So yeah, it’s been pretty much forever since I updated this blog. I’m a bastard, I know. Obviously my new years resolution to update this bad boy regularly has failed. And so has my resolution to get into better shape. I went bunjy jumping in Taupo and they weighed me… and I’ve gained 7 kilos. Probably more by now. That’s fifteen pounds. Eeek. And now I’m back in Auckland, getting ready for Australia on Thursday.
A lot has happened since I last updated this blog.
First, I went to the Cook Islands and had an incredible experience with one of my best friends. So much fun. I don’t even remember New Years. Then I went back to New Zealand and went up to Paihia and met some cool people and travelled around NZ with them on a tour bus. Again so much fun.
Lets see if I can remember some of the highlights:
Making gingerbread houses with my friend Nicholson
Christmas Celebrations with my birth-family
Christmas Celebration with my Mom on farm where Lord of the Rings was filmed
Seeing a spotted eagle ray, 3 sea turtles, and a white-tipped reef shark while snorkelling in theCook Islands
Lounging around the beaches on Paihia
Eating incredible amounts of food
Applying for 18 Google jobs and not receiving any responses
Watching a video about the “Gay” Dolphin
Bunjy Jumpin!!!!
Watching the Buskers Competition in Christchurch
Listening to Flight of the Concords
Playing way too much Monopoly
Trekking around Abel Tasman
Drinking way too much in Barrytown
Sleeping under my friend’s bed in Franz Joseph, and going for a 1 hour turned 3 hours hike with said friend (with no water)
Jumping into freezing cold glacier water
Singing Total Eclipse of the Heart in Queenstown
Checking out Milford Sound
Doing a three day hike on Stuart Island in one day!!!
Partying in Dunedin in clubs full of 16 year olds
Hanging out in Queenstown for a week, going out almost every night
Meeting up with Emily in Christchurch
I need to figure out what I am going to do with this site. Stay tuned
Yup. Today is Cubic Eve. New Year’s Eve’s Eve’s Eve. Tomorrow is Eve’s Eve, and then, of course, it is New Years Eve. The drunkest day of the year. Even more so than Halloween – my favorite day of the year. Last year I spent New Year’s with my roommates in Harrison Hot Springs (foreshadowing my New Zealand experience, but I’ll get to that later). The year before that was in Vancouver, but all I remember is lying on the club’s floor in a vail and a tiara too drunk to stand. My friend Brad and I drew the stamp on our wrist to get in – front of the line no cover – and already earned Super VIP at the other… alternative… club in town. Oooh a new memory of that night just came back to me. Lying on the ground of a parking lot waiting for my drunk friend to drunk-drive me home. Stupid, yes. I think we went through a red light, if I remember correctly. Please don’t drink and drive.
This year I get to spend New Years with one of my bestest friends, Emily Kydd. She always gets angry when I don’t use her name on this blog, so Emily Kydd – Lord of the Rings obsessed Pacific and Asian Studies Student and the University of Victoria – and I are spending a week together in the Cook Islands! Celebration! She’s technichally on an “internership” there, but we all know she spends all of her time at the beach while the children needing AIDS education wait for her, until she feels guilty and actually does her job. The gauge of how much truth to that assumption will be tonight when I see how tanned she is. Anyway. That’s what I’m doing this year.
Shoot I only have 14 minutes of Internet left.
Since its been several weeks since my last update, I thought it was about time I did.
We left off at my Surfing lessons on Mount Manugani (however you spell it). Considering I was born there, I probably should know how to spell it. The highlights from those few days were going to the salt-water hot springs with only cold water to shower ourselves off after, using a coat hanger to unlock the car after Hanna locked the keys in the trunk, and sleeping in my tent during torrential rain. Fun times.
After that we headed to Hot Water Beach. It’s basically a beach formed over hot springs. You did a hole in the sand, and lie in it. We used a frying pan. I have a feeling that I’ve already wrote all this. Shoot, I did. No time to delete it, 10 minutes left. We went dancing that night out in Tauranga that night at a club called Coyote. Fill in the blanks
We then drove to Rotorua. It smells like egg farts there – from the sulfur springs. We had our second thermal bath there at super hot, hot springs full of green algae. Sort of gross, but whatever.
Oh yes I forgot to tell you I’ve gained 15 pounds since I started this whole travel thing. I really need to cut down on my desserts (which is basically 2x per day).
Eight minutes.
At our campsite people had loud sex in a camper van. There were three people driving around, and one of them was fortunate to be locked out for a good half hours while the other two put the suspension to good use.
Then we drove to Raglin – a cool surfer beach. I should say hot surfer, but it was cloudy and cold out. I want to start surfing. Sigh. After our beach trip we headed over to Waitomo caves. I went caving and rock climbing, and it was epic. I’ll explain it in more detail when I have time. Speaking of time, I’m nearly out. I’ll leave you with the satisfaction of knowing that one of my new years resolutions is to update this blog more often. My other is to get a six pack. I’ll let you decide how realistic they are. I think getting a six pack was my resolution last year.
It’s been raining in New Zealand for the past few days. Well, maybe not the entire country, but certainly where I’ve been.
We left off with my plan, dancing, and meeting my Birth Mum. A lot has happened since then. At the hostel I was staying at I saw a post-it-note with a message advertising a free ride around the country. Yup. A free ride. All I had to do was split gas - 3 ways. A pretty good deal if you ask me, considering bus trips on the north island start at $390! And I’m cheap, so obviously I said yes.
I sent off an email and 3 days latter I was in a car with Stacey (a fellow Canadian), and Hannah (a girl from Germany). The adventure started after we picked up Hannah. When Stacey put the car into reverse it lurched forward a few feet (we were on the hill). And it happened again. Before going into reverse a third time we decided it would be wise to have me stand in front of the car and push it. Two seconds later I jumped out of the way as the car proceeded to crush my arm. It was 2 inches away from the car in front. I have very small arms. Ok I don’t and I’m exaggerating since the car didn’t actually crush me, but it was 2 inches away. Since we couldn’t move the car without hitting the parked hybrid prius, we had to knock on every house on the street asking people to move the car. Unfortunately, the owner didn’t live there. So we had to wait. And wait. Just as we were about to call the AA the owner came. What a good start.
Wow this is really boring. It was certainly more interesting at the time. I think the coolest thing I’ve done so far was go to this “hot water beach”. There are thermal pools underneath the sand and you dig holes and have a little bath. It was incredibly cool (err hot), and a lot of work. I borrowed someone’s shovel and Stacey used a frying pan. Oh yes, it was pouring with rain. Torrential downpour. It’s been raining pretty much since we got here. Except for yesterday, and I took the opportunity to take a surfing lesson. I suck. I’m probably the worst surfer in the world. But Stacey sweet talked the instructor and it was only $40 for 2 hours. $40 New Zealand, so like $30. Pretty reasonable. Oh yes, there was human poo on our campsite at Mount Maunganoui.
Ok so I have not actually been in New Zealand for a week… but I certainly have not been updating this website. And I feel sort of bad about it.
I don’t think the Choose My Adventure thing is going to work in NZ. Mostly because I do not have any money. I have enough to scrounge an existence, but I need to be cheap. But I thought I’d share with you my plans either way. I’m sure I’ll be able to provide you with the opportunity to have some influence.
Stay in the Auckland area until Christmas
Meet up with my Mom on Christmas, spend five days traveling with her
Fly to the Cook Islands and stay with one of my bestest friends from Victoria… for NEW YEARS! Celebration!
On January 7th fly into Auckland at 5:00 AM, and then hop on a bus and start traveling around the North Island
On January 23rd I fly from Wellington to Christchurch, and then take a bus to Dunedin to meet with a friend I used to work at the GAP with
On the 27th I meet up with one of my bestest friends from Victoria and we’ll rent a van for a month and travel around the South Island, and then make our way up… Eventually…
Late February I fly to SYDNEY!
And that’s why the Choose My Adventure thing isn’t going to work. I had to figure out ways to be thrifty.
So what I have been doing these last weeks? Well I messaged random people on FaceBook, befriended one of them, and now have a really good friend in New Zealand. NO, not that kind of “really good friend”. An actual friend who I go on adventures with. And have access to his friends, he he, which is fun. We went to the beach yesterday and had a giant picnic. There were 6 of us, and we bought $120 worth of food! It was amazing, until a swarm of seagulls came and attacked us, stealing our food. Well, the carcasses and bones and molten cheese.
Before that I went out dancing a few nights, got a bank account, applied for an IRD (social insurance) number, went to a meeting with the welfare people (I don’t think that’s going to work out, unfortuantly)… and met my Birth Mother. Yup. I’m adopted.
Hello hello! I am on my way to New Zealand! Yay! Celebration!
Sorry for not updating the site in a few weeks. I was incredibly lazy.
I’m still on the fence about what I want to do with this website - how I can make it better and more interesting to read. I guess I have several long flights to figure that out.
But on to more important matters: I was the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man for Halloween. My roommates were the Ghost Busters. Pretty sweet. Twenty days late, yes… but… yeah…
I really need to do something about these boring posts…
So I’m home. Finished Backpacking in Europe. The video explains all. Well, most. Ok only a little. I spend most of it talking about myself.
We need to start thinking about NewZealand though. I only have $1000, so I’ll need a job (or I’ll go on “the dole” aka welfare since I am a New-Zealand citizen). Ha ha maybe that should be the first question. Should I go on welfare when I am in New Zealand?
I have been without internet for a few days now… and am very excited to be back on. I think I have an addiction. Sigh.
Ice caving in Salzburg was really cool, no pun intened. I made a shitty video (I have a lot of trouble with iMovie. It always garbles the audio so at parts I had to cut it out and I gave up trying to make it look good. Add in the fact my cinematography sucks. I always turn off the camera right as I finish talking to I can’t use the end part of the take. Tears. I think I might buy the new version of iMovie and hope it’s better… and learn to film better as well). Wow, random tangent. At the beginning of the tour they asked for all the English speakers to put their hands up, and all the German speakers stared at us as we were ushered to the front of the group. Then the tour guide said something in German and everyone laughed. I wish I spoke German. It felt sort of weird being separated like that, but I’m sure they had their reasons; I got an excuse to weasel my way to the front of the line.
That sentence reminds of the English provincial I did terribly on. It was my first big exam and I ran out of time. I thought there was only one essay, but there were two. And the last essay was about life lessons, I literally had five minute to write it, so I talked about school, and included the following sentence.
“In English we learned how to use a semicolon; being able to connect two related sentences is a really useful.”
Yup. I wrote that. I don’t even think I used the semicolon correctly. And unfortunately, I don’t think my writing has improved much in the last five years ha ha.
Anyway. The trip is coming to an end soon (tear), but we still have New Zealand and Australia. If you guys vote for me to get a good enough job and make some money, there will be South East Asia to boss me around in as well. Oh what fun lies ahead of us… and I’m not even done Europe yet.
I’m running out of battery, but today or tomorrow I’ll upload some pictures and tell you about Interlaken and Luxembourg!
[edit: ok, just as I was about to upload the pictures the Internet went down… and now I’m off to bed, just as the internet went back up. Grrrrr! I’m heading to Amsterdam tomorrow, so I doubt I’ll be able to update the website. Maybe I’ll surprise you! Maybe not ha ha.]
Planning a bender-ending rest period in Munich was a stupid idea. It lasted all of 35 minutes.
I stayed the Euro Youth Hostel close to the main train station. The street has three giant hostels on it. They only charged me 12.50 Euro for a five person dorm… must have made a mistake but I certainly spent my savings on beer.
On the first night I met these three football-fanatics from England. Really cool guys, but one of them was the sterotypical / cliche English bloke character. Pursed lips - myspace posing - world hating type. Ha ha. He mentioned this club he frequented in London where you go there, check your clothes, put on a towel, walk around, swim, and have random sex with strangers. Sign me up. NOT. Seriously - barfy.
The guys were on their way to Moscow for a football game. They travel the world following their teams’ away-from-home games. Pretty cool. It’s their religion.
I convinced the guys to go on a Pubcrawl with me. It was actually pretty easy. The only problem was that we couldn’t find it. We eventually gave up and headed to the Hoffbrau(sp) house (the most famous beer hall in the world, apparently). Over a few stiens of beer (1 lire each, about 3 cans) I listened to them talk about how people from England want to get out of the EU because of all the immigrants coming to work… and I didn’t have anything to add to the conversation so I just smiled and nodded. It’s always interesting to hear different perspectives on things though. The myspace guy chatted up these girls - harsh abrasive - but convinced them to take us to the club district so we could check things out. We talked about it after and he said he was being strategic with his words, and obviously it worked. I was surprised. I guess some girls really do go for the assholes. Ha ha don’t get me wrong - I’m being a little bit harsh - he was a nice guy and it certainly made the night interesting and way more fun that it would have been had he not been there. All of them were fun and it was definitely a good night. If any of the three mentioned are reading this, don’t get the wrong idea! I really liked you guys. It was just a really… different… experience!
We found what I like to call the buffet club. All-you-can-drink for 10 Euro. In Berlin I paid 12 just to get in… although the club in Berlin was the best club I have ever been to. I digress. The drinks at the bar were free. I had Wodka Orange, Wodka Lime. After I started to feel ill I taught the bartender one of my favorite Vodka drinks: Vodka Water. I actually hate Vodka, but watered down Vodka mixed with more water is drinkable.
All you can drink for 10 Euro. It’s still shocking. I didn’t get sloshed because I was still hangover from the last days of drinking, but I certainly got my 10 Euros worth. The English guys had this 5 person metro pass so I didn’t even have to pay for that either. Sweet. What a good night.
The next day I went on a Free Walking tour. The guide rocked an awesome beard with one of those curly mustaches. I saw the sights then met up with an Aussi couple and a Kiki couple from the tour and we checked out a few more beer halls. Aftewards we went to this schnitzel pace and had massive pieces of - guess - schnitzel. When I say massive I actually mean gargantuan slash elephantine. Hold both your hands in front of you and spread out your fingers. That’s how big they were. No joke. I never need to eat schnitzel again, ha ha.
I went to my favorite store, H&M, bought a few t-shirts and a zip-up hooding, caught a train, Now I’m in Salzburg. Let the adventures begin.
Smoke illuminated the bright white-purple-green-yellow-blue air. Music blared. Hundreds of people moved on the flooded dance floor.
Last night I had one of the most incredible club experiences of my life. And, as you may be surprised to hear, I was completely sober. The night before I was on an over-the-top pub-crawl that involved nearly unlimited beer and several shots of real absinth. I had drank for two so I made the executive decision to take it easy.
Yesterday started off in a graffiti-ed warehouse. Multiple levels, illegal bars. Art everywhere. It was a cool place, but nothing compared to our next stop.
Panorama is the place to be on a Saturday night. Old power-plant turned multi-story-club, people party until the sun fills the sky and then sets again. I only lasted ’till five.
Getting to the club is an adventure in itself. Several trains and subways, unlit streets, sketchy people overdosing in pay-per-use washrooms. We actually had to walk down a in-construction street in complete darkness, stumbling over piles of sand, ledges, and overturned cobblestones. Somewhat overwhelming, if you don’t mind me saying so.
We were about to give up when we heard the music. Hundreds of taxis lined a small, unpaved road. People made their way to their own line. Once inside, there is no photography. They confiscate your camera. Everything is lit by red, until you hit the dance floor. Old power-plant equipment lines the walls. People line the passageways. I wish I was allowed to take pictures.
Sarah - the Australian girl who accompanied me - and I took every chance we could to explore the club. There were some dark passage ways that we opted not to explore, because we had a feeling there were people inside already exploring them. On one of the levels there is a little food place where we bought ice-cream… with sprinkles of course. I had strawberry. We chatted with the bar/ice-cream tender, and he poured us free jagermeister shots. Ok, yes, I had one shot… but it would have been rude to say no and one shot of jagermeister wouldn’t even get a 6 year old tipsy. Anyway. He was incredibly nice we were completely dumbfounded by the experience. Ice cream in a bar. Wow.
The music was good, the beats were strong, and we moved until the wee hours of the morning. We didn’t realize until we got there that the club was an anything-goes venue, so girls danced with girls, boys dance with boys, and I danced with Sarah. Ha ha. Great times. I’m happy I was sober because it was the kind of experience you need to remember clearly.
Berlin, I love you. I just wish your stores were open on Sundays because I was planning on shopping today and now I can’t. Grrrrr.
Fist things first, I was on CBC National Television yesterday! Celebration! Thank you CBC! 15 extra people came to my site ha ha. The interview was cut short because the phones here suck… but it was awesome having the exposure. It’s cool to think that thousands of people across the country know what we’re up to! Go us!
I can’t imagine traveling before the Euro. I refuse to use the many con artists I mean “change” bureaus scattered around the city, so I’m forced to estimate my needs. And I’m always wrong.
When I arrived, I took out 2000 Crowns? Whatever the currency is here. Prague Dollars. That’s almost exactly 100 Canadian. My hostel ate up 1380 of them. So in 3 days, I managed to only spend 600 - or $30 - on food. Pretty sweet. And I wasn’t skimping out either, except on paying to do things. I was going to go to this black light theater thing, but it didn’t work out because the people I was with were late. Whatever. I ate Ice cream, pastries, chocolate, bread, yogurt, beer, more bread, more beer. And yeah. Wow. I’m really unhealthy. I better take a multivitamin.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t decided to budget when I started, so on my first full day I spent about 400 ($20) on tasty treats. Yesterday I managed to only spend 100 ($5). Boo yeah. I had 10.5 Prague Dollars (ha ha hahahha sorry that makes me sound like an idiot but I love it) last night - about fifty cents - and went to a grocery store. And you know what I found? A nice big beer for 10.5. Thank God I kept my change.
Oh shit, I’m going to miss my train. PEACE MAXIUMUS!
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