Sundays feel like the early hours of the morning and Jetlag beats Tom again.

Note to self. 
Read about what will be open on Sundays in New Zealand otherwise it will take you 30 minutes to find somewhere to have breakfast.

Leaving the hostel we looked to find somewhere to eat but it was a struggle.
We finally managed to find a place called 'the coffee club'.
Not eating proper food due to flights and airplane meals we wanted something hearty to get us going.
A big breakfast and a great coffee alongside it was the best way to go about it.

And for those who say to me 'Tom, do you ever not think of food?' - This time it had to be done, trust me it was needed.

We then headed back to the hostel to decide on some sort of plan for the day, we saw a guy from the hostel was running a mini tour of parts of auckland so at 12 noon we met him with a few others and we headed out towards the harbour.
We had been hoping to speak to someone about what we could get up to while in Auckland other than recovering from a serious amount of Jetlag! Aka The Devil.

We took a great long walk down to the harbour where our kind guide talked to us about the history of Auckland and its ports and how most recently it has been the base for the New Zealand Ocean Racing team. On a very rainy Sunday indeed it was great to get some fresh air and stretch the legs out for a good hour or so.
We visited a pretty awesome fresh fish market as well ,and with me being a big lover of fish I was in my element. If I only I wasn't on a traveller's wage but one where I could buy as much as I wanted and chuck it on the BBQ with a nice couple of cold ones. (One day)

The guide took us back round the other side of the city and finished the tour the other end of Queen street which was where we were staying. We saw an art gallery near by and saw that it was free entry so thought we would take our chance and get in the dry but have a look round inside too.

What met us as we walked in was 4 floors of art, of all kinds with various ages and history behind it. It was great. I didn't want to take too many pictures and look like some happy clappy photo taking tourist so got a few I enjoyed looking at and reading about.

Walking out of the art gallery expecting a huge downpour the clouds had started to clear and the sun was coming out (slightly). We headed back to the hostel to start our planning for the week ahead in which we would travel down the north island to Wellington in a campervan/family saloon. 

We headed to the Jucy rental car depot and payed for the car in which we were going to rent for 6 days and where we would eat, sleep, drive and cook in. It was going to be Fun! I took a picture of one and you will see below what they are like. They were not something you would call 'tasteful' but for 6 days it would be perfect.

Via a supermarket the tiredness was already starting to settle in as we approached late afternoon so we grabbed some food to cook and headed back to the hostel. 

We got chatting to a young guy from Ireland and a young girl from the UK which was pretty cool, finding out about what they were up to and what their plans were was great to know and gave us some new ideas. 

Full up and ready to have a short nap before heading out for a beer and perhaps heading up the sky tower. 6pm came and then with me not being on the ball I had set my alarm wrong and then 4 hours later me and suzie woke up wondering what time of night it was. Once again Jetlag had got the best of us (Me setting the alarm wrong didn't help), we could have slept till the next day but thought it would be best to have a little walk around before actually heading to bed for the night. Walking down Queen street at 10pm at night on a Sunday was pretty cool, lots of people out drinking with friends, finishing meals out but many not looking forward to their working week starting again and their Weekend slowly slipping away.

After grabbing some burger king fries (I was disgusted they didn't have real burger king fries but more McDonalds), it was a quick snack before going back and hitting the hay.

A quick update on Auckland and the sky tower followed by the first day of the roadtrip soon!

Oh and I Forgot to add this little one in of Auckland on a lovely Sunny day on the Saturday when we arrived. What the weather should have been like all weekend if we hadn't been on the edge of a cyclone!

Next stop: Roturua via Hobbiton

Tom 0 - 1 Jetlag

Now first things first I apologise for the sporadic blog posts. I am a couple of weeks behind but its been a busy couple of weeks in Wellington! All will be revealed...

After an 8 hour stopover in Brisbane in the early hours of the morning and doing our best to get a few hours sleep in the airport and some sort of snack (which is hard to do between 1am and 5am at an airport at those times).
On the other hand, Thinking 8 hours in an airport wasnt going to be too bad, the longest stopover I have ever done was Munich for 3 hours in November and I thought that was bad!
But then I have to think about where I am going and the fact I was 4 hours away from landing in Sunny New Zealand in the middle of Summer for 5 months of fun, amazement and development.
We boarded the final flight to Auckland, it was relieving to know that this was the final leg of out travels. Just under 4 hours and we would be there!

The time came to jump on the plane to find it was the biggest passenger plane in the world. The Airbus A380! HUGE!

AND I EVEN MANAGED TO GET 

A COUPLE OF SELFIES IN!

2pm - Saturday 18th January 2014 

The journey starts.










We caught a taxi from the airport and got chatting to two women. Automatically noticing this 'brummie' accent when they were chatting we got chatting.When people talk about small worlds  this was one of them. The friends were fromNorthfield and Redditch! So I'm the otherside of the world and still manage to meet people within 20 minutes of where I live. Crazy.
Anyway we got to the hostel checked in and it was time to have a look round the city and get some sort of bearings to where we were staying. 

We had a good look round the city, through the main street where it was really busy with Saturday afternoon shoppers and people making the most of their weekend! We went and grabbed some food but the tiredness was starting to get to us, we didn't realise that the Jet lag was slowly creeping up on us. 

As we sat in the room we thought lets go for a nap so we can make the most of the night time in Auckland, so as my head hit the pillow at 6pm it felt great. Waking up with a real shock to what time it was I grabbed my phone and say it was 3am Sunday morning! We had just slept for 9 hours straight through our alarms and now we both felt awake and alive except the trouble was it was 3am in the morning. - Bad times.

To try and curb this feeling of being too awake going through my body I text back home as it was 2pm to see what everyone was up to, check the Wolves line up for the game that afternoon and I starting feel tired again. Making use of this feeling I hit the pillow and we woke again at 7.30am once again so awake it was crazy!
Rather than getting a lie in that our body didn't need we got ready, unpacked a few things and decided what Auckland looked like on a early Sunday morning! And this was the view from the Balcony.

Sunday/Monday blog to follow!

Tom x

Universal Studios Day and the final day in Singapore

 After a decent nights kip we woke early and headed out on the Metro system (Singapores better version of the Tube) and caught the bus out to Sentosa Island also known as Universal Studios Singapore. I didn’t realise the sheer size of the place till we went into the car park, I genuinely couldn’t see to the other end. At that point I realised we were in for a treat in our last day in Singapore. Everyone back home had said Universal Studios is unreal!! Apparently this place was meant to be very very similar and it weren’t half impressive! Madagascar, Shrek, The Mummy Returns, Jurassic Park, Transformers. All these were areas of the park which were themed through rides, shows and characters. Then you had Hollywood, New York and everything in between! It was amazing.

Highlight of the day had to be the Donkey 3D show, basically an animated Donkey was on a screen cracking jokes and singing etc with a very good impersonator at the side of the stage. There was a point in the show where it involved audience participation and they had to find a princess, with Suzie being the only British looking girl in the audience and with the added bonus of Ginger hair (just like Fiona) she was picked and her face streamed on the big screen while she talked to ‘Donkey’. She had to do her best Sin-glish language and phrases. It was hilarious to watch with many of the audience probably not understanding a word. Picture is below for proof!

Ride of the day, Transformers 3D. OH MY DAYS, I have never watched Transformers in my life but I WILL watch either when I am over here or when I get home. 5 minutes in a car transformer, it followed a scene and then you were the transformer. It threw you about, made you feel like you were falling, rocked you everywhere, I cant really do it justice by writing on here about it. And then in the end Optimus prime saves the day. Such an awesome ride with the Mummy Returns being the next one behind.

So after visiting various rides, film sets, shows and Steven Spielbergs shows ‘Lights, Camera, Action’ in which you see how a sound stage works and special effects which was great and a pleasure to watch. So after getting to the studios at 11 it was now 5pm and time to head back to the hostel. We had spent 6 hours there without even realising! Crazy! Oh and one weird thing I found out at Universal studios, after every ride especially transformers all the locals clap as a show of appreciation and the staff of the ride clap back. Was surreal and something you’d never see back home!

So after a trip back to the hostel and a coffee on the great balcony we had to use as freely as we wanted we headed out to Little India on the metro.

Little India was a show of culture, colour, smell and food. The main road was closed off for some traffic and it was very busy with many people just coming out of prayer. We asked a local policeman why it was so busy and he told us it was Thaipusam, this is a Hindu festival celebrated mostly by the Tamil community on the full moon in the Tamil month of Thai. They were rebuilding the temple which we were really gutted about as it looked like such a beautiful building with brilliant architecture. We walked the whole length of the main street in India taking a look down small streets where the markets were and didn’t realise how long we had been there! It was late on and we had also planned to head to Chinatown so we took our last look around Little India and jumped two stops on the metro and came into Chinatown.

Chinatown – WOW. Talk about colours and smells, now if people weren’t aware its coming up to Chinese New Year and Chinatown was in full swing in terms of preparation, lighting and something I hadn’t never seen so many of –Chinese Lanterns.

We were pretty hungry at this point and were being teased by the smells as we walked through the maze of streets! So we sat in what looked like a popular little corner café/restaurant right in the midst of Chinatown, we sat down and took everything in. It was 11.00pm at night and the streets were still heaving with some shops and stalls packing away but some still in full throw. We sat down with a couple of beers and navigated the menu taking in some dishes, with me not being a spice fan I opted for sweet and sour pork with some egg fried rice which doesn’t sound too foody I know but it was to be the best sweet and sour dish I had ever had and much better than any Chinese takeaway in England! Suzie once again opted for a dish with a bit of spice and enjoyed it all the more. As we sat waiting for our dishes to come it was a good chance to people watch and see the range of nationalities and cultures that walked past taking everything in just like we still were. It was great, so as we finished our meal we totally forgot about the last metro from Chinatown to our hostel so quickly paid and legged it to the metro station.

Ran down the escalators and thought 'oh dear', it was like a ghost town, honestly thinking we had missed the last metro we ran down to the platform to jump on the last metro of the night. Thankfully getting on that meant we didn't have 45 minute walk home, although in a heat of 16 degrees and a light wind it wouldn't have been much of problem.
So we got back to the hostel and got our heads down for the flights the next day and the last leg of the journey to New Zealand!

Singapore is a place I would truely recommend to anyone, I only got to see 2 days worth of things but WOW I was amazed and has made me want to visit Asia sometime in the near future again and spend a long period of time there. Singapore, its been a pleasure. 

And clearly Suzie weren't happy to be leaving!