Hot Bird Eyes Chilly Flavour Pokies

I'm posed with five playing cards. I don't know what denominations they are. I've been told to pretend I'm looking at your crotch. Marketing!

After a long day of traveling, followed by a long late afternoon of mooning passing boats from the glassed in bathroom, I was too tired to head out and forage for food.

There were a few restaurants essentially right below our room, along the boardwalk facing the water.

"I feel like Chinese food or stir fry or something," I said.

"Okay, when you go to get it, get me a cheeseburger and fries," ordered the Quad Queen.

"Look, every single time we land somewhere, and we're both exhausted, it's always me taking your order, and going searching for miles to bring your food. Why can't you go and do it this time, there's a Chinese place right downstairs."

"I don't know how to order Chinese."

"You just... just order it!" I bellowed.

"I'd get it wrong. I don't know anything about the crap you eat. I'd probably end up ordering chicken paws or something by mistake."

"Chicken... paws?"

"And hot and stupid soup."

"Hot and sour."

"And chicken paws."


At the Chinese takeaway place, a very large sign occupied a prominent place in front of the cash register, where I perused the menu.

"I'll have the pork bun. And the seafood pancake," I deadpanned.

I took mercy on the poor sweaty skinny guy running the joint and immediately ordered by the number, telling him I was just kidding about the other things.

I suppose it's never smart to piss off the cook before ordering Chinese food.

One way or another, dinner was rustled.

---

The next day, I had a mission. The Casino!

Yes, Cairns has a casino, so of course, I had to scope it out.


Cairns is a beautiful little town, full of life, greenery, restaurants, and a casino, or more specifically The Reef Hotel Casino - a large, modern, sleek structure with gambling down below, and a playground for the kids up top. So everyone gets to play.

There was a slot club, so of course, I signed up. For some reason, the boothling Sheila needed some processing time, so I was instructed to come back in about 15 minutes.

"Can I go and gamble until then?" I asked.

(Imagine boothling Sheila staring at me, expressionless, except for a twitching upper lip.)

I went and took a look around the place which looked like... a casino.

There was a small central pit, with aisles of machines ringing around it. Most of the pit games were closed down, except for a roulette wheel, and a couple of blackjack tables, and some other variaant game.

Really, really shitty picture of the Cairns casino pit.

I think it was pontoon, a name which is just begging for the old Flusherooski treatment. Swap a few letters... almost too easy. Use your imagination and I'm sure you can come up with a few mildly offensive, childish, and hopefully vulgar variations on it.

Oddly, the stakes at blackjack were minimum $20. I've never seen that before in my life. I didn't check to see if they have $20 chips or not.

My search for Beeefffallloooo! games was again fruitless (or mammal-less) and in fact, I don't think I saw one in the place. But I did find some elephant game, which I have since settled in to refer to as 'some elephant game' and this one liked me.

I see now that some of the attraction of video slots is that the first time you play one, you have no idea whatsoever what the fuck is going on. What are those prize values moving across the top? Why did that thing explode? What triggered the 'elephant takes a Volkswagen-sized dump' bonus?

Things were going well and I had quite a bit of fun - and then it was time to pick up my card. Now what? I had about $37 in the machine. I found a button that looked like it would cash me out. It was mysteriously labeled 'cash out' or some such.

And of course, no ticket came out. But coin after coin started pounding into the tray. Fuck.

The Sheila next to me told me where I could get a bucket ("Eyyah, git a buckeroo yondah beck tweenies noy noy noy.")

Bounty collected, I headed back to the slot club, and my card was ready to roll. Or slide. I immediately headed back to that elephant game and got busy. And of course, I had to feed in 37 Aussie dollar coins. Fair dinkum.

That done, I played, hoping for the 'elephant takes a Volkswagen-sized dump' bonus or at least the 'elephant pisses forty yards onto the trainers new Nikes' bonus.

The magic of my previous session had been lost, and ole flappy the longnose was eating my money like peanuts.

And this is where it got kind of interesting - cash out time with the slot club card inserted. They've got a system where your slot card can hold funds on it. You cash out and it loads the balance in the machine onto your card. Good luck if you lose the fucker. And you'd better have a better PIN than mine, which is "6969" (previously "1234", which is also the combination on my luggage.)

I found another machine and punched a similar sequence of buttons as what it took to launch the space shuttle, put in my pin "6969" and sure enough, funds were on my slot card and magically got poured into my machine.

Five fish. Yay me.

There's some interesting information available on the pokies - I'd love to see this in Vegas! Yeah, I know, not holding my breath on that one.

All too soon, I'd lost more than I wanted to and took a walk around Cairns to pick up some food, and try out the now (supposedly) fixed Uber.

I found a little Indian place (Mother India Restaurant) that I'd seen some reviews of, and ordered some Lamb Rogan Josh and some Chicken Paw Korma or other. And rice. They brought me water while I waited, which was very welcome - it was sweltering out.

So there I stood, on an unfamiliar street, in an unfamiliar town, but armed with Lamb Rogan Josh (which sounds vaguely like a comedy team in a Judd Apitow movie) - and a phone. And an Uber account.

Oops, something went wrong? If this continues, SUCK MY DICK! SUCK it while I walk 19 blocks back to my fucking hotel with 3 sloppy gallons of Lamb fucking Rogan Josh. Thank you.

Fuck my life, and double fuck you Uber! FUCK.

So I had to walk back to the hotel.

But I'll tell you... the curry was absolutely delicious. I mean unreal delicious. It was probably the best Indian food I've ever had. It was hot, but not Hot Bird Eyes Chilly Flavour hot. And, a couple of cold beers pilfered from the Horizon Club while Sheila Holly wasn't looking made it perfect.