New photos

I’ve also had chance to go through my plethora of Thailand photos and upload some of the one’s I never got a chance to whilst I was on the road. So you can check those bad boys out as well. I intend to do the same with my photos from the other countries I went to in due course.

For a start I didn’t have a job to go back to. I knew I’d have to look for one, which is always a pain, but even more so for me because web design jobs aren’t exactly 10 a penny around here. The most sobering thing is the slowing down of my pace of life. I’m sure some people thought I was just relaxing on beaches for five months, but in fact I was always up to something, always had somewhere to go next, always had plans to make. There was also the prospect of not knowing what to expect every day, or who I’d meet. I’m afraid coming back to the ‘real world’ makes me realise how predictable it is.

It’s been great meeting back up with family and friends. The question everyone seems to ask me is Where was your favourite place? and that’s actually the most difficult one to answer. In Thailand I had some amazing experiences round the River Kwai and Erawan Falls, and meeting up with Chris for the full moon party and learning to scuba dive was unreal. Australia was a non-stop laugh up the east coast, I’ve got memories of Fraser Island, scuba diving on the Barrier Reef and sailing through the Whitsundays that will stay with me forever. And in New Zealand I met an abundance of people who became really good mates as we toured through the beautiful South Island and onto the North with the Kiwi Experience. I suppose if I was made to choose between them I’d have to go for Thailand because as well as the fun times it had the most interesting culture to observe.

As good as it’s been catching up with everyone, after a couple of weeks I find myself wanting to hit the road again. I thought going away for five months would get that travelling ambition out of my system. In reality it has only planted a deeper seed. I found that the more of the world I got to see, the more of it I realised was still to see. I’d talk to people who were heading on to Fiji, the Cook Islands, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, the Americas or Africa, and I’d think I’d love to go there. If you’re reading this whilst considering travelling yourself, please, please just do it. Life’s too short to worry about what-if’s. Be aware though that travelling isn’t all smooth sailing. There will be some hard times and some testing times but they only serve to increase your accomplishment of the whole experience. In fact, if I’d have known beforehand about all the bad things that happened in those five months, it would almost certainly have persuaded me not to take the plunge. Yet all the good times I had so far outweighed the bad that I wouldn’t consider changing my decision for anything.

Now, of course, I have to get used to normal life again. Travelling around the world is all well and good but you can’t possibly sustain that kind of living on a long-term basis. Or can you?

Oduba was my next visit, a man-made island where you’ll actually find a beach. It’ no Bondi or Nai Thon but it makes a change from skyscraper after skyscraper. After getting lost for about 20 minutes I found the famous Toyota complex. It’s a big, extremely modern building where if you want you can push a button and have automated elevators present a brand new car to you ready for test driving. Also inside they had a showcase of their GT cars and the Toyota F1, along with Gran Turismo gaming simulators and other such modern facilities. Another train took me round to the Fuji Television building, a massive, impressive looking structure overlooking the Rainbow Bridge. It was getting on for 4pm and my final stop for the day was the hectic metropolis of Shinjuku. This place is as modern as you like with huge shopping malls, endless neon lights and skyscrapers so tall I never got far enough away from them to fit them into camera shot. The train station here is one of the busiest in the world handling over two million people a day. My first must-see was Kabuki-cho, Shinjuku’s red light district. Very little of it is geared for foreigners so unfortunately I don’t have any sordid tales to tell. I was looking for a sports bar I’d heard of that might be replaying the England game but I somehow got off-track and wandered about a mile in the opposite direction. About 45 minutes and some very tired legs later I found the place and ordered a well deserved pint of Stella Artois, along with some kind of chicken and beansprout dinner, which was tasty. The England game wasn’t on but I got them to put it on and chilled out there for a couple of hours.

I was a little tipsy upon entering Shinjuku Station and struggled to work out which train I needed to catch. I knew I couldn’t get directly back to Asakusa, I’d have at least one transfer. There was so many platforms and lines and people and trains that in the end I just kind of hopped on one to see where it took me. I ended up at a smaller station with less things to confuse me so I got back on the right track and two more trains later I was back at Asakusa. I must’ve boarded two dozen trains since I got to Tokyo and I haven’t once been confident I was getting on the right one, but I always have done. Haven’t gone wrong once. If I am going to get it wrong though it’s bound to happen this morning when I need to get to Narita airport to catch my flight back home. So, mum, dad, if I don’t appear out of the arrivals gate tonight it’s because I’m still going round in circles on Tokyo’s extensive rail network.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I didn’t have enough time here. You can’t experience a culture in three days. And although I’ve enjoyed Tokyo, I can’t help but be on a downer because it’s the very end of my trip. Thoughts about re-entering the ‘real world’ have clouded my mind and taken the emphasis off of what I’m here for. But as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. I look forward to seeing everybody I’ve missed in the last five months. I’ll post some kind of evaluation of my travels when I’m home. Until then, sayonara!

I dumped my bags in my room and headed out, but not before changing into shorts and a pair of flip-flops. The weather was overcast but very humid and sticky. Certainly not combat and trainers conditions. I took a train to Ueno and walked around the huge public park, taking in a couple of temples, the lake and, at the far end, Tokyo National Museum. It’s Japan’s largest museum and houses thousands of artefacts from art to pottery, acient sculptures to legendary katana swords and everything in between. I strolled around here for a while and then had a bit of a browse around the shops. In typical Japanese cuisine fashion, I had KFC for lunch and a McDonalds for dinner. The problem is, all the restaurants have Japanese-only menus. And although there are plenty of English signs around the place I haven’t met many English speakers. Whenever I go into a shop I can see the person on the checkout start to panic as I join the queue to be served. And even though they know you can’t speak any Japanese they’ll talk to you in it anyway. You just have to sort of pretend you’re at least getting the gist of what they’re saying.

I found my way back to the hostel (after getting lost having walked across the wrong bridge) and chilled out for a while, watching TV and talking to some of the other people staying there. I seem to be the only one who can’t speak any Japanese. I decided on an early night so I could get up for the England - Sweden game at 4am. With no alarm, miraculously I woke up at 3.45am and scrambled some clothes together. The only place nearby showing the game was a fair walk away so I made haste and found the little underground bar just after 4am. And they weren’t showing the game. So I walked all the way back feeling a little wounded. I checked the score on BBC Online and went back to bed, as I had a big day ahead planned.

Monday was my last day in New Zealand. I got up about 9am, had a shower and packed my backpack ready for checkout at 10am. I went along to the internet room to book a place to stay when I arrive in Tokyo. I also printed off an itinerary of a few places to visit during my brief stop in Japan. In the afternoon, JJ, Miles, Lara and I went to the top of the Sky Tower, the tallest in the southern hemisphere, for some panoramic views of New Zealand’s most populated city. I decided to use my final hour or so in Auckland to get my hair cut. I’ve only had it cut once since the end of January and that was back in Singapore so I thought I’d get tidied up for my return home. I searched the city centre high and low before eventually finding a shop with ‘hairdressing’ written in neon in the window so I thought this is as good a place as any. I sat straight down in the chair and the woman started going at the piece before I’d even had chance to tell her what I wanted. Not that that was much use as she spoke about seven words of English. I think she was Scandinavian. She took about an hour and kept talking to herself in her own language which was odd. Every so often I’d be sure she was finished but then she’d spot a strand of hair which was half a millimetre longer than the others, say ‘Ha! Gotcha!‘ and carry on snipping. Oh well at least I don’t look like I’ve got a mop sat on my head anymore.

It was then time to say my goodbyes, board the shuttle bus to the airport and catch my 6pm flight. New Zealand really exceeded my expectations. I’ve had a great time here and met so many people along the way, in just a three week period. Most of the people I’ve been with have got more time in NZ and are heading further north today to the Bay of Islands. I wish I’d planned in more time myself so I could join them up there but unfortunately it wasn’t to be. It’s time for me to leave the Land of the Long White Cloud for new horizons. The Land of the Rising Sun.

Next stop was Taupo. Taupo is the place where everyone tells you to do your skydive because it’s the cheapest place in New Zealand (and pretty much the world.) Again, I could only spend one night here but there would be an opportunity late afternoon or early in the morning before my next bus to do it. That’s if the weather was fine. Of course, it wasn’t. The afternoon was too cloudy, and these types of planes aren’t allowed to fly through cloud. I rescheduled for the morning at 7.30am but woke up to more cloud, so had to give up and catch my bus at 9am. Annoyingly the cloud all cleared into a beautiful, sunny day just as our bus started leaving Taupo for Rotorua. There were a few of us that were still keen to skydive even though the price in Rotorua was double that in Taupo. It’s a measly 50 to jump from 12,000ft in Taupo and 100 in Rotorua. But the sun was shining so we did it anyway. Five of us went along but the plane could only take pairs up so I went up solo. The plane took off and began to ascend quite rapidly. It climbs 1,000ft about every two minutes so it’s not long before the red ‘JUMP’ light starts flashing and you find the tandem guy you’re attached to starts edging towards the exit. Then before you know it your legs are dangling over the edge and the guy throws you both out into the clouds. The initial rush is immense. Once you get a tap on the shoulder you can spread your arms out and you’re hurtling downwards at over 200kph and the g-force is making your face screw up like a bulldog’s. After about 40 seconds freefall the guy pulls the parachute, at which point you are yanked up as the resistance suddenly increases. Following this you simply float down to the landing zone taking in the views all around, in this case the 24 lakes that surround Rotorua. It was an amazing experience and I’m glad I didn’t pass it up before leaving New Zealand. The whole thing was filmed (I had my own personal cameraman..) so I have a DVD to show everyone on my return.

Since leaving most of the guys I was hanging around with back in Wellington my new bus has a lot of the faces I began my Kiwi Experience with so we’re all in a room together and spent last night at the Tamaki Mauri Village. It’s a makeshift village set up in woodland just outside Rotorua built to the specifications of an old Mauri living quarters. There was a good four busloads in attendance and we were all made to stand outside at first while the Mauri warriors came out to intimidate us with a ‘challenge of peace’. They danced around with spears, grunting and sticking their tongues out etc until they lay down a peace offering which has to be accepted by one of us nominated as a chief for the night. Once that’s over you get a Powhiri, or welcome dance, and you can enter the village. We wandered around the impressive village where proper Mauri’s were busy doing weaponry displays, chanting or playing musical instruments. We then entered a big meeting house where traditional greeting ceremonies and song and dance was performed for us, including the Haka you see the All Blacks do before a Rugby game. Following this was a massive buffet, all cooked under the earth on hot rocks for over three hours. Before we eat the food is blessed with a prayer and then it’s time to dig in. It was a truly delicious feast. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a backpacker at an all-you-can-eat buffet before but my plate was piled up like a stack of Jenga. I had chicken, beef, lamb, potatoes, stuffing, vegetables and gravy, followed by steamed pudding with custard, pavlova and then a fruit salad. Money’s worth springs to mind here. There was an official closing ceremony with speeches and song before we all borded our buses back into town. It was a good night, it all seemed very genuine and authentic and we all came away with a little more knowledge about the Mauri culture. Which was nice.

On my first night everyone from our bus met up for a good old piss up. We terrorised a few bars in town including the World Bar where they serve all their cocktails in tea pots. Wednesday was a bit of a recovery day, although Pete, Ed, Joe and I found time in the afternoon to play a spot of frisbee golf. It was a new concept to me but the idea is simple: you ‘tea-off’ from designated spots, in this case it was certain rocks and trees in Queenstown’s botanic gardens. The ‘hole’ is just a tree which has been marked and you keep throwing the frisbee until you hit the tree. The match was unfortunately cut short due to bad light.

On Thursday we all did the Canyon Swing which is notorious amongst the activities here. It’s a kind of bungee jump and giant swing all in one. There’s a platform mounted to a cliff 109m above the Shotover River. A rope is attached to you - thank buggery - and you jump off, plunging yourself into a 60m freefall into the canyon before the ropes tighten and swing you into a giant 200m arc at a blistering 150kph. You swing there back and forth above the river for a while before they winch you back up to the platform. I did it twice because it was only an extra $39 to do a second jump. For my first, I did the Superman dive, turning in to a flip during the freefall. For my second attempt I did what the Canyon Swing crew call the ‘Elvis Cutaway’. They attach the rope and winch you out off the platform so you’re suspended in mid-air, facing the sky. When they pull the pin, which releases the extra rope keeping you suspended, you fall (rather unexpectedly) down with the walls of the canyon racing past your head, at which point it’s new-pair-of-underpants-time. On their ’scary scale’ my first jump was a 3/5 and the Elvis was a 5.5. I was actually more scared the first time because I had to physically jump  off the ledge myself, rather than being released by the staff. Peering over to what would be certain death if you weren’t strapped to a bungee rope and then making the decision to leap off is not easy - or natural. It goes against your most predominant human instinct. However, once I realised I wasn’t dead it was one of the funnest things I’ve ever done. Extreme!!

On Friday I was supposed to be going on a day trip to Milford Sound. It’s one of the most beautiful parts of New Zealand and the trip, worth $160, was given to me for nothing as a bonus when I booked the Kiwi Experience back in Christchurch. None of the other guys booked at the same time so I was the only one going. Unfortunately, ever since having my phone stolen in Thailand I haven’t had any kind of alarm so I entrusted my good friend Ed to set his alarm and wake me up. However, he seems not to have quite yet grasped the concepts of am and pm and set his watch to go off at quarter past six at night instead of quarter past six in the morning, a fact we discovered when we both arose at 8am, an hour after the bus had departed. Oh well, apparently it rained all day there anyway.

Instead, we all took the gondola up the mountain to The Luge track. It’s a small, downhill race circuit which you fly down in mini go karts, bumping eachother off the track and going on to two wheels as you whizz around the tight corners. That was wicked fun, I’ll upload a video soon (see below.)

Related videos

• My Canyon Swing jumps (file size is quite large (6mb+) so it may take a while to buffer and run)
• The Luge racing (I’m the one in the red, white and blue top)

The Franz Josef Glacier is one of over 3,000 glaciers in New Zealand, but it’s the most popular, largest and most accessible. It’s located on the west coast where the world’s biggest tectonic plate fault line bisects the south island. The Australasia and Pacific plates are actively grinding together causing hundreds of earthquakes yearly. Most are undetectable to humans although a ‘biggie’ is now overdue.

The hike involved walking up sculpted steps made by our guide in the ice up on to the glacier’s trunk - the area where the ice is forced down a valley by the gathering snow at the main body. From there we worked our way upwards, trekking along slippery slopes and climbing up through icey caves. 1,000 metre high mountains line the valley where the glacier flows. We hiked up to about 500 metres. The wind, rain and constant flow of melting ice down the glacier is constantly changing the surface, forging seracs and carving out new crevasses for exploring all the time. We were on the ice for six hours in total. We got some great views up there and the terrain was challenging at times which made for a very enjoyable day. Also, back at the bottom of the glacier I bumped into the Portsmouth girls me and Chris met in Thailand who did a hike with a different group on the same day. Small world.

Back at the hostel, Rainforest Retreat, the night’s activity was a killer pool competition. The night before was karaoke where Ed, Joe, Pete, Lara and I could be heard belting out Wonderwall by Oasis and Hey Ya by Outkast. As for the pool comp, 30 people entered but there was only one winner: me! I lost one of my lives early on but a succession of competant shots kept me in the game and secured a bit of a showdown with one other guy at the end. It was tense, the whole bar gripped by the action, and luckily I held my composure to finish off the match after stiching the other guy up with his last life. With the $35 bar tab winnings I bought all my new buddies a pint, because that’s the kind of gentleman I am…

Today the bus drove us south to Wanaka (yes, there is an a after the n) where we’re staying one night. En route we stopped to check out Lake Matheson, with it’s reflections of Mount Cook and the Fox Glacier. The scenery on the way was really special, I’ve not seen anything like it anywhere else. Tomorrow we leave for Queenstown - New Zealand’s adventure capital.

Our stop for the night was Lake Mahinapua Hotel, run by a very funny - and very old - bloke called Les who looks a lot like Father Christmas. There was a fancy dress theme for the night. We either had to go in 60s, 70s or 80s attire, or a superhero, or anything beginning with P (i.e. policeman, princess, pregnant mum, paedophile…) After racking my brains for a good five or so minutes I went with the letter P vibe and picked up a cheap yellow t-shirt, blue shorts and socks, a $2 pair of football boots from a charity shop and some brown body paint and went as arguably the world’s greatest footballer of all time, Pele. I even bought a permanent marker and wrote ‘Pele’ number 9 on the back and drew the badge on the front. I proudly took home the achievement of most photographed person that night, and with all the effort involved turning myself into a black man I should think so too. I was in the shower for half an hour scrubbing it all off afterwards. A bloody funny night though.

Today was just about getting to Franz Josef, a glacier township in National Park surroundings where I’ll be climbing the Franz Josef Glacier tomorrow. We did stop for lunch at a tiny museum which was just a video really about deers. Believe it or not in order to start the process of farming deers they had to capture them from the mountains by flying a helicopter up there, where one man would chase and hover over a running deer and another man would leap out of the moving chopper onto the deers back, tackling it to the ground. They’ve since invented the net gun so it’s not such a life threatening job anymore, but, bloody hell, imagine doing that sort of thing on a daily basis. Jumping out of helicopters onto speeding game. Would make an interesting addition to any CV, that.