We found a very nice hostel to stay in, made entirely of wood, with a verandah all the way around and painted in pastel colours. It's really pretty. Cairns is quite warm, so the big ceiling fan helps.

After breakfast, we wandered in to town. We wanted to change our flight from Cairns to Darwin and we've decided to avoid Indonesia at the moment and go straight to Singapore. It's such a shame as I've really been looking forward to it, but we'll go there sometime. So we went to the Qantas office and did that - we're going to Darwin tomorrow, but we can't get to Singapore until 20th August, so we'll have just over a week up there. We had to book a hostel for tomorrow night too.

Then Mikey got his hair cut (he refused to allow me to take before and after photos) and we had lunch in the park. Then we searched for a bookshop for a guide to Asia, and went to visit the Cathedral of St Monica. This church is famous for its stained-glass windows, which were certainly bright, colourful and modern, but they didn't seem to me to be real stained glass: the details were all painted on which is cheating a bit. The windows round the outside showed the creation, full of universes and wallabies, and there were two panels round the main door depicting coral reefs and crashed planes and sunken battleships and tropical fish.

We passed a pet shop in the shopping mall that had puppies in glass cases in the window. Two tiny dachshunds and a large, bemused-looking dalmation. I've never seen that before and I don't like it - you can't just see a doggie in a window and go in and buy it, so I don't really see why they should be there. Specially as I can't take them home. Even if I made little panniers for the dalmation to carry so that the dachshunds wouldn't get tired.

It rained this evening, on our way back to the hostel. Big black clouds, still warm, but the hot ground made it very humid. Mikey's fast asleep, snoring while I'm writing this. We'll make supper in a bit.