Nothing’s Familiar

I’ve tried to write about what I have done in my last week in New Zealand for sometime now. I keep on writing things specific to that day, I never finish it, for reasons I can’t remember and when I read it back it just seems pointless too send. So I’ll start from scratch and cover the last week in New Zealand.

After spending Christmas Day alone waiting in a hostel for my bag which never came off my flight down to the South Island, I went out around Christchurch to get my Christmas dinner. You probabbly all had roast turkey, potatoes, sprouts and lots of alcohol. I had a vegetarian turkish kebab, with water. Whilst you were all sat next to the fire, watching TV – I was sat outside in the sun, reading a book, occasionaly pausing to stare at the breakdancers spinning frantically on their hands, before falling painfully on their backs.

Boxing day was similar, but more breakdancers showed up and performed moves which involved straining their backs to near the point of breaking. It was also a little bit wetter.

When Alasdair, his Cousin (Doug) and Girlfriend (Iris) arrived in their rented car to take me away, I was ready to leave. We travelled to the North of the South Island first to go whale spotting and to relax in the natural hot springs. The whales were unable to squeeze us in for that day and the ‘Hammer Springs’ were springs, converted into modern swimming pools. They still stank of sulpher though and they still attracted thousands of fat, thin, young and old tourists. We decided against queing for 1 hour and decided to walk 2 hours to see a piss-poor waterfall instead.

We continued further North to a place called Picton, all I remember from the first night was staring at and confusing a strange looking cat (it turned out to be a possom) and freezing my bottom off in my $12 sleeping bag. The next day I ditched the sleeping bag and purchased a douvet, pillow, ground mat and a bed sheet cover – (which was of course was really useful, seeing as I didn’t have a mattress).

We then kayaked around the Marlborough Sounds, in a yellow kayak, in yellow kayak.

The following day involved lots of driving in the blistering sunshine until we reached a small place called Franz Joseph. Thousands of people cram here to gaze, take photos and climb the huge glacier. Franz is also situated in a rainforest, which is where we camped. The brochure for the campsite said “Take a 5 minute walk to the centre of the village, but not not before you’ve enjoyed our bar and laundry machines’

At night and all morning we heard the sound of rain pounding against our tent. This, unsuprisingly, was the day we were booked onto to do a full day tour of the Glacier. Coincidently, this was also the day Iris and Doug had those work related things to do -you know, one of those “it came to me in the middle of the night, whilst in a rainforest in a tent whilst being pounded with rain” memory sparks. (I think they just wanted to enjoy the laundry machines)

The glacier was cold, slippery and remarkably astonishing. Which, I guess is how you would imagine a huge chunk of ancient ice to be.

Travelling further South to Queenstown, we set up camp next to a gang of juvenille delinquents all from Christchurch. What fun it was to watch them drink beer through funnels and debate whether or not to head-butt their cars.

New Years Eve day was spent watching New Zealand and Sri Lanka at cricket, New Years Eve night involved the same frolics which have existed since fireworks and alcohol have been on earth and New Years Day rained, hard, pretty much until the 4th of January – which is when I left New Zealand.

Yesterday I visited 4 different countries. I started in New Zealand, then flew to Australia, Indonesia and where I am now, Singapore.

I’ll tell you about Singapore tommorrow, or Saturday. It’s only little country to it shouldn’t take up too much of your time.

Good day everyone, thought I best quickly post something, just in case you all spend you Christmas holiday funds paying for detectives to find me. Which I am sure you would all do, in a heartbeat.

I am in New Zealand now, staying at my friend’s cousin’s flat, 13 hours ahead of most of you stationary people and a few hours ahead of the rest of you smelly travellers. However I’m probabbly a lot wetter than the lot of you. Since arriving in New Zealand it’s rained, ridicioulsy heavily, pretty much every day. I’ve also spent a shed load of money travelling a little bit by bus, buying a new camera, bag, paying for dorm rooms, Internet and obviously doing the New Zealand’s world famous extreme sports.

So far I’ve sat on an inner tube, whilst wearing a full on gimp suit, floating down a dark, wet, cave, occasionally jumping down dark waterfalls and staring at glow worms. I’ve also scuba dived in “One of the top Ten dive sites in the world”, The Poor Knights Islands, which boasts a massive group of 2m wide Stingrays (obviously they had been eaten by killer whales just before I got there) and loads of sea slugs which are about 5cm long and full of colour (great….) I walked all day to view some waterfalls, got lost, missed the last bus and started to walk 6km back to my hostel before sticking my thumb out to get a lift, I got picked up after 20 minutes and got taken right to my front door – not bad for my first hitch hiking experience.

Thanks Kiwi dude, however you were.

Back at the hostel I met a crazy Taiwanese girl called Huei Ming, or Jennifer (if you want to remember her name and not pronounce it incorrectly). After I impressed her with my dreadful Chinese she explained she had rented a Rav 4 (a big SUV) and is travelling around New Zealand in it, so, I asked if I could travel with her. She agreed, then I spent the next 4 days driving around beaches, nearly crashing to look at sheep (they don’t have sheep in Taiwan) and basically having a great time. We visited a 90 mile beach, some huge kauri trees and took lots of photos.

Today, back in Auckland, I met up with my friends from England who had been travelling around South America at the same time as me. We had planned on meeting up at various times but kept on changing our plans, so, today we finally met. We had a few beers and agreed to do a bungee jump off the Auckland Harbour bridge together. I quickly popped to an ATM and took out $100, then went to buy a sandwich. The sandwich came to about $7, I opened my wallet and suddenly my heart dropped to my pocket, fell through the hole in my pocket and landed on my freshly flicked, hot cigarette butt on the floor….. Empty wallet.

I ran back to the ATM and sure enough the $100 had gone, I had just left it there, waiting for the picking. I quickly justified the loss of the money by thinking about the various things I hadn’t bought a long the way and just tried to forget about it. I then thought, WAIT..! Perhaps the machine had just eaten it? So, as cunning as a prune I returned to the ATM, withdrew $20 and waited to see what would happen. Surely enough the machine got bored of offering me money and sucked it back, success!

Perhaps the money hadn’t been stolen?

I found the ATM’s owner and explained to them what had happened – “You put another $20 into the machine?” they mocked. I agreed, then they explained they couldn’t do anything about it. I have to contact my bank in England who will put a claim against this bank in New Zealand and after duplicating forms, processing, sending back for queries, filed for pending and buried in soft peat I may get my money back, at some point.

Don’t worry I’m not going to ask you all for money.

However my real name is Ranjig Singabab, son of the Late President of Sierra Lionne. My fathers death has caused many problems for us as his $900,000,00- is locked into his account and we can’t access his funds unless we pay it into an off-sure account, for reasons I can’t explain. If you would accept this money into your account and transfer 80% back to me, you can keep the remaining 20% for your troubles. I hope you will accept this offer, and you will be remember in the hearts of the Sierra Lionne’s people for ever. Please supply me your bank details, pin number and address.

Thanks,

Oh and have a good Christmas!