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Charmita and Olarse - Paula & Nick Rowlands

Paula & Nick Rowlands Paula - Here we are fulfilling a long-held dream of travelling the planet. Through our travelblog have fun joining us along the way!


Nick - I also will have fun reading Paula's travelblog.


"In German, there is a word, Kunstlerschuld, which means "artist's guilt", the emotion a painter feels over his frivolity in a world in which people work in a rut that makes them gloomy. Perhaps there is also a sort of traveler's guilt, from being self-contained, self-indulgent, and passing from one scene to another, brilliant or miserable makes no difference. Did the traveler, doing no observable work, freely moving among settled, serious people, get a pang of conscience? I told myself that my writing - this effort of observation - absolved me from any guilt; but of course that was just a feeble excuse. This was pleasure. No guilt, just gratitude." (Paul Theroux, The Pillars of Hercules)

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Joined on: April 1st 2007
Last Login: July 21st 2008

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Blogs & Travel Journals

by Charmita-and-Olarse, order by Date newest first.

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(N) This fortnight was the wettest of our time so far in NZ. Frequent gales, black skies and lashing rain made us shiver and wish we had central heating (but over here few people do, it seems). We all moved house on Saturday 21st June to just down the road, because the girls from whom we sub-let our room were fed up of the house being so chilly, as well as the mould growing on the ceiling, and the old kitchen with its sink awkwardly positioned right in a corner. It would be great in the summer but it was a [View Full Entry]

Charmita and Olarse - Paula & Nick Rowlands | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 0 Comment(s) | 17 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | 961 words | [diary=290995] | 2008-07-20 07:31:44

View from our bedroom window, Royal Oak, Auckland
John and Nick in Lion Brewery, Auckland
Out with John and Laura in a Japanese bar, Auckland

Watch out - film crew ahead
Watch out - film crew ahead
At Paula's very first job in New Zealand
(P) At 6 a.m. I was called in for a second day of shooting for the TV advert (see previous entry) - the price of fame, huh? Jobs-wise, a temporary opportunity came up: I had an interview on Monday and started on Wednesday! Not standing at another bus stop on telly, but being part of the Stock Broking Operations Team at a securities firm, ASB (Auckland Savings Bank), inputting and reconciling share trades on behalf of clients. It is good to experience the other side of the stock exchange business, and although my stint has been extended, I don’t know whether [View Full Entry]

Charmita and Olarse - Paula & Nick Rowlands | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 1 Comment(s) | 4 Photo(s) | 3 Video(s) | 636 words | [diary=290994] | 2008-07-13 04:06:38

Paula hard at work on set, Auckland
Cayenne helps us move house
By the Open Home sign outside our house

Rainbow viewed from the top of Mt Eden, Auckland
Rainbow viewed from the top of Mt Eden, Auckland
Mt Eden is Auckland's highest point
(N) In the supermarket, Paula had found a prospectus for a college that was running a one-day bread-making course one Saturday in the very near future. It was already booked up, with 2 on the reserve list, but suddenly there were enough cancellations to enable me to get a place, as a present from Paula. So I spent Saturday 24th May in the company of 10 women and 1 other bloke (whose wife, also in attendance, had bought him the course as a birthday gift), and we baked multi-seed loaves, cheese twists, herb rolls and pumpkin bread. Paula opted for a [View Full Entry]

Charmita and Olarse - Paula & Nick Rowlands | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 0 Comment(s) | 25 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | 2755 words | [diary=280645] | 2008-06-22 10:58:09

Fresh bread
Cheers!
View of Mount Eden

Looking up at the Sky Tower
Looking up at the Sky Tower
At 328m, the tallest tower in the Southern hemisphere, apparently
(P) The weekend! Our housemates kindly took us on a picturesque drive to Waiwera Thermal Baths for the afternoon, where they had a Movie Pool (mostly Disney) and several other outdoor pools with natural spring water up to 41 degrees! The setting was amidst hills of lush green trees and it was great to be swimming (okay, more bathing) in the outdoors. We hit the town on our first big Saturday night out in Auckland, starting at The Drake, a 19th century pub formerly frequented by sailors since it used to sit right on the harbour. It is quite a tall, [View Full Entry]

Charmita and Olarse - Paula & Nick Rowlands | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 0 Comment(s) | 17 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | 1416 words | [diary=280644] | 2008-05-30 10:19:25

Waiwera Thermal Baths nestled in the hills
Freshly brewed beer at The Shakespeare Tavern
View of Mount Eden hill from Mt Eden Village

Section of our larder
Section of our larder
People are encouraged to 'Buy Kiwi', all these products display the 'Made in New Zealand' badge
(N) Arrival and first week Both legs of the flight were smooth, and 27 hours after the first take-off on Monday 28th April, we landed in Auckland on Wednesday the 30th. The temperature was a warm 20 degrees, better than we were expecting. We walked through the terminal towards immigration, past exotic-sounding airlines such as “Fiji” and “Pacific Islands”, and got our work visas approved. We had a very friendly taxi driver who took us to the marina and showed us his yacht(!) before dropping us in the ‘Three Kings’ area of Auckland where we met our new housemates Pamela, Ashleigh [View Full Entry]

Charmita and Olarse - Paula & Nick Rowlands | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 0 Comment(s) | 9 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | 1126 words | [diary=277101] | 2008-05-17 05:56:40

Paula in our new street
Nick outside the house
Paula in the garden

(N&P) Week 1 - Touched down back in Blighty on 3rd March, it felt a bit chilly after several months of baking heat. Family friends Breda and Sean opened their home to us for the first two nights back, feeding us with ham toasties, roast dinner and all things yummy, washed down with plentiful cups of tea! Ah, it was great to be back. Thence we went to stay in Paula’s sister Katie and her husband Goshi’s new abode in Langley, which was all lovely. We spent a leisurely time with them and Dad, great to see them after such a [View Full Entry]

Charmita and Olarse - Paula & Nick Rowlands | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 1 Comment(s) | 69 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | 3297 words | [diary=255491] | 2008-05-12 10:25:30

Great Uncle Michael and Paula
Nick and folks on the Dales
All the boys

Giant Buddha, Wat Pho, Bangkok
Giant Buddha, Wat Pho, Bangkok
As an idea of scale, that is a doorway in the bottom left of the photo.
(N) Bangkok was founded in 1782 by the first monarch of the (present) Chakri dynasty. It is now the country's spiritual, cultural, diplomatic, commercial and educational hub. It covers an area of more than 1,500 square kilometres, and it is home to approximately ten million people or more than 10% of the country's population. Interestingly (I think), "Bangkok" means something like "Village of the Plum Olive" but is not the official name of the city, rather it is the name of the original village where the French had a short-lived garrison in the 1660's. The modern capital was founded on more [View Full Entry]

Charmita and Olarse - Paula & Nick Rowlands | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 0 Comment(s) | 34 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | 4194 words | [diary=236112] | 2008-05-02 09:37:59

Paula in Banglamphu
"Mr Armani" makes exceedingly fine suits - and dresses and...
Nick

(N) We'd had a great time in Chiang Mai, enjoying the hot weather, colourful temples, varied markets, the cooking, the massage and the food! But it was time to leave, and the contrast in bus between Thailand and Laos was huge: everything inside was spick and span, and we even had a uniformed hostess! The journey took 6 hours, a winding route through the hills to Mae Sot, an unremarkable town in itself, but just 7km from Myanmar. Our curiosity had been piqued when we were planning our trip, reading about the town just over the border called Myawaddy - superficially [View Full Entry]

Charmita and Olarse - Paula & Nick Rowlands | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 0 Comment(s) | 71 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | 4447 words | [diary=246419] | 2008-03-02 10:44:44

Mae Sot woman wearing Thanaka face mask
Two schoolboys, Wat Shwe Muay Wan
Buddha, Wat Shwe Muay Wan

Nick lends a helping hand...
Nick lends a helping hand...
not realising quite how heavy it would be! Luang Prabang
(P) Vang Vieng was still cloudy as we departed on the bus to Luang Prabang, not so far in distance but took over 6 hours due to winding mountain roads through the most scenic views we've encountered in Laos, across lush valleys dotted only with the occasional hillside dwelling dwarfed by its surroundings. Luang Prabang (LP), 700 metres above sea level and surrounded by rolling mountains, is a commercial hub between Thailand and China but what most strikes you is the beauty and dare-I-say quaintness of the place - almost like a model town, no big tour buses and easy to [View Full Entry]

Charmita and Olarse - Paula & Nick Rowlands | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 0 Comment(s) | 50 Photo(s) | 6 Video(s) | 3852 words | [diary=246506] | 2008-03-02 10:44:25

Monks walk down the main street to collect daily alms
Wat Xieng Thong
Reclining Buddha, which travelled as far as the Paris Exhibition in 1831!

(N) We planned to be 2km away from Tat Lo down the dirt track at the junction for the bus south at 8 a.m., but the time taken by the breakfast shack to produce our huge egg baguettes and half-pint of coffee meant that we arrived 5 minutes late, not sure how much of the 2-hour gap between buses was still to elapse. Amazingly, one pulled up within a minute, one of whose passengers was a man who carried a pet bird on a stick - it was not clear if the bird remained on the stick of its own volition, [View Full Entry]

Charmita and Olarse - Paula & Nick Rowlands | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 1 Comment(s) | 40 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | 3665 words | [diary=245432] | 2008-02-26 09:05:37

On the old bus to Champasak
On the
Colonial House and local vehicle



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