Category: Uncategorized
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Bangkok to Koh Lanta – Tuesday
My alarm went off as planned and I had a shower and packed up my stuff just in time to get to the hotel lobby at 6:40 where my airport taxi was already waiting for me – great start! I handed back my room key and the receptionist quickly shot upstairs to check I hadn’t…
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Bangkok – Day 2
Penny had an early start for work and was due to go off on a school trip up into northern Bangkok later in the day, so I decided I’d leave with her rather than hang around awkwardly in her flat, and just drop my suitcase at my hotel until I’d be allowed to properly check…
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Bangkok with Penny
After the red-eye flight of nightmares, topped only by the Perth-Sydney flight that almost killed me, I got off the plane in Don Mueang airport only to join another insane queue for immigration control. The queue grew and grew behind us as we were the first scheduled flight of the day and I quickly became…
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Sydney to Bangkok ✈️
We managed to get to Sydney with enough time for me to enjoy all the longest queues in the world, starting with passport control and bag security to enter Australia from New Zealand. I had some goods to declare but they had mercy on me since I wasn’t leaving the airport and promised not to…
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Last day in New Zealand
This one is going to be hard to write… Crucially, because I don’t want to leave. We have all morning together and then I realistically need to be at the airport by 1ish to get my 4pm flight to Sydney and then on to Bangkok. We’d seen that the farmer’s market in Matakana ran from…
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Gardening Day with Anneke – Paremoremo and Orewa
As an incredibly recent and last-minute hire by The Friendly Gardener, I got up, showered and had coffee in time for an 8am departure from Anneke’s house to get to our first job of the day in Orewa. We stopped at Mitre 10 (homeware shop) for a pair of secateurs and gloves and a few…
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Portland, Tawharanui and back to Puhoi
Dogs were being walked and fed in the downstairs part of the house near our rooms quite early in the morning, so after a good night’s sleep we were up and drinking coffee by 7:30am. No rest for the wicked, or certainly no lie-ins! Vanessa made us an amazing coffee with the machine hidden in…
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Kai Iwi Lakes and Portland
Kai Iwi Lakes We’d agreed to hire the kayaks from 10:30am, despite check out being at 11am, but the owner very graciously let us leave our stuff in the accommodation while we went out kayaking for a few hours because she had three properties to clean anyway. We tidied up our stuff ready for when…
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Opononi and Waipoua Forest
This morning, I thought it was about time I dusted off my running trainers and made use of the 88 kilometres of beach at my disposal. I was quite impressed that Strava the running app thought I had the ability to run on water. It certainly felt like sand to me! In fact, the only…
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90 Mile Beach and Cape Reinga
Today’s the day we’d be driving up the beach of ninety miles (Te-Oneroa-a-Tōhē), which actually measures 88 kilometres in length… but Anneke (my knowledgeable local) says that apparently they originally measured it by how long it took for a horse to gallop along it… because that makes total sense… And what’s even stranger is that…
Blonde on a Road Trip 