I never thought I’d ever visit Queensland again, and especially not the Whitsundays! But I had the good fortune to get this opportunity from work, which was pretty amazing! Never would I have ever imagined that I’d work for a company who could provide an all expenses paid trip like this! Especially because I could take a friend!
We flew out from Sydney, to Hamilton Island, which then had a boat transfer to Hayman Island. I’d done some preliminary research that showed it was a fancy boat, not dissimilar to the posh pit on the boat to MONA.
Hahaha ok first impression – this was nowhere near the calibre of the MR-1’s posh pit food presentation! That being said, I still ate it all! There’s nothing that’ll tempt me to enjoy food quite like a French breakfast radish!
Look at the size of this room! It’s huge! Super fancy! Though the mattress was far too soft for me and my bad back XD
The view from the balcony!
Oh wow, haha, it looks just like a resort! Lol, obvious me is obvious.
The infinity pool is pretty awesome!
We had two days here with a bunch of other workmates, but luckily, there weren’t any corporate bonding exercises or anything, we actually were allowed to do whatever we wanted! The only requirement was to attend the two dinners with other workmates, but again, thank goodness, no one talked about work! Yay, we know how to have a good time!
The first night, we had a seafood buffet on the beach, and it was actually great! I was sooooo full. I tried most things, the sushi was so so and most of us were puzzled as to how to get soy sauce onto the sushi without spoons or little sauce dishes, so I had mine without any sauce haha. The rice was not great though. The gravalax, on the other hand, was extremely good and I kept going back for more!
The oysters were also good (and didn’t run out early!), the moreton bay bug was surprisingly tasty; that actually impressed me! I did eat some of the vegetables too, which were also very good!
Dessert came out when everyone was far too tired (some people who flew in from Hobart had 3AM starts!), but I still sampled some fruit, cheese and sweets!
WOW this breakfast buffet! Good thing I’d digested all the food from the night before, this is the biggest range I’ve ever seen! There’s just so many different types of food, there’s something for everyone!
I took a little bit of most things, that roast ham was the best thing! I absolutely loved it! The chicken dumplings (the white ones) weren’t bad either!
The cockatoos here love to snack on human food too!
Most of the paid activities were booked out (including massages!) so my friend and I did the free stuff! This was the fish feeding, and it was actually pretty cool! I got splashed on repeatedly by the giant trevally that would jump out to catch fish. Plus look at the greedy seagulls that would wait around and chomp on the fish food after we were done!
It turns out one of the pools here is one of the largest in the southern hemisphere! And, this resort is pretty cool in that some of the rooms have a balcony that lead straight into the pool – no fence, nothing! Amazing! My friend and I took our spots on the deckchairs, went for a dip, and waitstaff came around to take our order for food which was super convenient! This is the life! The seagull thought so too, and we had a bit of a standoff! Luckily I am partially trained in reading the body language of birds thanks to the pigeons, so I mainly just talked them down haha!
The oysters were really good, and my poke bowl was far too big, but it was a good feed!
Look at this little curlew! We called them the night patrol because on the first night, we saw a pair walking around and check in on every hotel room door. How cute!
We also went on a small nature walk around the island, where we learned a lot about the history of Hayman Island, including how it came to be a resort! Not only that, but I realised that the place is full of giant houseplants in their natural habitat! Everywhere I looked, I saw what I only knew as indoor plants, in their full outdoor glory. Plus there are green ants here (no one at any lol), honeysuckle (which I successfully took the stem out and licked the nectar!), and we learned about the smart cheeky cockatoos that would roll coconuts around so that they bake in the sun, and the water inside would ferment, and then they’d crack them open and get drunk on alcoholic coconut water!
Then once again night came around for an obligatory work dinner, in which I had a fight with a padron pepper and lost! That is, I ate one, thought it was fine, but then I ate parts with seeds, and started dying, and a fellow work colleague found this hilarious!
I am the most terrible person. All that choice at the buffet, with some new things on rotation, and I was already bored on day 2?! I’m just really not a resort person haha. I need to earn my food through exploration! That being said, their curry of the day was really good, I should have had that earlier too, and the poppadum are so good! I had to get the roast ham again cause that was so tasty! And a waffle again because why not.
Oh, that’s right – we saw rambutans on the buffet! So we had to try them. I heard other people exclaim about the rambutans as well – it turns out people in the know realise it’s an expensive and hard to obtain fruit, so they also treated themselves to that here! Rambutans have an interesting texture to them, their flesh seems more defined than lychees, and the skin between the seed and flesh seems to stick more on rambutans? With a slightly more mild flavour. Was fun to eat, but currently I still prefer lychees more. Too bad there weren’t any mangosteens to sample!
Aah you cheeky cockatoos! You know human food, especially AN ENTIRE KNOB OF PEPE SAYA BUTTER isn’t good for you right???
And we were done. That was it, two days of great relaxation! Even though it’s not my type of holiday, it was definitely fun to experience!
One fun thing I discovered on this trip – since it was organised via work, I couldn’t select seats on some of my flights. Turns out if you go to the counter and ask nicely, they sometimes can indeed give you better seats if there’s room! I asked for seats closer to the front of the plane and I got really lucky many times! The more you know!