We’ve based ourselves in Auckland during the last week in NZ and it has been a charm! No more worrying about where to park, where to drive and where to sleep. We picked a nice little hostel on Queen Street, it’s cheap and the location is awesome. If you don’t know Auckland, Queen is the main strip where you can visit the Auckland Harbour, the downtown, the Chinatown and the “village”. The hostel is right on top of the hill in Chinatown by the Rainbow quarter. It is within walking distance to all the important places it’s very practical. I feel like I was back in Montreal surrounded by Chinese restaurants, Asian grocery stores and the busy touristy harbour (Old Montreal). The BRSA swimmers have an idea what it’s like: very much like where you stay when you go to Nationals in Montreal.
We returned the camper van and we were served by an angel – the shop was closed (but no one had told us it closes early on Saturday), the clerk was already doing overtime and was on her way out. After a little bit of convincing, this kiwi angel punched back in to close our file and we were done with Sushi. It was a simple little gesture from her end but for us it was a huge stress relief (penalty for late return, parking fee until the shop re-opens three days later...). We will work hard to bank up more karma points because all we had were cashed in.
The hostel also gave us a wicked deal for booking a week+ worth of nights. Things are definitely looking bright for us.
In Auckland, we mainly spent time shopping around for cheap tickets to Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. It was quite a frustrating exercise when the free internet at the library was s-o-s-l-o-o-o-o-w. But then we found out that we did not have to have an onward ticket out of Thailand if we had a Thai visa. Luckily, the Thai consulate is in Auckland (more karma points deducted – Do you trade these points for favours or do you have to accumulate more points when someone does a good deed for you?). Another kiwi angel was waiting for us at the reception, she pulled some strings and we got our visa without any difficulty within 1.5 day. This normally takes 3-4 days and would have made us miss our flight to Bangkok on Feb 8. This time we didn’t use our karma points, we bought her a coffee (was that considered a bribe?). We have had nothing but luck here. Well we did have a bad luck with a dinner that we had to trash out because the ground beef (we say mince beef here) would not get cooked after an hour on the stove... there goes our luxurious omelette dinner.
But the two angels sent for us plus the fun walks around town and the free internet at the library sure made up for it :)
On our first night, we went for a nice walk to the harbour and found out it was Auckland Day. There was a festival, a fare and shows on the schedule. We enjoyed a nice street-performers show. The performers were very funny and talented. And the Harbour was just splendid! It was Saturday night so there were lots of people out in the streets. One thing you see wherever you go are pimped up cars doing rounds of the downtown area on a busy Saturday night. It was so funny when a convoy of about 20 cars lined up and revved their engines enough to rumble the entire downtown core for as long as probably 10 street lights.
Today (Feb 6) is Waitangi Day. It’s an important day in the Maori and kiwi history. There was a free festival and we like free stuff on our trip. We were hoping to catch a Haka performance but no luck we got there too late :( The Haka is the traditional Maori warrior dance, the All Blacks (kiwi rugby team) performs this dance before a game, I’m sure some of you have seen it. We had hangi today, I guess it’s one of their traditional dish here – the food is cooked underground. It was a mixed of chicken, lamb, yam, potatoes and cabbage. But my ultimate culinary highlight in Auckland was a bowl of PHO! You know that Vietnamese noodle soup with raw beef, tendon, flank, meatball, bean sprouts and mint that you see everywhere in Calgary and Montreal... It was so yummy! I used to have at least one of this weekly back in Calgary with Mike. I haven’t had a single one since leaving Canada 3 months ago :) It was the best pho ever, sorry mom :)
Today is Feb 6, tomorrow we’ll kill time at the hostel and at the airport. Early morning on Feb 8 we board the plane for Bangkok. It’s going to be quite a change of scenery and pace from tranquil New Zealand where we called home for the last 6 weeks. Both Gen and I are little bit nervous but excited at the same time. The plan is to call Bangkok home for two weeks before heading up north to Chiang Mai for another two weeks. In March we’ll cross over to Laos and Cambodia for a total of one month before visiting my homeland, Vietnam. It’s going to be fun in Vietnam for the obvious reason of a homecoming for me but also because both my mom and sister are coming to meet us there. It’s a big homecoming for the Diep clan since neither one of us have been back since we fled Vietnam 30 years ago on a small little boat along with other boat people during the first flee of boat people. I’m definitely excited to see my mom & sister and other relatives whom I haven’t met or was too young to remember.
Hang in there you guys, winter is almost over. I hear it had been quite a mild winter, I’m glad. You’ll be wearing your shorts and sandals (or jandals as the kiwi call them) in no time. Take care!
