Previous travels
Tuesday, February 28th, 2006Long before the days of blogging and digital camera’s I did travel a bit more, but not a lot of online record of this. So a very short sum up of previous travels:
Indonesia: 1991, 1994, 1997-1998
My mum developed a fascination with Indonesia long before I was around. We didn’t do the normal kiwi camping thing instead my mum bundled my 6year old self up on my first overseas trip to Lombok, Indonesia. After a few more trips back, a wedding and a half indonesian sister we ended up moving there in 98 where my mum and sister stayed for 2 years but me being an ignorant 11 year old wanting to hang out with my friends came back to NZ after a few months, with a couple of visits back. Lombok from what I remember is a beautiful island yet to be over-run with tourists like Bali, I’ve heard now lots of places we used to go are now gone and I imagine that it is much busier now. However I still have great memories of spending all day on the beach, making friends with the pineapple girls and short term tourists, catching crabs and bemo’s along the winding streets. Waking up every morning to those damn roosters and the mosque in the village behind us. Hopefully will get back there sometime soon and see how it has changed.
England/France 2003
A month long school trip to Europe with 11 other students. A taste ofEurope on a short and organised trip, fun for the time but ensured I definitely am not interested in tours. We hung out in southern England in Christchurch staying with our host students who had come to stay with us in NZ two year previously. We spent 2 weeks in France travelling around the north, seeing some cool villages, then stayed in Paris-beautiful as always, also a day trip to eurodisney which I have little-to-no interest in. Great fun being overseas with all your friends and cool oppertunity at school. Unlike other trips I had lots of money with me so we spent a lot of time shopping….
Zambia 2004
7 of us headed off to Zambia for 5 weeks on a missions trip through church, a great bunch of people, all being my good firends. We had an awesome time, I think the group made it all the better. We worked with a missions organisation in Kubwe where we stayed out in villages running church type services and talking to people during the day out in the middle of nowhere, amazing singing as the sun went down and goat curry and rat for dinner….We then headed up to Mansa and stayed with families while helping at outreaches every night. Then we headed over to Mukinge hospital again, seemingly in the middle of nowhere where we painted staff houses for a couple of weeks. Great bunch of people working in the hospital and cool to visit some our oour church missionaries who work there. A few days down in Livingston being tourists, over to Botswana for a safari and back up to the capital Lusaka for the long journey home.
Fiji 2005
An unexpected trip with my Dad and Di, a break from NZ winter for 2 weeks over to Fiji, stayed on some island (Kadavu I think it was called) with no roads at an isolated ‘resort’ owned by Fijians, who cooked us amazing food every meal. We walked over to the nearby village for tours around their school and homes and Kava drinking ceremonies-which is not a good time, tastes like muddy water. We hired a car for the last few days on the main island and drove around staying at a typical fijian resort, amazing snorkeling, beautiful beaches, but the tourism industry is out of control and it really feels like the country has sold its soul to tourism. The place we spent most of time in was cool but the main tourist spots were a bit strange, too many people on package holidays with no interactive with any Fijians other than drivers and hotel workers. I’m sure there are areas of Fiji which are still away from all of that and hopefully they stay that way otherwise Fijian culture will only exist to be packaged up and sold to tourists.
then my blog kicks in…
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