New Zealand Trip

Again, I'm sorry for leaving my blog inactive for quite a while. I've been busy with stuff lately..

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Okay that's a lie =).. My post-NZ trip life has been all about waking up late everyday, doing nothing productive, watching every single movie that sounds even remotely interesting on the telly, and growing fatter by the minute (if that's physically possible ;P).. Enjoying the joys of life, to say it in short.

Now don't start with "that is soo lame, boring life" et cetera et cetera, coz i sure think it's better than working. I mean seriously, why do you work for? There has got to be better things to do just to pass time. My way, for instance..

Some flowers. Why? Just because..

Okay enough of that, I'm sure a lot of you will agree with me (if you don't, you should, coz you're so wrong). So I was in New Zealand, or Aotearoa, as the Maoris call it, for about 3 weeks or so, mainly to visit my brother who is studying there, and also for a vacation, naturally. It had its fair share of ups and downs, but all in all it was a pretty enjoyable trip.

First of all, my family and I did some massive shopping before leaving Malaysia and we had a little trouble packing and fitting everything into the car, as you can see here -


We took Air New Zealand to Auckland as the ticket price was considerably cheaper than MAS. By how much? Try around RM700 per person. And yet, apparently they're making losses year by year. Now how did that happen? ;P A downside of Air NZ is that there are no direct flights from KLIA to Auckland so we had to transit in Singapore.

Was stuck there for 2 hours and seriously, Changi Airport is a site for the world's largest gathering of people from all corners of the world. Here's a typical scene there :-

Frenchy : omelette du fromage bonjour au revoir a bientot
Middle Eastern bloke : kill american infidels martyr osama bin laden al qaeda
American : did you see the jugs on that chick?
African : %#^!#$^%&*#!%#%^%#

And man do travellers stink!! I walked passed this narrow corridor with hundreds of them sitting on the floor, benches etc, I couldn't breathe!! Imagine the stench of Wayne Rooney's socks (or any other footballer for that matter, I just picked 'Shrek' coz he looks like he doesn't bathe) after a full game and you'd be close. Not quite there yet, but close. We found a place to sit, away from the smell, to take a picture.

My dear Mum, yours truly, and a bunch of flowers

The flight from S'pore to Auckland took a few minutes short of 10 hours; that gave me a lot of time to watch inflight movies.. Sounds good yes?

Wrong! Cause halfway, I chose to watch Brokeback Mountain. I was curious kay? Not gay in any way. That movie was extremely disturbing! ugh.. Good editing and storyline though, I'll give credit to that.

These dudes haunted my dreams for a few times.. Please God, no more!

On arriving at Auckland, my dad was constantly checked by the airport marshalls. Well, he was wearing this trenchcoat, and I guess that made him look kinda suspicious :P. We survived all that rented a car. And oh, my brother was there too!! I had to drive coz my dad decided my brother and I are big enough not to drive him around, and my brother is a lil short on driving practice. So yea, drove to the Paihia, Bay of Islands, 4 driving hours away from Auckland.

Driving experience there, now that's interesting. Somehow, the Sun will always be shining straight into your eyes, even when your sun visor is down. Fine, I can live with that.. at first. Imagine this, you're going round a corner, and mid-corner, you get a full blown sun glare. The first time it happened i veered off my lane and almost crashed.. It happened countless times after that too, though i was more careful. I had to be, as the only outcome of not being careful is certain death. Either from a head on collision with oncoming traffic, or a couple of thousand feet fall into a ditch. Those with epilepsy cannot drive in NZ, simply because the 'on-off' effect of the sun getting into your eyes would most likely trigger epileptic attacks, and they would die, obviously.

Paihia is a fishing village, with the main town being just off a beautiful beach. We stayed in Club Paihia, where we had the privilege of staying in one of their best chalets. It had everything you could ever need, and more. Even a pet cat. No kidding, a fat cat called Tigger. He was extremely tame, obviously coz he had been neutered (ouch).

My brother, Hazwan, with Tigger

Did a lot of things there, like playing chess!! Yes, chess =)

My bro, the King

And I rode the swing; felt like a child again. And no, it did not break. hehe.. I know, I was surprised too!

Little Hafriz :p

Check out this waterfall, it had TWO rainbows in front of it.. (only one is clearly visible in the picture, but it was there)

Hairuru Falls

Kay, that's all for now.. I'll continue later.. Maybe..

note - All pics (except the Brokeback one) taken with my T30, compressed for easy uploading.