Sri Lanka so far

Wow, this post should have been made public a LONG time ago. Unfortunately though, there have been numerous set backs that have stopped me from posting this. Whether if has been a lack of Internet connection, a lack of time or a lack of a device to post it on. But finally, as the stars aline, I am able to post this.

Our first day away actually didn't have us 1000's of kilometers from home, but at Auckland. We stayed with my mum's brother for less than 24 hours (so just for the night). The day after that however was a big one. It involved us going from Auckland airport all the way to Malaysia while transiting TWICE! (Once in Melbourne and another in Singapore) and once we got to the airport at 12:00 at night we had to find a taxi driver to take us to our hotel, and when you've been up for 24 hours+, this is no mean feat. Unfortunately we were in an airport which meant that all THEIR methods of transportation were an ABSOLUTE rip-off (200NZD to get to the city center) so we had to find a cab driver who wasn't looking to make us pay a small fortune or who was just preying on foreigners and planned to steal our belongings. At last we found a driver who was willing to take us there. After passing about 4 airport security men wielding assault rifles (one was playing a catchy rhythm by flicking his safety switch off and on!). At last we finally got to our first state of residence: the summer suites. This was an apartment complex in Malaysia.

We stayed there for two nights (this number has become pretty standard). The hotel itself was very nice. It had a pool and a spa. This, however, was my first introduction to asian spas. The water inside them is actually colder than the pool itself which is very confusing, different and downright wrong. Another thing to note is that where we were staying, we could see the minera tower (or KLC tower) this would illuminate with a lovely array of RGB colours at dusk, but as soon as the sun was all the way gone if would turn white. This (at least I assume) is due to Ramadan. Ramadan is a Muslim tradition where one is only allowed to eat before sunrise and after sunset. They are NOT allowed to eat in the day. This was also linked to Muslim prayers played over speakers in the city (Which actually woke me up one night). At the end of our stay it was time to get ready for ANOTHER  plane flight! Luckily though, this one was only going to be the distance from NZ to Australia. This was the most unpleasant flight yet though. The whole flight a loud buzzing was playing, the plane was freezing cold, babies were crying and we were flying in the middle of the night! After the usual bore of going through customs we finally had arrived at Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka!

Arrival in Auckland

Today we arrived on our first minuscule step of our massive odyssey. We arrived at Auckland at 11:00am, Friday 17th. We are staying not in a hotel (*Gasp*, *Shock*!) but rather in our uncles apartment is Auckland. But we aren't the only children staying here in his residence, he also has 2 children himself. One is called Jesse and is 3 years old, and the younger is called Dany (or Mae Mae if you prefer) We got off the plane and had lunch at a place offering $4 pizzas. After being helpfully full we returned to the apartment for the rest of the day. There we discovered the children's affection for a tiny wee drone. They were screaming and yelling and having a blast (and sticking their hands in the plastic blades of the thing). Tomorrow, however is when the real trip begins. We have to fly from Auckland to Melbourne (transit for an hour) and fly to Singapore, from there (two hours wait) to Malaysia and then get to our hotel. Phew. If it takes long to write it's going to take forever to get there.

New Trip

Hello! and welcome back to my blog. There has been a noticeable absence of content for the last 3 years but now, this blog will FINALLY become populated with writing as we are about to go on a 5 week trip to Sri lanka! (We will be ging though KLand Auckland also) we leave 17th June so be ready for the first post!

Unfortunately, this will be my last blog post from the travels of Vietnam and it is more of an inspirational, short speech than a proper post but here goes:
Where ether you've been to the country's that I've been writing about or not, I hope you've truly enjoyed my blog and thought that is has been right below actually travelling the world. For all the people who have followed me through my travels by reading this blog, I would like to thank you all for getting me up to 1,000 page views, which I never thought even possible. It has been a pleasure writing this blog for you, and hope that you are truly inspired to do travels like mine and have our own blog to keep people, friends, family or even your class informed on your travels. Maybe I'll make a you tube account next?

But to all those people out there, share my blog posts with people so that they to may be informed about my travels and know all the tricks of the trade if they go as well but until my next great adventure (or not so great): adios, bye yaxi, zbogom, adeu, farvell, adiau, nakeiin, abschied, no matter how you say it, goodbye! (or cheerio)

A fulfilled child (for now)

Barber from hell

Now that we're out of the heat (literally and figuratively) My blog posts are coming to a near-halt, but the inspiration lives on(at least as long as the photos do!)

THE CUT-THROAT BARBER

Not so long ago, in a place 1/4 of the way around the world,.....

My hair drooped low, badly in need of a hair-cut (if only for dad anyways). As luck had it, we go for a walk and what do we see? A hair-dresser who promises dad more hair than he began with(Can you believe it?). We agree to send dad trooping off to get a hair-cut (I felt so confident I booked me, and my 2 little brothers in at the same time!!)

It all started innocently enough.......yip...I can handle that..looking pretty smooth...

Dad asks for a for a shave and what a surprise he gets! (an ear clean, nothing abnormal there right?)

This man has got to be good ...he tells us HE HAS BEEN CUTTING Hair FOR 30 YEARS AND his dad has been a hairdresser for 30 years and possibly HIS dad has been a hairdresser for 30 years but the whole story got a bit lost in translation!!!

 Hold on...whats that???A blade? Ooops....con-cen-trate!!!Do NOT make anyone laugh.  One slip and it's all over

 Cripes I think nature has taken care of ALL the hair around there!!!Forehead shave...ummm...

 Holy mooly...I'm definitely NOT keen for the back shave..I'm pretty sure kids do NOT need a back shave!!!....Maybe Bruno...?

 Hold AB-SO-LUTELY still.  One slip and you will be only a memory!

 E gad,even the eyebrows require attention!!!

 A man who knows his job!

 And takes it seriously...VERY seriously!!

 Could you possibly know your eyeballs need renovation???ouuuu.....ew....

 And look....virtually no investment at all!!!Contact us for your nearest franchise!!!

An eye dropper?, hope it's clean! 

More like a surgeon's instrument table than a barber's!

cut-throat wanted!

Nothing too unusual about this hair-cut, is there?

They all come trooping back from the hair dresser with mum looking slightly paler than usual (hard to tell because she was mostly red from the heat!): Well you are DEFINITELY not getting rid of that sheep on your head there,there's bound to be more head lice than room 6,she says,maybe somewhere else!

Nha Trang to NZ

100 HBCB (hours before coming back)

The night after tour 2 we accidentaly broke a hotel footrest. Dad broke the footrest by putting one on a normal chair and sitting on it (the reason we wanted to do this is because you had to stand up to use the computers and when I do some of my long-winded post,s sitting down is quite necessary. The leg was buckled thanks to his gargantuan weight!. The manager tried to sue us 20 U.S dollars! when the seat's insides were: plastic wood and cardboard! Dad reckoned he would pay 5 U.S dollars at the most to get that foot-rest fixed. It was hardly our fault because sometimes they brought out a big stool that actually enabled me to sit down and blog to my heart's content but for some reason they decided not to have the stools out all the time and they wouldn't give them to you even when you asked.
In the end $10 bucks did it( "and don't come back")

The day after we took a night bus out of Nha Trang and into HCM city(Saigon) ,the big bad capital.

   

HCM city tour

The  day after we arrived on a sleeper bus we went on a 2-day, homestay tour down the mekong river. Our first stop was to try honey tea. Our tour guide said that honey tea made you live longer... or was that royal jelly? Apparently the Mekong is a prime place for bees, but because I don't like honey, I didn't like honey tea much. 

Next we got on to a tiny boat that was in risk of tipping over because of all the weight(Yip, that's you mum and dad). We took a trip through some giant overgrown palm fronds with the huge risk of rain ever-present with the dark skies overhead.

We had booked a homestay that was on the river (literally it was held up by Styrofoam blocks) and with it, lot's of mosquitoes. We woke up in the morning with no dengue or malaria so I was feeling was lucky. After a short boat ride (we had to do this on the way there as well) back to the rest of our tour we went to see "the floating market at 8. Here are some pictures,the things on the end of the pole show you what is being sold.

 Another day at the office!!!

All this waiting around is making me sleepy.

 How many bricks can YOU carry.

 Living life on the edge (of the river)

 BRICKED IN

Little girl asking if she can use the I-pad (the response: make one out of melons and see if you can scrounge a charger out of the water)

Oh yeah... I didn't order that did I?

The final city/countdown

We flew into Singapore the next day we only had 2 nights here before we had to go home, to NZ

We had a cheap hotel because it was in the RED zone of Singapore that meant there were a lot of seedy characters hanging around the street corners (I am trying to put this into non-offensive words). 

The second day there we went to an island called Sentosa where we went to Universal studios,which cost a lot of dough but when we got in we found it was worth it! We spent all day in Universal studios and had lot's of fun. The downside was that we qued for 2 hours for one ride! (they had a system: if you wanted to go as a group you had to take the long line BUT if you wanted to go by yourself with some other people you could in the super fast line OR you could pay a metric ton of money to upgrade your pass to a premium pass where you could go as a group really fast). We hadn't figured this out yet.!!!

At the end of the day, we had a great day at Universal Studios Singapore

 Creepy eh?!

Universal studios, we're far, far FAR away!

Home bound

2 days later we were at the airport with a  10 hour night plane to Auckland ahead of us. On the back of the seats in front of us had a screen with very little things you didn't have to pay(Of course mum was to stingy to buy the movie upgrade) for so I went to the free section and watched the very little shows that were available there was only a snow boarding/ surfing/ skateboarding show and a fishing show.

I wrote this page from home  (we took a 1 hour flight from Auckland to Napier) as soon as we got home because I have been unable to access any internet from Singapore on.

Please do not fret this is not my last post because I left out a huge section of my blog so that I could catch up with current affairs!

-a ground-struck child

Tour 2

The day after the first tour we went on another tour where we got to have a private driver and explore one of Vietnam's nature parks.

Our first stop on our private tour was the cave of pre-historic man's cave. We had to hire a torch to go in because the cave system went on for EVER, it was pitch black once you got further in.. As we entered we thought we had been scammed for the torches because all we could see was a big hollow in a mountain, we then saw a keen little girl scurry out from under a huge stalagmite. We  found the way around this stalagmite then saw (with the help of our torch) lots and lots of small red dots which we all agreed, must be iron, pushed down from the water dripping through the ceiling (on the way back out of the cave we thought we saw a small bit of silver on the roof of the cavern but ,unfortunately, could not pick it off).

As we went through the caves I saw a small iron deposit on the rock, so decided to pick it off but almost touched... a weta! (for those of you who have not seen a weta before, they look like this:
                         
*uuuuuuuuuggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh!! it's a bug!!!* these small bugs are native to New Zealand or so we thought before we saw this specimen).

So yeah... unless we saw some type of mutant cockroaches they obviously live elsewhere than NZ.

After a short time walking we found an old, rusty ladder that lead up,vertically, so ,naturally, we climbed up (well mum and Lockie didn't) and (no it was not a giant slater at the top!) saw...  (no the ladder definitely did NOT brake at that moment)  another impressive cavern with nothing much inside except bat poop. We went back down the ladder and joined mum and Lockie (the wusses) again.

Next we went to a monkey rehabilitation center. We saw some monkeys that had not yet been eaten by hungry human beings (well what else did you think we'd see? Aliens?!). After them (it took about 1/2 an hour) we went to see the turtle conservation center (Bruno called this the turtle conversation center) I usually like turtles but at this place, in the searing heat, you had to find the right language on the signs (that's all there was) and also burn in the heat.

 We had had a boat trip through a valley planned but it turned out that if we went for a boat ride (3 hours) we would miss our night bus and that would not be good. The night bus (which I really enjoyed)  is a bus filled with beds. We're headed  for Nha Trang , the city on the beach.