Took a few days out to go snowboarding at Mt Ruapehu which is the largest mountain in New Zealand. I had worked there for a couple of seasons and have been going down every year over the last seven years. Ohakune is a really small town, very simple and laid back. I hired a rental car from Auckland and drove the four hours down. The drive is really beautiful, for the most part it is all countryside passing through a few small towns along the way. Arrived early morning and went and caught up with my friend Hamish who owns one [View Full Entry]

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Ski Dubai were holding a five day freestyle course and we were lucky enough to have two professional snowboarders from Austria come out to give us instruction. They were Gigi Ruf and Sani Alibabic and both are sponsored by Burton. The first two days of our course was with the ski dubai instructors learning how to ride rainbow rails, boxes and tabletops. The next two days we had instruction from Gigi and Sani. We had about eight people in our group some of whom lived in Dubai and others who were living overseas. By the forth day every single one of [View Full Entry]

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Got up early and was picked up to go on my Jakarta city tour. It took about an hour just to get into the city, the traffic can be really bad especially as the population is around fourteen million people. The guide took me to the national museum to see all the artifacts which was pretty interesting. Most of them had been acquired by the dutch during the 19th and 20th century. The exhibits included hindu-javanese stone statues, prehistoric bronze wares and chinese porcelains. There was also a display of treasure of indonesian heirlooms. For such a big museum i was [View Full Entry]

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Got into Jakarta in the evening and had arranged to go on a tour to Bandung to see the Gunung Tangkuban Perahu volcano (mountain of the overturned boat). A couple of the other crew were keen to go as well. We got picked up early in the morning and drove the 4 hours to Bandung. The drive was pretty tedious but we all managed to have a bit of a sleep in the van. We finally made it there and then drove up the windy road up the mountain. We got out where there were several people hounding us to buy [View Full Entry]

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I had a trip to Brisbane for a couple of days so I decided I would book a ticket and fly down to Sydney on the Saturday morning to spend the day with my family. My parents came and met me at the airport and took me home. We spent the morning sitting around catching up. I got to spend some time with my little six month old niece Madison who is soooo cute! We then went to a nice restaurant for lunch where my brother Justin came and met up with us. After lunch my parents, my sister Natalie, Madison [View Full Entry]

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I was lucky to have two London flights back to back so again arranged to meet up with my friend Janie. I made my way to St Pauls to meet her for lunch. We found ourselves a nice little restaurant where we sat outside and had a really nice lunch. She had to get back to work so I decided I would go to the National British Museum. The one thing I love about London is there is always something to do. It doesn’t matter how many times you go there, you can always find something. London boasts several museums and [View Full Entry]

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I was absolutely shocked when I saw a good friend of mine Adam sitting in the front row on my flight to London. He was travelling with his friend and were on their way to Europe to watch the Tour De France. We arrived into London early morning and was a quick trip to the hotel which is conveniently located within the terminal. The rugby tri-nations game was about to start and the all blacks were playing. My friend Adam was transiting London for only a few hours so I told him to come straight to my hotel in time to [View Full Entry]

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Left the hotel and made my way back to the train station. It was obvioulsy market day as the street was closed off and everyone had set up their stalls selling fresh fruit and vegetables among other things. Found a little corner coffeeshop/bar where i stopped for a morning coffee and pastry. I couldn't believe at 9:00 in the morning they were still serving people beer! Made my way back to the airport and had to wait an hour before the check in opened for my flight to Reijkavik with Iceland Air. I was travelling on a stand-by ticket so have [View Full Entry]

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Rome is one of the most beautiful cities i have visited. There is so much history to it, it is mind-blowing. It is a place where the past is always present. I have never seen a city where the modern is built around the ruins of life that existed centuries before. My flight arrived in the early afternoon so i made my way straight into the town centre. First stop was the Capitoline which was known from earliest times to be the centre of all political, social and religious life in Rome. Situated next to this was the amazing Vittoriano also [View Full Entry]

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Well today was a funny day. I had decided to go snowboarding and ended up meeting this girl called Madeline from Norway. She was also pretty good at snowboarding so we hung out riding together. We got on really well and didn't seem to run out of things to say. Even though she was eight years younger than me, didn't seem to make any difference. She was staying in Dubai for just a few days with her mum and so was stuck hanging out with her mums friends. We had so much fun hanging out i suggested we should go to [View Full Entry]

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