The end

With this, i finally completed my travel blog of year 2005 (!!!) special dedication to my pen and my notebooks that served me well throughout the journey. Next project, photo blog of year 2006

auckland the city

Greeny Auckland

23/11/05 4.12pm

32,000 feet above, 2 hours since departing Auckland

Concluded my first bag packing experience today after spending 2 nights in Auckland. Experienced quite a few things in Auckland, like have my first ever Wendy's burger, met a long lost secondary school friend along the street ( what are the odds man!), hop on to a garbage car for a free ride to the town after i was lost in suburb for 2 hours, had the best Korean meal ever, being ill-treated by bus driver for the first time in NZ, help by many local Indians throughout the stay and perhaps many more.

overall, its jut another city, perhaps a cleaner one, to certain extent only. The city looks so identical to KL, especially around the main street that heavily occupied by Asian, at least that's what i felt. It may be suffering from identity crisis just like KL, but it does have some sense of romanticism flowing along the higher-end part of the city.
When i was crossing this main crossroad over viewing this giant santa claus, i suddenly felt a lost of identity. I cant remember who am i or why i was here for. Stephanie Sun was humming softly through my mp3 player "i wish i am aninvisible person, and i could hide all my sadness" into my ear. The world seems to have pause 3 seconds for me. I managed to catch a glimpse of all the passerby in the middle of the crossroad. So emotionless, so cold, so far. 3 second gone, the pedestrian light start turning red and buzzing the people to finish crossing. I ran to the opposite side, and tell myself, dont worry, i am heading home now...

21/11/05

YHA Hostel, Waitomo Caves

After a whole day of sulphuric smell, i head off my journey again for a fresher air, this time i am going to Waitomo that is famous for its caves.

famous not only because it has unique looking caves, but also inside these caves, there's this interesting creature call glow worms. These glow worms are actually larvae that can glow in the dark and attract flying insects to fly towards them and then trapped in their sticky web. Beautiful but deadly creature. So what's the different between glow worms and fireflies? my perspective, besides the fact that one live in the riverside and another one live in the cave, there's not much different. However, it feels much cooler to be seeing all this artificial milky way on the roof of the underground cave.

this is exactly what i observed in the cave, but i got this picture off the internet :)

instead of seeing the glowworms via a slow sailing boat, i go for the extreme option, black water rafting.
those tube are my boat and we need to cave through the running water under the caves for 2 hours. Its not exactly that challenging, but its definitely fun to do so, especially when u are playing along a group of American ladies that scream for every single tiny thing.

Waitomo have some good scenery to offer too besides the cave. Ended up having an extremely relaxing 2 days in Waitomo with lots of, lots of fresh air.

you will become lazy here...

19/11/05 7pm

Rotorua

Without knowing much about the town, i arrived this town just in time to view the children's day parade.

As i walked along the town, a pungent smell is swirling in the sky and yet everyone seems okey with it. Maybe its just me... Later on when i saw this, i know things are not as simple as i first perceived.
look~ The drain releasing some pungent smell along with obvious smoke flowing out. The smell is so strong that it is visible, just like what i see in the cartoon!! OMG, i should call 911. Wait a second, the smoke and the smell is everywhere~

normally a park will have a blue lake within it and people calmly sitting next to it. Interestingly, this park near the city center has a lake that smells real bad and release lots of smoke. Knowing that i have not done my homework regarding this town, i head off to tourism center to figure out what is it all about..

Turn out that Rotorua is a very unique town in which is has extremely high geothermal activity, so high that literally every single hole you dig will cause a release of sulphur from the land below. So if you choose to stay here, you have to live with the smell.

according to my source, Rotorua is famous for 3 things, the first one is Geyser. A geyser is a hot spring characterized by intermittent discharge of water ejected turbulently and accomplished by a vapor phase. its quite impressive to see the periodical eruption the vapour, besides the fact that i got wet after standing too near the eruption point.

Pahula Geyser

Apparently there's a even famous Geyser that actually have different colour due to the sulphur content and the eruption was as high as 2m. Unluckily, the eruption only happened on 11.27am everyday, which i would have be gone to next town by then.

the 2nd thing Rotorua famous for is spa/bath house.

this is a former bath house call 'Blue Bath' that eventually become a museum. Nothing impressive to be frank, and later i did go the the real bath house to soke in some hot water. Besides the smell, i really cant distinguish the different from the hot shower i would have at home.

The 3rd thing Rotorua famous for is the Maori Cultural heritage. Maybe i have not traveled far enough ever since i got to NZ, but for the first time , i see more Polynesian on the road than Caucasian. There's quite a bit of Maori Cultural show for tourist too in this area. Due to the limitation of the time, i didnt manage to see any cultural show, but i do realise that i should have bring along some egg, because u can almost cook your egg in anywhere.

No joking, people in the past do cook their egg this way....