The Kiwi chapters...

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After a full day of travelling on 21 Feb I arrived back in Bangkok at 9pm. Decided to see Khao San Road by night and so booked into a hotel just off the main street. Not exactly five star luxury, but not quite Leonardo Di Caprio dodgy standards a la The Beach either! The bathroom was so small that the door only opened half way and you had to squeeze in and shut the door before you could get to the loo. Spent the evening haggling with the street vendors, but have to say that I'm not that good at it! Besides which, everything is so cheap to start with, that you feel bad negotiating on the price at all. Had a last wander round Bangkok the next morning and then it was off to the airport to leave Thailand and head for New Zealand. By the way, you're probably wondering what happened to my good intentions of spending some time doing voluntary work in Thailand. It really was something I wanted to do, but there was so much to see and do that I decided against staying in one place for the whole month and so travelled the islands instead. Who knows, the spanish course in Mexico may go the same way yet - best laid plans and all that!

Arrive in Auckland on 23 Feb and check into YHA - no more beach bunglows to myself for a while and am now staying in dorm rooms. Got picked up by Ed (Steve and Max's friend) on Friday and went to stay with him and his wife Claire for the weekend. They have a fantastic house half an hour outside of Auckland, so got to take of advantage of real luxuries such as having bath and using their washing machine - clean me and clean clothes - bliss! It was Claire's birthday on Saturday so we spent the day having a picnic at the beach with loads of her friends. Thought this would be an opportunity to meet some Kiwi locals, but bizarrely almost all of them were English couples they've met since having their baby daughter eight weeks ago! Having read loads of bumpf of where to go and what to see in NZ, it became apparent that five weeks just isn't going to be long enough to do it all and could see travel time diminishing rapidly, so headed back to Auckland on Sunday to make some travel plans.

Joined a Magic Bus tour (same idea as the Oz/Kiwi Experience coach tours) and set off for the Bay of Islands on Monday. There was a good mix of age groups and nationalities on board and the whole trip was great fun. Tuesday saw a day trip from Paihia, where we were staying, to Cape Reinga at the top of the North Island. There were lots of stops en route, but one of the stops was to allow us to experience sand boarding. Slowly tregding up to the top of a high sand dune, lying on a body board and zooming down the dune to the bottom. After the instructor had pointed out that travel insurance didn't cover us and that if you did it wrong you could crack your vertebrae, I had second thoughts about doing it. Got to the top of the dune, looked down and had third, fourth and fifth thoughts too! Yet another skiing moment with my fear of downhill slopes being at the forefront of my mind! Egged on by the others decided not to wuss out and ventured down very slowly applying the brakes (my feet!) as much as possible. Was good fun and was going to go up again, until one of the girls wiped out and got a face full of sand!

Yesterday was a Day in the Bay boat trip around the Bay of Islands. Beautiful scenery, but the highlight was definitely the dolphins swimming around the boat and playfully leaping (not sure that's the right word?!) in and out of the water. Unfortunately didn't get to swim with them but hopefully will have other opportunities either elsewhere in NZ or maybe in Mexico.

Left the Bay of Islands this morning and arrived back in Auckland this afternoon. Set off on another Magic Bus to the Coromandel Peninsular tomorrow for four days.

Thanks to all of you for your emails. Sorry for my delay in replying - will get round to it eventually, but please do keep them coming as it's really nice to hear from you all!

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