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Asia, take two. What a long day! I woke up at 3:30am to take the shuttle to the airport. I got to Melbourne around 8am, just in time to sit at the airport for five hours. Ahhh, airport fun! So what do I do in an international airport with five hours to kill? Coffee, sudoku, [...]

I slept in this morning, before heading to the Auckland airport for my flight down to Christchurch. I took the $5 bus into town. It’s kind of nice visiting the same town again. I know where everything is and it’s all so easy on the second loop through. I walked to Pac’n Save to get [...]

I never give big cities a chance. After breakfast, I walked down to the docks to see if there were any spots on the ferry left to Waiheke Island. There was still room on the 10am ferry, so I ran back to the hostel and grabbed my backpack. First, I took the bus around the [...]

I had breakfast at Replete Food and people watched. I could totally live here. After checking out of the hostel, I wandered around, and did some shopping. I ended up buying a blue tank top and a hat (for Thailand) at a surf shop. At noon, I caught the Stray bus headed to Auckland.
I officially [...]

We booked a tour to the Wai-o-tapu Thermal Wonderland for this morning. It was fantastic. I took way too many pictures of boiling mud, the geyser, sulphur pits etc. Nerd day out! Seriously, though, it was great. After the bubbling mud, we stopped at the geyser. Oh and buzz kill, they put soap in the [...]

This morning we walked back to the spa park to swim in the river. It was rather murky and really warm. I ventured closer to the river where it was practically freezing, and then decided to stick to the mud area. A very fun morning! Everyone was going skydiving before we left for Rotorua. (Our [...]

We had an early start yesterday on the express bus to Auckland. We were only going halfway, to Taupo, but since it’s the express bus, it made only a few stops and no hiking. We made it to Taupo around noon and received the bad news that the Tongariro Crossing is closed, due to a [...]

So this morning when I checked the fridge, two pieces of my leftover pizza were gone, and in their place were two $2 coins. I was mad that someone stole my pizza, but then I just started laughing, because no one ever steals food out of the fridge and compensates you for it. It had [...]

So I’m standing in the coffee shop this morning, waiting for my take-away and “boo!” Amanda appears. They decided to not spend an extra day in ChCh, so we’re on the same bus again! So I’ve already done the the Christchurch to Kaikoura bus trip, and the deja-vu part is that we happen to have [...]

Still in Queenstown? I decided to stay an extra day, and then travel on with Amanda and Sas. The following day we finally left. The drive back to Christchurch was rather uneventful. We stopped for a few cool views of Mt Cook and lunch near the lake.
After arriving in Christchurch, we went out for Thai [...]