Preparing for South East Asia!

I have now been in Australia for several months and have finally started getting ready to move on.  It was always my plan to leave around May and as that gets closer I get more excited.  I am indeed heading to South East Asia where I will spend three months traveling up and down the coast visiting lots of different lands and cultures.  Before I embark on that journey however I will head through Australia for two weeks, going to Cairns and then Alice Spring, visiting some of the most iconic places in this country.  Uluru and of course the great barrier reef.  These two weeks will be a reintroduction on blogging into my life as I can not wait to start again.  After those two weeks I am flying to Singapore to start my Asian Adventure!

The plan so far:  Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, (maybe Laos) China, and Japan.  All in three months. Should be pretty awesome.  I have now starting the planning session of our trip.  Today has been the start of the planning and so far it is going good!  Now that I have really looked into some of the amazing things that can be done and for so cheap!  The food is probably what I am most excited about.  For those of you who have read my last blog about traveling in the United States and Canada you are probably aware about how much I love eating!!!  This time I am going try and take more pictures and put them up because I do really enjoy photos.  And I got a camera specifically for this great trip and the trip to Australia which I have not really used.

I also spent two weeks in New Zealand which I will also try and write a nice blog about.  With some glorious pictures that I have taken with the nice camera!

As for right now I am logging off to spend some more time researching our travels!

New Zealand: South Island (Queenstown)

After our amazing trip in the sound we headed to Queenstown for our last two days and for a little R and R.  We stayed at an amazing Hotel with a gorgeous view.  Our first day we drove in about mid afternoon and then headed to town.   The first stop was the Kiwi Center because unfortunately due to a miss-communication we had not yet seen any Kiwi's!  So off we went, and there are ridiculously LARGE birds!  I was so shocked, I thought they were tiny little animals, but they are pretty sizable!  After enjoying our walk around the Kiwi Center we headed to the streets for some Tapas and wine! Then we walked to the Lake Front.

After the Lake Front we got some groceries from the store for a later dinner and then headed back to the hotel to watch the sunset and enjoy some movies!

View of the City

View As the Sunsets From Our Hotel

Enjoying Some Wine on the Balcony

 The next day my mom had a surprise for me so we headed to the ShotOverJet.  We ended up getting there early so instead we kept driving to Arrow town an old Colonial town.  It was great, lots of cool little shops.   This was amazing experience!  We hopped in the boat and did 360 turns at 90 mph (or something crazy like that)  and went through the Canyon. It was a pretty awesome and thrilling time!

Nice Old Buildings!

Some Really Neat Little Additions to Make the Town Seem Cool

This was amazing experience!  We hopped in the boat and did 360 turns at 90 mph (or something crazy like that)  and went through the Canyon. It was a pretty awesome and thrilling time!

This is the River we Did the JetBoat on!

 One of the last things we did was head to some wineries and try the amazing wines that are found in this region.  We ended up going to a couple.  This was a first stop:

The Areas Where the Wineries Are 

After the first couple wineries we headed to one where you they had scents.  This meant you needed to try and figure out which smell was associated with taste.  It was really interesting and helped me figure out more what to look for when tasting wines.  After the nice day we headed back into town and had a delicious seafood dinner!  What a great way to end the whole trip!  Really an amazing time!

New Zealand: South Island (Te Anau and Doubtful Sound)

We woke up in Te Anau and had the entire day to relax and enjoy.  We spent lots of time in sun, or reading our book!  Then we headed into town and did some shopping.  The only thing we had planned for the day was the Glow worm caves.  It was a great adventure!  First we needed to cross the lake.  Forty minutes on the water, in the sun, and enjoying the beautiful scenery.  Not too bad.  We got off the boat and were greeted by a guide who showed us into the caves.  After a short walk through the caves, where we needed to duck, and had to watch for dripping we got into a small boat.  This boat went up a small river in the caves where we could see absolutely nothing!  We couldn't even see our hand in front of our face.  But looking up we could see thousands of glowworms lighting up the caves like the stars in the night sky.  It was pretty amazing!  I did not expect to like this tour as much as I did!  It was definitely something that was unexpected. Nature can really surprise you some times!  If you ever get the chance to go see some of the glowworms anywhere do it!  Really a cool experience, and not like anything else you have ever seen!!!

After the glow worms we headed back to the boat and then back to Te Anau.  We spent the night in our hotel and made dinner at home with some more wine and cider.  Overall not too shabby, nice and relaxed!

The next morning we hopped in the car nice and early and headed to Manapouri where we were meeting our group for the next two days!

We spent two days on a Deep Cover Charter's Tour and it was totally amazing!  Loved every minute of it.  The people were so friendly, the staff, the other members of our group, everyone was just great.  And we got to do all these amazing things and see all these amazing animals!

Some of the Amazing Animals we got to see!

The Albatros' getting some food from our ship

Fighting for Food

Some of our Lunch!

A View from Our Boat

Lunch is Served!

The Dolphins came up right to our boat!  Pretty amazing!

Picture of the Sound while we were leaving, what an amazing place!

 After an amazing two days, where we saw penguins, dolphins, fish, seals, and birds!  We went kayaking and fishing.  I even caught my first fish ever and then got to eat it for dinner.  That was definitely a highlight for me.  What a cool experience to actually catch your own dinner.  And even just catching a fish, something I have never done before!  Super cool. The only downside of this trip was the sandflies.  The bite like crazy!  I was itchy for a week or two after this!  But other than that it was one of the highlights of our whole New Zealand trip.  After our trip here we headed back to Queenstown for our final two days of the trip!

New Zealand: South Island (Mount Cook)

We got up early and headed to the airport in Wellington to have one of the most bizarre experience I have had in an airport.  We got there early, which was not necessary!  We checked in easy and grabbed some breakfast and headed to the gate.  After waiting for about an hour we got on the plane.  As in literally walked off the street, got tickets (no ID required)  and then got on the plane, no security, no checking luggage, no nothing!  It was something I was definitely not used to!  But really nice!  The plane itself was one of the smallest one I have been on, only about 40 people and had propellers.  But the whole no security thing was pretty crazy, nice though!

Some of the really cool scenery in the aiport!

Gandalf flying away from the airport, just like we were about to do!

We arrived in Queenstown and grabbed our car and headed to Mount Cook!  We drove for a couple hours along the beautiful lakes and trees.  Definitely very different than the North Island, lots of mountains and trees and lakes.  This was more like Canada!  And then we stopped for our first view of Mount Cook

When we got to Mount Cook we dropped our stuff of at our hotel and took small hike up the side of on the mountains to see a view of the whole valley

Loving being near the mountains again!  How I miss them in Australia!

After our small hike we headed to the hostel for a nice quick dinner before we headed to our vantage point for the sunset!  Something I definitely did not want to miss as I heard they could really be spectacular!

Having a Nice Cider with a beautiful view!

Sunset at Mount Cook!

 After a nice night in the hotel we woke up early the next morning so we could fit in a three hour hike to the glacial lake before heading off for the day!  It was awesome getting up early, watching the sunrise, heading out on trail before most people had even gotten up!  It's nice getting up early and getting lots done!

A View on our way to the Lake

Some of the Glaciers we saw in the Lake

The Lake, the Mountains, and Everything!  What a great place!

 After our hike we hoped into the car and headed to Te Anau where we were going to stay for the night.  We had a couple stops, one major one: BUNGEE JUMPING!

There is me taking the dive!

And I touched the water!  And of course, bounced back up!

After a nice bungee jumping, we grabbed some cheese and cider and headed to our hotel.  Once we got there, we turned on a movie, enjoyed a nice dinner of wine/ cider and cheese!  What a great way to end a very busy day!

New Zealand: North Island Part 4 (Wellington)

After leaving Fielding early in the morning we made it to Wellington right on time to do everything we had planned for the day!  We started out at the WETA Workshop where we got a tour of the Lord of the Rings workshop, as well as other things.  It was a pretty cool tour, learned lots about how swords were made and how props and costumes were put together for the final product.  Pretty neat stuff!

After WETA workshop we headed to the famous museum: Te Papa.  It was a really beautiful museum.  As someone who does not really enjoying going into museums much, this was very well built with lots of interesting exhibits.  I spent hours looking and information about the Maori people as well as an interesting exhibit on the Treaty of Waitangi.  This looked into the translation of such a document and how two peoples could sign the document, but the translation of such a document could change the whole meaning!

After the museum we walked the waterfront for a while and then headed for an early dinner at probably the best place we had dinner the whole trip (Maybe, we had a lot of good food!)  The Shed 5 was totally amazing.  The food was delicious!  We started with an appetizer of Carpaccio (I think it was Salmon, but I don't remember, some sort of fish!!!) which was to die for!  So great!!!


After dinner we headed to a nice motel near the airport where we could get up early for our flight to the South Island!

New Zealand: North Island Part 3 (Tongariro Crossing and Fielding)

We left Rotorua early in the morning so we could make it to the trail head early enough to do a full day of hiking!  We left early, but decided to stop on the way to make sure we had food and drinks for the hike.  We couldn't find any grocery stores on the way out of Rotorua, but when we got near Te Pau we pulled off the highway and found this really cute store with the most amazing bakery!  I got this delicious Cinnamon Roll topped with icing and the best part was in the middle there were all these delicious apple pieces and other yummy tasty treats.

From there we headed to the Crossing.

The Map of the Trail, We went to the Lakes and turned back and come back!

So we headed out of the trail for a couple hours, and this is mainly the landscape we encountered, very different from what I am used in Canada!  I usually see trees and lakes, very green!  But this was brown and dry!

A View From the first couple hours

After a while we decided to stop and have a healthy snack!  As well as some of the water we packed (mistakenly we only brought about 2 litres for both of us for a 6 1/2 hour hike, definitely not enough water!)

Ramy Ram is back to adventuring!

 After our snack we headed up the steep part of the hike for a while!  Lots of climbing, some places even had metal rope to hold on to while you walked!  Then we got to the top and saw the amazing red rock!

Red Rocks at the top!

 Apparently it is a Volcanic Hazard zone, so we had better be careful!

Watch Out!

 The most amazing part of the hike are the lakes that you get to see.  This is also the most famous and if you have heard anything about the Tongariro Crossing then you probably know about these lakes!   And it was definitely worth the hike up! We also turned around before we got to the lakes, but definitely glad we went all the way to the top!

Made it to the Top!

 On the way back we saw some really cool scenery, again the landscape was so different from what I was used to in Canada, nothing green in site!

What a Desolate Land

 And then after 5 1/2 hours we made it back to the car and stopped 10 min later to take a picture of this amazing view, still on of my favourite views from the trip:

After getting back in the car we headed to Fielding, a small town where one of my friends lives.  And it was small!  When we got there we headed to the only place open for dinner, the Irish Pub!  It was delicious and packed, seemed like everyone in the whole area ate here!  After LOTS of water and some ice cold cider we headed to bed for a great night sleep!  (Although I woke up with HUGE sunburn the next day, was not prepared for the hot New Zealand Sun!)

New Zealand: North Island Part 2 (Rotorua)

We spent two nights in Rotorua.  Both of which were a blast!  We stayed in a very nice hotel called the Princes Gate Hotel.  Our first night we drive in from Hobbiton and headed to the Polynesian Spa.  Which all in all was kinda a disappointment.  I have been to several mineral pools before and thoroughly enjoyed them.  Having heard that this was one the best in the world (although really every place says that about themselves!)  I was expecting quite a bit.  In the end however it was simply a couple pools at different temperatures, and although the view was nice, I could have spent the same time in a bath tub!  If you have never been in a mineral pool then go for it, but all in all I would not recommend this to people!

After the mineral pools we headed out to find some dinner, we ended up, after much searching, at a placed called BREW.  It was delicious!  I have a pizza and a tasting rack (of beer).  After a day with sun, mineral pools, and not too much food it was exactly what I needed.  A nice cozy bar, some beer, a delicious pizza, and some good company!  Not too bad, definitely go there if you get the chance, VERY yummy!

Then we headed to the Princes Gate Hotel for the night.  We had free internet, which is fairly rare on this island we found out later so that was a definitely bonus! Spent some time watching a movie and enjoying the nice room.  Then off to bed because we had a big day planned for tomorrow!

Our second day in Rotorua started at the Fat Dog Cafe and Bar.  A delicious breakfast places where all the locals were.  The food was amazing and the decor was pretty awesome.  This was definitely a place for me.  Eclectic and fun!  Lots of colours and the portions were LARGE!  My mom also forgot to ask for glutton free bread, which is usually a little extra, but they brought her some for free, so not too shabby! Good service and good food!

Then we went to see some of the geothermal activity.  Instead of seeing the tourist ones that are found right outside the town we drove a little while down the road and found a great one, not too busy and just as beautiful!  Orakei Korako was really amazing!  When you get there, there is a little gift shop/cafe where you buy your tickets, then you get on a boat, cross the lake to the geothermal experience.  There is a very nice path, where you walk around for about an hour to two hours.

The colours that the minerals brought forth were truly stunning!

And of course the steam and the smell left a lasting memory as well

After this pretty awesome experience we headed back to town where we awaited our Dinner Adventure for the night.  We had planned on a Maori experience, the other thing Rotorua is well known for.  We spent the night at Mitai Maori Village.  It was really great!  The Maori experience was really interesting, which demonstrations of songs, war dances, and games.  All in all very interesting and well presented!  And then the dinner was delicious!  If anyone is thinking of doing this, without a doubt do it!  So fun!  And we got to see some glow worms in the process as well, not too shabby!

After one more night in Rotorua we headed further South to the Tongariro Alpine Crossing!

New Zealand: The North Island Part 1 (From Aukland to Rotorua)

Well I am writing this when I am now back in Australia, two weeks after the trip is done!  But nonetheless I am writing this as a memory to what has happened and a for all you out there who are interested in traveling to this amazing country!  I will start in the North Island and then work my way down the island and finally go to the South Island.  This blog will be different from my other ones in that I went with my mother.  This means several things:  I did not plan nearly everything and therefore don't remember exactly what tours and hotels we stayed at, this is by no means a backpacking blog (it was a nice trip and definitely was worth it), and finally there will be pictures of both of us (which will be a treat I am sure!)  Let me now start with the first couple days!


Well I flew from Perth to Auckland with a two night stop in Melbourne! I LOVED Melbourne, I would definitely recommend EVERYONE going to this amazing city.  The people were so friendly, the food delicious, and the vibe amazing.  I stayed at a pretty great hostel right in the middle of everything.  It was called United Backpackers and it was great, clean and everyone was friendly!  What more could you ask for in a hostel?  Anyway this is an aside, now back to New Zealand!

I arrived in the Aukland airport in the afternoon.  My mother graciously picked my up and we immediately rented a car, which was the big decision for this trip!  We were driving!!!  This was a big step mostly because we had to drive on the left side of the road.  Definitely an experience.  Although for anyone who is wondering, New Zealand is a great country to do this in.  The roads are mainly two lanes and everyone is friendly.  There are only a couple of major cities and those were easy enough to navigate through, although we didn't do Aukland at all!

Anyway the first night we drove a little while away from the airport and had a nice steak dinner.  We slept at a small motel off the highway which was convenient for our early start the next day.  We were heading to Hobbiton and then Rotorua the next night!

Hobbiton was quite an adventure!

Those of you familiar with the Hobbit Movie or the LOTR must recognize this house!

The amount of detail they put in this little world was amazing!  I simply expected the hobbits to walk out of their hobbit holes and ask us what we were doing here!  Or see them walking around in the gardens picking  fruit.  Being there brought the characters and their lifestyles to life.  You could see why hobbits would be peaceful beings who simply wanted to eat.  When I was walking around there that's what I wanted too! Although this was a little pricey (75 per person)  it was really cool and our guide was very knowledgeable.  She told us lots of stories about the actors and especially Peter Jackson who is definitely a perfectionist!
We finished the day at Hobbiton in the Green Dragon for a nice Apple Cider!

The Bar at the Green Dragon!