Published on
11th June, 2010 in
Travel.
Last year my birthday surprise was a horse ride on the beach, this year Bhav blew that out of the water with a trip to the Cook Islands!
Try to picture my surprise on my face when Bhav appeared on the entrance security camera on a very cold and wet Friday afternoon and told me we were going to the airport. It soon became obvious that everyone was in on it and before long we were sat in the airport waiting for our flight to Auckland. I wasn’t expecting much for my birthday and would gladly have settled on a weekend in Auckland but much more was to come.
I had my first birthday in Auckland where we had a great lunch cooked by Bhav’s mum in her new house. The strange thing about the International Date Line is that when travelling east you get the same day again. The Cook Islands, whilst only 4 hours away in a plane are essentially yesterday compared to New Zealand. We left in the evening of my birthday and arrived in the early morning of it. We spent my second birthday of the year (who says the Queen is the only one who gets two?!) on the south pacific island of Rarotonga; exploring the market and “Capital”, relaxing on the beach and snorkelling/swimming in the crystal clear water.
On our second day in paradise we flew to the coral atoll of Aitutaki, regarded by many as one of the most beautiful places in the world and has to a large extent avoided mass tourism. We rented a scooter to get around the island and fell off it on the first day. To explore the lagoon we rented a kayak and also enjoyed a cruise and snorkelling trip taken by Teking, a local tour operator.
We had a great time in the Cook Islands, one that came to an end all to quickly. We left on the 4th of June and arrived on the 6th. We might have had two 29th’s but we’re also in the bizarre position of having never had a Saturday 5th June 2010. Well worth the swap if you ask me.
Paradise
Fire Dancing, part of the cultural show we enjoyed one night over dinner purely by chance
Continue reading ‘Birthday trip’
Bhav and I went on another fishing trip (I don’t actually eat fish), this being our third sea fishing adventure. We were in the capable hands of Allan Anderson owner of Karitane Charters and had a mostly great time, although we both felt ill on the way back when Allan’s gutting and cutting up the fish.
This time we were catching groper, probably the largest fish we’ve seen and about 15kg in weight. We were only able to catch one or two each so as to not over fish them but considering we’ve still got fish in the deep freeze from the last trip and that we gave over half of our catch to friends we’re still doing well for a supply of food!
Our Catch
Continue reading ‘Groper Fishing’
Queenstown is the adventure capital of the world and one of the premier tourist destinations in New Zealand. Over the Easter Weekend we, together with a school friend of Bhav’s, drove from Dunedin and had a great time there.
The drive in itself was fun. We took the scenic route that locals apparently take stopping off to visit a cheese factory, drive through vineyards (and stop off for a free wine tasting) before watching people jump off an old bridge at the site where the “sport” of bungy jumping was invented.
We spent a day and a night in Queenstown, enjoying the spectacular scenery. Easter Weekend as might be expected is a busy time and the streets were packed with people. The queue at the cable car up one of the hills seemed long but moved quickly and we were soon at the top enjoying the views. We could have been up and down in the time it would have taken Bhav to climb up if she had stuck to her plan.
On the drive back towards Dunedin we took a detour to Arrowtown, a historic ex-gold mining town and then to another beautiful setting in Wanaka (which just so happened to be hosting the 4th largest Air Show in the world). After enjoying the view, which was occasionally punctuated with low flying aircraft, we set off on the long ride home.
Lake Wakatipu
Continue reading ‘Easter Weekend Trip to Queenstown, Wanaka and Arrowtown’
Being back home over Christmas and New Year and with the recent cold snap in the UK there was my first opportunity to witness something which my dad has described many times over the years; walking on the Lake of Menteith.
Lets get this out of the way early on, lakes in Scotland are usually called lochs but this one (which I’d always thought was the only lake in Scotland) is called a lake. It isn’t very deep and we were told in Geography at school that it is a kettle lake. It has three small islands, the most famous being Inchmahome, the location of a Priory where Mary Queen of Scots took refuge for a few weeks in 1547. I’ve been to Inchmahome Priory before as a kid and it is a local tourist attraction maintained by Historic Scotland who usually provide a boat service over to the island from the strangely titled Port of Menteith village.
The lake hasn’t frozen over since 1979 but when it does to a depth of at least 7 inches an outdoor curling tournament called The Bonspiel or the Grand Match is held on the loch. Unfortunately the event was cancelled but at least Dad and I got the opportunity to walk over to two of the islands, Inchmahome and the nearby Inch Talla with it’s ruins of a castle usually unreachable to the public.
It was a strange feeling to walk on the ice. Any concerns of it cracking were quickly allayed and throughout our time on the ice we saw some stable cracks but never heard any new ones. In places there was a covering of snow which made it easier to walk on without slipping and sliding around. We wore the wrong footwear though, we could have been over to the island in minutes if we’d brought ice skates.
The frozen lake
Mum and Dad standing on the ice
Continue reading ‘Walking on the Lake of Menteith’
Before I arrived back in the UK I had the pleasure of going to the Dunedin Scottish Festival, a week long series of events celebrating Scottish culture and local peoples’ roots. New Zealand is good like that. When the French were in town for the rugby they still made an effort to welcome their guests and make them feel at home, even with them being their competitors at the national game. One of the first things people will say about Dunedin when describing it to visitors is about it’s Scottish heritage and I’ve met a lot of people that talk fondly of some relative that came over.
Dunedin, Gaelic for Edinburgh has the rough road layout and all the familiar street names of its name sake, it has its own bagpiper that can often be found outside the Scottish Shop on George Street, Irn Bru, haggis and a variety of Scottish things can even be bought in the local supermarket, the tourists often taking pictures of the statue of Robert Burns in the centre of town. It all makes me feel very welcome and proud of my culture.
Bhav, my partner had enjoyed a ceilidh last year held during the festival and while we missed that this year we at least attended the opening ceremony, highland games and the St Andrews Day lunch.
Being on the opposite side of the world never felt more like home.
Me with the Mayor, Peter Chin at the Dunedin Highland Games
Mass pipers at the Highland Games
Recommending useful software is a common feature of technology blogs, but I thought I’d share with you some programs that I’ve come to rely on when using my Mac. These are general helpful applications, which can help people regardless of what they primarily use their computer for. It’s easy to go down the geek route, but here is a list of easy to install easy to use applications to enhance your computing experience.
Growl (free) and 
OmniGrowl (free)
Growl (free) gives you notifications on your screen when something notable happens. It’s able to notify you of events that originate in other apps, like Firefox and with OmniGrowl (free) you can extend that functionality to notifying you of the weather, birthdays, flights arriving, etc.
Continue reading ‘Mac software I can’t live without’
Recently I’ve been starting up a business with a group of guys here in Dunedin who already own a clothing company and want to diversify their business. We’ve been working together on the new venture for a while, entering competitions, writing business plans, the usual things and with the launch of our website threadjungle.com, I thought it was high time I mentioned it on my blog.
So what is threadjungle? It’s an ecommerce platform where users can set up their own store to sell customised items without having to worry about inventory, order fulfilment, customer service, paying for an ecommerce website, etc; we’ll take care of all of that for them. Oh, and the best bit is to open up and run a store is free and always will be.
We’re (or should I say I’m) still in the process of writing the code but we already recruiting testers to open stores, our first being RetroKiwi. So unlike Twitter, we should actually have some money coming in!
I was already really looking forward to going to Malaysia and I was promised an experience completely different from my previous Kampong (village) life in Sarawak. We were in Malaysia on business, pitching travel software to one of the most important tourism boards in the country, seeing what future Bhav’s company could have there and visiting her family.
We spent the majority of out time in Kota Kinabalu (KK to the locals) with Bhav’s Dad but visited Kuala Lumpur (KL, the capital) and Bhav’s extended family for a weekend too. I’ve never really been to KK before, my previous experience was getting a taxi from the international to domestic terminals before the recent building work. The city is quite spread out with a few hills separating residential parts. The waterfront area is the main location for tourists but even then KK isn’t a very attractive city and doesn’t have much in the way of tourist attractions. The Sabah Museum and Heritage Village is probably the main attraction. The museum is poorly laid out and quite dull but the heritage village outside is much better. Like its counterpart in Kuching, Sarawak (the other Malaysian state on the island of Borneo) the heritage village is a collection of buildings in the traditional style of the various tribal groups.
We enjoyed our time in Malaysia, and who knows, maybe it’ll be the next destination after New Zealand.
Me, Bhav and her Dad with KK behind us
Continue reading ‘Malaysia 09′
I don’t know why almost everyone outside of Auckland hates the city so much, I guess it’s the townie/country rivalry, but I really liked Auckland. It probably helped that the weather was so nice and consistently sunny. We were very lucky to be able to use Bhavs Mums apartment in the city centre and have her take us around and out for meals. It was great to finally meet all of Bhavs Auckland based family and friends too.
The first morning we went out to Mission Bay for brunch, a beautiful drive to a really nice part of town. I also visited the Sky Tower (you can’t visit Auckland and not see the tallest building in the southern hemisphere, apparently), the War Memorial Museum, Devonport, Mount Victoria, New Market, my first kiwi bbq and One Tree Hill.
From Auckland it was on to Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia via Brunei.
Auckland from Bastion Point
Continue reading ‘Auckland’
We only had a few hours in BSB this time (I’ve been there countless times before due to having lived only a few miles away over the Malaysian border) and nothing has changed, not that I expected anything new. It was good to escape the airport for a few hours, get some lunch, retrace paths once taken and visit BSB’s only new attraction; the Kampong Ayer Cultural & Tourism Gallery. Kampong Ayer, once described by a European explorer as the “Venice of the East”, is a collection of somewhat rundown houses and other buildings built on stilts in the bay. I’ve been there before of course (and taken the sunset boat tour round it and everything) but it was still fun to go over on one of the little speedboats and see the new museum.
Our detour to Brunei was only short but was our first taste of things to come; the food, the heat and the way of life. It’s funny how you fall so quickly back into things.
Kampong Ayer, Brunei
Continue reading ‘Brunei’
