The guy was looking at last night’s party pictures on his iPhone. “Whaaaat thhhhhheeeee fuuuuuuuuuuuuu…..” Hangover giggles dropped him to the deck. “Duuuuuuude, that – that chick – that chick – ohhhhh myyyyyy gooooooooood!” He passed the phone to his buddy, who started laughing. The two girls at the table leaned over for a look. The phone [...]
After that somewhat disastrous false-birthday morning celebration, a refreshing swim was in order. Our bungalow’s at the south end of Sairee Beach, which is, semi-intentionally, somewhat removed from the backpacker area. This is where the families and the 30+ stay, and where they swim. It’s also, unofficially, the part where it’s OK for the occasional [...]
Ko Tao Sairee Beach faces west, and for sunsets that’s best, But come morning it’s deep in the shade. But a coffee milkshake, Make the Farang* awake! Yet at noon, she’s still in the shade Come 2PM, and the sun, like a hen, lay’s an egg on westerner’s head. And so he must plop, And [...]
The alarm went off at the unholy hour of 6AM. We managed to lift our legs and drag them to the dive-shop. A lot of divers were standing around outside, everything feeling… disorganized. Steve, the shaggy English manager of the divemasters, filtered through. “Has anyone seen Luke? Hey, has anyone seen a man named Luke? [...]
On one of our Ko Tao layabout days, we had a very difficult decision to make. “Are you going for a swim?” I asked Antje. “Because I am, in a few minutes.” “You can go.” A few minutes later I was still there, and she asked why. “Just relaxing.” Ten minutes later I hadn’t managed [...]
Or, “Globalization, it’s effect us.” “If oil go down,” a Russian said, “Russia, it has nothing. The last 20 years, everything supported from oil. If there no more money from oil –” “I don’t think oil prices are going down, mate,” an Australian said. “Yes, but if Europe stops using so much, and America stops [...]
Approaching us was a large yellow t-shirt with a short, unhappy woman inside. The dreaded trip had arrived. “Ticket,” she demanded. We gave three tickets. “Recee.” Antje had the receipt. Without further ado she turned and walked to Khaosan road. I asked Antje if we were supposed to follow. Antje had no idea. I turned [...]
It was evening, and Ethos was starting to fill. Behind us, an older, caucasian expat was on his cellphone. “I mean that’s what they’re paying for, that’s what they wanna see, isn’t it? Just say something like, ‘That’s tiger shit,’ and let everyone take a picture.” At this he went quiet, listening to the response. [...]
For all the restaurant misses, once in a while there’s a big ol’ stinkin home run. I’d been looking for an adaptor the day before and found a place called “Ethos”. The name, if anything, was a turn off, but the inside had floor pillows and cross-legged eating. Had the food been bad it would [...]
After a gross, lame breakfast, it was time for our first massage. With our backs cracked and legs walked upon, Antje then went to the airport to pick up our friend, Inga. Peter met me at Khaosan road. I met Peter at UW, and more recently he visited Antje I in Cologne. It was a [...]
We’d forgotten to reserve seats, landing us right in the middle of the airplane. Dumb. Very dumb on such a long flight. Suddenly Antje jumped up, totally alert. “I think no one’s sitting there!” Wait! What! Where? There! The row in front of us was free! In a flash we were there, and as the [...]
It was time to check out of hell. None of the other campers were headed back to Warkworth, so I asked the female owner once again about the taxi. It came to 40 euros, she guessed. She still recommended hitching. There was now a tremendous hill involved this situation, one we hadn’t had to deal [...]
Burger rage: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10778643
Back when some plans were in the process of bursting (thanks again Airjet!), I called a campground in Leigh. This was the day after the Milford Track, and we’d spent most of that day – up ’til 4PM – getting to a point, plan-wise, where I could even make this call. And… success! The two-night [...]
Some drawing at our favorite coffee place (Vudu :) in Queenstown.
It was straight back to Queenstown, with a pit-stop at a kiosk/convenience store. Having been away from that stuff for four days, it didn’t really appeal to me… until Antje came back with two ice cream bars, three bags of chips, and two ginger ales. Whoa! And YUUUUU-MMMMY! In Queenstown we drank too much coffee, [...]
The first person to fall asleep that final night was an older man who’d been invisible somehow the entire trek. He was sleeping on his back, and slowly, but perceptibly, his breathing went from the standard human variety to that of a gasping guppy. As I was trying to remember exactly how sleep apnea worked, [...]
“….I’ve been up here for seven years now, and I love it, I absolutely love it. Every day I don’t feel older, I feel younger, and I feel like this is my home, and not the ‘outside’, as I call it now….” It was the kind of speech that keeps coming back to you after [...]
We’d heard horror stories about sleeping in the bunkrooms, and in preparation, Antje had bought a pack of long earplugs presumably made for aircraft carriers. When inserted at maximum depth and given a corkscrew turn, they almost touch brain. Still, we were awoken the first morning by a man speaking in full volume to his [...]
Having walked three-miles, we arrived at Clinton hut, the first on the Milford Track. Across from our bunks were two Swedes, brothers Hakan and Bengt. I asked Bengt, who’d been living in Sydney for seven years, if he missed home. “No, not really,” he said. His brother was visiting for three weeks, and that was [...]
When New Year’s Day came around a week and a half ago, the newspapers here did what most dailies do on January 1st. They ran those “Year in Review” pages with lots and lots of pictures. Overall, 2011 was a year of misery for New Zealand. Almost 200 people died in the earthquakes, dozens of [...]
“If a girl’s cheating on me, that hits me hard. I don’t know why, but if a girl’s cheating on me, that really hits me hard. That breaks my heart. If a girl’s cheating on me, that really breaks my heart. But I don’t know, maybe I can’t love any girl.” It turns out he’s [...]
Back in our sort of crappy hostel with a million-dollar view, a hostel conversation was well under way. A Dutch guy and his girlfriend had befriended an English guy. The English guy played in a band. The Dutch guy was intrigued. “Do you think it is possible that there is an objective standard for being [...]
Bordering our own room was the dorm room, and through the walls, the sounds of hostel-urchins could be heard. As for the mattresses, they were new 27 years ago, and now should be given to charity. The shared bathrooms were also pretty grotey. The good news was, the view from the deck is of the [...]
I did something wrong during the booking process, and at about 60% of the hostels we check into, a variation of the following happens: “Hi. We should have a reservation under Dillon?” “Yep, let’s see here. Dillon, Dillon, Dillon…. Hm. Sure you’re on here somewhere, just… let’s see. Hm. It loooooooks like…. Is there any [...]
The plan had been to spend our last day in Wanaka doing nothing, absolutely nothing, just sitting on the beach, doing nothing. The sun was more than accommodating to that idea. When a breeze picked up, though, everything changed. Further down, and next to the pile of (abhorrent) kayaks, stood the proud masts of two, [...]
On day two we kayaked, and if there’s one thing I truly hate, it’s kayaking. I don’t know why, and I wish I could hide it better, but at one point Antje burst out laughing from behind at the anger that was apparently exhibited in my paddle strokes. I was a “grumpy fool,” she said. [...]
Robbie and Rebecca are friends of ours from Düsseldorf. Recently we’ve had many things in common: Not only did they, too, tie the knot this summer, as a human male and a human female, but they, too, chose New Zealand for their honeymoon, and they, too, postponed their trip to coincide with a Kiwi summer. [...]
To clarify: A Flat White is a latté with no foam. A Fluffy is steamed milk with a as much foam as possible. Kids adore it, and it gets ‘em hooked on café culture at a young age. A Long Black is a very very strong Americano, and a Short Black is an Americano. Still, [...]
(For those who haven’t googled the answer, see Antje’s drawing below.) From stargazing it was Twizel. The scenery was alpine, and at one point Antje put an earbud in my ear. With Sigur Ros, the trip was a documentary. Twizel’s a town of 1,000 with a shopping center and a grocery store that, one fine [...]
NZ-themed question of the day: A Flat White, a Fluffy, a Long Black, and a Short Black are all kinds of what in New Zealand? (Whoever guesses correctly gets an NZ-themed gift next time we see them. Whoever googles the answer goes straight to hell.)
The bus had been idling for five minutes; it was now five minutes late. In each of the bus driver’s three apologies, his frustration increased. He was a short, tough, bowling ball of a man, and when at last he saw his prey, he swung the door open and barked, “Get your butt on the [...]
At 8AM sharp, with neither food nor coffee in our bellies, Billy the northern Irishman pulled up in his bus-van. Billy was a mechanic most his life, but after visiting his sister in New Zealand, Billy packed his bags. “This is a dream job, really,” he said. “Every day feels like I’m on holiday.” Halfway [...]
Akoroa and Hector’s Dolphin The bus-ride out of Christchurch was sight-seeing + nostalgia + a heavy scoop of melancholy. The driver spoke in the tone of someone showing the exact spot where his house burned down. “Do you see that building right there? That one’s got to come down. The one on the corner comes [...]
“Now, a lot of you may be tempted to yell ‘Thar she blows!’” our guide said. “But please don’t do that. Not because it scares the whales or anything, but because it’s wrong.” The ship, a powerboat catamaran with about 100 seats inside, cruised up and down the waves. It was sea-sicky. “Today they’re all [...]
In last week’s New Zealand Herald, there was a political cartoon that showed Santa giving a middle-aged man a tricycle. Two of the wheels show the names of the majority/minority parties in NZ, and the third “wheel”, which is in fact a rectangle, has “Maori party” written on it. “You said you wanted stability,” Santa [...]
At around 2:45, more than two hours into bus ride, our driver flipped on the radio. Tick-by-tick, he increased the volume. ‘Mr. Jones” was playing, and I thought, ‘Funny bus driver. Must be a Counting Crows fan.’ When the song ended, the news cut in: “Still getting reports from an earthquake in Christchurch at around [...]
It’s usually about two minutes minutes before the bus arrives that the second-guessing begins. By that point a few dilapidated hotels, hostels, and B & Bs have rolled by, and it’s easy to think, ‘Mine could be one of those.’ And it could. But, with luck and a little research, our hostels HADN’T been one [...]
Inside, Antje and the server did that thing that seems to happen most often to Germans, where they speak to each other in English for a while before realizing both speak German natively. In this case our server was Swiss-German, just like the proprietor, and he guided us through the five wines. Wines are a [...]
At 10 in the morning, our lady hostel-owner gave us two bikes, a map, and enough “make sure to stop here!” advice to last well more than the 7 hours allotted. Her advice was a re-hash of what her husband had told me the evening before. He’s the fourth Watson to run Watson’s Way Backpackers, [...]
A few observations. Many cafes are closed on Sundays. Most restaurants/cafes/bars haven’t discovered faucets that combine hot and cold water to make medium water. So the options are, left: scald, or right: bacteria. Tap-water is free at restaurants, and comes in a big glass bottle. If you pull out a map, a Kiwi will help [...]
Zealandia is surrounded by a 8.4km/5-mile, reinforced mesh fence with a curved steel lip on top to keep out cats, rats, possums, and curious boys. The entry includes two sets of 20-foot-tall gates with a mandatory bag-check in between. There they screen for – of all things – mice. Antje and I laughed, and after [...]
4th act … Why don’t you put your drinks down right now because I’m – about – to drop – a news – BOMBSHELL. News just in from the Cappedi Coast Paper. Apparently chickens LIKE listening to country music. [no reaction] Well, just like everybody in this room, I was gobsmacked. To think that chickens [...]
On stage, a large Samoan-looking man was just finishing his act. … OK, last thing. I’ve got a few jokes. ‘What do you call a punishment for coughing.’ ‘A coffee [cough-fee]‘ ‘What did the whale say to the Japanese whaler who’d just asked the whale to his birthday party?’ ‘Sorry I can’t make it. I [...]
Being forced to pound a hot, ‘take-away’, 16 oz. latte – ”No hot beverages!” – before a five-hour bus-ride is the opposite of a good start, especially when the bus has no bathroom. Fortunately there was an extended bathroom break in the middle. A thin, middle-aged Kiwi walked up to me. “Muggy out here, in’t it.” In [...]
Daan from Holland Booked or spontaneous? Yeah, wherever the wind blows me. I mean I have some general ideas of the highlights, what I want to visit. I meet people, they offer me something, um, I say yes or I say no. Mostly traveling or mostly working? Traveling. Whenever I go somewhere and I like [...]
O seaside Napier, With street names like Shakespeare, Dickens, Tennyson, and Milton You inspire your guests, to write poetry, and think loftily – unless they’re work-travel backpackers, mostly from Germany, who hand-roll ciggies, and drink canned beer, after a hard day’s work, picking apples, whilst they daydream, with dirty hands, of future fornication. Your Art [...]
Worried we’d miss the alarm, I woke up at 3:30 and cat-napped to 5:00. When Antje woke up at 5:00, her parched lips held the same unspoken question as mine. ‘Why the bottle of wine?’ Our legs were still tired from running + biking. Stupid. Still, we were the first off the bus into the [...]
It was 5:55AM, and according to the bus’s rearview mirror, a 40-year-old, female passenger now had her pointer-finger inside her nose. It was deep. When the desired article didn’t budge, she changed tactics: it was time to burrow in with the thumb. From the security of the outer nostril her pointer-finger provided extra leverage. The [...]
It was time for the next adventure, and at 12:30 a red bus with balded tires screeched around the corner toward our hostel. A big bearded Maori of the mountains yelled down at us. “YOU RAFTING?” “Yeah, sledging.” “WHERE YOU FROM?” “America!” “ALRIGHT AMERICA, TAKE A SEAT!” There were eight others on the bus, most [...]
On the way out of the “Top 10 Holiday Park” in Waitomo – goodbye, quiet park! – around 30, 11-year-old boy-scouts were sitting at picnic tables. Two scout leaders stood in front. “OK boys. Now, who can name three creatures that can be found in the caves?” One boy raised his hand. “Glowworms?” “Yes, that’s [...]
When did you know you’d go? About a year ago I told my boss I was quitting, at which point she said, “OK, well, thanks for telling me, and uh, you know, get back to me at some point when you know exactly when your last day’s gonna be.” And uh, she came back to [...]
Just before 10AM the Black Water Rafting Co. van pulled up, driven by Niel, an Englishman from outside Manchester. He’s a good conversationalist and a calmly competent driver, but what really draws your attention at first is the fact that his entire body is tattooed, including his throat and the palm of his right hand. [...]
The Intercity Bus pulled in to Auckland at 7:35 AM, twenty minutes late. When he’d loaded the bags into the hatches, our cheerful, white-bearded bus driver jumped inside. “Sorry I’m late, everyone. Made a few mistakes this morning. First one was waking up (wink wink).” As the bus pulled out, the microphone crackled on. “OK [...]
Auckland feels like Vancouver. There’s water all around, it’s very familiar somehow, but there’s still a good deal of dissociation in the details. It also gets 50ml of rain each December, according to our guidebook, and on Sunday a fair amount of that jar was filled. We jogged right through it, had a delicious breakfast [...]
Antje tried an ATM – and was rejected. She tried a second ATM – and was rejected. She tried a third, and fourth, etcetera, ad nauseum, and at that point we had a very big “uh oh” moment. Our entire travel budget was in her account. Everything we had for our trip was on that card. What [...]
In the boarding room of the airport it all became real. There were a whole lot of utterances that suddenly made no sense to us. Though we were still in Frankfurt, the world had gone Chinese. Somewhere in there a loud, fleshy American walked into the room (part of a small group), and, after collapsing [...]
It’s OK for rich people to go bananas in at Globetrotter. It’s OK for people with an American Express Gold card to buy rad stuff that’s from the future at REI. But for backpackers or bobos or the insecure middle class, these places can wipe an entire city off your travel map. What they tap [...]
Everyone knows the feeling. You walk in with good intentions. You walk in meaning to buy hiking boots. After trying a few pairs on, though, you discover the hunting knife you’ve always dreamed of. It could easily kill a bear or cut down a tree, and it’s shiny enough to work as a mirror if [...]
For those who’ve just bumbled across our page, this is the story: Hong Kong for a day, New Zealand for 45, Two weeks in Thailand, And a cool, Seattle finish. Antje and I would like to thank all family and friends, including those who couldn’t attend the wedding, for making our honeymoon this honeymoon. That’s a respectable [...]
Dearest reader, dearest guests… hereby we invite you to follow our daily foibles on our trip through New Zealand, Thailand and Seattle on DAYBLES.com We will spoil you with our drawings & writing impressions and travel candy. We wish you a pleasant trip with us. We are very delighted if you`ll follow us through comments, [...]
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