This whole trip has been booked venue by venue and activity by activity online. We have used many different booking sites and agents. It is time to throw a little criticism in the direction of pretty well all of them.

Wherever we have booked with hotels and tour operators directly we've got what we wanted, expected and paid for. Wherever we have gone through one of the endless variety of intermediary sites offering great deals, there have been issues. The most common one was with hotel bookings. Invariably we found two queen size beds where we had specified one king size. The hotels always sorted us out and we're talking minor irritation only, but it just became tiresome when it happened for the third time at the Cairns Shangri-La. However they were very helpful at the hotel. 'This always happens', was there response. They upgraded us to one of their management suites with a king-size bed and access to the 'luxury' floor. This has it's own lounge and dining area that serves breakfast to the occupants of this floor only, provides drinks and quite good snack food all day long and all included in the room cost. So things were looking good....or so we thought.......

We had a very disturbed night. Not only was it impossible to get the room dark enough to sleep, but the luxury management suites are on the mezzanine floor overlooking the very lovely marina, buy are above the hotel's restaurants, bars and nightclubs - very noisy. The hotel management was treated to an earful from your correspondent and an audience with the duty general manager was duly held the next morning.

Our remaining nights are being spent in one of the four penthouse suites overlooking the harbour. Quiet, dark, large and comfortable with a balcony and a great view - and we still have access to the 'luxury' floor for our complimentary breakfast and drinks and light snacks from 7:00am to 7:00pm. That's more like it.

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