Auckland Week 1.5

Sunday morning (14th Oct) we were brave and went to the polo clubs training session. It was on the edge of a lake in an area that had been quarried out. We had to wait for the men with their little 1m long remote control sailing boats to finish their race before braving the water in the very strong winds! Ball throwing left a little to be desired...

Monday we went and picked up (and paid for!) our new car and spent the next while wondering whether the wipers really wanted to work or not. We took the car to visit a mechanic and got it sorted out. After all that, we decided it was about time to do some touristy stuff!

Wednesday, we went to the Auckland Museum, which is huge! It has big sections on all the wars that NZ has been involved in, the volcanoes, and plenty more. It also has a Maori section and we went to see their Maori Cultural Performance. Singing is very important to them and they do it very well!

On Thursday we got a ferry from the main city of Auckland across to town of Devonport on the North Shore for the afternoon. Compared to the busy city we left it was a quiet little village like place. While we were there we took a look at the Navy Museum, which was small but interesting, telling the history of the NZ navy. Of course, we made it to the polo pool session that night too!

Friday morning, we got up bright and early, got a set of roofracks put on the car and set off for Taupo.

Auckland, Week 1

Wednesday, 10^th October 2007, we arrived in New Zealand, made it through security (including the stringent checks of Piper, the customs Beagle, who can sniff out fruit at 10 paces), the kind people at immigration stamped our visas and we were in!

We got the bus into town and straight to Auckland Central Backpackers. We managed to check in and get a quick bite of lunch before the jet lag hit us again! We’re now 12 hours ahead of Ireland.

Thursday morning, we got moving again. First call was to the Backpackers Car Market, a garage where people can display their car/van for sale for a small fee. A handy source for backpackers! It’s the start of their busy season, so prices are about to go up. The vehicles on show there are usually at 12 – 25 years old so it’s only backpackers buying really, and the prices vary according to the demand at the different times of year. Hopefully that means that what we buy will be worth about the same again if we sell in a years time.

We’d both organised getting NZ bank accounts opened from home, so just called into one of the branches here with our account details and ID and got our bank cards! How simple compared to home! Though we’re still trying to work out how one accesses one’s money and moves money from our Irish Accounts to the NZ ones now…

I got a sim card for my phone (Vodafone are the only mobile providers here and are enjoying the monopoly – no freebies!) and texted a Kiwi polo player Sean had contacted before leaving home. He invited us to their club session that evening, so we tackled the bus service and turned up at the pool. We played a couple of good games with them in their heated outdoor pool, and then set off for their after pool session pub session. Ended up at a committee meeting – those things are the same the world over! Got a lift back to the hostel from one of the lads, Andrew, and an invite to their training session on Sunday morning. Starting to feel like we’re not just on holidays here! Well, not just the kind of holiday where we’re going to be going home in a couple of weeks anyway!

Since then, we've agreed to buy a 1993 Toyota Emina, which hopefully is in good enough nick to last us the year without falling apart, and that we'll hopefully manage to sell pretty well at the end of the year! Paying over the dosh tomorrow.

We went to the local Polo Club's training session this morning. It's far too energetic a way to spend a Sunday morning -trying to play in a plastic polo boat in very strong winds! We're going to stay in Auckland till Friday morning, going to the pool session again on Thursday evening. Then the plan is to hit Taupo and visit Jane, an old friend of Sean's.

Oh, and the update from home is that my sister, Susan, managed to fall off my horse (even though he did a great jump over the fence) and break her leg! Get well soon Susan!

Kuala Lumpur

After several going away parties, my trip finally started at 1.30 a.m. on Wednesday 3^rd October 2007, when Dad and I set off for Dublin airport. By 9 a.m. I’d met up with Sean (who flew from Cork) in London Heathrow and by the next day we arrived in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, suffering from jet lag and a 7 hour time difference.

We got a taxi to our hotel, gathering some useful local information from our driver on the way. Our hotel was just down the road from the Twin Towers and the posh Suria KLCC shopping centre at their base.

On Friday (5^th Oct) we set off to the National Museum, followed by a walk around the Lake Gardens. When the heat got too much for us we went to the air-conditioned Planetarium, which is quite dated at this stage. Some of the reports were talking about planned missions in the late 1980’s… But it was much cooler than being outside! The humidity was very high. I managed to get a bit sunburned even with trying to avoid being outdoors for too long!

On Saturday we tried out the hop-on-hop-off bus tour round the city. We found a big boys toy shopping centre in Bintang – 6 floors of shops full of cameras, computers, phones and the likes. It took quite a while to get Sean out of there, and not without a dent in my credit card… When we went to leave, we discovered that it was pouring rain, which did a bit to help the humidity status thank goodness. We waited patiently for the bus again and had a quick look at China town before heading back to the hotel.

Sunday morning we got up early and rushed to the Twin Towers to get our free tickets to go up to the Skybridge. While the towers are both 88 floors high, the public can only go to the bridge between them, which is at floor 41. It’s still a great view, and who can complain about something that’s free! As we were already enjoying the view from up high, we then went to KL Tower, the communications tower, and got a full view of the city from ???m. We decided to treat ourselves a bit and had lunch in the revolving restaurant on the floor above the observation level. Tasty food and, once you could find your table again after going to pick something up from the buffet in the not revolving middle bit, very enjoyable! Next stop was the Aquarium before we collapsed in a tired heap again!

On Monday we felt like a bit of a change and went to the Sunway Lagoon on a tour organised by the hotel. We had great craic on the water slides and roller coasters, saw two gorgeous Bengal tigers and other animals, and of course, both got sunburned a bit due to forgetting to top up our sunscreen. I think we were slightly distracted by the water slides…

Tuesday 9^th October we packed our bags again and headed to KL airport. Another long flight later and we landed in Auckland, New Zealand!

I'll get around to posting something on this soon....