Suzi and Kostek

We took a very early morning flight from Adelaide through Melbourne to Nadi, Fiji. It was a very comfortable trip and we arrived to sunny Nadi at around 330pm. We were both very excited for our helicopter transfer to Matamanoa Island. Matamanoa Island is a small, intimate and secluded Fiji Resort set in the beautiful Mamanuca Islands approximately 30 kilometres West of Nadi International Airport. The Island boasts a volcanic cone jutting out of the turquoise/aqua blue waters of this unspoilt area of the Fiji Islands. Clad with dense bush and palm trees, the brilliance of the vegetation contrasts magnificently with the white curved sandy beach and pristine coral reefs. Fiji is an island nation in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean about 1,100 nautical miles (2,000 km; 1,300 mi) northeast of New Zealand's North Island. ... read more

We arrived in Adelaide early in the morning and were very cheerfully greeted by Kat, who was in town for her sister’s wedding. She even collected our luggage and was ready with a cart when we walked into the baggage claim area. Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia and the fifth-largest city in Australia. Adelaide has an estimated population of more than 1.2 million. Named in honor of Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, queen consort to King William IV, the city was founded in 1836 as the planned capital for a freely settled British province in Australia. Adelaide was designed in a grid layout, interspaced by wide boulevards and large public squares, and entirely surrounded by parkland. Early Adelaide was shaped by religious freedom and a commitment to political progressivism and civil liberties, which led to ... read more

We left Sydney along with Luke and Dana in the morning and took a few hours flight to Hamilton Island in the Whitsundays. The Whitsunday Islands are a collection of continental islands of various sizes off the central coast of Queensland, Australia, situated between just south of Bowen and to the north of Mackay, some 900 kms (560 mi) north of Brisbane. The island group is centred on Whitsunday Island, while the group's commercial centre is Hamilton Island. The beautiful sunny weather of Sydney has quickly changed to very cloudy and rainy weather up in Queensland. We knew that the area of Whitsundays is currently in its rainy season but we clearly underestimated, as you will read later on. We landed on the smallest possible runway that a jet-liner can land on; it was fascinating to ... read more

We boarded Air New Zealand for our 12 hr flight from Hong Kong to Wellington, via Auckland. Wellington is the capital city and second most populous urban area of New Zealand. It is at the southwestern tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Rimutaka Range. It is home to 393,400 residents. In 1865, Wellington became the capital city of New Zealand, replacing Auckland, where William Hobson had placed the capital in 1841. The Parliament of New Zealand had first met in Wellington on 7 July 1862, on a temporary basis, but Wellington did not become the official capital city for three more years. The area has high seismic activity even by New Zealand standards, with a major fault line running through the centre of the city, and several others nearby. Several ... read more

We flew in on a rainy morning from Hanoi to Hong Kong. We bypassed immigration and customs in Hong Kong airport by going directly to the high speed ferry to Macau and cleared immigration there. Macau along with Hong Kong, is one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China. It lies on the western side of the Pearl River Delta across from Hong-Kong which is to the east, bordering Guangdong province to the north and facing the South China Sea to the east and south. Macau was a Portuguese colony in 1887, and is both the first and last European colony in China. Portuguese traders first settled in Macau in the 16th century and subsequently administered the region until the handover on 20 December 1999. The Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration ... read more