After having to return back to Auckland we did a real quick trip to Rotarua and back and had the best buffet we have ever had in tourist type place, the Maori Hangi traditionally is cooked in the ground but in Rotarua having access to the power of the geothermal hot springs by the bucket load they cook using steam. A complete selection of cold starters followed by steamed (and then maybe roasted/smoked a little) chicken, lamb and pork with kumara and stuffing. There was a huge set of desserts including NZ pavlova and some lovely icecream with nuts in. After [View Full Entry]

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After we dashed out of Christchurch we had a couple of days to kill in Auckland including Christmas Day, the strangest one we have ever experienced. After various web cams and phone calls bridging the 13 hour time delay to the UK we were jealous of the mounds of turkey, stuffing and roast potatoes being prepared back home (and damnable Brussel Sprouts for Shabana). Our Christmas lunch was a buffet consisting of various foods from around the world, nice but deffo not the same. As luck would have it on Boxing Day we were heading for Tahiti and then Moorea and [View Full Entry]

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First off this was the country I had most been wanted to see. No one I have ever met that has been to NZ has a bad word to say about the place. After spending almost 3 weeks here I can echo all the great things people say and commit to print that NZ is probably one of the nicest places in the world and comes a close second to London, look at the photo above this. Awesome!!! My one caveat is that it is so frikken far away from anywhere else. We arrived in a cool afternoon and got into [View Full Entry]

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So I guess this was our return to civilization the land of the white folk, where we could understand the native speak and drive on the right side of the road (that of course being the left) Given that the slightly knobby geezer in STA travel had given us super bozzy flights we were forced to change them and in the course of doing so we gave ourselves an overnight in Perth. Now in retrospect this may have caused us a great deal of budgetary concern in the months that followed as the only reasonable accommodation that we found on the [View Full Entry]

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Another day another quick post. Bali is something Shabana has been looking forward too for so long, it was the carrot that i used to get her round all the sightseeing i wanted to do, her chance to lay on the beach and do nothing. Unfortunately it wasn´t to be. We landed with the gently falling rain and grabbed a taxi out to Sanur beach which was to be our home for a few days. By the time we had checked in and had a shower at that the sun had come out a little and we wandered out to look [View Full Entry]

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Hong Kong the land of the Anglo Chinese, big buildings, Bruce Lee and a surprising amount of hills. The first thing we noticed that was a little strange were how the buildings were occupied. Each high rise block would contain a mixture of stuff within, shops were often not on the ground floor so you would have to decide you really wanted to see into a shop and get the lift to the right floor in order to actually look. The same for restaurants, no being able to browse the menu to decide you liked it or even to see the [View Full Entry]

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We were not intending to come to Malaysia this time but the rains in Vietnam forced us to push forward a bit quicker than we planned, then the fact that the cheapest way to get to Hong Kong was Air Asia from either Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur. Our choice was clear, we had in 2004 visited Malaysia and we had missed our Penang and Georgetown on the way through so as we had just been to Bangkok we thought why not (serendipitous as Bangkok airport as soon to be closed due to Civilian action). Georgetown is kind of meant to be [View Full Entry]

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After the Sick After the depressing sites of the day before we got back on the road to see the temples at Siem Reap a 6 hour journey to the north along some reasonably smooth roads. We got the 12 o'clock bus from Phnom Penh (PP) so we arrived as the sun was setting which turned the sky over the green paddy fields 100 beautiful shades. The town itself is a lot smaller than the capital and as the principle tourist town it is beset with touts particularly the tuk tuk drivers. We took the VIP bus from PP, it cost [View Full Entry]

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I won't beat around the bush we were told some fairly scary things about the state of Cambodia, how the food was terrible and how dirty it was but it was the first country this trip that we ran out of time in before we had seen all we wanted to see and we thought the country was great. We arrived in Phnom Penh to be confronted with a fairly hefty line for the visas on arrival, it took around 30mins or so to process everybody so that still beats Nepal by a clear 2 hours and we had a fairly [View Full Entry]

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Firstly let me say i became a victim of my own picture taking mania, i got so many that it became too much of a hassle to sort out in the limited time i had in the internet cafe. Thats why it took me 3 months to write anymore on here. Apologies. Our last stop in Vietnam was Saigon and the Mekong Delta, a load of the people we met said Saigon was going to be busier than Hanoi the sister capital in the north, but we didn't find it to be the case. We started our stay in the Pham [View Full Entry]

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