Blogs from Central, Auckland, North Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 13

Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon really, was noticeably wealthier, busier, and more commercial than Hanoi, with huge billboards and fancy shops. We did a trip to the Cu Chi tunnels, which is part of the extensive tunnel network that the Viet Cong lived in during the Vietnam War, to hide from the Americans and the South Vietnamese army. It was really interesting to learn about how they lived in the forest, only coming out of their tunnels at night. Bec and I were too chicken to actually go into the tunnels though, as they were tiny! Recruits in the Viet Cong were often pretty young and very skinny from foraging in the jungle and from villagers. American soldiers were far too big to fit down them and this is how the North Vietnamese soldiers held ... read more

I was up early and hopped on a bus back to Auckland. I booked this ticket ahead of time as it was the cheapest but it worked out perfect because the All Blacks will be having a parade through the city not long after this bus gets to Auckland. Perfect! I took my stuff over to the apartment building I would be staying for my last 3 nights and dropped it off as I couldn't check in yet. I headed back to Queen street and grabbed some lunch and waited with all the other people on the street. At 2:30pm the parade began. It started with some maori calling out to the all blacks with their horns. Then a dancing marching band which were really good! Then the All blacks started coming through. 2 or 3 ... read more

Hello, First I'd like to start with an apology: Unfortunately this blog will take on a different tone from that of the blog one before last. I'm sure everyone loved to hear about our adventures from the point of view of a 16th century explorer but frankly it is quite a lot of effort to write and probably didn't contain much in the way of useful information about what we actually did. So I write this time as a hungover 22 year old English male slightly buzzing on an iced mocha holding a strong urge for a France upset tomorrow. So.. we begin after the game that we shall not mention, where we traveled across to Murawai 90 minutes west of Auckland on the west coast and began our week of surfing. We spent 2 days ... read more

Day 7 (Friday 16/09) Today we made our way back to Auckland for the weekend's action of Rugby and partying. We said farewell to Napier and arrived in Auckland mid-afternoon and checked into the Nomads Fat Camel Backpackers. This backpackers is much closer to the Queens Wharf Fanzone and the Viaduct, which is full of bars and restaurants around a harbour area built for the Americas Cup. After checking in and getting settled, we headed into the Viaduct for some drinks at Degree 0 which was full of Aussies, before heading over to the Fanzone to watch the New Zealand vs Japan game. The Fanzone was the busiest we had seen it with the massive Heineken World Bar shoulder to shoulder. We managed to get a spot in front of the big screen and watched New ... read more

Hello All, I am of the opinion that this blog cannot continue until the elephant in the room is addressed. England are out, the world cup is over and more distressingly we are quite plausibly looking at wales in the final of a world cup. This raises several issues, 1) living in New Zealand has overnight become neigh on unbearable, (with the small exception of Argentina scaring them into playing very English rugby last night). It would appear that nearly every Kiwi now has a very real great great grandfather's second cousin's step sister that once saw the Eiffel tower or mined in wales and so are subsequently at least half French or Welsh depending on which angle the seek to exploit our misery. 2) It is now painfully clear that neither Myself or Andy could ... read more