I think the weather is finally starting to change in Hanoi - I had to wear a cardigan today! Sadly all week the skies were lovely and blue, but now it's the weekend it's just dull and grey. Still, at least the change in weather should help me get ready for the UK - it definitely won't be t-shirt weather there.  2 weeks til I'm flying back home!!

On Tuesday it was Vietnamese Teacher's Day and from my 3 different classes I got given 2 scarves, some nail polish and a massive bunch of flowers:

I've included my hand so you can see just how big they are.  Pretty awesome!!

Last month the family came out to visit and we travelled around Vietnam. It was a lovely holiday and I got to go to lots of new places in Vietnam. We spent the first couple of days in Hanoi then got the overnight train to Sapa. It was nicer than the train to Hue last time but still not a pleasant experience. It was worth it though to spend some time up in the north of Vietnam. We arrived in Lao Cai ridiculously early in the day and met our tour guide then headed to Sapa to have breakfast. After that we went for a walk to a waterfall in the mountains, then we had the rest of the day to ourselves. We went for a walk to the lake in Sapa - it was much nicer than the lakes in Hanoi! Not nearly so many pieces of rubbish and dead fish floating on the lake!

The next day we went back to Lao Cai and up to the border with China, then we went to Bac Ha. We missed the big market but it was still a nice place to spend some time. We went for a walk in the hills around the town and as it was time for the rice harvest there was lots to see. We walked past fields and went to a small village, and had a chance to go into a local house to see how the local rice wine is made.

It was a really nice walk in a pretty place, and then in the evening we went to a nice restaurant for a Vietnamese feast. Bac Ha is pretty cool!

The day after that we set off on a long drive to Ha Giang via windy mountain roads. We went past lots more rice fields in the mountains on dodgy roads, and at one point got stuck in the mud and had to be pushed out by a bunch of passing bikers.

It was a long journey until eventually we arrived at the eco lodge we were staying at. It was a bit grey and damp and a bit of a strange place, but I suppose it could have been worse! It was in the middle of nowhere with nothing much to do other than walks in the surrounding hills but as I was having issues with my feet I couldn't go on the walk so it was a bit boring.

Ha Giang was our last stop on the tour of the north - after that we went back to Hanoi for another couple of nights there. I went for Japanese food with my sister, and we all spent some time in the Old Quarter. We also went to Derry's, the pub by my apartment that I used to go to all the time but haven't been to for ages.

After some time in Hanoi we flew to Phu Quoc, an island in the south of Vietnam that's actually closer to Cambodia than Vietnam. We had to go via HCMC, and on the bus from the terminal to the plane the driver had his pet chick on the dashboard next to him!

When we first got to Phu Quoc it was raining so we didn't really do much other than hang out at the resort. The next day we headed into the town for a couple of hours. The weather was a bit grim at first:

but as the morning progressed the rain cleared away. We crossed the river and walked to the sea where there is a lighthouse, then went back into the town and found the Cao Dai temple. The guy there offered to take us up to the top of the temple to see the views over the town and that was quite nice.

We also hired motorbikes one day to drive around part of the island but as my motorbike was a bit crap we didn't get very far. Other than a trip to the night market, we spent the rest of the time at the resort. It was quite a nice place with huts close to the beach and a couple of bar/restaurants. It also had its own beach so we spent some time in the sun once the rain had cleared. It's also a good place for a nice sunset! 

This is the hut we were staying in. Other than the river that runs underneath when it's raining, it was a nice place to stay.

The last stop in Vietnam was HCMC. We stayed in a very nice hotel with a rooftop swimming pool. On the first evening there we went to the tall tower that you can see in the picture below. The city looks much nicer from up high at night! 

As we'd all been to HCMC before and seen the sights we didn't do much there other than go to the tower and the market, and walk around the city a bit. On the last night we had dinner at a nice Thai restaurant then headed to the airport for our flight. I left the family behind at Bangkok and spent a couple of days there doing some shopping. Found a shopping centre there that has themed floors, one of which was London so there were loads of sights like below scattered all around the floor.

I also took advantage of a classy cinema and supermarkets full of goodies from the UK, and found a pub for a roast dinner on Sunday before flying back to Hanoi. A nice end to a nice holiday!

Friday was the last day of term and my class took me out for Chè after the lesson. I'm still trying to decide if I like it or not - some seem quite nice but others are very strange. It is made with some kind of liquid produced from things like rice or taro (?) that is then sweetened and then a whole bunch of other stuff is added to it. Some of it works well (things like jellies, coconut or caramel) but things like kidney beans or corn seem like such a strange thing to put into a sweet dessert!

This is what it looks like

We have it sometimes at work for special occasions and they tend to get the more basic versions with just two or three ingredients but my students ordered one for me that had a little bit of everything in it. With each mouthful I was changing my opinion about it as one mouthful was nice with coconut and jelly and then the next one would have lychee and kidney bean which is not something that should ever go together! I might have to take the family for some when they come and visit and see what their opinion is.

Yesterday I met a friend for a drink in the evening and we decided to get dinner from the restaurant next door and I rediscovered my love for La Lot so i also plan to take the family there for another fix. The version we had yesterday was chicken, but it is also available in beef and it is AWESOME!

You could even make it for yourself...

One more week at work then it's holiday time!!!!

I shouldn't neglect this so much! I shall try to make more of an effort to write this, even if I'm not doing anything exciting! 

As always work is chugging along. My contract has 24 hours teaching out of my 40 hour week so I spend most of my time teaching, planning or marking. One of my classes consists of several students I taught on their last course and they were so excited to see me again which was nice. They even called up several of the students who hadn't signed up for the next course and convinced them to come back to study as I was their teacher which made me feel nice and competent as a teacher! That class is super lively and is an evening class so the time flies by which is great, as a sucky class in the evening can really make the class feel like it lasts forever. Another of my classes has some old students I taught a few terms ago who are super enthusiastic and love to have a good chat in their lessons so they're quite fun. Unfortunately my last class is a bit lame but I only see them for 2 days so it's OK. I think they're glad to see the back of me after two days as I'm mean and confiscate mobiles if they use them in class and by the end of most lessons I have a pile of phones on my desk that they're all looking longingly at and desperate to get their hands on! 

Other than work I don't do a whole lot else. There is a nice rooftop bar close to work that we go to for drinks after work sometimes which is fun, and then the weekends never consist of all that much. Now it isn't so hot I'm going out and about a little more but it is pretty bog standard stuff. Today, however, on my way into the Old Quarter I encountered a rare Hanoian creature - a polite bus driver! I was running to the bus stop to try and get there before the bus but I didn't make it. I fully expected him to slam the doors shut and drive away with a big smile on his face as I've seen that happen on many occasions when I've been waiting at a bus stop and other people have been running for a bus. However this guy pulled over and waited for me and even said hello when I got on the bus! Unheard of! Never fear, Hanoian customer service returned to its normal standard at the post office. They tried to convince me that my nice padded good quality envelope was no good and it would instead the better to put the stuff into a random bit of cardboard and tape it up at the sides. It then took three of them to check all the paperwork I had to fill out and each one wanted it completed in a different way, then one of them was adamant I had to put my passport number on it despite the fact I've never had to do this in the nearly 4 years of sending stuff home. I finally got it all sorted and then went to a stationery shop to buy pens and the crap service continued. It is impossible to just pick up the pens you want and go and pay for them. Instead you have to try and wave someone over to take them out of the display case and fill in a receipt that you then take to another cashier who takes your money and gives you another receipt. What is particularly dumb about this is that the pen cabinet is literally right next to the checkout. There is no need for the multiple pieces of paper, especially as each piece must be obtained from a sour faced woman clearly resenting being at work on a Sunday night.

After that I headed to my fave cafe for some coconut cake because it is awesome, then tried out a new spa for a foot massage. I do like a good foot massage and this place did a nice one with a coffee scrub so I imagine I'll be returning many times in the coming months. I may even take the family there when they arrive in a couple of weeks. These last few weeks I've just been looking forward to my holiday as it has been aaaaages since my last one. My parents are coming out with my sister and we have a couple of days before going up to the mountains, and then to an island in the south. They're both palces I've not been to before and it's been a while since I've been to a new place in Vietnam so I'm looking forward to that. After that I have a couple of days in Bangkok to go shopping. I'm so excited to finally be able to buy books, shoes and pants!!

Summer in Hanoi is the monsoon season, but this year seems particularly monsoony. For the last few weeks there has been rain like this:

several times a week. This makes getting to and from work endless amounts of fun, especially at night. People are even more mental on the roads in the rain, apparently believing that if you move fast enough the rain will somehow magically avoid you. In super heavy rain it is hard to even keep your eyes open while riding along on a motorbike as the rain relentlessly smashes into your eyeballs so I find myself driving along slowly, squinting and trying to shield my eyes with one hand. I've taken to wearing sunglasses in the day so I look quite stupid driving along wearing shades when the sun is nowhere to be seen, but it provides some protection from the monster raindrops. Sadly sunnies are no good at night as the poor lighting in some parts of town means that when wearing sunglasses it is impossible to see anything at all.

Then there is the delightful rain gear that must be worn if you want to stay dry. I have a couple of plastic ponchos but they both smell kinda plasticky so when you get to your destination and take off the poncho there is a faint whiff of plastic that lingers in your clothes. It is still hot despite the rain so you sweat underneath the plastic, and if it hasn't had time to dry off since your last drenching it is particularly grim to put a wet poncho on. As your feet are exposed while riding and often have to be put down into puddles at intersections it is never a good idea to wear nice shoes so plastic flip flops are a must which means changing shoes repeatedly throughout the day. Any time you forget to take rain shoes with you the rain will fall so quickly it floods which means your poor shoes are going to get soaked. If you're unfortunate enough to ride through water overflowing from sewage canals your shoes are fit only for the bin, unless you want to smell like sewage every time you wear them after that.

It it a delightful time of year! As a result, I haven't been doing a whole lot other than camping out where there is air con.

My students gave me a weird dehydrated banana thing -

Turned it over to see that there has been an element of creativity used when translating the only ingredient of pure bananas from Dai Hoang into English:

Sadly I didn't take a photo of the banana from Dai Hoang that is afflicted with pure stupidity. It kinda looked like a wrinkly brown severed finger. It really didn't taste good!

I spent my time off for Labour Day and Liberation Day in Hanoi as flights to anywhere exciting were expensive. A week or two before the holiday the weather was great in Hanoi - no longer cold and grey and depressing but not yet so hot you break a sweat just by getting out of bed. Sadly by the holiday it had changed to superheated summer weather making you feel like you are living inside an oven. This made it harder to motivate myself to do much but I tried to get out and do some things.

I went for a walk around the two lakes by my house - I've discovered a road along the edge of West Lake which is much quieter than the one I used to drive along, and after driving along it a few times a week to get to the gym I decided to go and walk a little way around the lake as it is quite pretty. As it was a holiday no one was about so it was pretty peaceful!

I also went out into the countryside with Tuan. We drove down to the south of Hanoi where they are doing a lot of building in the hope of making it the new business centre of the city. The tallest building in Vietnam has been built there and we drove past that, though after places like New York, tall buildings in Hanoi don't seem all that tall! We headed out of the city to the south - they have just opened a brand new highway which all the cars and trucks use leaving the old road free for motorbikes so it wasn't too terrifying a journey as all the speeding trucks were nowhere near us. We went to a place called Sai Son to go to the temple there. After looking around the temple we went to sit on the covered bridge by the lake where lots of people were swimming, and then a procession to another temple for some ceremony started up so we went round to watch that. Once the procession finished we drove back to Hanoi as the sun was setting - it looks very pretty setting over the rice fields with buffalo wandering around. It made a nice change to be in the countryside rather than the city and I got to see something a bit different so it was a nice afternoon.

Other than that I didn't do too much with my time off. I attempted to bake cookies, but they didn't turn out to be quite as awesome as I was expecting - I think the little table top oven isn't great for baking as I've not had much luck with my attempts to bake bread either. However, we took some when we went to Sai Son and Tuan ended up sharing them with the people sitting on the bridge with us and they seemed to enjoy them!

As I was putting the photos onto my computer I came across some from March - Tuan had never eaten Japanese food so I took him to my favourite Japanese restaurant for his birthday. It seems there are a couple of nice pictures from that night so here they are:

Far too much wasabi in the soy sauce! This made my eyes water:

Full set of pics here.

I have a 5 day weekend coming up so maybe I'll do something and write about it here!

A month after Tet I'll finally pull my finger out and write about it!

As I'm now on a full time teaching contract at work I only got 4 days holiday for Tet as opposed to the 2 weeks I've had in previous years but I took a day off to get a full week and it was paid holiday so I can't argue with that too much. I had to go to work at the start of the Tet break along with the other full time staff but as the school was closed to students that meant there wasn't much to do. We spent most of the time doing a whole lot of not much but we did manage to edit some new exams.

I then had my week off for Tet and flew to Hoi An to get a bit of warmth and get out of Hanoi. Hanoi airport is a disaster just before Tet and the flight was full of poeple carrying branches and flowers with them, because apparently trees and flowers only grow in Hanoi, so the journey wasn't that pleasant. Landed at Danang airport to find that they've finally finished the new airport terminal there so you no longer go through what seems like a relic of the war when getting off the plane and instead get to go through a fully functioning modern airport! Was picked up at the airport and taken to my hotel in Hoi An and after checking in I went into the centre to find something to eat and found that the whole town had lanterns on display for Tet.



I spent some time walking by the river along as it's pretty year round, but even prettier at Tet with all the lanterns on display and candles floating down the river.



The next day was new year's eve so the town was gearing up for the celebrations. In the evening there were a couple of stages set up along with a bunch of games, the most popular being ones that involved that social evil of gambling! So popular were they that the electricity to them was switched off at 11 to stop them taking attention away from what was happening on the stage! The entertainment was a whole bunch of singing and dancing broken up with speeches



and the grand finale of everyone coming out on stage as some sparkler type fireworks were set off across the stage. The fireworks burnt through whatever had been used to string them across the stage and fell onto all the equipment along the edge of the stage, narrowly missing the performers. Go Vietnam! At midnight (well, a couple of minutes before. The guy in charge of reading time clearly isn't very good at it) there was a count down and then a bunch of fireworks.



They were much better than the fireworks in Hanoi last year, presumably because they had more open space and didn't have to worry about tall trees and buildings getting in the way.

The next day, new year's day, was pretty quiet as most businesses were shut. The spa across the road was still open though so I spent half a day there and then went into town to spend the rest of the day sitting in a cafe. As Hoi An is a tourist town there were still a fair few cafes and restaurants open on new year's day making it a much better choice than Hanoi where pretty much everything shuts. Over the next few days of the new year the town got busier again as more and more businesses reopened and bus loads full of tourists from Saigon showed up. By the end of the week pretty much everything was open again so I finally went to some tailors and got some skirts made. I spent the rest of the week by the pool at the hotel, visiting an assortment of cafes for food that is hard to find in Hanoi, both Vietnamese and Western, and walking around the surrounding islands where you can find peace a quiet, a rare thing in Hanoi! Also took in some pretty sunsets (of course!!)



It was a nice relaxing week. As I've been to Hoi An several times before I didn't feel guilty about doing nothing much while there and it is a nice small town so it makes a nice change to Hanoi. There are loads of nice restaurants there, including the only Italian restaurant I've found in Vietnam that knows what a real spaghetti carbonara is all about, and some cheap Vietnamese restaurants selling Cau Lau, one of my favourite Vietnamese dishes and something that is pretty much impossible to find in Hanoi. I ate well that week!

Pics here

I'm so lazy when it comes to writing on this thing now!! So the last thing I wrote about was my trip to New Zealand. A couple of weeks after I returned to Hanoi my Grandad died so I had an unplanned trip back to the UK to go to the funeral. While it was a horrible reason to be coming home, it was nice to spend a week and a half back in the UK.

I was lucky enough to find a flight back to the UK at such short notice so close to Christmas that wasn't ridiculously expensive, so this time I got to sample the delights of Qatar Airways. Most other airlines were well over a grand, some several thousand pounds a ticket, or were sold out completely. There were one or two that were tediously long and required 36+ hours to get from Hanoi to London. Qatar was a pretty good deal though and although I had to go via Bangkok and Doha I didn't have to spend long in either place. As an added bonus they let you onto the plane at Noi Bai as soon as its ready so instead of having to spend ages on uncomfortable metal chairs in the worlds lamest international departure lounge you get to go onto the plane and start watching movies a good hour before you depart. The plane to Bangkok went on to Doha but instead of kicking you off the plane at BKK you get to stay on and once you've identified your bags you can continue watching your movie while the ground staff come on and clean around you which is much nicer than having to fanny about getting off the plane just to sit next to it for a bit before getting back on. See LAX, it can be done!! There is no need to put people into a little room next to their plane when they fly from London to Auckland!

Once I got to Heathrow I had the speediest ever exit from the airport as there were no queues for the biometric passport barriers so I managed to get a relatively early bus to Reading to get a train to Swindon. Decided to get a taxi from there to my house as it had all been a bit last minute and so I really wasn't prepared for the cold - after shivering at Reading station in my flip flops I decided to give waiting at the bus station for who knows how long a miss! Once back in Bassett I walked into the town in an attempt to not give in to the temptation of having a nana nap and discovered that Costa Coffee have moved into Bassett. As I walked past I saw one of my friends inside so I went in and had a chat in the warm. It was nice to catch up with an old school friend! That evening I was treated to a roast which hands down beat the one I'd had in Auckland and was all the incentive I needed to not give into the jet lag too early!

Spent most of my time at home doing a bit of shopping and eating pub grub with the family, but I also took a couple of trips to meet people. I went to London for the day and met Nina in the evening for dinner after spending the day doing some shopping and checking out all the Christmas stuff that was going on. Hanoi doesn't really go all out for Christmas so it was nice to see some fancy lights and pretty Christmas trees. I went to Hyde Park but the icy wind blowing across it meant I didn't stay there long. I went to Covent Garden which always goes overboard on the festive spirit and I also went to Somerset House. Was killing time waiting for Nina in the evening and managed to time a walk across Waterloo Bridge as the sun was going down which was rather lovely.



I also went to Bath to meet Kyle and Liz. It was freezing but at least I wasn't wearing flip flips this time! We went to a few shops and then went for lunch at a buffet place. It was actually pretty good, plus they had Yorkshire puddings on offer!!! They also had an ice cream station where you could choose your flavour of ice cream and then get it mixed with smashed up malteasers. Awesome! After lunch we stayed warm in Cafe Nero for a while before braving the cold a little more for some photos complete with Asian posing.



My friend Mat also came to visit Bassett and we went for an lovely pub lunch at one of the pubs in Bassett. I'd been there for drinks before but never to eat but it was a pretty nice meal! When we left the pub it had started to snow so we headed to Avebury. Sadly the snow had stopped by the time we got there but we still had a nice walk round some of the stones and paid a visit to the National Trust shop. As it was so cold there weren't many other people getting in the way and cluttering up the place!



As my sister came home for the weekend to go to the funeral we were put in charge of decorating the christmas tree - I don't think we did too bad a job!



It's certainly nicer than my pokey little store bought Christmas tree I picked up in Hanoi on Xmas Eve.



The day after the funeral I had to fly back to Vietnam as I didn't want to be cheeky and push my manager's kindness too far by taking off more time than necessary. It really sucked to get back to Vietnam on the 21st Dec, especially as I arrived late at night and had to be at work at 7am the next morning. In the end though Christmas wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be even though it's not such a big deal here. Some people from work were going for dinner on Xmas eve and I joined them. It was actually quite a nice evening - the buffet was one that had been on offer since Thanksgiving so it had some rather strange non-Christmassy food like macaroni cheese but there was lots of turkey and stuffing and so many types of potato so it wasn't all bad. There was also sangria and beer and we spent a few hours there before trying to find another place for drinks afterwards. We went to a shisha bar someone recommended and they were closing up but when they saw the size of our group they decided to reopen and even agreed to turn off the loud techno music they had been playing! On Christmas day I didn't do a whole lot, but as I'd been able to bring back some gifts from the UK and I had some Christmas movies I managed to entertain myself. In the evening I made a baby Xmas dinner and my friend Tuan joined me before going to the airport to pick up some tourists. He bought with him the biggest bunch of flowers I've ever seen in my life! I made him watch the Snowman and he seemed to enjoy it, and also fed him Christmas candy after dinner. All in all Christmas wasn't too bad!



Here are the photos

Time to write about New Zealand!!

As expected the journey over there was rather lame. 12 hours in Seoul isn't an exciting way to spend a day, especially as it was all spent in the airport (it seemed like too much hard work to go out end explore the city!) but at least it is a big airport with free wifi all over. Also the seats aren't too bad for sleeping on - they aren't metal and there are no annoying armrest. If you set yourself up by gate 17 (the gate for flights to someplace in China) it's pretty quiet for a couple of hours, then you get to watch the entertaining sight of Chinese people trying to get onto their plane, then it all goes quiet again for another couple of hours!
Arrived in Auckland and the parents were there to meet me, then we walked round to the domestic terminal for our (separate) flights to Wellington and some western food. Managed to stay awake until the end of the day by indulging in some shopping and then going for dinner a little way away from our hotel.

The next day we went for breakfast at a cafe close to the hotel that did awesome eggs benedict (continuing with the theme of Western food!) then we went up the cable car to the gardens.



We walked back down through all the assorted parts of the gardens. Of course I had to make a daisy chain!



At the bottom we walked past the Beehive to the waterfront and walked along to Te Papa where we spent a couple of hours. It's an awesome museum!

The next day we went across to the South Island on the Interislander. It was a bit of a crappy day to start with but as we got closer to the South Island the sun came out and it was quite pretty sailing through the sounds to get to Picton. Once there we picked up the hire car and then went for some lunch in the town. After lunch we drove to Blenheim but instead of driving down the man highway we went along the coastal road. It was a pretty dodge road in places, but there were some beaches/bays along the way to stop at and also this view:



Pretty awesome! In Blenheim there was much excitement in the supermarket as I found lots of exciting food that isn't available in VN like crumpets and L&P. In Blenheim we went to a couple of wineries, a hydroponic strawberry farm, a chocolate shop and the domain where we were mobbed by ducks while eating our lunch.

Next up was Kaikoura. The guy at the motel in Blenheim suggested a couple of places for us to stop on the drive. The first was a place called Kekerengu where we stopped for a drink at the cafe and a I spent a couple of minutes on the windswept beach before I got too cold and had to head back to the cafe to warm up by the fire. The next stop was Ohau Point where you can walk along next to a stream for a few minutes to arrive at a waterfall where heaps of seal pups are swimming around and playing on the rocks. Totally worth walking through a damp wet forest to get to! Once arriving in Kaikoura I got myself an attractive bright pink coat to try and stay warm and dry as the 2 stops on the way to Kaikoura had shown me that my little Laos hoodie wasn't gonna be enough to get me through the crap south island weather. Don't be fooled by how blue it looks in the picture below - it was freezing cold!



We spent that afternoon doing a whole lot of not much as our whale watching was cancelled due to wind. We walked from our motel into the centre for a spot of shopping and drove out to the seal peninsula but as the tide was in there weren't many seals around compared to last time I went there. In the evening we went into the centre again for dinner at a pub and had the slowest service in the world - we waited aaaaaaaaaaaaages for a simple steak. That evening was very clear which meant it was freezing, but it was very pretty on the beach with the moon reflected in the sea.



The next day was sunny enough to see the top of the mountains and the sea looked a lot smoother but whale watching was still cancelled.



As a result, we got on with our long long drive to Hokitika via Arthur's Pass (after a quick stop at the fudge shop). We got a little lost on the edge of Christchurch but it wasn't too bad a journey. There was some pretty scenery driving across to the other side of the country and we stopped at a few lakes/viewpoints/random walks as well as the cafe in Arthur's Pass surrounded by Keas.

We only stayed in Hokitika for one night and that was probably enough! On the first night we tried to go out for dinner but the two restaurants in the place were full so we ended up at the chippy and then we went to the glow worm dell on the edge of town. It is a couple of minutes walk from the road to a bunch of rocks covered in glow worms. Maybe not as impressive as the Waitomo glow worms, but free! The next day we spent the morning in the town and found a surprisingly large number of things to do. We went to the museum which had an exhibition all about Whitebait fishing as well as the standard collection of random objects found in all museums in small town New Zealand. Also went to a few of the shops - lots of greenstone and sheepskin stuff for sale, plus another small fudge shop - and to the kiwi centre. We got there in time for eel feeding time and saw the sea life that they have there before going to see the kiwis. After that we had lunch then drove to Franz Josef and our dodgy motel. After dinner we went out to Okarito beach, about 1/2 hour away from Franz. It's a bit of a drive to get there and it was freezing cold, but there was a really pretty sunset!!



The next day was a pretty crap day weatherwise but thankfully I had my attractive pink coat to get me through the day.



We went to Franz Josef glacier and walked to the face of the glacier and back as well as to some reflective lake pool that doesn't really reflect much on a cloudy day then went back to the hostel to attempt to warm up and eat some lunch. After lunch we went to Fox Glacier and walked to the face of that one too.



The next day we had another long drive, this time to Wanaka. We stopped at Lake Matheson and walked round to the viewpoint where you are supposed to be able to see the mountains reflected in the lake but there were clouds over the top of the mountain and ripples on the surface of the lake from the wind. It was still a nice enough view tho so it was worth stopping. The next stop was Knight's Point overlooking the coast and then we stopped at some place by a river for lunch where I was eaten alive by sandflies. We also stopped at a waterfall and then we got to the top of Lake Wanaka and stopped at a couple of places along the way to take pretty pictures like this:



We stopped at Puzzling World and I managed to convince mum to come into the illusion rooms with me. Eventually we arrived in Wanaka and had a bit of an issue finding the motel but once we did it was a very nice place to stay for a couple of days. We went into the town and had dinner in time to watch the sunset over the mountains which was pretty cool.



The next day was a bit cold and grey again so we went for a walk along the Clutha River then spent some time in the town. The next day it was all pretty again so we went to the lake before leaving to drive to Queenstown.



We stopped in Cromwell on the way as well as at a random hydroelectric place and the AJ Hackett bungy.




We had a very nice place to stay in Queenstown a little way away from the centre so lots of walking to and from town happened over the next few days. Of course we went up the gondola and we also went jet boating as well as spending some time in the centre and taking a trip to Arrowtown.









Perhaps the best thing we did in Queenstown was to go out to Milford Sound by plane. It was teeny tiny plane for just a few people and we flew out of Queenstown over the snowy mountains...



...out as far as the coast where the plane then came in to fly over Milford Sound before landing. The weather was much better than the last time I was there and it was very pretty, plus there were penguins!!!!!





Left the parents at Queenstown and flew up to Auckland. Didn't do much the day I arrived, but I did get taken for a roast which always goes down well with me, even if it was a strange takeaway roast served in a box! The next day I walked around the Viaduct area that had been all tarted up for the Rugby World Cup then I got a ferry to Devonport. Tried to find the bookshop I used to go to all the time but it seems to have gone :o( Did find another bookshop though so I was happy. I had to take a trip to the chocolate shop to get some gifts and then after lunch I walked to Cheltenham Beach. Walked along the beach to North Head and went to the little beach there before walking around for some awesome views of Auckland.





No trip to Auckland is complete (for me) without a trip up the Skytower. The weather wasn't great but it ended up being a more impressive sunset than I thought it would be.



Didn't do much with the rest of my time in Auckland - lots of shopping and aimless wandering - until my last day when Liz set me up with instructions as to where I should go. I obeyed and went to Parnell to the rose gardens and Parnell Rise, and in the evening I went down to the waterfront.





I managed to get to go to some places that I missed last time on the South Island and the weather was so much better than before in most places so it was a nice trip with the parents.

All the photos are here