Author archive
29 October 2021
City Wall on the Greek side Having retired around 1930 last night and with it being daytime in New Zealand, my body clock woke me up around 0300. I couldn’t sleep anymore and sat up reading, writing and chatting. After breakfast, I took a walk around the old city’s wall, starting around 0820 at the […]
28 October 2021
Crossing to the Turkish side I had set the alarm for 0630 because if I woke up later, there’s a risk of feeling like death warmed up, due to the time in New Zealand. The hotel buffet breakfast at 0730 was good with the usual selection of Mediterranean or Middle Eastern stuff (eg. tomatoes, cucumber, […]
27 October 2021
Continuing to Dubai We landed at Kuala Lumpur at midnight, from Auckland, and had a 1h35 turnaround before continuing to Dubai. Emirates don’t appear to have traffic rights for bringing passengers from Auckland to KL. We remained on board during cleaning, catering, security and refuel, after which the joining passengers boarded. Airlines talk about the […]
26 October 2021
On edge at check-in A week after making my bookings, the time has come for me to depart. This is very unlike the old style of travel when I may have made bookings up to 14 months in advance on AirAsia. The 1810 departure on Emirates meant that I had time to fit in a […]
19 October 2021
A journey born out of spite, as the world learns to live with Covid-19 I didn’t get to see Mum before she passed away a month ago and also missed her funeral. I do still want to get back to my hometown Kuching but airfares are ridiculously high. I would have paid the high price […]
27 September 2021
Ridiculously high airfares I had been wanting to go see Mum in Malaysian Borneo for a while now. But the need to do hotel quarantine there and also upon return to New Zealand was a deterrent. Apart from that, it seemed best to delay the trip until her helper finishes up in December and I’d […]
11 July 2021
Covid-19 travel restriction changes While in Queensland, we were puzzled that the restrictions surrounding our return to New Zealand were the same as that from New South Wales which was suffering badly from Covid-19. In contrast Queensland was having no or just one case a day. I had been expecting the New Zealand government to […]
10 July 2021
Above: Taking off from Brisbane, we fly over North Stradbroke Island which I ironically visited at the beginning of this trip. Checking in at Cairns Airport We both woke around 0300 after about 5h30 of sleep. We were halfway getting ready when our alarm sounded at 0320. We couldn’t get into the locked hostel kitchen […]
9 July 2021
Chilling We started the day with a long waterfront walk towards the south then the north. After that, we kept close to base as Kim was on the verge of sealing a deal for the purchase of a boat with his friend. After a light lunch of Vietnamese sandwiches, we took a swim in the […]
8 July 2021
Back to Cairns We departed Port Douglas at 0800 driving towards Cairns. After filling up near our destination, Kim dropped me and our luggage off near our accommodation at 0900 while he returned the wreck which we had rented. In Cairns, we’re booked for three nights at Global Backpackers in a private ensuite room. With […]