Author archive
10 December 2005
The Empire is located in Jerudong, outside the capital Bandar Seri Begawan. We took a visit into the capital today, a place we had visited before in 2001. We walked around the shops, visited the Royal Regalia museum, and from the waterfront took a water taxi to explore Kampong Ayer, the village on stilts. Brunei […]
9 December 2005
Today we largely relaxed and enjoyed the facilities of the hotel. In the evening, we went to Jerudong Park. This is an amusement park built by the Sultan in 1994 as a birthday for his subjects on his fiftieth birthday. Admission is free of charge. Not only that, the Sultan invited Michael Jackson to give […]
8 December 2005
It was five hectic days of admin (setting up electronic billing and automatic payments) and purchasing (furnishing and decoration). We were pleased with what we had achieved before leaving for our short holiday in Brunei. But we had one last important thing to do. I’ve been approached for a contract role at Vodafone, a company […]
2 December 2005
Above: Big plantain banana and a tiny banana, at a friend’s house. To get from Singapore to my hometown in Kuching, there are daily direct flights. But with high departure taxes from Singapore’s Changi Airport and a high fare, it was much cheaper to cross the border to Johor Bahru in Malaysia, and then fly […]
29 November 2005
It seems silly that we’re travelling again only more than a month after returning from Easter Island. But we have just bought an apartment in my hometown Kuching and wanted to check it out. Yeah, it also seems silly to have bought an apartment so far away but it was a good deal and I’d […]
29 November 2005
We arrived into Singapore, the Lion City, at 1830 for a three night stay, which is really only two full days. We stayed with Mum and step-dad, and did what we normally do in Singapore, which are eating and looking for bargains on items which are normally over-priced in New Zealand.
25 October 2005
We landed in Auckland around 1215 and picked up our Avis rental car to take us home. This was the cheapest way of getting home. The car cost us NZD19 including surcharges (so the actual rental would have been a negative amount). It’s sold as a relocation from the airport branch to the city branch […]
24 October 2005
We had about six hours to self-connect for our flight to Auckland departing at 0530. With arrival immigration, luggage claim, check-in and then exit immigration, there was about three hours of actual waiting time. But those three hours were at the horrid hours of the night which meant I was rather sleepy. The flight to Auckland […]
23 October 2005
We have a day to kill today, with our departure at 2200 tonight. Plans for horse-riding and various other options got washed away by the rain. We took it easy, really easy. In fact, we went back to bed after breakfast! After a late lunch around 1400 at Cafe Ra’a (again), we wandered to the […]
22 October 2005
The West Coast Today we set off in a different direction after breakfast. We drove along the west coast of the island. We were on a dirt track rather than a road, which took us to Ahu Tepeu’s small colllection of moais. There were also elliptical and round rock bases of old houses. We didn’t […]