busy taking pictures at the man-made beach, you can see me behind my dad getting all excited to dip my feet into the cold water right. Hehe. :P

Ahah, already IN the water with my brother. Hehe. :P

We stayed on until dusk before heading home for our grilled honey-coated chicken. Hehe. :)